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The Weekly Route: Tyrannical, Raging, Necrotic, and Infested

Welcome to the second RaiderIO Weekly Route, the series that provides you with a plan of attack for every dungeon, tailored to the challenges of this week’s affixes and Infested pattern. Note that some big changes were recently made to Mythic plus. This week’s routes have been designed with the changes to enemy abilities in mind, but it’s likely that the Infested pattern has changed slightly in a few dungeons, and that has not been factored in.

Let’s start by briefly covering the affixes that are active this week: Tyrannical, Raging, Necrotic, and Infested.

Necrotic and Tyrannical are two affixes that combine to dramatically increase the difficulty of most boss fights. While encounters that were difficult on other Tyrannical weeks might feel impossible this week, there are a few bosses in particular that Necrotic most augments. These are bosses with high attack speeds, like Harlan Sweete during his last phase, and bosses with adds, like Raal the Gluttonous. This is therefore a good week to reconsider where you plan to Bloodlust, as the relative difficulty of the bosses in the dungeon may have changed.

Thankfully, kiting is a strategy that defeats both Raging and Necrotic - your tank should be kiting pretty much every trash pull this week and if you find yourself having trouble, they might need to start kiting earlier than they think. Raging also bumps up the relative threat level of certain enemies - particularly those like Siege of Boralus’ Irontide Raiders who cast an Iron Hook that can one-shot while they are enraged. This week’s routes take this into account and avoid such enemies whenever possible, but in some cases you are forced to pull such enemies - in those cases, intelligent application of your group’s damage, coupled with abilities like Druids’ Soothe or similar abilities from Hunter Pets will help a great deal. For more information on defeating Raging, check out my guide to the Affix:



The Weekly Routes





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, were designed for a specific team composition: Brewmaster Monk, Discipline Priest, Havoc Demon Hunter, Balance Druid, and Rogue (multi-spec). Each of these specs brings unique abilities, and there are strategies in these routes that rely on having them – for instance, our Motherlode Peacekeeper Strategy uses Ring of Peace, Shining Force, Distract, and Stealth!

If you’re a coordinated team, even if your composition isn’t the same as ours, 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 a Copy Route link for any dungeon to copy the MDT string for that route, so you can then paste it 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 send using MDT’s in-game share function, so consider clearing them before sharing with your group-mates!



Atal'Dazar [back to top]



This is an incredible week for Atal’Dazar! The recent hotfixes may have made this week’s Infested pattern less annoying, as they suggest that the Reanimation Totems will likely no longer be Infested. Besides a few dangerous Raging pulls, none of the trash in here should present too much of a threat. Though there are many Infested enemies in this week’s routes, none of them dramatically restrict how you can pull the dungeon, so they shouldn’t cost more than a few seconds each.

The boss encounters in this dungeon are some of the ones least impacted by this week’s affixes. Both Vol’kaal and Priestess Alun’za help to kill themselves, negating much of the impact Tyrannical has on the timer, and all four bosses pause their melee attacks to cast, giving your tank easy opportunities to drop Necrotic stacks.

Read more on Atal’Dazar Dungeon Abilities.



Atal'Dazar Basic Route
Atal'Dazar Expert Route




Freehold [back to top]



In high keys, Freehold is actually fairly difficult this week. The active captains, Eudora and Jolly present a serious challenge on Tyrannical. Kragg is also rough this week, his Azerite Powder Shot can either murder a non-tank or force you to pump a bunch of inefficient healing into a tank with Necrotic stacks. Harlan Sweete enrages at 30%, doubling his attack speed and creating a serious Necrotic threat out of a normally easy boss. The trash that you can remove this week by joining the crew is some of the easiest trash in the instance, so our Expert route advises delaying that until the last possible moment. Both routes will require you to deal with a number of Cutwater Harpooners, enemies who can delete your party once they’re Raging. If you’re disciplined, you can leave these enemies at around 35% health until they cast a Dragging Harpoon and then try to nuke them down before they get another one off.

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.


Freehold Basic Route
Freehold Expert Route



Kings' Rest [back to top]



Lots of the trash in here was recently nerfed, but unfortunately it’s Tyrannical week so this is still going to be brutal. All of the bosses except Mchimba the Embalmer pose a serious threat to your group, but King Dazar deserves special mention for being a boss that notoriously hits tanks very hard. This week, with Necrotic, the king will be a nightmare. Your tank will need to try their best to drop stacks during a Quaking Leap, but Dazar will dash to the tank as part of his Blade Combo, so even that is a tenuous proposition. Save cooldowns to obliterate the raptors, especially the second one, as they will double the Necrotic problem. While the second raptor is active, Dazar won’t even cast Quaking Leap, so that opportunity to drop stacks disappears until you can kill it.

Since King’s Rest is such a linear dungeon, the Basic route pulls much more trash than necessary. If you’re able to find some trash to skip you can shave a few minutes off your timer with that route. The easiest trash to skip are the Animated Guardians or the Purification Construct - but the Expert route this week elects instead to kill those enemies and skip some of the more vicious Spectral Berserker pulls. These skips are much more difficult to execute but they reward you by removing some of the hardest pulls in the dungeon.

Read more on Kings’ Rest Dungeon Abilities.


Kings' Rest Basic Route
Kings' Rest Expert Route




Shrine of the Storm [back to top]



There are a number of pressure points that your group will have to deal with if you step into Shrine this week. Numerous groups of small enemies will stack necrotic very quickly on your tank, so you’ll need to adjust your strategy to ensure you don’t pull Animated Droplets or Tidesage Initiates with other enemies. There are also a number of casters and minibosses who will hit very hard while Raging.

None of the bosses are particularly easy Tyrannical foes, but with the change to Vol’zith the Whisperer’s Whispers of Power, the last encounter of the dungeon has become a grueling marathon that eats up a large chunk of the clock.

Read more on Shrine of the Storm Dungeon Abilities.


Shrine of the Storm Basic Route
Shrine of the Storm Expert Route




Siege of Boralus [back to top]



Siege of Boralus has received some changes which should make the third boss easier but the last boss harder - it’s no longer going to be possible to zerg down the last platform. This dungeon has some serious difficulty this week - the adds on the Dread Captain Lockwood encounter will pose a serious threat with Necrotic, for instance. There are also a ton of hard hitting, low health enemies that will require careful control to mitigate deaths from Raging and Necrotic. The good news is that a well-disciplined group can use the Ashvane Spotters to their full potential and breeze through the dungeon. Focus your cooldowns and brain cells on the first 10-20 seconds of each pull involving a spotter and you’ll find the enemies melt.

The Expert route is very tight on Scrimshaw Gutters - if you end up missing more than three, don’t panic! Just add in a pull of Bilge Rat Buccaneers. As with last week, if you play Alliance, you’ll need to adapt the routes for the differences at the start of the dungeon.

Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.


Siege of Boralus Basic Route
Siege of Boralus Expert Route



Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]



Tyrannical is famously brutal in Temple of Sethraliss, but when it combines with Necrotic you’ll find Adderis and Aspix to be very difficult and Galvazzt to be nigh impossible in a sufficiently high key. Even Marektha poses an elevated threat this week as Necrotic stacks up from the adds during the intermission and the final phase if it lasts for long enough.

Compounding this, if you hold yourself to the restrictions of the Basic route and forgo any ability-facilitated skips, you’ll find yourself overpulling the dungeon by almost 20% - so if you’re using that route as your starting point and you’re able to modify it with any skips, you should absolutely do so! The easiest packs to skip are the very first ones of the dungeon, just pop Shroud or have a healer invis pot through and mass rez you on the other side.

Read more on Temple of Sethraliss Dungeon Abilities.


Temple of Sethraliss Basic Route
Temple of Sethraliss Expert Route




The MOTHERLODE!! [back to top]



The Motherlode is one of the dungeons least impacted by this week’s affixes, as Tyrannical is much less problematic in this dungeon than Fortified. Furthermore, many of the enemies have a slow auto-attack speed or they spend time casting instead of swinging, so Necrotic will be less of a problem here than anywhere else. There are a few enemies that will be problematic when Raging - Addled Thugs and all of the casters - so be careful to not have multiple such enemies enraged at the same time. The bosses should be largely unaffected by Necrotic - the tank will take a bit more of a beating on the later bosses, and effective kiting by the other group members will be slightly more important when engaging Azerokk, but all things considered this is a great keystone to receive this week.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.


The MOTHERLODE!! Basic Route
The MOTHERLODE!! Expert Route




The Underrot [back to top]



If you fell into a coma two weeks ago and woke up today, The Underrot would be almost unrecognizable. The addition of Stealth detection to the Blood Matrons means that old routes which skipped the blood trolls at the front of the instance are much harder to execute. This change causes both the Basic and Expert routes to instead clear trash at the start, although the Expert route does skip a few enemies after the matrons are taken care of.

The buff to the trash is dramatically offset by the nerf to Elder Leaxa - she was a brick wall in high Tyrannical keys due to the ridiculous DPS check required to avoid getting overrun by her clones, but now she only ever spawns one clone at a time and is therefore easily manageable - in fact, the Expert route doesn’t even hold lust for the boss, electing instead to use it to facilitate a larger pull at the very start of the instance.

Special shoutout to Raging/Necrotic Feral Bloodswarmers - these will remove squishy members of your group from the game if you give them the chance, but you can actually negate all damage from these enemies by staying at a medium range when fixated. Stay too close and you’ll get hit by their melee attacks, run too far and they’ll charge at you and inflict serious Shadow damage.

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.


The Underrot Basic Route
The Underrot Expert Route




Tol Dagor [back to top]



This dungeon has also received a set of dramatic changes. One that may have slipped past you in the patch notes was a change to the adds in the Sand Queen encounter - they no longer melee, so Necrotic will prove to be trivial rather than impossible on that fight since you should be able to drop stacks during Upheaval. Jes Howlis has also received some serious buffs and is now a real boss. This week it’s vital that you clear all of the Raiders in the jail cells before engaging the boss to prevent Necrotic from becoming too difficult to manage during the second phase of the fight.

The cannons now scale with M+ level, a huge buff to their damage - now both the Expert and Basic routes plan to abuse them as much as possible, pulling all the trash that can be easily killed by cannons. It’s possible that in coming weeks we’ll decide to pull more trash from below and kite them to the cannons to be slaughtered. If you’ve ever done battle with Overseer Korgus in a high Tyrannical key, you’ll be relieved to know that Incendiary Rounds no longer stack, transforming the encounter into one of reasonable difficulty rather than one capable of randomly destroying even the most well coordinated group.

Read more on Tol Dagor Dungeon Abilities.


Tol Dagor Basic Route
Tol Dagor Basic Route (The Drain)
Tol Dagor Basic Route (The Brig)
Tol Dagor Basic Route (Detention Block)
Tol Dagor Basic Route (Officer Quarters)
Tol Dagor Basic Route (Overseer's Redoubt)
Tol Dagor Basic Route (Overseer's Summit)
Tol Dagor Expert Route
Tol Dagor Expert Route (The Drain)
Tol Dagor Expert Route (The Brig)
Tol Dagor Expert Route (Detention Block)
Tol Dagor Expert Route (Officer Quarters)
Tol Dagor Expert Route (Overseer's Redoubt)
Tol Dagor Expert Route (Overseer's Summit)




Waycrest Manor [back to top]



Last week’s Waycrest Manor routes all happened to meet the criteria for a Basic route - but this week they all plan to use a Rogue or a death to skip enemies in the cellar. If your group isn’t interested in doing this, you’ll need to modify the routes slightly - I’d recommend cutting enemies from the Courtyard or Hunting Lodge to add the enemies you don’t plan to skip in the cellar. Remember that you need 82.7% enemy forces before you descend to the catacombs. The Gloom Horrors that reside there have recently had their code messed with to remove a trick that some unscrupulous gamers used to make them trivial, and they’re now extremely twitchy and evade-prone. Do your best to stay still and on level ground when engaging them to avoid any brutal resets.

The bosses in here are not easy this week. The Soulbound Goliath often requires healing to be funneled into the tank, so Necrotic will probably require you to drag it into fire more often. Raal the Gluttonous requires fast destruction of adds to prevent Necrotic from stacking too much - try especially hard to prevent any oozes from meleeing your tank during Tenderize so that your tank can drop stacks while Raal is busy. Lord and Lady Waycrest are also difficult on any Tyrannical week, but this week, when they’re both active and stacking Necrotic on your tank, you’ll have to play at the very top of your game to survive.

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.


Waycrest Manor Top Left Route
Waycrest Manor Top Right Route
Waycrest Manor Bottom Right Route





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About the Author


Dratnos is a Rogue main who raids with US 21st <Parse Culture>. He loves playing all three Rogue specs and pushing high keys with his friends Jason, Mischief, Wafflesauce, and Zattack. In addition to creating guides on YouTube, he streams on Twitch, where he likes to review his friends’ logs. He’s also a Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour Competitor and host of the podcast Allied Strategies.


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