The War Within Season 1: MDI Group B Preview

By Seliathan — Nov 7 18:00 UTC

The first MDI season of The War Within is HERE! The Time Trials have concluded, the 16 qualifying teams have been determined, and the action starts NOW!

This weekend, we’ll watch Group B battle it out to determine which three teams will secure tickets to the Global Finals! Read on for a brief overview of the MDI format, info on each of the Group B teams, and our predictions for this weekend’s tournament.

The War Within’s Season 1 MDI starts at 10am PT / 7pm CET this weekend, and you can watch it live on the Warcraft YouTube Channel, or the Warcraft Twitch Channel. If you aren’t able to tune in, we’ve got you covered with LIVE updates and highlights all weekend long with our MDI Highlights page!

MDI Format
Group B Teams Preview

Group B Predictions

MDI Format

Throughout Dragonflight, we saw a few changes to the MDI format, and these improvements remain in play for this first MDI of The War Within as well. We are down from 24 teams to 16, with only two group stages before the Global Finals begin. From each group stage, 3 teams will advance, with the remaining 2 slots for the 8-team Global Finals coming from China.

You heard that right: for the first time in years, we will be seeing two competitors from the Chinese region again! Their Time Trials and group stage will be handled separately without an English live broadcast, so their teams will come into the finals as a deadly dark horse duo!

Teams are still required to field 1 Tank, 1 Healer and 3 DPS, with no duplicate specs, no teleporting out of the dungeon, and no pulling through walls or other tricks unless they have been cleared with the admins first. Despite these restrictions, we still anticipate a wealth of new and shiny tricks from the teams to try and gain a competitive edge!

TWW MDI Season 1 Rules

Group B Teams Preview

With only three teams qualifying per group stage, Group B promises to have a heavily contested third place, while the top two spots are almost guaranteed to go to the two top teams of Group B. Mandatory and Holy Moly both had incredible showings during the Time Trials, coming in second and third place respectively with only 15 seconds separating them. The third highest seeded team of Group B, NoTitle ended up over 3 minutes behind these two, and consequently we do not expect them to be able to upset either of the teams during the Group Stage. However, if Group A is anything to go by, an upset could certainly happen unexpectedly!

Group B boasts many veteran teams with familiar names and players, so we do not expect a whole lot of wipefests throughout the event; it’s also always exciting to see teams who never made it to the MDI or TGP Global Finals before return once again for their shot at victory, and to watch teams who once barely made it into the Group Stage now come in as Top 10 Time Trial competitors! To better prepare you for the upcoming showdown, let’s look into each and every one of the Group B teams and how they have performed thus far.

Mandatory are the single biggest favorite of the tournament, and are defending their MDI crown after claiming it in Dragonflight Season 3’s MDI, beating out Echo in a nail-biting 5-game series. While they were unable to replicate this success in Season 4’s TGP, Mandatory are coming in hot with a great Time Trial performance, despite some clear struggles to practice and run keys together regularly.

Mandatory ultimately ended up a minute and 27 seconds slower than Perplexed, but the team may simply not have played as much once their qualification for the Group Stage was guaranteed. If you want to win the championship, you have to beat every team anyway, right? With the experience of multiple first and second place finishes under their belt in the previous iterations of the MDI and TGP, Mandatory are going to be a tough team to beat, both in Group B and during the Global Finals.

Holy Moly are no strangers to MDI esports competitions at this point, with many of the group members having played under a whole host of different team banners in previous tournaments. With some of their players having played in household names like Legendary, Perplexed, and Madge, as well as most of the players raiding together in Echo, we expect a great deal of familiarity out of this fresh team.

Holy Moly finished up their Time Trials coming in third, only 15 seconds behind the reigning MDI champions, and if this performance is anything to go by, we can’t wait to see what they have in store for us this weekend. With many of their players being experienced Race to World First (RWF) raiders, their multiclassing ability is likely through the roof, which could give them an edge in adjusting to the most recent class tuning that shook up the meta for DPS, Tanks and Healers.

NoTitle are one of the newcomers this season, as the team more or less simply decided to try their chances at the MDI. They came in sixth place, to many people’s surprise (including their own), and suddenly realized that Global Finals are not only within reach, but a realistic goal. While NoTitle are a solid 3 minutes behind Group B’s Top 2, they only need to come in third to guarantee themselves a spot in the Global Finals, which will likely have led to them ramping up their practice time significantly!

While the players of NoTitle have little MDI experience, they are frequent high-key pushers on live servers, making them quite adaptable when things go wrong – an important soft skill during the live event portion of the MDI! Being able to react and adjust quickly to things not going according to plan is hugely important, especially with the new Affix situation that sees many teams struggling to claim wins due to a few unfortunate deaths.

Despite one of their players quickly having to pick up

Enhancement Shaman, NoTitle are looking like one of the best contenders for a Top 3 finish in Group B!

With a name such as Cursed, we sure hope this is not indicative of the team’s performance this weekend! Many of the players have a plethora of experience in the MDI reaching as far back as Legion, putting them in a prime position to snag a Top 3 spot despite only being the fourth highest seeded team of the weekend.

Cursed ended up only 10 seconds slower than NoTitle, which should give them quite a bit of hope since all their players have extensive live-event experience. This can come in clutch when things don’t exactly go according to plan. We also expect the team to be resilient to the stress of this environment, giving them yet another possible edge over the competition to perform far beyond the expectations that people may have of the 7th seed in the Time Trials.

Ducks Can Fly are a reputable name these days, as the team continues to show up for each and every MDI and TGP, and they seemingly do better and better each time. While the Ducks faced an early elimination the last time around, the team certainly has prepared for this MDI more so than any other. This showed in their Time Trial performance, which ended up only 40 seconds behind the #7 seed, Cursed, a team stuffed with MDI Global Finals veterans.

We expect our ducklings to soar to new heights, as a Top 3 finish is not entirely out of the question. We’ve seen in Group A already that consistency is going to be key for making it far in the tournament, as the 15 second death penalty of the Challenger’s Peril affix can quickly turn the tide of battle, and if Ducks are known for anything, then it’s certainly their consistency. Right? Well, maybe. Either way, the Ducks are looking strong this season, and we can’t wait to see how far they can fly this time around.

Advance are a team of players from the guild of the same name, and with a very speedy progression through the current raid tier, Nerub-ar Palace, they had plenty of time to set up a team and prepare for this season’s MDI. With how quickly these players ended up progressing through the tier on a very tame schedule, we can only hope that their MDI results are equally as impressive, especially as the team hopefully had a bit more time to prepare and practice after ending up in Group B instead of A.

Their 11th place in the Time Trials may not make Advance seem like a force to be reckoned with, but they only ended up about a minute and 20 seconds behind their first opponent of the tournament, the third highest seed of Group B: NoTitle. We’ve already witnessed an upset last week, with the third highest seeded team of Group A quickly knocked down. We can’t wait to see if that happens again!

Some Seriousness are another team whose name should ring familiar, as they managed to make it into the Group Stage of the Dragonflight Season 3 MDI where they were knocked out by household MDI veterans Dire Wolves. After replacing one of their players, Some Seriousness will be facing one of the top favorites of not just the Group, but the entire tournament, and it will not be an easy fight for the squad.

That being said, the new MDI environment with the new subset of Affixes has already become a hurdle for favorites in Group A, and it could easily happen again this time around. With Some Seriousness now having some live-event tournament experience, they may end up being a lot more serious, and even a force to be reckoned with, this time around

Les Bros Canteurs are a new squad on the block, and the French team have already played together for a long time under their guild banner. Healer Elvym always wanted to play the MDI, but never had the players required. Luckily, one of their fellow guildies ended up losing a bet to Elvym, and as a result, Les Bros Canteurs was born.

Without huge ambitions, and with a middling timer in the Time Trials that netted them a #16 seeding, this team barely made it into the tournament. Les Bros Canteurs is under no illusion that their matches will be easy, but this lack of stress and pressure could be a boon for them if one of the other teams slip up. Maybe we will see them make it into the Top 6, or even Top 4, if they can keep cool heads and play their own game, instead of trying to reach for the stars.

Group B Predictions

Only three teams from Group B will be qualifying for the Global Finals. With their wealth of experience and great Time Trial performances, Mandatory and Holy Moly seem like Group B’s safe bets. The third spot is up for grabs, and just like in Group A, we have multiple teams this time around that could easily snag this coveted third spot by the end of the weekend.

Once again, consistency and clean play will likely be the key to success, and it is hard to say which one of the remaining six teams will end up on top. While the top spots may not be as exciting to watch, Day 2 of the event will be a slaughter, with four teams eliminated on a single day of play.

An important thing to keep an eye on is the class composition for each of the teams, as well as the ability to multiclass. With the arrival of the World of Warcraft 20th Anniversary Patch and the numerous hotfix patches following, many classes saw sweeping changes to numbers and talents in recent weeks. Switching to a new spec for a small but noticeable gain in DPS is not something that every player is capable of doing – especially when deaths are so punishing in dungeons nowadays.

While previous iterations of the MDI only had teams lose 5 seconds per death, the new change to Challenger’s Peril adds a whopping 15 second death penalty, and we’ve already seen how massive this change has been in the games of Group A. When the dungeons are finished in 11-14 minutes, losing 30 seconds to 2 deaths can spell doom for any team, even if their pulls end up a lot faster than those of the competition. A full wipe is almost impossible to recover from, further incentivizing teams to not only care about how fast they can go, but to somehow put safety first, too.

We will see how this plays out the second time around, as this change to the Affix system certainly took a few teams by surprise in the Group A weekend. As for the final results, we would certainly love to see an upset of the veteran squads, or even two, but if history is anything to go by, we have rarely, if ever, seen it happen. Still, you’d better join us for all the action on Friday at 10 AM PT/7 PM CET for Group B of The War Within Season 1 MDI!

Thanks for reading our Group B Preview, and be sure to visit the OFFICIAL HUB of The War Within Mythic Dungeon International Season 1 for info on the rules, prizes, teams, and the LIVE Event Coverage!

About the Authors

Seliathan has been playing Rogue for over half his life, since the initial release of WoW over 19 years ago. After a long career of Raid Leading, Theorycrafting, and pushing Mythic+, Seliathan enjoys creating all kinds of PvE content on Twitch, co-hosting the Tricks of the Trade Rogue podcast, contributing to Raider.IO as Staff Writer, and writing guides for Icy Veins.

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.

About the Editor

Gogogadgetkat has been playing WoW since late BC, and has been the GM of her guild Propaganda since its creation in 2014. As a career healer, Kat has a number of CEs and old-school heroic kills under her belt, all on a variety of healing classes and specs—she’s a serial altoholic! In addition to Mythic raiding and a little Mythic+, creating safe, inclusive spaces in gaming is her longtime passion; Kat has been an admin for the Perky Pugs community since late BfA, and is also a founding council member and the Executive Director for the DEIBAJ initiative VISAGE. She is excited to bring her wealth of experience and love of writing to the Raider.IO team.