Welcome to the 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.

The affixes that are active this week are: Fortified, Bolstering, Skittish, and Infested.

Although these affixes are challenging, this is the week that will most reward you for cleverly planning your pulls. Luckily, this article will equip you to do just that! Always have a plan to minimize the impact of bolstering using crowd control. You’ll also need to apply your damage in a disciplined fashion - but if you can do so, you’ll simultaneously be playing around Bolstering and Skittish. Much like last week, this is a week where the same play pattern counters both of the affixes!

Bolstering in particular is the affix that takes center stage this week. Consider the texture of each enemy pack. Your primary tools to use against bolstering are crowd controlling larger enemies and killing their smaller friends 30 yards away, or distributing your damage so that all targets die at roughly the same time. In some cases, such as minibosses that are not crowd controllable, you may benefit from the use of taunts from your DPS to hold the miniboss while the rest of your group handles their bodyguards far away. However, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease, and you’ll lose less time by having a few bolsters instead of splitting a pull into smaller pieces. This balance is very difficult to find, and it’s the primary skill that will be tested this week. To delve deeper into the strategy top teams use to counter Bolstering, check out this Affix Guide:







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: Blood Death Knight, 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, Peacekeepers in The Motherlode can be activated using a combination of Shining Force, Death Grip, 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 Share using MDT’s in-game share function, so consider clearing them before sharing with your group-mates!

Atal'Dazar [back to top]

In absolute terms, Atal’Dazar is, as usual, one of the easiest dungeons to handle this week. However, in relative terms, this is a moderately difficult week for Atal. There are a number of awkward Bolstering pulls, some of which are due to the infested pattern, but others are due to the Reanimation Totems or the pulls which contain enemies with dramatically different amounts of health.

One tip for this week is to refrain from stepping into the blood to kill the Gilded Priestesses until the rest of the pull is close to death, otherwise you’ll wind up bolstering a bunch of enemies unnecessarily!

Read more on Atal’Dazar Dungeon Abilities.

Freehold [back to top]

It’s a great week for Freehold! Captain Eudora is ready to join your team - or, at least, let you join her crew - trivializing the Council ‘O Captains encounter. Furthermore, there are only a few pulls where you’ll have to manage enemies with disparate health bars - the Vermin Trapper pull being chief among them, but that’s easily managed by CCing the Trapper and killing the rats outside of Bolstering range. The Infested pattern is a thing of beauty - in fact, the Expert route avoids pulling any infested whatsoever except for a few that should die instantly to Painful Motivation.

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.

Kings' Rest [back to top]

Kings’ Rest is never an easy dungeon, but this is perhaps one of the best weeks for it. Neither Bolstering nor Skittish should pose too much of a threat, as the pulls are naturally small and rarely contain enemies of different sizes. The only big pain points this week are a few obnoxiously infested enemies, such as Guard Captain Atu and a Bloodsworn Agent in the burial chamber after The Golden Serpent, and, as with any Fortified week, the vicious difficulty of the Shadow of Zul encounter, which is compounded by the reduced effectiveness of kiting with Skittish active. On the whole though, it’s better than normal in Kings’ Rest, so this might be the week to upgrade your score in this brutal dungeon.

Read more on Kings’ Rest Dungeon Abilities.

Shrine of the Storm [back to top]

Bolstering is a problem in Shrine of the Storm on any week - the dungeon is full of enemies that like to hang out with smaller or larger friends. Luckily, some enemies, like the Animated Droplets and the Abyss Dweller obey special bolstering rules that mean you don’t have to slow down your pulls to accommodate them. The truly savage pulls in this dungeon are the minibosses like Windspeaker Heldis, Runecarver Sorn, and the Deepsea Ritualists that are immune to crowd control but are also surrounded by smaller enemies. You’ll need to figure out how best to handle these pulls with your group’s composition - extremely disciplined damage control is one option, DPS taunts on the minibosses while the other enemies are killed farther away is another.

The infested pattern this week is also not ideal - there are a ton of infested enemies in packs that aren’t easy to crowd control and deal with simultaneously, so you’ll find yourself spending a lot of time cleaning up the one infested enemy from each pull. In a dungeon with a timer as tight as Shrine’s has been since the buffs to Vol’zith, this is likely to be the nail in the coffin for pushing this keystone this week.

Read more on Shrine of the Storm Dungeon Abilities.

Siege of Boralus [back to top]

Bolstering is a blessing and a curse in the Siege of Boralus. On the one hand, you can bolster Ashvane Spotters and use them to one-shot other enemies and even tentacles on the last boss if you can keep one alive until then. On the other hand, there are many asynchronous pulls with enemies like Ashvane Commanders that are much beefier than their friends and are also immune to damage from the spotters. These are easy to bolster into oblivion and will cause catastrophic damage if you don’t focus your damage efficiently. This is a great week to bring a Subtlety Rogue to focus damage into those priority targets.

Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.

Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]

For similar reasons to those laid out in the Kings’ Rest section, this is a great week for Temple. In the community of those who run keystones at level 20 and higher, this dungeon is often referred to as a dungeon that is only open on Fortified weeks, due to the insane difficulty of its bosses, especially Galvazzt. Additionally, Bolstering and Skittish have their impacts minimized by the small and consistently sized pulls that make up most of the enemy forces you’ll pull in here. The cherry on top is the infested pattern - there are only a few infested that you’ll have to deal with in the Expert route, and the only truly awkward one is an infested Static-charged Dervish which can be managed with a DPS taunt.

Read more on Temple of Sethraliss Dungeon Abilities.

The MOTHERLODE!! [back to top]

Don’t venture into The Motherlode this week if you don’t have the ability to focus your damage. Most dungeons have some pulls with small enemies and large enemies, but the Motherlode is full of pulls with small, medium, and large enemies that pose a difficult damage coordination challenge for even the best teams. This is compounded by the fact that the trash in this dungeon is already difficult - there are a bunch of vital interrupts and hard hitting enemies that can quickly melt any player who pulls threat or any tank who neglects their own survivability to do enough damage to beat Skittish.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.

The Underrot [back to top]

The infested pattern in here will pose a few moderate challenges this week, but nothing too serious, especially if you follow the tactics in the routes below. Don’t fall into the trap of evenly damaging all the enemies in pulls that contain Feral Bloodswarmers - it’s worth bolstering the others to remove those evil things from the game as fast as possible! The fact that the Blood Trolls at the start of the dungeon are no longer easily skippable is also a buff to this dungeon’s difficulty on Fortified, but if you follow the Expert route and skip the Befouled Spirit, that portion of the instance should be manageable. Be sure to check which of the two bridges at the start of the dungeon has the two Blood Matrons so that you can go down the other bridge!

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.

Tol Dagor [back to top]

Recently, the Heavy Cannons get substantially buffed. Their damage now scales with Keystone level to always be about a quarter of each enemy’s health per hit. This has caused the dominant strategy in Tol Dagor to devolve into a frantic dash to the cannons, skipping as many enemies as possible along the way. Once you’ve made it to the cannons, you can then pull enemies from back in the prison into a gruesome death by cannonball. The Expert route incorporates this strategy to a moderate degree, although you can take it even farther if you’re up to skipping even more of the trash from the lower levels.

Read more on Tol Dagor Dungeon Abilities.

Waycrest Manor [back to top]

As usual, the Waycrest Routes are segregated by open door rather than by difficulty. In terms of difficulty, they’re closer to Expert than Basic this week - there are many large pulls that you should split in two if you’re not comfortable with them, and both of the right-side routes feature a skip in the basement.

This is a fine week for pushing Waycrest keys - there are a few awkward infested enemies, but most of them can be controlled for a while and then dealt with together. The tank may have difficulty picking up threat on adds during the Raal the Gluttonous encounter, but these enemies don’t hit very hard, especially on Fortified, and the biggest threat is the tank running out of the boss’ melee range trying to pick up the adds and causing him to Consume All and eat the whole group. You’ll also have to deal with awkward Bolstering pulls with large enemies that can’t be crowd controlled, like Matron Bryndle in the courtyard, or the Heartsbane Soulcharmers throughout the dungeon. Keep your AoE in check and these shouldn’t be too problematic.

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.

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