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MDI Time Trials: How To Earn the Thundering Banner of the Aspects



The Time Trials for the 2023 MDI have officially started! At 12pm PST today, the two Time Trial dungeons were announced, and the gates are open. It’s time to start running those dungeons! We’ll be excitedly watching the official Time Trial Leaderboards to see which teams are likely to qualify for the MDI Groups. The bulk of players on the Tournament Realm, however, are here to earn the exclusive Thundering Banner of the Aspects in-game toy! The Banner toys were a new addition in Shadowlands, and players can earn them by participating in the Time Trials, Proving Grounds, or Open Qualifiers for the various WoW Esports competitions.

If you’re one of those players who has signed up with a team with the goal of earning the Thundering Banner of the Aspects, you’re in luck! We’ve got all of the info you need right here, including step by step instructions on how to set up your character, what you need to do in order to earn the banner, group composition suggestions and even easy-to-follow routes for the two dungeons!



Table of Contents






Time Trial Info



MDI Time Trials consist of two dungeons with pre-determined affixes. The affix combinations are combinations that do exist on live servers, so there won’t be any surprises. The keystones start at level +15, and will cap out at level +21. This means that the teams trying to qualify for the next stage of the MDI will first be required to level the keystones for each dungeon to +21, at which point shortest completion time is the deciding factor. For those of you looking to just earn the Thundering Banner of the Aspects, the only thing required is to complete each of the two Time Trial dungeons, in time, at keystone level +15. You do not need to create these keystones yourself, as any player-made keystones will become unusable when the Time Trials start. Instead, you will want to head to the Turnip NPC, who will give you a quest which rewards the two Time Trial Mythic+ Keystones you use to practice and compete.

Time Trials opened today (Wednesday, February 1st) and will close at 12pm PST on Tuesday, February 7th. Dungeons must be completed prior to the 12pm timestamp. If you start the dungeon prior to 12pm, but you complete it after the fact, it will not count. The Banner toy is an individual reward, so as long as you have been given access to the Tournament Realm, you can complete the two dungeons with any group of people to earn the toy. You do not need to complete the dungeons with the team you originally signed up with, and you can keep playing and help other people achieve theirs, if you want!.

The Time Trial dungeons for the 2023 MDI are as follows:





How To Earn the Banner Toy



As mentioned above, to earn the Thundering Banner of the Aspects, you must complete each of the two Time Trial dungeons in time at keystone level +15 or higher. This is an individual reward, so you can do this with any group of people on the Tournament Realm - you are not required to run this with the individuals you signed up with on Gamebattles.

Reminder that you will need to talk to the Turnip NPC to get your Keystones. Once you have those and your team is ready, head on over to the Dungeon Teleporter to get sent directly to each of the dungeons - you don’t need to fly there. Run your dungeons in time, and have fun!

The Banner will show up in your in-game toy inventory automatically within approximately 30 days of the end of the Time Trials. Your dungeon runs may or may not show up on the Time Trial Leaderboards, but rest assured that as long as you completed both dungeons in time at level +15 or higher, you have earned yourself a fancy new toy.





Setting Up Your Character



ACCESSING THE TOURNAMENT REALM


If you signed up properly on Gamebattles, you should have received an email from the WoW Esports Admin team confirming that you have been granted access to the Tournament Realm for the MDI. If you do not see the Tournament Realm when you login to the game, you may need to refresh your Battle.net Client.

Open up World of Warcraft, and go to your Realm List. At the bottom right corner will be a tab that says Tournament. Select this, and select the appropriate Mythic Dungeons realm. Once you are on the Realm, you can start creating Characters!






CREATING YOUR CHARACTERS


NOTE: If you want to set up a Demon Hunter or other class that has a level requirement, you will simply need to make another character first.

Select the Create New Character button, and make whatever you choose! You are not limited on classes or races, and you can make as many of the same class as you wish. Reminder that cross-faction play is available so your dungeon team can consist of both Alliance and Horde if you desire. Every character you create will be maximum level but otherwise fresh.

We recommend following the naming rules and conventions as laid out by Blizzard. This makes it easier to assign your dungeon runs to a team (if you play with the team you signed up with) on the Time Trial Leaderboards. Additionally, if you decide to make a go for it and attempt to qualify, your characters will all need to follow the naming rules. Your characters must all be named in convention with your BattleTag or GameBattles alias. For example, my BattleTag is Hulahoops, so my Tournament Realm characters are all named Hula____, such as Hulablades, Hulayaya, Hulashoots, etc.



CHARACTER SET UP: GEAR


Your character will load into the Tournament Realm in Valdrakken with a basic set of gear, a starter talent build, and no professions. Setting up your character can be a daunting task, but it’s also incredibly fun! There are vendors throughout Valdrakken that will have everything you need to get set.



To gear your character, head on over to the Gear vendors, where you can get armor, weapons, trinkets and accessories. These vendors have the best possible gear available in the game at any given time, including all of the Revival Catalyst set and non-set items, so have fun making your character powerful!






CHARACTER SET UP: SPECIAL VENDORS


When you make a new character, you zone in with 10,000 gold, but if you run out, you can head on over to the Paymaster for more. Additionally, this is where you’ll find specific trainers and vendors for Mage Portals, Death Knight Runeforging, the Beastmaster to get Hunter pets, the Guild Master, the General Goods vendor, and the Transmogrifier.





The General Goods vendor has some pretty useful items, including the Grand Expedition Yak and Town Scrolls, which are used to leave dungeons, as well as a Sack of Stolen Dragon Glyphs, which you can purchase to level your Dragon Riding.






CHARACTER SET UP: CONSUMABLES & ENHANCEMENTS


Nestled in front of the Gear vendors are Grand Apothecary Alchataur and Veeno, the Consumables and Enhancement vendors, respectively. Here you will be able to load up on potions, food, runes, gems, enchants, tinkers, and armor kits.






CHARACTER SET UP: PROFESSIONS


Lastly you will want to set up your Professions. The Blacksmithing trainer is located behind the Gear vendors, but the rest of the Profession vendors and trainers are directly across the way. Profession items like crafted gear and embellishments cannot be purchased from a vendor - you will need to skill up professions in order to make these items for your character.





NOTE: If your goal is simply to earn the Thundering Banner of the Aspects, you can probably get away with not worrying about professions. However, if you truly want to min-max your characters and group, this is the process you will want to follow:

  • Have one player on your team level Jewelcrafting to learn the Elemental Lariat pattern. You can send Crafting Orders to this player to make them for your whole team.
  • Pick which professions you want based on the crafted gear and embellishments you wish to have. For example, you may want to have one Leatherworker on your team to craft a Flaring Cowl for any Leather DPS to play alongside with Seal of Diurna's Chosen
  • Once your whole team has acquired all the crafted gear and embellishments needed, we recommend every player swapping one profession to Engineering in order to access and use the Arclight Vital Correctors (the Battle-rez item).


To learn a profession, you will want to speak to Associate Professor Instructaur, train in the two professions you wish to learn, and then click on “I want to browse your goods”. This delightful Tauren sells you his brain. Purchase Professor Instructaur’s Brain and use the item, and it will give you max level in both professions as well as teach you all of the accompanying recipes. He also sells all of the materials you will need to craft items in the “Bottomless Bags”. Important note: you will only have the maximum skill points for crafting if you are standing next to Professor Instructaur!






Setting up your User Interface



USER INTERFACE: TRANSFER SETTINGS WITH MYSLOT


Your Tournament Realm characters are not considered to be on the same account, so your addons and WeakAuras will not automatically transfer over from your characters on live realms. Additionally, the “copy a profile” option available on many addons will not function as those profiles do not exist. Any addons you have downloaded should automatically populate on the Tournament Realm as long as they exist in the Interface folder under your Retail World of Warcraft client, but without any settings.

We recommend starting out with the addon Myslot. You will want to open this up on your character on a live realm by typing /myslot. Hit Export and it will copy the written data. Open the addon on your Tournament Realm character, paste the data into the window, and hit Import. This should copy over most of your settings for your addons as well as macros and keybindings. It is recommended to save the imported code as a profile, as sometimes the settings can reset when logging out of the character. It is not perfect, however, so you may need to make some additional tweaks and adjustments.

If some of your macros, keybindings, and settings don’t transfer correctly, you can open up your WTF folder (found in World of Warcraft > Retail > WTF), select the Account folder and the proper Account name, then the server of the character whose settings you wish to copy from live realms. Select the character, and then copy the SavedVariables folder. Go back to the server list in the Account folder and select the appropriate Mythic Dungeons folder, and paste the SavedVariables folder into it. It will ask you if you want to replace files, hit yes to all.

This should get you to a place where your Tournament Realm character has almost the same User Interface as your live character, but again you might need to do some additional tweaking.



USER INTERFACE: USEFUL ADDONS


For those of you who are not a big fan of using addons, but still want to make the process of acquiring your Thundering Banner of the Aspects as smooth as possible, we have compiled a list for you with some of the most useful addons and WeakAuras for playing Mythic+ dungeons.

RECOMMENDED = Recommended addons/WAs that will find use everywhere.
OPTIONAL = Optional addons/WAs that might improve gameplay quality of life.
SITUATIONAL = Situationally useful addons/WAs for those who want to min-max more. You definitely don’t need these to time +15s!


  • Myslot: As already mentioned, this addon allows you to import your macros, hotkeys and a variety of other addon-settings from your main character(s). Chat command: /myslot
  • Little Wigs: Similar to its big cousin, this addon is used to show timers and play warnings for boss-abilities, but in dungeons instead of raids. Chat command: /littlewigs
  • Mythic Dungeon Tools (MDT): This addon allows you to plan your dungeon routes before starting the key, and you can share them with everybody in the group so you are all on the same page. You can check out our section below for some of Dratnos’ recommended routes! Chat command: /mdt
  • Details: Addon that allows you to keep track of all the damage and healing done in dungeons. Also useful for tracking deaths that occurred, and what people died to. Chat command: /details
  • Custom Nameplates: Instead of using the Standard UI nameplates, many prefer using custom nameplates like Plater (/plater), Neatplates (/neatplates) or KuiNameplates (/knp), which allow for more customization and visual clarity
  • OmniCD: This addon allows you to keep track of your entire party’s cooldowns, from DPS and defensive CDs, to their interrupts, crowd-control abilities, and their duration. Chat command: /omnicd
  • Method Raid Tools: Many players use this as a more advanced tool, with features such as showing whether you have all consumables active whenever a readycheck is made, a combat-rez timer, the ability to create notes for cooldown management etc. Chat command: /mrt




USER INTERFACE: USEFUL WEAKAURAS


WeakAuras(WA) is an incredibly versatile and useful tool, that can help you pay more attention to specific mechanics, cooldowns or really anything you desire if you know how to code or find them. We have compiled a list of WeakAuras that will be useful in the Time Trial Dungeons, or even when playing Mythic+ on the live servers! You can open the settings by typing /wa, where you can select and configure each Weakaura individually.

RECOMMENDED = Recommended WeakAuras that will find use everywhere.
OPTIONAL = Optional WeakAuras that might improve gameplay quality of life.
SITUATIONAL = Situationally useful WeakAuras for those who want to min-max more. You definitely don’t need these to time +15s!


  • Causese’s Dungeon WeakAuras: A variety of different WAs that warn you of dangerous abilities or debuffs.
  • Thundering Tracker: This WA enables you to track the next incoming Thundering, your own debuff, and if you still need to clear it with somebody else.
  • Automark WA: You can set up this Weakaura to help you mark enemies with icons like the Skull, Triangle, Moon etc. This can help immensely with assigning interrupts or CCs.
  • Wise Mari Corrupted Geyser: This Weakaura keeps track of the Corrupted Geyser explosions on the Wise Mari boss encounter in Temple of the Jade Serpent. Don’t be in the water when it erupts!
  • Targeted Spells: Mainly used by healers, this WA helps keep track of any spells enemies cast on a random player. This includes dispellable debuffs or high-damage spells, so you will always be prepared for who will be the target of these.




Group Composition Recommendations



PLAY WHAT YOU WANT, PLAY WHAT YOU LOVE!
OPTIMAL “META” COMPS ARE NOT NEEDED!

As of the writing of this article, over 160.000 different characters managed to time a Temple of the Jade Serpent, with the same affixes as the Time Trials, at a +15 or higher. In Ruby Life Pools “only” ~78.000 characters managed to time a +15 on the Time Trial affix combination. This number might seem low, but keep in mind that the dungeon has received quite a few nerfs since the Time Trial affixes were last active on live servers, and since it was the third week of the season, many players were still lacking a lot of gear that kept them from completing the dungeon.




With access to the best possible gear and the highest quality enchants and consumables, timing a +15 keystone is certainly possible with all classes and all specializations, and all combinations thereof. There are hundreds if not thousands of players of each class and spec that timed +15 keys and higher at this point, and you will be able to wear much better gear than them! While some classes naturally feel and perform better in Mythic+, comfortability is a much more important factor than class choice. Playing what you know is almost certainly going to allow you to time both dungeons at +15.




While we cannot stress enough that you do not need to worry about playing the “perfect” class to earn yourself your Thundering Banner of the Aspects, the Tournament Realm also offers you the unique opportunity to try out any class or spec you want – you simply create another character and set it up. If you want to try your hand at one of the classes or specs that is currently being favored by some of the high-key pushing players, we have a handful of recommendations for each role for you:

TANKS

Protection Warrior has recently received a few nerfs, but it is likely going to be the number one choice for any MDI Tournament competitor, and for good reason. Blood Death Knight and Brewmaster Monk have seen some more play in recent weeks, and could be good for a surprise appearance.

HEALERS

Preservation Evoker and Restoration Druid have stolen the show in Mythic+ so far. Evoker offers a higher DPS potential, and it is likely going to be the go-to healer for the top teams. However, never underestimate the power of Priests and their Power Infusion.

DPS

Rogues of all specs, Windwalker Monk, Balance Druid, Havoc Demon Hunter and Enhancement Shaman (yes, you read that right!) have all shown great potential in live-keys so far, offering a strong combination of single-target and AoE dps, as well as great utility and survivability. However, we have seen many changes and tuning to several classes in recent weeks, and the meta has not yet adjusted to these changes. Maybe we will see Frost/Fire Mage or Fury Warrior make a return, and with the 431 ilvl Raszageth bow - Neltharax, Enemy of the Sky - available, even a Hunter could potentially sneak in there?



Dungeon Routes



A how-to guide for earning the Thundering Banner of the Aspects would not be complete without some easy-to-follow routes for each of the Time Trial dungeons!


TEMPLE OF THE JADE SERPENT


Temple of the Jade Serpent can be very dangerous with Raging, as there are several massive tank slams and mobs that pulse damage or explode on death, and these can all become lethal when combined with Raging. If you’re just going for the banner, you can pretty safely pull this dungeon one pack at a time and focus on single target damage, though you will still need a good plan for the very last pack of the dungeon.

Another thing to make sure to remember is to talent into a curse dispel if you can, as there is a nasty one later in the dungeon!





RUBY LIFE POOLS


Ruby Life Pools will require some finesse to deal with Sanguine in the upstairs area but otherwise should be possible to overpower with the best in slot gear available on the tournament realm. Remember that slow and steady wins the race for the banner, though you will need to pull much more aggressively than this if you want to qualify for more than that!





If you have any questions, you can join the Official WoW Esports MDI Discord Server for additional information and support.

Make sure to check out the Time Trials Leaderboards to keep tabs on who will be qualifying for the 2023 Mythic Dungeon International, and keep your eyes on the Raider.IO Twitter for more MDI content and coverage!