General Mythic+ Tips
As an accompanyment to this guide we've included some general tips on how to communicate with your group, information on each affix, as well as general pathing recommendations (including how to do skips)
As an accompanyment to this guide we've included some general tips on how to communicate with your group, information on each affix, as well as general pathing recommendations (including how to do skips)
Keep in mind not EVERY single tip for every class is included in this guide, as the main goal is to optimize for tanks specifically. However, we are trying to include tips for everything that could impact your pathing/pulls as much as possible.
Necrotic -- duration was reduced to 5 seconds (was 6 seconds)
Fortified and Tyrannical
Fortified - Trash mobs have 20% more health and inflict up to 30% increased damage (this is multiplicative with key level).
Tyrannical - Bosses have 30% more health and deal up to 15% increased damage (this is multiplicative with key level).
General Advice: As always these weeks change the difficulty of trash and bosses respectively. There is no overarching strategy to dealing with either affix and each ones difficulty will be heavily dependent on dungeon mechanics and the other affixes that are paired with it (for example Fortified and Bolstering is much more threatening than Tyrannical and Bolstering).
There are some odd interactions between Fortified and some bosses where their add summons are considered trash mobs and will be more dangerous even on non-Tyrannical weeks.
When trash mobs die, they buff any other enemy mobs that are in combat within 30 yards, increasing their maximum health by 15% and damage done by 20%.
General Advice: This is definitely another affix that slows your pulls down and actively encourages you to pull smaller. Most of the responsibility for managing mob health pools lies on your dps to properly swap targets to the mob that has the highest health remaining. In pugs or uncoordinated groups, it may be best to bind a skull icon to mark high health targets and encourage your dps to balance out healthpools.
It can actually be safe to do larger pulls on Bolstering weeks as long as all of the mobs have similar healthpools, giving your party the chance to evenly dps them down. The more coordinated your group, the easier this affix becomes.
On death, trash mobs apply 1 stack each of a 4 second long Magic DoT that ticks once per second. This effect stacks and will refresh its duration if additional mobs die during this time.
General Advice: Keep an eye on mob health and plan for Bursting stacks. It is a common misconception that you should always be aiming to keep Bursting stacks low (around 3-4) to allow the healer time to keep everyone up. In reality, most healers can easily heal 6-8 stacks if it is planned and the DoT is not extended. Extending the Bursting stacks is what will get you killed when dealing with this affix so your general rule of thumb will be to kill as many mobs as possible in a 1-2 second period and then back off to prevent extending the high stacks.
Immunities that prevent the application of magic effects (such as DK's AMS or Paladin's Blessing of Spellwarding) will immune the application of new stacks but will not remove existing stacks. Immunities that clear magic effects (such as Rogue's Cloak of Shadows or Mage's Iceblock) will remove the stacks entirely and prevent the application of new ones for the duration.
Random trash mobs throughout the dungeon will have the Inspiring Presence buff giving all other mobs within 15 yards immunity to cc and interrupt effects (but not themselves).
General Advice: When encountering a pack with the Inspiring Presence buff you will want to use your knowledge of the other mobs in the pack to decide if you can do the pull without cc's or interrupts. If you decide that you cannot do the pull without cc, you need to use a hard cc (such as Freezing Trap, Sap, Polymorph etc) on the mob with the buff and pull the rest of the trash out of range (15 yards) to kill it before pulling the remaining mob and single targeting it down. Overall knowledge of the dungeons and the mechanics will be your best bet in properly countering this affix.
Upon reaching 30% health, non-boss mobs will enrage, dealing 75% more damage
General Advice: Be ready to kite once mobs start reaching 30% health but be careful of casters who will continue doing high amounts of damage to you even as you run away. For more dangerous mobs try and save stuns/cc for them if you do not have access to a Druid or Hunter to remove the enrage.
Upon death, trash mobs leave behind a red void zone that lasts 20 seconds. They will deal 15% of max HP per second to any players standing in it and will heal all enemy mobs standing in it for 5% HP per second. These puddles can stack on top of each other, increasing the damage and healing affects proportionally.
General Advice: This affix is primarily on you as the tank to handle. Keep a close eye on mob health and slowly kite mobs away a small distance as they get close to dying. Be wary of mobs that stop and cast, especially if the cast is uninterruptible. If mobs are difficult to move (for example any type of archer) or impossible to move (for example tentacles that come out of the ground), move the other mobs away from them at low health to avoid placing the puddles on their location.
A common misconception about Sanguine is that slows make it harder to handle. However, if you get used to them slows can be extremely beneficial to control the micro-position of mobs relative to the puddles that spawn, and will allow you to be more efficient with your space by not over-positioning the mobs.
Spiteful Shades spawn from the corpses of trash mobs and fixate on random non-tank players.
General Advice: This affix is extremely dangerous, especially to your melee players as they will still be within melee range when the first Spiteful Shades begin spawning. On higher key levels their melee is close to a one-shot on non-tank players so make sure you are either very quick with stuns or your melee players are preemptively running out.
Try not to waste too much time actually dpsing them as this is a huge time-sink in your runs. You want to handle this affix in a similar fashion to Bolstering, kill all of the mobs at the same time and run away as a party, leaving the Spiteful Shades to slowly die on their own.
While in combat, both trash and bosses will spawn Explosive Orbs that will detonate if not killed within 6 seconds. If they are allowed to detonate, their damage dealt is equal to 50% of your max HP.
General Advice: There's not a lot of advice to offer past just killing the explosive orbs! In most groups it is more efficient for the tank and healer to handle the bulk of the explosive orbs as it leads to the lowest loss of group damage for them to swap off; that being said, dps should be helping when there are a lot of them spawning. They are not damaged by area of effect damage and must be directly targeted.
Consider getting a weakaura or nameplate pack that makes the explosive nameplates more visible to make it easier to target them.
The damage can be line-of-sighted which can be very useful when pulling large packs.
Any player falling below 90% health applies a Grievous Wound bleed that will stack to 4 until they are healed back to above 90% health. Casting some direct heals on the player will remove one stack but if not healed past the 90% threshold, the Grievous bleed will continue to stack again.
General Advice: There is not much you can do as a tank on this affix specifically to help, however be aware that your healer will be under much greater pressure on these weeks so keep your pulls on the smaller side. Additionally, in SL they've reintroduced Grievous coming up on weeks alongside Tyrannical again and these weeks are going to be particularly difficult. Weeks with Grievous are generally not good weeks to push keys and this is considered a very challenging affix due to the increased healer pressure.
Trash mob and boss melee attacks apply a stacking bleed that also reduces healing received and deals damage proportional to the amount of stacks.
General Advice: This affix is almost exclusively on you as the tank to handle, and you will need to get comfortable with managing your healthpool and cooldowns to determine when you should start kiting. A common mistake on necrotic weeks is to start worrying about necrotic stacks either too early or too late. There is no magic number that you should start kiting at, and there are more variables to take into consideration than just always kiting at x amount of stacks.
Get comfortable monitoring your damage intake and communicate with your healer to find a sweet spot that works for you, as unnecessary kiting leads to a lot of lost dps for your group.
Periodically, every group member will get a quaking effect around them that will go off after 2.5 seconds. If you are hit by someone else's circle you will take damage and it will interrupt any spellcasting.
General Advice: This affix is mostly difficult in melee heavy groups where spreading out is harder. Keep an eye on your group's position and get ready to reposition in a way that no one is getting hit by each other's quaking but your dps can still hit the mobs.
While in combat, enemies periodically summon tornadoes that will damage and do a knockback to anyone hit by them.
General Advice: This affix is pretty cut and dry with the only real advice being: try to avoid getting hit by the tornadoes. If you are running in a melee heavy group, consider moving the mobs around the area to periodically get away from larger clusters that spawn.
Trash and bosses will periodically spawn Volcanic Plumes on the location of party members. After 2 seconds the Plume will erupt dealing damage equal to 20% max HP to any player standing within 2 yards of it and shooting them up in the air.
General Advice: Obviously the main point of this affix is just...don't get hit by it. It has a preference for spawning on players further away from the mobs (usually ranged but can also be you if you're kiting) so in most situations it's not a major problem for a tank. Be careful when mechanics require your group to stay stacked up or if you are running an all-melee group. This is widely considered to be one of the easiest affixes.
Encrypted has its own page dedicated to it which you can find here.
Due to the nature of SL’s nonlinear dungeon design and surplus of mobs/paths you can take through most dungeons there is no “perfect path” that can be applied to every group comp or even set of affixes. As a result, this guide will only make generalized suggestions in terms of pathing and we recommend that you find MDT routes that you and your group are comfortable with. The main two options for this are:
Our top recommendation would be to go to https://wago.io/mdt and find paths for the dungeon/week from streamers or other players that you trust. Import them into the tool and edit them to your liking based on your group comp. This will help you get exposed to numerous different options and you might learn some tricks or skips you didn’t know of before!
Alternatively if you are new to M+ or using MDT, go to https://raider.io/ and use the sidebar on the right to navigate to “The Weekly Route”. This will show you 2 sets of paths for each dungeon: a “basic route” and an “expert route” based on the current week’s affixes. The differential between the two is often explained on a dungeon by dungeon basis as it may require a specific class or ability in order to be used.
One of the most common roadblocks groups face when trying to follow an “advanced route” is lacking a Rogue to group stealth past difficult mobs. There are some alternative strategies to this listed below:
If you cannot take either of these options but the mobs are a large enough pain that 4-5 deaths on the timer would be worth it to skip them, you can also do the following:
In short, this is just one example of an ability that feels “essential” when watching people playing at MDI-competition level, but can be tackled in numerous different ways. Be creative and flexible based on the strengths and weaknesses of your group to get through each pull.
One of the biggest things that can impact the success of a run is proper communication between group members. Due to class roles, tanks are often the default “shot caller” of a M+ run if no one else volunteers. As you are the one making the pulls, ensuring the path is followed, and setting the pace of the run it will often fall to you to communicate what you need to your team. The addons and weakauras mentioned in this section are linked on our M+ Tank Resources page.
Becoming comfortable with the abilities each class has at its disposal can make your runs go smoother. Especially when running with different people on a regular basis, it is useful to know what classes are able to handle each mechanic. There is some information below that can help you become more comfortable with each class' utility and playstyle.
Magic Dispel: All Healing Specs
Disease Dispel: Monk | Paladin | Priest | Dwarf | Dark Iron Dwarf | Kyrian Covenant
Poison Dispel: Druid | Monk | Paladin | Dwarf | Dark Iron Dwarf | Kyrian Covenant
Curse Removal: Druid | Mage | Shaman | Kyrian Covenant
Enrage Removal (soothe): Druid | Hunter | Rogues (new for SL with Shiv and numbing poison)
Bleed Removal: Paladin | Dwarf | Dark Iron Dwarf | Kyrian Covenant
Magic Purge: Demon Hunter | Hunter | Mage | Priest | Warlock | Shaman | Blood Elf