Welcome to 2019’s first edition of the RaiderIO Weekly Route! As always, we’re here to provide you with a plan of attack for every dungeon, tailored to the challenges of the affixes of the week and the Infested pattern.

This week’s affixes are: Tyrannical, Teeming, Volcanic, and Infested.

This is one of the best weeks on the calendar and it’s the last really good one before Season 2 hits, so if you have a RaiderIO score in your sights, this is the week to go get it! This week is a good week because Tyrannical is active alongside no other affixes that make bosses harder, like Necrotic or Grievous; and Volcanic is a very easy affix that only really has tjhe potential to kill you in a few specific parts of a few specific dungeons - read on and you’ll find those mentioned in their respective sections so you’ll be ready for them! Teeming is the affix that will eat up the most of your clock this week, but this is the only week on the calendar where Teeming is active but Fortified is not, so the affix will be at its easiest.

Since Teeming generally requires you to pull more packs than usual, you have reduced flexibility to skip pulls because they contain Infested enemies. You can find some useful Weakauras to help you track Infested enemies and the Spawns of G’huun at the bottom of this article. Check out this short video guide to the Infested affix for some strategies to deal with Infested depending on which types of enemies are infested, with practical examples:







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! Every skip in these routes features a full explanation if you mouse over the corresponding number.

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]

Teeming is no joke in here, but luckily Volcanic and Tyrannical are! Both the Basic and the Expert routes are going to send you to pick up extra enemies from the left path of the dungeon before returning to the other side. Teeming also behaves a little weirdly in here, where there are actually a number of potential Teeming spawns, of which only one will spawn at random, but neither of the routes include any of these enemies.

The active Infested pattern is not bad at all - none of the enemies in front of Priestess Alun’za are infested, and there are only a few awkward Infested that truly slow down the route - the Expert route does include the center pull in the dungeon, in which Dinomancer Kish’o is Infested, but since she’s an archer you should be able to just tank the other enemies a few yards away and cleave them all down.

Read more on Atal’Dazar Dungeon Abilities.

Freehold [back to top]

Very high keys of Freehold this week will be challenging due to the difficulty of Tyrannical Kragg and Tyrannical Eudora. Unlike last Volcanic week, Raoul is active this week, so watch out for players trapped inside Blackout Barrels - they’re likely to eat some Volcanoes and may require big defensives.

You don’t have to worry too much about Infested this week - there are only a handful enemies touched by G’huun in either route, and with the clever use of Crowd Control you should be able to handle many of them simultaneously. For some suggestions for how exactly to execute this, just mouse over the corresponding bubbles in the route in-game.

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.

Kings' Rest [back to top]

This dungeon has hard trash and hard bosses - so it’s rough that Teeming increases the amount of trash you have to deal with and Tyrannical also makes the boss fights more challenging. That being said, it’s hardly an impossible Kings’ Rest week - it’s just a dungeon that requires more coordination, damage, and healing for any given Keystone level than most of the others.

The Infested pattern at play this week is the most irritating of the three in the burial chamber after the first boss - both of the packs of two that are immune to Crowd Control feature one Infested and one non-Infested enemy. Luckily, with the exception of one Interment Construct and one Witch Doctor you won’t have to deal with any other Infested this week. The basic route in this dungeon pulls far more enemies than necessary since the dungeon is so linear - if you’re using this route and your group can execute any skips you should do so!

Read more on Kings’ Rest Dungeon Abilities.

Shrine of the Storm [back to top]

Since the buffs to the last two bosses of Shrine, this dungeon is now a strong competitor with Kings’ Rest for the title of “Most Difficult Dungeon.” The timer is just so tight, and Teeming exacerbates the problem. Watch out for Volcanoes under the feet of snared players in the Aqua’sirr encounter!

This is a great week to bring a Subtlety Rogue to your Shrine of the Storm keystones - you can pull relatively harmless enemies into every boss except Lord Stormsong off of which they can generate Combo Points to funnel damage into the boss, and most of the Infested enemies this week are mini-bosses, which means the minions that surround them are in no danger of dying and can serve as fuel for the Rogue!

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.

Teeming isn’t too bad in here since much of the extra required Enemy Forces can be picked up using Ashvane Spotters. Nothing will interact too badly with Volcanic unless you can find a creative way to get stunned in a bad spot by a banana or a Commander. The Infested pattern is manageable - there are a few pulls where it’ll slow you down but the routes include some tricks you can use to avoid spending too much time on them!

If you’re pushing your group’s limits, Siege on Tyrannical will never be trivial - both Hadal and Viq’Goth are difficult - Hadal is a difficult numbers check, whereas Viq’Goth requires high damage, high healing, and good execution of mechanics. If you can handle these two fights, the rest of the dungeon shouldn’t pose too much of a threat!

Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.

Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]

Those pushing bleeding edge RaiderIO scores will probably not upgrade their scores this week in the Temple because Galvazzt is such a difficult boss that the dungeon’s best runs are almost all from Fortified weeks. Other than that, the dungeon is a good one for this week. Some dungeons require you to pull extra packs when Teeming is active, but in this place you’ll meet the Teeming requirement by pulling the same packs as usual - they just have a few extra enemies in them.

There is one obnoxious Infested enemy in the path this week - an Agitated Nimbus - that you’ll probably want to fight alongside a non-infested Nimbus to avoid losing too much time to pulling too slowly. Besides that, the Expert Route only pulls a couple of Infested Krolusk Riders that shouldn’t add too much time to the run.

Read more on Temple of Sethraliss Dungeon Abilities.

The MOTHERLODE!! [back to top]

Last week, this dungeon was joined by dungeons like Shrine of the Storm and Kings’ Rest at the top of the difficult-o-meter. This week you’ll find it to be much more hospitable - Teeming is a real threat to the timer but you should be able to mitigate that by pulling big, since the trash isn’t buffed by any other affixes this week. Though you’ll be pulling millions of enemies, thankfully very few are Infested this week, and the ones that are are often ones you can easily pull either by themselves or with other Infested from nearby packs.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.

The Underrot [back to top]

Since the buffs to the Blood Troll trash at the start of the instance and the nerfs to Elder Leaxa, The Underrot has felt exceptionally well balanced on both Fortified and Tyrannical weeks. With Tyrannical active, all of the bosses can pose a serious threat but none are impossible - the primary threat will be the timer. You’ll need to pull the extra Teeming enemies boldly to avoid being too slow, but many of the added enemies are difficult ones.

If you follow the Basic Route, you’ll find an irritating pull where one Infested Defiler is accompanied by a non-Infested friend. The best recourse to this pull is to avoid it, which the Expert Route does, but this means you’ll have a little less room to fight Sporecaller Zancha.

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.

Tol Dagor [back to top]

The bosses in Tol Dagor remain extremely difficult. Jes Howlis and Overseer Korgus are two of the most likely encounters in the expansion to claim players’ lives with Volcanic - the former because of the stun when he phases (stay spread to mitigate this), and the latter because of the constraints on your space and the Heartstopper Venom, which limits your movement.

If you can handle the bosses, you can blaze through the rest of the dungeon and pick up all of the Enemy Forces with the help of the cannons, which can demolish enemies in a matter of three or four shots regardless of Keystone level! The Expert route skips everything it can until those cannons are available, and then returns to the prison to pull enemies forward to become cannon fodder - this is tricky but highly effective and should make the timer a non-issue as long as you can cleanly handle all of the difficult boss encounters.

Read more on Tol Dagor Dungeon Abilities.

Waycrest Manor [back to top]

We’ve continued to eschew the Expert/Basic paradigm in Waycrest, opting instead to publish a route for each potential open door. This week, the routes fall a bit closer to the Basic side of the spectrum - none of them feature any difficult skips, since Teeming requires you to pull enemies that we normally elect to skip in the Cellar. All three routes call for an advanced technique in Raal the Gluttonous’ room - a Rogue sneaks in, hits the boss, then Vanishes, which serves two purposes. It opens all the doors to the room, so you won’t have to pull all of the inefficient Maggots, but it also temporarily removes the boss from the area, so the tank is free to run in, grab all of the trash, and then run back to the group, which is either in the Courtyard or the Hunting Lodge depending on the open door, where all the enemies can be safely dispatched. If you don’t have a Rogue, you can perhaps achieve similar results using a potion in combination with either a death, or an ability like Invisibility, Shadowmeld, or Feign Death - but none of these are as clean as the Rogue’s, so you may want to just pull the Maggots and do the room more slowly.

In terms of difficulty, this is a good week for Waycrest - the bosses are hard and will likely be your group’s biggest problem, as Teeming doesn’t add too many pulls nor does it make any existing pulls impossible, and the Infested pattern is not bad at all.

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.