MDI Team Spotlight: Aster.Y
In the MDI Global Finals of Shadowlands Season 2, Aster.Y broke records by becoming the first Chinese team to ever advance to the Semi-Finals.
In a thrilling grand finale, Aster.Y faced off against Echo, taking second place worldwide — even scoring a map off Echo with a blisteringly fast Halls of Atonement.
With MDI teams announcing this week that they have begun practicing for The Great Push (TGP) of Season 2 on the Tournament Realm, we are excited to present our interview with members of team Aster.Y. Today, Aster.Y reflects upon their experiences in the recent MDI and shares their plans for future Mythic+ tournaments. Not only do the Aster.Y boys have a distinct sense of humor, but they are also inspiring Mythic+ innovators who are a force to be reckoned with in any competitive PvE content.
For many years, the Chinese WoW division has held an air of mystery to the other regions, as Blizzard has a separate publishing partner in mainland China, Netease. We always value any opportunity to bridge this gap, so we’d like to extend our continued appreciation to NasDa for acting as the translator and liaison of this piece and numerous others at Raider.IO.
Table of Contents
“We trained nearly nonstop since the MDI Time Trails and I think it paid off really well for us. Practice makes perfect.” —Yeluo
Q-1: We are very happy to be speaking with you today. Can you please tell us a little about yourselves and how you became an MDI team?
Anuo: Hi! My name is Anuo. I'm 30+ years old and I'm the tank player of Aster.Y. I've been a Mythic+ enthusiast since Legion. I participated in the Legion MDI once but it didn't go too well. Our team wiped on Rokmora in Neltharion's Lair multiple times. The last time when all of my teammates died, I decided to solo the boss from 50% to 0% with my Blood Death Knight. It became a meme in the Chinese community ever since then. After that, we started to see some Mythic+ groups in the group finder menu with titles like, "18 Neltharion's Lair LF tank who can solo the first boss".
The 2nd time that I was almost in the MDI finals was during BFA where Yeluo and I formed a team called Battle For Champion. We were the #1 seed of the China qualifiers. However, right before we were flying to Australia to attend the LAN event, one of our players had a really serious family emergency he had to take care of, so that was basically GG for our team and was the end of my 2nd MDI attempt.
This time around, I finally found 4 teammates who were skilled and dedicated enough to compete in the MDI. Most importantly, they all have a strong will to put in loads of time and effort to achieve our ultimate goal, which is to win the tournament. Having to play the entire MDI finals online this year sort of helped us so that we could play in our most comfortable environments. We also didn’t have to deal with any of us getting rejected for obtaining a visa to travel abroad.
Yeluo: Hi, I'm Yeluo. I used to be one of the hardcore raiders and a Mythic+ player in the top Chinese raiding guild JTH. I joined Aster before this MDI. As a team, we are a bunch of high-key enthusiasts. We won 2nd place in the Season 1 TGP. We decided to participate together in this MDI mostly because the tournament length got dramatically shortened.
Qingxin is probably the youngest player on our team, and yet he is arguably one of the best (if not the best) Mage players in the world. Some people might know him from BFA expansion when he started to push high keys very seriously with the team.
Little rain (雨祭花逝) and Little sun (小太阳), are relatively new players on the team. Little sun played with us in TGP Season 1 and performed really well considering that it was his first ever official tournament. Little rain joined us before this MDI and the way I recruited him is rather interesting. I dug through quite a lot of Warcraftlogs of top Chinese guilds and found him. We asked him if he'd be interested in joining us and he said yes. That’s how we got our 5th player. His main class is Shadow Priest, and this is exactly why we recruited him in the first place. But as the meta shifted a bit in different dungeons and Qingxin and I had to play Mage and Rogue in most of the dungeons, we asked him to play other classes like Monk, Warlock and Boomkin. I would like to say that he's done a really good job playing those alt classes that he's never played at such a high level before.
Outside of WoW, I play other fun games such as World of Warcraft.
Q-2: What has your MDI journey been like throughout the season? What were some of your biggest highlights?
Yeluo: An intensive and wild ride, a bit of unfortunate in the end.
Little sun: The highlight for me in this tournament was when we played against Ambition in the Lower Finals in De Other Side. During the huge pull with the Haunted Urns in the Ardenweald zone, I managed to play Ashen Hallow to its full duration and kill huge amounts of Explosive orbs almost perfectly. Before that match, I was afraid that I would have trouble targeting the orbs because my hands might be shaking uncontrollably.
“The biggest challenge for us was our lack of experience in both the MDI speed-running format and the official tournament itself. —Yeluo
Q-3: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced throughout this MDI season? How did you overcome these obstacles?
Yeluo: The biggest challenge for us was our lack of experience in both the MDI speed-running format and the official tournament itself. Since this is the first time we ever competed in the MDI finals, everybody was so nervous throughout the entire tournament. It was a completely different experience compared to that of the TGP tournament.
In order to overcome these obstacles, we had no choice but to train extra hard. We trained nearly nonstop since the MDI Time Trials and I think it paid off really well for us. Practice makes perfect.
Q-4: How did it feel to take that first victory of the Grand Finals against Echo in Halls of Atonement? During the dungeon, were you aware of how close the match was, or were you solely focused on your own performance?
Yeluo: It was a good start. Based on our own assessment, we had the ability to fight Echo in every other dungeon apart from Theater of Pain. During the first game, we were able to find out their situation with a couple of minutes delay on the broadcast. After we knew that Echo messed up a bit and fell behind, we decided to take the slower but safer route.
Q-5: In Theater of Pain, NasDa reported on Twitter that you felt like Echo had the upper hand. What do you think may have contributed to this advantage?
Yeluo: I guess we had a different understanding when it came to the MDI. We thought that MDI was all about speed, so our healing CDs assignment was very aggressive. This put a ton of pressure on some of the pulls, which then made them inconsistent for us.
Team Aster.Y in the MDI Broadcast, featuring Little rain
Q-6: We loved your video featuring Little rain in the MDI broadcast that showcased your team. What was one of the funniest moments during your MDI practice for the Global Finals?
Yeluo: The funniest moment would be when Little rain Wild Charged and fell off the cliff when we were fighting against the last boss in Sanguine Depths. We laughed so hard because we knew we would win despite the mistake.
Qingxin "practicing Hunter" for Aster.Y's MDI Theater of Pain strategy
Q-7: What are your goals for upcoming MDI tournaments? Do you plan to compete again and have a rematch against Echo?
Yeluo: Everybody is actually very tired from practicing the MDI already but we are still planning to play in the next TGP. We think we could've won last time and we don't want to have any regrets.
“After experiencing the entire journey of MDI for the first time, I strongly realised how much effort and time you have to invest to reach your goal. I hope we can achieve more in the future representing the Chinese region.” —Qingxin
Q-8: Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share?
Anuo: If there were a parallel universe, I would say this to myself one and a half months ago.
"You will never believe that, after going in and out of the dungeons for almost 3000 times in a month, you will take a giant leap forward in your mindset, professional skills, and understanding of the game."
From playing in the China finals with shaky hands, to having a chance to beat the team that I considered to be "out of reach" for us, I have grown a lot in this MDI journey. I have accomplished my goals, pushed myself to the limit, and faced the challenge head on.
And most importantly, don't ever Wild Charge when you fight against the last boss in Sanguine Depths.
Qingxin: Thank you to everybody that has been following the tournament — especially those who supported us and those who stayed up all night to watch our performance. Your passion is one of the greatest forces that drives us. After experiencing the entire journey of MDI for the first time, I strongly realised how much effort and time you have to invest to reach your goal. I hope we can achieve more in the future representing the Chinese region.
Yeluo: In the next MDI, I hope that the top 2 teams from China can enter the Grand Finals.
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About the Authors
VitaminP (VP) is the Lead Editor & Assistant Producer of Raider.IO and has worked for the organization since the formation of the News Section in November 2018. Although VP is currently focused on pursuing her Masters of Business Administration, she specializes in tanking classes and has loved doing competitive Mythic+ on and off since early Legion.
NasDa hails from Beijing, China and represents Aster as part of the management team. He lived and studied in the UK for 9 years and became a content creator in BFA, mostly covering the Western WoW scene as a hobby. NasDa has played WoW since Vanilla, and he started hardcore raiding in TBC with a group of Chinese students overseas in EU, finishing as a World Top 50 guild. NasDa’s goal in the WoW scene is to bridge the gap between East and West.
