MDI Season 3 Finals Spotlight: W OMEGALUL

By Hulahoops — Jul 8 2022 15:00 UTC

Are you a fan of the MDI? Have you ever wanted to know a bit more about the players dedicating countless hours to the unique PVE esport? Leading up to the Shadowlands Season 3 Global Finals this coming weekend, we’re bringing you spotlights on the various teams you’ll be seeing racing through dungeons during the broadcast. Read on to learn more about European based team, W OMEGALUL!

Don’t forget to set your clocks for the Global Finals taking place this weekend! You can check out all of the MDI action on the official World of Warcraft YouTube Channel, starting at 10am PDT / 7pm CEST, starting Friday July 8th. If you’re unable to watch the broadcast but want to stay on top of the competition, we’ve got you covered with our live updates and analysis all weekend long over on our MDI Highlights page!

Team Members
Team History
Season 3 So Far
Q & A

W OMEGALUL: The Ostentatious

Team Members

Whether you’re an MDI fan, a Race to World First devotee, or a member of the high Mythic+ community, W OMEGALUL’s roster has some very familiar names on it. This European team is made up of Drjay, Igloo, Lemiike, Tobo, and Ricky.

Drjay has been a staple of the Mythic+ and MDI scene for many years, having started competing in the esport back in 2018 with the team Method Pogchamp. He is known for being a high-tier Mage player but is able to multi-class to meet whatever the current MDI meta is. He has played on a number of different teams over the course of his MDI, both with and against many of the other veteran competitors in the tournament this weekend. In 2018 and 2019 he was on the team Abrakeydabra with Divinefield, Ashine, and Swag, all of whom are on another Global Finals team: Perplexed. In 2020 Drjay played with the team Deplete from Beyond with current teammate Igloo, and current Echo member Clickz. In Season 1 of Shadowlands, Drjay and Igloo were still playing together on the team PI Me. However, they went separate ways for Season 2, with Drjay joining Moadmoad and Maystine of MONKA on the team Omega Pump, and Igloo playing on Team Name.

Learn more about Drjay in his 2019 Player Spotlight interview here!

Igloo has been healing in the MDI since the 2019 Spring Season, when he was on the team Fourty K with Wolfdisco, who is also a current Perplexed team member. Similar to Drjay, he has been on a few teams over the years, but he and Drjay always seem to end up back on a team together! Over the years in the MDI, we’ve seen Igloo play multiple healer classes, including Resto Druid, Mistweaver Monk, Priest (both Discipline and Holy), and Holy Paladin. He is a very skilled multi-classer that is able to adapt to whatever his team needs.

Tobo is brand new to the MDI but he has already been making a splash in the high-end PVE community. He is a strong multi-class DPS player who trialed with World First guild Echo this most recent tier, and was promoted to raider after a raving review from Raid Leader Scripe. Tobo is one of the youngest competitors on the scene and did not start pushing Mythic+ until this Season, yet he’s already making an impact! Tobo is definitely a player to keep an eye on.

Ricky played back in BFA with the team Paint for Fem as a DPS for a couple of MDI Seasons, playing with longtime Mythic+ favourites Fem and Sjele. Their team had some moderate success in Cups, but unfortunately never qualified for Global Finals. This will be Ricky’s first time on the (proverbial) big stage, and we are cheering him on!

Learn More: MDI Team Spotlight Paint for Fem, 2020

The last member is the team’s tank, Lemiike. He is also brand new to the scene, but has been making waves on the Mythic+ leaderboards this expansion, earning some very high rankings on the tank lists. At the time of writing, he is currently the 6th highest ranked tank in the world!

Team History

W OMEGALUL is an amalgamation of various players with different histories in the MDI. Drjay has been competing since 2018, Igloo joined the fray in 2019, and Ricky had his MDI endeavours in BFA before taking a break until this Season. The highest finish any of them have had in an MDI Season was back in 2018 when Drjay was playing with Method Pogchamp and earned 3rd place in the Global Finals at BlizzCon. In the 2020 Global Finals, Igloo and Drjay also came in 3rd place on team Deplete From Beyond. They’ve had varied success as individuals or on the same teams since. We’re excited to see if the additions of rookie players Tobo and Lemiike will help the team make it to the podium!

Season 3 So Far

Omegalul placed 5th overall in the Time Trials, which placed them in the Group C weekend. As you may know, the current format of the MDI has 24 teams qualifying from the Time Trials, and sorted into 3 separate Global Group weekends. The teams that place 1st and 2nd in each Group weekend then qualify for the Global Finals. Unfortunately for Omegalul, they did not qualify for the Global Finals via their Group weekend, as Donuts and Despair were the champions and Sloth earned the second place finish.

Luckily, the current format of the MDI allows for an extra opportunity for teams to earn a spot in the Global Finals by way of The Last Stand. This is an extra tournament that follows the “Great Push” format — where the goal is to push keystones as high as possible — and the winner is given the last and final spot in the Global Finals. After missing out on their berth in the Global Finals during the Group C weekend, Omegalul entered and won The Last Stand! This win earned them their chance at becoming the Shadowlands Season 3 MDI Champions.

In fact, W OMEGALUL did not just win The Last Stand tournament — they dominated, taking 5 out of 6 of the leading times for the dungeons.

Perhaps W OMEGALUL’s most impressive performance was their blazingly fast 11 minutes and 11 seconds Tazavesh: So’leah’s Gambit run on +23, shown below!

W OMEGALUL - The Last Stand, Season 3. Tazavesh Gambit +23 - 11:11 min

W OMEGALUL also had an immaculate performance in a +22 De Other Side, clearing the entire instance in 20 minutes and 14 seconds with no deaths!

In the Global Finals this weekend, W OMEGALUL’s first matchup will be against fellow European team MONKA, pitting Drjay against two of former teammates from last Season, Moadmoad and Maystine. We can’t wait to see what the finals have in store!

Q & A

Now that we’ve covered some backstory on the W OMEGALUL team, we wanted to delve a little deeper into what it’s truly like to compete in the MDI. We asked the players a handful of questions about life in the MDI, and this is what they had to say.

Q-1: How do you cope with the pressure, stress, and anxiety of competing on a World Stage, both as an individual and within your team?

Lemiike: I have always been very good at dealing with stress and demanding situations since I have been in plenty of them — not only in WoW, but also with other games and my old job.

Ricky: I don't really have a good answer for coping with all the stress/pressure during long hours of practice, but I can say that being motivated to play competitive tournaments and having a good end goal helps a lot.

Igloo: I’ve been competing for a long time now so I don’t feel the same stress I used to. Experience helps a lot. Treating practice seriously helps me stay in the competitive mindset and the pressure of playing in the Cup matches.

Tobo: I just try to ignore it as much as possible and pretend like it’s not there, really. It helps that our comms are private — it’s kind of like our own bubble where we can just chill and talk like normal.

Q-2: What role do people outside of your team (partner, family, friends, etc.) play in supporting you as an MDI competitor?

Tobo: My dad always asks how our practice is going and watches some of our matches, always interested and supportive!

Q-3: How do you maintain your mental and physical health during the MDI Season, especially in situations where you or your team don’t perform as desired?

Lemiike: Failing to maintain good mental health is not an option — you just have to keep looking forward and, if things go wrong, you have to ask what happened and figure out how to fix your mistakes. Physically, it’s down to basics, at least for me, which is to get good sleep, eat well, and exercise.

Ricky: Making sure I have a proper schedule, eat/drink properly, go for some fresh air during short breaks, and eat healthy food during dinner breaks. And, if we underperform, my mentality is to just keep moving forward and not let it drag me down.

Igloo: Practicing for 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week during Cups takes its toll eventually; trying to keep an atmosphere of constantly improving and working on progress helps keep my mental in check so it doesn’t feel like I’m bashing your head into an immovable wall.

Tobo: Always trying to think of what’s best for the team. If we lost the previous matchup, we think about how we can do better in the next match and try not to get caught up on the mistakes. If we’re tilted, we take a break and cool off a bit because playing in a bad atmosphere is just useless.

Q-4: Describe a typical MDI Competition day for you. Do you have any routines or rituals you follow? Any superstitions? Anything you make sure you do the night before?

Lemiike: For me, a typical day of MDI competition is that I wake up and start with a cup of coffee at my PC, then look to see if there is any news out regarding WoW. Next, I go out in the garden with my dog to get some fresh air and energy for the day. Then, it’s gametime.

Ricky: I always try to wake up an hour before we start playing so that I can get a small breakfast, some strong coffee, and start thinking about what today's plan is going to be.
I always have a music playlist that I listen to during Cup play, but I mix it up a bit during practice.

Tobo: I get some nice sleep the night before and just eat normal meals a good while before the match so that I’m not bloated or in a food coma by the time we play.

Q-5: What do you look for in your teammates? What are the important traits to being a good teammate? Why did you decide to join your current team?

Lemiike: I trust my teammates to know the very best of their own role / class, just I want them to trust me in my choice of class I play and how to play it. Being a good teammate means playing for the team and not for your own sake. Always play for the team. I decided to join the team due to the people who were in it. The experience and talent they have are huge, and we have a high chance of success. Additionally, everyone on the team has a similar mindset to mine, so there was no hesitation for me to join this team at all.

Ricky: I look for teammates that have a wide spectrum of different skills so that we can end up covering every important role once the roster is filled. Then, being able to take/give constructive criticism and have good ideas for each dungeon helps the team a lot. It’s also kind of important that the team has a good social atmosphere considering that we have to spend an insane amount of hours together during some stressful days. I decided to join the team because I felt like we have big potential and a chance of going far in the tournament.

Igloo: Everyone needs to be on the same page and have the same ideas about how the game should be played and how practice should be conducted. Consistency is so important in MDI — you run the same dungeon 100+ times and you need everyone to remember their jobs and execute every time, which the best players make happen more often than not.

Tobo: Important traits to being a good teammate are consistency, being able to take criticism and view things objectively, good communication, and motivation.

Q-6: If you have been playing in the MDI for a number of years, what is it that keeps you competitive and passionate about the esport? If you are newer to the MDI, what motivated you to join?

Lemiike: I’ve never played in the MDI before. The reason I joined this year is because I felt that I was able to compete — not only to participate, but actually have a shot at winning. I didn't have that feeling before since I didn't have the time, but ever since I decided to try and become a full-time streamer, I also felt that now is my time to actually play the game to the fullest extent.

Ricky: I played some seasons in BFA with the old squad and then took a break in Shadowlands since I feel like having a fulltime job working 07:00-15:00 and only being able to practice from 15:30-23:00 everyday during important weeks is not enough if you want to be able to compete at the top. With W OMEGALUL, I saw a chance of actually playing in a team that would spend more hours and I took it. I'm a competitive person, so that alone is the big motivator.

Igloo: I just enjoy the competition and the feeling of progression / improvement and trying to win. I’ve played in every MDI Globals since 2019 and still feel the drive to try and place highly in the bracket.

Tobo: I’m pretty new to the MDI myself, but it seemed interesting with figuring out big pulls, optimising cooldowns, and going for the fastest times.

About the Authors

Hulahoops has been playing WoW since Vanilla. She has recently shelved Retail to go back and re-experience TBC in all its glory, but will one day make her way back to the Shadowlands. In her hey-day, Hulahoops could be found raid-leading in Mythic Progression, or competing in the MDI with her team Angry Toast. Hulahoops is a Holy Paladin in every sense of the term: she moderates the Hammer of Wrath Paladin Class Discord, and she was a practicing Lawyer for 7 years. Judgment isn't just a spell! Hulahoops decided to put the law books away and follow her passion for gaming and esports by joining the team at Raider.IO. In her capacity as General Manager, Hulahoops oversees events, content, and more!

Picco is an old-fashioned WoW gamer that started back in Vanilla and has played ever since. She is a healer by heart and is currently maining Restoration Druid. She loves Mythic+ and has a great passion for events like the MDI and TGP. Picco is part of the KeystoneMasters team and enjoys jiggling around with ideas for fun new formats of community tournaments. She is also a Mod for several streamers and guilds, particularly during the RWF. Outside of WoW, Picco is a Sprout in FF14, where she explores with her Lala Summoner.