Let’s start by briefly covering the affixes that are active this week: Fortified, Sanguine, Grievous and Reaping.

This week’s a tough one - Sanguine and Grievous have a particularly annoying interaction where your party members may briefly touch the edge of a Sanguine pool and suddenly they have an unexpected stack of Grievous. Meanwhile Grievous being active turns some bosses from their normally tame Fortified versions to ones that put out almost as much damage as they do on Tyrannical weeks. Grievous is also one of the few affixes that makes Reaping noticeably harder. It’s not an impossible week to venture into Mythic Plus, but it’s not an ideal week for pushing keys either, so it’s very important that you enter each dungeon with a plan for these tricky affixes.





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]

Fortified is the more challenging of the Level 2 affixes for Atal’Dazar, and combined with Grievous there are a number of very deadly pulls that will also stack Grievous on your whole group. These are most notably the pulls with Toxic Saurids and the pulls with a Reanimated Honor Guard. Outside of these, watch out for the Sanguine pools blending in with the blood pools that are part of the Priestess Alun’za encounter and the surrounding trash.

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 if your group contains a non-Unholy Death Knight you should adapt the Route to do this, perhaps using one of our earlier Fortified Season 2 routes. We are instead proposing a strategy of killing Yazma, then rushing to the middle pack of the dungeon and finishing off the last few Enemy Forces in the form of the four Saurids in that pack.

Read more on Atal’Dazar Dungeon Abilities.

Freehold [back to top]

The Blacktooth are the gang you can join up with this week, meaning the two Captains you’ll have to face are Jolly and Eudora. Even though it’s Fortified and not Tyrannical, with Grievous active you’ll have to be on your toes during all four boss encounters.

There are also a few very difficult trash pulls in the middle area of the dungeon this week, as Fortified Harpooners hurt a lot, apply Grievous to random members of your party, and threaten to hook them into Sanguine pools if you’re not careful. To solve this, both of our Routes this week generally avoid most Harpooner pulls, electing instead to pull other packs instead.

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.

Kings' Rest [back to top]

Kings’ Rest is a rough one this week, as Grievous transforms the damage output of these Fortified Bosses to Tyrannical levels, but the trash is of course much harder than on a good Tyrannical week. With these affixes, we’ve decided that the most difficult trash pulls are likely to be on the bridge, and our Expert route now plans to pull the full set of four Animated Guardians near the start of the dungeon in order to skip more of those trolls on the bridge.

Like in Atal’dazar, our Expert route plans 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 make that assumption, but it remains a powerful strategy if your group includes a Death Knight, 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 on Sanguine is much easier now than before Patch 8.1.5, as several enemies no longer trigger the affix on death. That being said, it’s still a tough dungeon, and you’ll have to be especially vigilant for the first two Reaping waves, filled with caster spirits that will ensure Grievous stays ticking on random members of your group. It’s also important to note that Tidesage Initiates continue to drop Sanguine, so make sure to not leave them underneath the minibosses they accompany as they die.

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.

Sanguine in Siege of Boralus is annoying and difficult to manage in a few spots - there are a number of very low health enemies that can die and risk healing up their beefier friends. This is particularly painful when it comes to an Ashvane Commander pull, as those enemies have much more health than others, so they’re almost always alive when their friends are Sanguine pools, and they are immune to Crowd Control and love to charge random members of your party - this can be extremely frustrating if it brings them into a Sanguine pool. Watch your positioning to ensure this never happens - make sure that the line between you and any active Commanders never touches a pool.


Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.

Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]

This is an interesting week in the Temple of Sethraliss. Generally this dungeon is best run on Fortified weeks, and Sanguine in particular is fairly low-impact here - watch for the Static-charged Dervishes though - they sometimes drop a five-stack of Sanguine on death! The fact that Grievous is active makes it a much sketchier Fortified week than usual for this dungeon, and you’ll find the HPS requirements on the tougher boss fights to be akin to a good Tyrannical week.

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]

Our Expert-route philosophy for Motherlode continues to suggest getting most of your count from Mechanized Peacekeeper pulls - but these can be challenging with Sanguine active! Peacekeepers have much more health than other enemies, are immune to Crowd Control, and they often stand still and cast for several seconds, so you really need to be sure to never have them atop a Sanguine pool. If you can execute this, you should find this to be a good week for this dungeon.

We’ve got a few new changes to our Expert route this week: the first is that we’re no longer planning to activate any Peacekeepers that require extremely long displacements of their pilots, as the classes that are able to do this have largely fallen out of favor in the metagame. Now, all you’ll need is a short displacement, such as a Typhoon or a Ring of Peace. We’ve also updated our plan for the final Reaping wave - we’re now triggering it by killing a pack of rats before Death Skipping to the third boss.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.

The Underrot [back to top]

This is another dungeon where, with the exception of the first, the boss fights are ones where you’ll feel Grievous’ impact on the whole party. They’re not as bad as those of some other dungeons, but don’t be caught off guard by the damage output especially during Cragmaw’s Tantrum.

There are also a few pulls that may cause Sanguine troubles, especially to less experienced groups. Chief among these are Underrot Tick pulls, so we’ve omitted all of those pulls from this week’s Basic route.

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.

Tol Dagor [back to top]

Fortified is great news for Tol Dagor, as the Heavy Cannon strategy trivializes much of the dungeon’s trash, especially if you skip as much of the earlier parts of the dungeon as the Expert route plans to. Sanguine in the tight hallways of those sections of Tol Dagor is just another great reason to use this strategy. Watch out for Grievous during the First and Last boss encounters, but in general this key is a great one to roll this week.

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]

Mercifully, Maggots no longer spawn Sanguine on death, removing one of the most irritating aspects of this dungeon on weeks when the affix is active. You’ll still have to be careful with Sanguine in the narrow hallways here, and you’ll need to plan ahead to avoid polluting the pathway that you need for the next pull. Grievous isn’t too bad on the boss encounters here - Sister Briar’s Jagged Nettles and Sister Solena’s Aura of Apathy are the two abilities that will cause you to feel the affix the most.

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.