Player Perspectives: Big Brain Strats Behind The Last Stand

Throughout this 2nd Season of the Shadowlands MDI, we have brought you a handful of articles that reviewed Big Brain Strats showcased by the teams during the Group Stage weekends. However, the most recent competition weekend of the MDI took an interesting turn as we entered the long-awaited Last Stand tournament phase. The Last Stand followed a different format from the Group Stage weekend tournaments. In fact, it was very similar to the format of The Great Push, which we first saw in Season 1 and will be seeing again this coming December!

Instead of giving you clips and analysis of Big Brain Strats that we saw in the Last Stand, our post-tournament analysis today features a host of player perspectives from the competing teams. One thing that we found intriguing throughout The Last Stand (and The Great Push of Season 1) was the various approaches and strategies that teams had to make throughout the weekend due to the format itself. With 15 total hours to run 6 keystones as fast as possible, what kind of decision making goes into the process? Which dungeon do you do first? How many times do you restart a dungeon vs. when do you choose to just complete a run? These are some of the questions we couldn’t stop thinking about!

The Global Finals are coming up this weekend, so to get us all into the competitive spirit, we are bringing you this insider look at the Big Brain Strats used to tackle The Last Stand format! First, we will discuss how the tournament was structured in a little more depth to catch you up to speed. Then, read on for exclusive interviews with each of the teams that participated in The Last Stand* to learn about their perspectives and approaches towards the unique tournament format!

*The Chinese team, Aster.Y, was unfortunately unavailable for the interview.

Table of Contents

The Last Stand - A Brief Overview

At the start of this month, 6 teams had a total of 15 hours (5 hours x 3 days) to run 6 different dungeons to achieve the fastest time possible in each. The keystone levels and affixes were determined by Blizzard and only revealed to the teams at the start of the competition on the first morning of the tournament. The winning team was determined by the lowest overall time taken to complete all 6 dungeons. The teams knew which dungeons were slated to be part of the competition, but that is all the information they had going into the weekend. The weekend prior, a separate Time Trials was held to qualify for The Last Stand and the two dungeons the teams had to run to earn a spot were Plaguefall and Mists of Tirna Scithe. Therefore, the teams knew that those two dungeons would not be included in the dungeon pool for The Last Stand itself.

Unlike the standard MDI double-elimination style competition weekends, the teams competing in the Last Stand needed to implement different strategies when it came to dungeon routes and group compositions. As the teams did not learn the affix combos or keystone levels of the dungeons until the competition began, preparing for the tournament was tricky; the teams may have needed to make impromptu decisions based on what the other teams were up to rather than speed-running a perfectly scripted route.

For more details on the format revamp of the MDI and the Last Stand, please check out our overview of the MDI Last Stand, group recaps, and predictions here..

Ready to hear what the players have to say about their approach to the Last Stand? We spoke to Roff from Practice, Aichaa from Evolving, Mky from Reload Esports, Drjay from Omega Pump, and Ellesmere from the tournament winners, Ambition! Read on to see what they had to say about this unique tournament format and the strategies involved!

Player Perspectives

Q-1: How did you spend your time on the Tournament Realm after learning you had qualified for the Last Stand?

Roff: We only played The Necrotic Wake for 3 hours on Tuesday. We didn’t practice the dungeon before our group stage because we would realistically never play it. We planned to play a lot during the weekend in between tournament play but then we saw the rules and realised we have no chance of getting a good placement because of our lack of experience in dungeons.

Aichaa: To be honest, we didn't prepare for The Last Stand. We knew our chances were low because the format of “infinite try” is hard for us. In addition to that, myself and Alex were back at studies, so our schedule was pretty busy :(

Mky: We practiced some of our weaker maps from the last cup but didn’t play much since we felt that practice wasn’t as valuable as it was in the other format.

Drjay: Running all 6 Dungeons that were not played during Time Trials on 21 Fortified without Affixes (21 Tyrannical is usually a lot easier without practice).

Ellesmere: Most of our time prepping for The Last Stand was spent practicing previous MDI cup affixes and trying to beat everyones times since we didn’t know what the affixes were going to be. The better we got at quickly figuring out optimal routes and speed running techniques the better prepared we would be going into the tournament, even if we didn’t get to practice any of the correct affixes/dungeons.


Q-2: How does the fact you do not learn the keystone levels and affixes for each dungeon until the competition begins affect your preparation for both routes and group composition?

Roff: I think it favors teams that have more experience in all keys from either previous MDI or a lot of play on live keys. We have done weekly +15 keys throughout the entire expansion so our understanding of the dungeons or mobs in dungeons is very bad. That combined with us not playing at all during the week made us come 6th place in this tournament.

Aichaa: That’s not a big deal after the preparation we had for the first cup. Everyone is able to play many classes and if a keystone is very different from what we practiced, we could watch the best teams in cup B or C.

Mky: I don’t think it mattered too much since meta comp is almost the same in every scenario and you didn’t have much time to try new routes.

Drjay: Since time is a very limited and important resource in a format like this we decided to prepare routes and practice group compositions that are consistent all-around and not affix dependent.

Ellesmere: I think not knowing the key levels or affixes is extremely fun, I like this format significantly more then the standard MDI head to head format. I also love that practice is disabled in the off hours of the tournament, because I think all of the on the fly routing and strats that happen live are very fun to watch.


Q-3: Are there some dungeons where, regardless of affix combination, you would not (or do not) change your route and group composition?

Roff: I think Halls of Atonementis a good example where you pull the same regardless of affixes. Our lack of success in halls was purely because of my inexperience with Raging in an MDI scenario. We really like Warlock and decided to play that in Sanguine Depths because we think it’s more powerful than Windwalker Monk in that key.

Aichaa: Route will always be different looking at the affixes, it changes so much! Composition can be definite if we’re not that strong in one dungeon. For example, we never went into De Other Side after the very first Time Trials, because we didn't have to, it would be a map where we play our “strong” pick.

Mky: Sadly, Bolstering still exists, which changes routes drastically. But other than that you still changed some small things about route depending on Fortified/Tyrannical or keystone level for sure.

Drjay: De other Side and Theater of Pain.

Ellesmere: There are no dungeons where routes wouldn’t be changed regardless of affix combination because when you introduce Bolstering for example, both group comp and routing drastically changes. Inspiring can also be one of those affixes that forces groups to pull differently, although generally it shouldn’t affect group comp too much unless you’re forced onto night elf for a specific shadowmeld strat.


Q-4: After Days 1 and 2 were over, what strategies did you employ to prepare for the next day? Did you review the video or what the other teams had been doing?

Roff: We did what we were familiar with from our group stage or watched VODs from the previous day and full copied other teams.

Aichaa: Our plan after day 1 & 2 was to finish in 4th place. We knew we had a good Sanguine Depths and wanted to go at the very last hour to do a good timer and make a little surprise because we had “bad” timers overall. We didn’t look at the opposing teams because with the little time we had to prepare the dungeons, we preferred to play “things” we knew.

Mky: We prepared a plan of priorities. After we finished all 6 keys, we decided to prioritize keys where we knew we could improve our timers significantly and fast due to our best timer being weak because of poor play. We also watched the best runs of each dungeon to see if we could improve routes, but sadly didn’t have much time to try them.

Drjay: Talking from experience, over the course of a tournament weekend teams always check what the competitors are doing. Depending on how comfortable teams are with adapting, including parts of different routes and strategies is something many teams do, including ours. As an example both my team and Ambition took parts of the route of Aster in DoS, or both Aster and Ambition played our NW route on the last day.

Ellesmere: After the tournament ended each day we watched back the entire VOD and checked out what every group was doing in the dungeons. We wanted to see if anyone had any better strats for certain dungeons. After that we spent time brainstorming routing and group comps for the dungeons we hadn’t yet touched.


Q-5: How much did what the other teams were doing during the competition affect your strategies or decisions?

Roff: We watched a bit in Halls of Atonement and after awhile we wanted to try to go right first to do 1 Shard of Halkias + Incinerator Arkolath pull then 2 smaller Shard pulls and maybe change our comp to Shadow Priest instead of Warlock but we had already put in 2.5 hours so we decided to stick with our comp and just finish the key and move to the next.

Aichaa: After the 3 first cups, we analysed what teams were doing, and what we could upgrade in our runs. But in some dungeons we kept our proper strategy. For example, Sjele found a decent way for the maze in Mists, we don't know if it’s the better way, but we like the way we do it !

Mky: It only affected us on day 3 really since we already knew it was really hard to come back from our previous days and wanted to finish Sanguine Depths fast so we had a chance to improve other timers.

Drjay: Due to the time restriction of 5 hours, every team was primarily focused on executing their own game plans in the first place. After the day was over you could start adjusting and fixing issues.

Ellesmere: Because we had a fairly significant lead going into day 3, we didn’t really need to modify much of what we were doing. Looking back, if we had seen what other groups were doing in Sanguine Depths, and we had another day, we definitely would have made some adjustments (specifically pulling Incinerator Arkolath into the first boss), but other than that we were happy with almost all of our other runs and didn’t see much need to change anything based on what the other competitors were doing.


Q-6: Did you ever change your plans of which dungeon to go to or what compositions to use, on the fly? If yes, why? Also, how do you decide which dungeons to do and in what order? (For example, what was the reasoning behind leaving Sanguine Depths until the final day?)

Roff: I think people decided to do the more straightforward dungeons first where the best strats have already been found. Sanguine +22 with Fortified and Raging is a dungeon where comp & pulls can change up a bit in speed, and giving away your strat early on in the cup is not good. And as you saw, teams decided to play different comps in that dungeon where Guardian Druid was played, Boomkin, Affliction Warlock and other specs as well. In other dungeons, the standard Frost Mage, Windwalker Monk, Subtlety Rogue or Shadow Priest was played.

Aichaa No, our plans were fixed, we knew what timers we could achieve with our runs/compositions and we had a plan that we tried to respect. The affixes of Sanguine Depths were pretty hard; we knew we were going for a “fast” weekly-no-leaver there. Having one hour was enough to have a decent run because of the difficulty of the dungeon.

Mky: We only tried a different comp in De Other Side I believe but quickly hopped back to Monk. Other than that we pretty much played following what we planned beforehand. We decided to first do keys where we felt comfortable and avoid Sanguine Depths at all costs.

Drjay: In SD we planned on playing Rogue instead of Monk, Rogue is better for speed due to higher priority target damage. Making the faster strategy work is usually neither easier nor safer. Monk provides more AoE Damage and Leg Sweep which is a powerful Crowd Control and also stops Explosive Orbs from spawning during its stun duration. Since time was too limited to make the faster strategy work, we decided to go with the safer version. Other teams had a similar approach for that dungeon. Our “Dungeon Priority List” got defined by difficulty level and possible time upgrade. Saying that, easier dungeons got played first and Sanguine Depths last, 22 Fortified is not easy without too much practice and in order to go fast you need to pull big, which Explosive naturally counters. Teams ended up playing full AoE comps in Sanguine to make a decent run happen in the short amount of time that was available.

Ellesmere: Our reasoning behind which dungeons we decided to go to was based on the simplicity of the affixes. We didn’t want to waste any time brainstorming comps/routes on Day 1, we just wanted to slam the dungeons with the easiest affixes and put up times. We spent all our time after the tournament ended on Day 1 discussing the dungeons we hadn’t touched (especially Spires of Ascension, since Bolstering was tough in there), but we decided to leave Sanguine Depths for Sunday since it was by far the most difficult dungeon and we didn’t want to show our cards in there unless we had great times in every other dungeon.


Q-7: What considerations go into deciding when to Town Portal and restart a dungeon, and when to keep going just to get a time on the board?

Roff: Just press “shift+T” for Town Portal man.

Aichaa: Once we decide that we are “ready” for one dungeon, we leave after we know we made a big mistake. And we also have timers in the key we need to respect, for example in Halls of Atonement, we know the 1st boss must die before 6 minutes.

Mky: After a full wipe or a major mistake we always instantly Town Portal, except in Sanguine Depths since we knew it was really rough and we felt that some teams wouldn’t even finish it.

Drjay: It depended mainly on how competitive the run would be. Spending 10 minutes on finishing a run that wouldn’t be competitive is far less efficient than starting a new run and trying to go for the winning spot. In some dungeons compromises had to be made, depending on how hard a dungeon actually was. Spires / DoS as an example, even in a non-optimal run the run had to be finished if we got far, just because the dungeons were difficult to speed run in the first place.

Ellesmere: We called for a dungeon reset whenever we had multiple deaths on a pull. If the pull could be reasonably salvaged, we continued on, unless we had already put up a good time and were only in there to put up a perfect one (in which case we decided to Town Portal after any meaningful death).


Q-8: What kind of IRL prep (meals, sleep, hydrating, etc.) do you do knowing that you’ll need to be in tip top shape for a full 5 hours of doing dungeons?

Roff: I didn’t do anything special since we couldn’t play during the day, but I made sure to eat dinner before the tournament started.

Aichaa: We didn't speak about that, but eating healthy and light is the best way to stay focused. If you go for a big hamburger you will be tired for sure. About sleep time, we managed to sleep enough. Sleep time is personal for everyone, but I know some of the people on our team were sleeping right after the days were over because it was midnight.

Mky: I don’t think we needed to do anything out of the ordinary since we’re from EU and the tournament schedule was not too restrictive for us.

Drjay: I always tell my teammates I play with to:

• Sleep 8+ hours before a tournament day
  
• Not play too much before the actual tournament to not get burned out before it even starts
  
• Take a short walk and get some fresh air - It helps wonders!
  
• Eat latest 2 ½ hours before tournament start, ideally not eating too much or mainly light food
  
• But most importantly: don’t change routines. Try to keep everything the same with slight adjustments to the time schedule so you don’t stress your body.

Ellesmere: Nerf made sure all of us got to bed on time, although Billy (Asuna) often ignored him. We made sure to eat a nice breakfast before the competition because there would be no food breaks or anything during the 5 hour tournament block.


Q-9: What did it feel like resetting the dungeons and heading right back into the fray? What helped you and your team keep powering through after hours in the same dungeon?

Roff: I think it’s fun, it’s kind of the same as practice runs and it was like that for us kind of because we hadn’t practiced anything before.

Aichaa: When you know you are able to do something fast, you want to reach it, that’s all. And when you see that other teams are able to pull faster timers, you want to improve to be as good as they are. It would be annoying to be the best team, because it’s harder to beat yourself than other teams in my opinion.

Mky: We all struggled after some hours of playing since it was really taxing mentally. Not being able to be consistent through all 5 hours was probably one of our biggest flaws during the tournament.

Drjay: Motivating each other and fighting together for the final goal is what helped us.

Ellesmere: Being able to reset the dungeons and optimize on the fly was actually really nice. Having to slog through the rest of the run after a failed pull was always one of the things I hated most about the MDI from both a viewer and competitor standpoint, so being able to reset with this format was great.


Q-10: Looking back on The Last Stand, is there anything about your routes/strats, preparations, or choices that you would have changed in hindsight?

Roff: I think if we played Shadow Priest and went to the right in the start of Halls of Atonement from the beginning it would have been better. And of course play a lot more hours than what we did.

Aichaa: I don't think so, we only wanted to play some maps, have fun, and we knew anyways that we wouldn't qualify because the other teams were just better in this format.

Mky: Preparation wise it’s really hard to do better since most of it comes from experience and it’s something we’re lacking, but definitely wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. I also feel like we missplayed not finishing each dungeon with a competitive timer and hopping onto the next one once we had a timer thinking we would have time later on to improve it.

Drjay: Only in DoS where we ended up playing with a slight adjustment based on Aster’s strategy. Besides that our game plans were good, for other teams it ended up being beneficial taking parts of our strategies. The only thing we were lacking was proper execution.

Ellesmere: The biggest change we would’ve made was in Sanguine Depths. Our route wasn’t perfect, nor was our gameplay, so that’s definitely where we should have put more practice time.


Q-11: Is there anything else you’d like to add about your experience with the Last Stand?

Roff: I think it would have been nice to know that dungeons were turned off during the weekend outside of the tournament hours. We planned to play a lot during the weekend so if we would have known before the tournament started, then we could have practiced dungeons before the tournament. I get that dungeons & affixes can stay hidden, but I think this style favors the players that play mythic + all the time too much.

Aichaa: See you in Season 3!

Mky: Even though it really showed our team’s weaknesses and we couldn’t capitalize on our strengths to be more competitive, I appreciate Blizzard trying to do something new since the old MDI format was becoming too repetitive. Personally I didn’t enjoy playing it much and I would’ve preferred a normal cup, but I can see why other players liked it better and might be the way forward for MDI :)

Drjay: Very interesting format, more of it. Preferably Great Push, no Speed Running.

Ellesmere: The Last Stand was a ton of fun and I hope they use this format in the future to make the MDI more fun for both players and viewers.

Conclusion

We will get to see more of this tournament format during the Season 2 “MDI One-Off” event, when Blizzard brings back The Great Push! There will even be 2 dungeons from Legion added to the pool as a special treat, as the event will be coinciding with the Legion Timewalking event on Live Servers. We are very excited for this tournament, and you have until November 29th to sign up with your teams!

Before that takes place though, the culmination of the Season 2 MDI is this coming weekend, as the Global Finals take place on October 29-31! Make sure to tune into the Warcraft YouTube Channel to watch the action, and check out our live updates over on our MDI Highlights Page.

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