MDI Time Trials Analysis & Cup Preview: EU/Asia Division #2

Welcome back to another MDI Time Trial analysis article! If you missed the previous articles in this series, here’s the Article for the first MDI cup, in the EU & Asia Region, and here’s the Article for last weekend’s cup, the first in the Americas & Oceania Region. This weekend’s action will again be streamed live at the Warcraft YouTube channel - though matches will begin an hour earlier than previous weekends! Let’s dive into which teams will be present and how their Time Trials turned out.

The Teams

The top six seeded teams from the first cup in this region have all re-qualified. Learn more about them in the article for the first cup. Each team’s position has changed though - let’s go through what happened for each of them!

Method EU are coming off of a convincing undefeated victory in the first cup. They now have claimed the first seed in the Time Trials as well, improving from a second seed placement last time.

Perplexed have had another strong Time Trials performance, securing the second seed after their second place finish in the first cup.

Deplete from Beyond improve from fourth seed to third seed, though last cup they only managed to tie for fifth in the live tournament.

The Boys have upgraded a fifth seed into a fourth seed, and looked very strong in the first cup, where they secured a third place finish, upsetting two higher-seeded teams along the way.

Paint for Fem will be the fifth seed this time, after earning the sixth seed in the first cup. They also overperformed their seed in the first cup, making it to fourth place, which is the pace that teams will need to hit in order to make it to the season’s final tournament.

With all these teams doing slightly better than their previous seeding, one team has been on the other side of things. Self Reliance started out strong with a third seed into the first cup, but in the actual cup they only managed to tie for fifth, and in these Time Trials they fell all the way to a sixth seed. They’ll definitely be looking to bounce back this weekend.

Two teams that qualified for the first cup didn’t make it this time around, they are The Doppler Effect and Poulukka - it looks like they didn’t participate in the Time Trials at all. They were the first two teams eliminated from the first cup, but if they choose they can once again try to qualify for the final cup of the season in a few weeks’ time!

That makes room for two new teams to enter the stage! In the seventh seed, Couch Pepega are here - though for many of these players this is not their MDI debut, with some having played as recently as the last season in the East cup as Buff War Nerf Rogue. We’ll have to see if the nerfs to Rogue that they called for will create the environment they need to succeed this season.

The last spot in the time trials belongs to another new team, NO SNITCH, who will face the daunting round 1 Method matchup. Their roster has players who can play most of the right classes, though they were the only qualifying team to field no Death Knights in their time trial runs, and they’ll need to speed up their dungeons by a substantial amount in order to compete with the higher seeded teams.

The Time Trial Dungeons

These are the dungeons that were played during the Time Trials:



Each team got unlimited practice runs and five official attempts for each dungeon over a period of five days. Awakened was the fourth affix active in every dungeon. Keystones were set to level 19,

The first dungeon was The Underrot with Tyrannical, Skittish, and Sanguine active. Without any of these affixes pumping the brakes on big pulls, this time trial was dominated by Unholy Death Knights. Excitingly, a couple of teams ran Vengeance Demon Hunters in this dungeon - this allows a few massive pulls where the goal is to have everything die in the duration of a Sigil of Silence.



The second Time Trial Dungeon was Tyrannical/Quaking/Bolstering Kings’ Rest. Almost every team ran a monochromatic comp here - it was all about the Beast Mastery Hunters. In fact, of the 24 dps in the top 8 time trial runs, 22 of them were Hunters. This spec brings unmatched Single Target dps, which is the primary challenge of this dungeon with Tyrannical active.



The final dungeon was Shrine of the Storm, and the active affixes were Fortified, Volcanic, and Necrotic. The metagame in this dungeon seems to have settled on double Unholy, with tanks playing Dwarf for the ability to drop Necrotic. There was some disagreement about whether to play Hunter or Demon Hunter for the third DPS slot, though the top three times in this dungeon all landed on the Hunter.



Be sure to catch the action this weekend - the tournament will start one hour earlier than the last two weekends!

Related Interviews

- Method EU Team Spotlight (MDI 2019 Blizzcon Finals)
- Paint for Fem Team Spotlight (MDI 2019 Summer Season)
- Drjay Player Spotlight (2019)
- Sjeletyven Player Spotlight (2019)
- Ashine Player Spotlight (2019)
- Anda Player Spotlight (2020)

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