This article and the Routes within have been updated to account for changes to the game and new strategies that have emerged since the last time these affixes were active.

This week’s affixes are: Fortified, Sanguine, Necrotic and Reaping.

Your tank is going to feel the full force of this week’s affixes. Necrotic will require them to kite and carefully ration their defensives, while Sanguine will require them to carefully control the pack as it dies - which can be challenging while kiting! Take care to avoid killing the front-most enemy if they’re lined up and chasing your tank, as that will spawn a sanguine pool through which the rest of them will run - instead pick off the enemies near the back of the chain or use knockback effects to control their positioning. There’s also some tension with how you use your crowd control - Necrotic incentivizes you to slow and AoE stun enemies, but Sanguine will punish you for doing this at the wrong times.

Keys can certainly be done quickly and at a high level this week - most of the burden is on the tank, but the rest of the group can help by paying attention to necrotic stacks and using abilities to control the enemies as needed. Because Fortified is active, bosses should be relatively easy this week - be careful to clear out any potential enemies that might get pulled during the boss fight beforehand though - you don’t want their Necrotic stacks or Sanguine pools anywhere near the boss! It is worth mentioning that Reaping has no interaction with either Necrotic or Sanguine - the enemies don’t even heal from Sanguine pools!





For each dungeon, there are two different Mythic Dungeon Tools (MDT) routes available – a “Basic” route and an “Expert” route. The Basic routes follow a few restrictions: they don’t feature massive pulls, they don’t require special class abilities like Shroud of Concealment to facilitate skipping mobs, and they don’t require the use of death skips. They also don’t require you to leave anything crowd controlled for too long.

The expert routes, by contrast, often call for advanced pulls and skips. Sometimes, these skips require specific classes like Death Knight, Demon Hunter, or Rogue - but often they can be done by many different group compositions, just in slightly different ways. Every skip in these routes features a full explanation if you mouse over the corresponding number.

If you’re a coordinated team, you should start with the Expert routes and remove pulls/skips that you can’t do. If you need help making any such for your team's strengths and weaknesses, ask me when I'm streaming or get in touch with me using any of the contact info in my RaiderIO Profile!

Click on the COPY MDT IMPORT STRING button and you’ll be able to paste that string into the the "Import" window of your Mythic Dungeon Tools addon and get the route for yourself! Each of these routes contains annotations about how to do each pull and which enemies to crowd control, where to Bloodlust, etc. The annotations and drawings make these routes take a few minutes to Share using MDT’s in-game share function, so consider clearing them before sharing with your group-mates!

Atal'Dazar [back to top]

Though Atal’Dazar is easiest on Tyrannical weeks, this isn’t a bad week for it either! Be careful to not get baited by Sanguine while fighting Gilded Priestesses as the two different types of blood pool look very similar! Another common gameplay pattern that you’ll need to watch out for is stunning dangerous mobs like Toxic Saurids or the trolls in the bigger pulls - if you do this while they’re dying, you may cause Sanguine healing to happen. Instead, try to use your AoE stuns earlier in the pull that you normally might, and save knock effects for the end.

As the metagame has shifted away from Death Knights, our Expert routes no longer plan to take control of an undead enemy and kill it after Yazma to avoid the final Reaping wave, but this strategy is still excellent if you have access to it!

Read more on Atal’Dazar Dungeon Abilities.

Freehold [back to top]

This is an excellent week for Freehold! Jolly and Eudora are the active captains, but since it’s a Fortified week they shouldn’t present too much of a threat. You’ll need to be careful with Necrotic stacks while fighting Harlan - when he’s below 30% his attack speed doubles and that can cause the stacks to get out of hand quite quickly! Also be careful to not position yourself such that there are Sanguine pools between you and any Cutwater Harpooners that you’re in combat with, or you might find yourself hooked into them!

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.

Kings' Rest [back to top]

This is not a terrible week for Kings’ Rest - Sanguine in the tight corridors and Necrotic during the King Dazar encounter are likely to be the biggest challenges of the week, besides of course the difficult Fortified trash towards the end of the dungeon, culminating with Shadow of Zul. Be prepared to fight a Reaping wave sometime during the gauntlet after The Golden Serpent - likely while a part of that gauntlet is active!

Like in Atal’dazar, our Expert route used to plan for a Death Knight to take control of an undead enemy and kill it after King Dazar to avoid the final Reaping wave. We now no longer assume your group has access to this, but it remains a powerful strategy if you do, and you should rework the Route to use it.

Read more on Kings’ Rest Dungeon Abilities.

Shrine of the Storm [back to top]

Sanguine in Shrine of the Storm is a serious problem - though Animated Droplets mercifully no longer spawn pools, there are plenty of low health enemies that still do, and a ton of caster types that love to stand in the sanguine and heal up to full. There are also a ton of tight spaces, especially if you use the Expert route and find yourself avoiding packs that are close to other packs you’re supposed to fight.

Our Expert route plans to skip the fourth Reaping wave by triggering it during a death skip - while our Basic route plans only to skip the final wave by triggering it after the final boss.

Read more on Shrine of the Storm Dungeon Abilities.

Siege of Boralus [back to top]

As usual, our Siege of Boralus routes are based off the Horde pathing and will require some modification if you’re Alliance.

One cool thing you can do with Sanguine is use it to heal up Ashvane Spotters that are low on health but that you want to keep around for a while. Our expert route, for example, proposes keeping the final Spotter alive from the moment you encounter her to the moment the last boss dies - using her to help deal with trash, reaping waves, and even with tentacles during the fight against Viq’goth.

Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.

Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]

Temple of Sethraliss is largely unchanged, route-wise, from previous weeks. Even on Fortified, you’ll want to use your Bloodlusts on the difficult bosses, like Galvazzt, who can still easily be a brick wall with Necrotic active. This is, generally, a good week to head to the Temple - most of the trash isn’t too bad with Fortified or Necrotic, and there isn’t all that much of it, so you won’t have to deal with too many Sanguine pools. Do be careful with where you drop Sanguine in the boss rooms - you don’t want to find yourself fighting against Merektha and have her heal to full because she emerged from a transition into a pool, nor do you want to have enemies during the Avatar of Sethraliss encounter standing in Sanguine pools such that you’ll be forced to wait for them to despawn before you can progress the encounter.

Read more on Temple of Sethraliss Dungeon Abilities.

The MOTHERLODE!! [back to top]

Sanguine is a huge technical challenge in here if you’re using our Expert route, as we plan to activate almost every single Peacekeeper, and those non-crowd controllable enemies often get in 5-10 second windows in which they stand still and cast, which represents a full-heal if they’re in a Sanguine pool. We believe this strategy, picking up almost all of your Enemy Forces from the enemies before the first boss, is the best way to defeat the timer in this dungeon, but it is not easy and requires exceptional mob control from the tank, as well as knockbacks from the rest of the group ideally.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.

The Underrot [back to top]

There are a few spots in this dungeon where Sanguine can be a threat - dropping it under Grotesque Horrors or in the center of Cragmaw’s room, for instance, can cause problems for your group. Necrotic may also pose a threat, especially when fighting the various skeletons in the latter half of the dungeon - be ready to kite aggressively here!

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.

Tol Dagor [back to top]

It’s still Heavy Cannon week in Tol Dagor - although you’ll have to be careful as Sanguine can slow down the process. The upside of a cannon-oriented approach this week is that you’ll have to spend less of the dungeon fighting against the Necrotic/Fortified trash. We find this to be compelling enough to adjust our Expert route to be our most extreme yet - only one Reaping wave will be encountered before you get access to the cannons. This requires a large amount of skips, some involving deaths, but the payoff is tremendous if you can execute them!

Watch out for Necrotic during the Jes Howlis encounter - if you don’t generally kill the Irontide Raiders before engaging him, this is a good week to do so to minimize the stacks on the tank during the fight.

Read more on Tol Dagor Dungeon Abilities.

Waycrest Manor [back to top]

Waycrest Manor is still one of the most challenging Sanguine dungeons in the game, though it’s much more doable now that Maggots don’t trigger the affix. Much of the dungeon is narrow hallways and space that you normally re-use, so filling it up with Sanguine is easy to do and will punish you for doing so. To mitigate this, you should pull every single pack back into the most recently cleared open space, and/or you should beeline for the next open space and then pull enemies you skipped along the way into it.

Be sure to manage Sanguine in the boss rooms - particularly that of Lord and Lady Waycrest - you can save yourself a lot of trouble by killing the trash far away from the space you’ll want to use for the boss encounters.

If you can skip the Gloom Horrors at the end of the dungeon, with either a Shroud or a death, and then go back and finish them off after Gorak Tul, you’ll have one less Reaping wave to deal with! This is a marginal benefit, however, and often tricky to execute, so you may find just dealing with the Reaping wave to be the best option - if you can manage it, pulling it on to Gorak is a great strategy!

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.