This week’s affixes are Fortified, Teeming, Quaking and Reaping!

This week’s affixes are unfortunately dramatically more difficult than last week’s. Fortified and Teeming combine to make the pulls bigger and more deadly, while also massively increasing the total amount of damage that you need to deal over the course of the dungeon. Meanwhile, Quaking serves to punish you for playing in tight spaces and to increase the difficulty of the otherwise-easy Fortified bosses. Two of the few affixes that make Reaping more difficult are active this week - Teeming, increasing the number of spirits you fight each wave, and Quaking, which continues to occur during Reaping waves and which can be particularly problematic if you spawn a large number of Lost Souls and find yourselves zoned by their AoE abilities.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Quaking affix, how it works behind-the-scenes, and how to play against it, check out this guide:







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]

Atal’Dazar is a difficult dungeon with Teeming active. One irritating peculiarity of this dungeon is that there is a random component to which Teeming enemies spawn - in addition to the extra enemies in the rest of the dungeon, there are three potential Teeming additions near the front of the dungeon of which only one will spawn every time you start a Keystone. Two of these possible spawns are on the southern part of the dungeon, beyond the point where either the Basic or the Expert route reaches, but one of them is a Reanimated Honor Guard pack that can either get in your group’s way if you didn’t plan to kill it or can mess up your Enemy Forces plans if you did and it didn’t appear. Our Basic route’s solution is to plan to either kill that group if it’s there, or an adjacent but otherwise skippable group if it isn’t - while the Expert route plans to skip it either way as part of a skip to Vol’kaal.

However you plan to deal with this element of randomness, brace yourselves for a number of difficult and large pulls that don’t get easily broken into smaller pieces! Atal’Dazar is also one of the dungeons in which Teeming noticeably increases the number of packs you have to pull, not just their size.


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]

It’s not a bad Freehold week - Raoul and Eudora are the active captains, but seeing as the week is Fortified this is actually good news, as it means that Captain Jolly and his the members of his Cutwater crew are ready to join your side, removing the most problematic enemies from the latter part of the dungeon - the Cutwater Harpooners.

Beware of Quaking during the Harlan Sweete encounter - both the Expert and the Basic routes call for you to avoid the trash in his room, which means you won’t have much room to work with and Quaking can come at a bad time and cause your group serious problems.

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.

Kings' Rest [back to top]

Kings’ Rest is never easy, and this week is no exception! Teeming’s impact in this dungeon is largely the addition of a few large enemies that you’ll generally want to pull by themselves, which increases the amount of time that it takes to clear the dungeon by a noticeable amount. It also makes it very difficult to clear the trash in The Golden Serpent’s room in three pulls like normal, as an extra Witch Doctor has been added and it’s difficult to handle multiple of them simultaneously.

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]

Shrine of the Storm was the most difficult dungeon by far last week. Of Keystones level 14 and higher completed, only 14% were within the timer, compared to 34% for Kings’ Rest, the next worst option, and 91% for Freehold, the best. It would not be surprising to see this feat repeated, as nothing about Shrine is easy this week - there are narrow hallways and footwork-intensive boss fights which make Quaking a real threat, and a ton of brutal Teeming packs, not to mention the fact that Reaping waves are already very large in this big dungeon on non-teeming weeks, so they’ll be truly massive this week!

Both of our Routes plan to skip the final Reaping wave by killing a pack of Abyssal Eels after Vol’zith the Whisperer. Our Expert route also plans to skip the penultimate Reaping wave by triggering it during a death skip.

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.


This week, it’s a good idea to make good use of Ashvane Spotters to get through the huge amounts of extra health that Teeming and Fortified combine to add to the dungeon.One way you can do this is to modify the expert route by skipping to the final Spotter and then using it to clear many packs, a Reaping wave, and tentacles during the last boss encounter. If you can execute this well, you’ll likely complete the dungeon with a large amount of time still on the clock - but it’s difficult to do and if you try it and wipe you’ll find the timer much less forgiving.

Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.

Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]

It’s a great week for Temple of Sethraliss - there is only one really problematic Teeming pull and it’s one of the first you’ll have to deal with. Luckily you can elect to use Bloodlust on this if you can handle the first boss encounter without it. Other than that, the rest of the dungeon should be fairly straightforward - most of the remaining pain will be felt in Galvazzt’s room - both when fighting the boss itself and the trash beforehand. Be sure to have lust available for this boss, even if it means you miss out on a fourth use of the ability over the course of the dungeon!


Our Expert route plans to skip the final two Reaping waves - the first by triggering it during a death skip, and the second by triggering it as the final boss encounter finishes.

Read more on Temple of Sethraliss Dungeon Abilities.

The MOTHERLODE!! [back to top]

The Motherlode a very difficult dungeon this week - Teeming increases the amount of trash that you have to pull so dramatically that you’ll find yourself pulling many more packs than you’re used to. This is because relatively few additional enemies have been added to those that the Routes normally pull.

Our Expert route is designed to get as much trash as possible from the start of the dungeon, which we believe to be the fastest way to fill the Enemy Forces bar. Try to kill enemies from these packs near the corpses of the ones from earlier pulls in order to cause the Reaping spirits to spawn nice and grouped for you, and prevent the nightmare of many Tormented Souls casting on you from different angles. After skipping all of the trash after Azerokk, the Expert route also plans to avoid the final Reaping wave by remaining just under 100% until all of the bosses are dead, at which point you can double back and grab one enemy to finish the dungeon.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.

The Underrot [back to top]

The Underrot is one of the dungeons that is the least affected by the majority of the weekly affixes. This week you’ll only feel Teeming’s impact in a handful of pulls, and none of them are made impossible by it, and you’ll only have to pull a pack or two more than you normally would. Watch out for Quaking on the Unbound Abomination encounter - it can be problematic as you’re trying to stack for the Cleansing Light.

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.

Tol Dagor [back to top]

It’s a great week to do Tol Dagor, as both Teeming and Fortified increase the difficulty of trash, but Heavy Cannons can take care of the majority of the Enemy Forces bar without any increase in difficulty from either Teeming or Fortified. Our Expert route continues to be optimized for exactly this strategy, and pulls almost nothing before getting access to the cannons. This involves a few skips that are difficult to execute, but the payoff is immense and the timer is so generous that we wholeheartedly recommend learning this strategy and using it to the fullest extent.

This dungeon is also an exception to our rule for the Basic routes that no specific classes or abilities are required - the route is designed for a group with either a Rogue or a player with items from their profession that can open the doors. If you don’t have access to either of those, the dungeon is extremely linear and you should just pull the enemies that are in your way and avoid any that aren’t!

Read more on Tol Dagor Dungeon Abilities.

Waycrest Manor [back to top]

Teeming/Fortified weeks are interesting in Waycrest Manor - normally you’d prefer the Top Left door be open in order to facilitate an early Bloodlust on The Heartsbane Triad, but with these affixes the Right-side doors may actually be more favorable as they instead afford you a good lust on trash in the Hunting Lodge. Regardless of which door is open, you’ll want to pull enemies back to spaces that you’ve already cleared and that are wide open - otherwise you run the risk of Quaking striking at a bad time while you’re packed into a narrow hallway.

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.