Impressive Mythic+ Runs Towards the End of Season 1
As the first season of Shadowlands grows older, players have been gaining both the tools and motivation to try more and more extreme or creative things in Mythic+ dungeons. Today, we'll be taking a look at some of the recent, very impressive and unorthodox runs from mono-spec, no tank or healer action, very high no healer keys, as well as the highest keys timed so far in Shadowlands!
The Highest Keys Timed in Shadowlands
First up, two teams have managed to time +29 keys. While a +29 is the highest key level seen in Shadowlands so far, both keys were done on the Tournament Realm instead of live servers. Skyline timed a +29 Necrotic Wake and Ambition timed a +29 Plaguefall:
Unfortunately, there are no videos to accompany these tweets, as the teams are most likely safeguarding their strats for the upcoming Great Push tournament.
As for the highest key timed on live servers, Naowh, Sjele, Gingi, Zaelia, and Maystine took down the Necrotic Wake +28. You can check out their run here:
For some analysis on these recent world records, our resident Mythic+ expert Dratnos is here to give us the rundown:
DratnalysisGreat Push teams have started putting up impressive results as they're pushing the limits of Mythic+! On the tournament realm, they're able to create characters with whatever gear, Covenants, and Soulbinds they want (though notably they don't have access to the Leech and Avoidance that can show up on live gear). They can also attempt any given keystone over and over again as they try to get their strategies nailed down for when the Great Push Proving Grounds happen on the weekend of the 22nd and the tournament itself happens on the weekend of the 29th. In this environment, the World's first +28 keystone was completed by an all-star squad comprised of top MDI players from a few different teams: Naowh, Gingi, Zaelia, Maystine, and Sjeletyven.
Their composition is a little different than the standard MDI one, and also different from the top of the live key ladder. They've incorporated the Elemental Shaman that showed up in the MDI Global Finals as a potent AoE damage dealer and group healing monster with Ancestral Guidance. They've also swapped to the Guardian Druid in the tank role to get access to incredible facetanking ability, even at the +28 keystone level, through the Ursoc's Fury Remembered legendary. This is an exciting preview of some of the composition changes we will likely see during the Great Push itself - it'll be exciting to see if teams can replicate this +28 feat during the tournament as well, as they won't have infinite time and the affixes may be more challenging.
Their composition is a little different than the standard MDI one, and also different from the top of the live key ladder. They've incorporated the Elemental Shaman that showed up in the MDI Global Finals as a potent AoE damage dealer and group healing monster with Ancestral Guidance. They've also swapped to the Guardian Druid in the tank role to get access to incredible facetanking ability, even at the +28 keystone level, through the Ursoc's Fury Remembered legendary. This is an exciting preview of some of the composition changes we will likely see during the Great Push itself - it'll be exciting to see if teams can replicate this +28 feat during the tournament as well, as they won't have infinite time and the affixes may be more challenging.
Mono-spec Keys
Now we're off to the mono-spec keys, with two separate groups of all Balance Druids and all Elemental Shamans taking down a +17 and a +16, respectively, with no healer or tank specs!
Starting with the +17, we have Heartlife, Hitmonup, Astramoon, Dontauren, and Sî taking down a crazy high Mists of Tirna Scithe +17, Boomkin only:
This mono-spec feat was soon followed by a +16 Necrotic Wake done by Petko and 4 fellow Elemental Shamans: Ripozap, Vrattqt, Tjamanenn, and Cherosham. This wasn't their first all-shaman clear either, as they had previously done a five Elemental Shaman +15 as well!
And here's a look at these two exceptional runs by Dratnos:
DratnalysisThese awesome runs push the boundaries of what's possible in Mythic plus - 5 DPS specs doing a key have several massive challenges, and the teams that achieved these runs deserve a tremendous amount of credit for figuring it out. It's no surprise that these runs were done with two DPS specs that have substantial off-healing capabilities as well as temporary tanking cooldowns such as Force of Nature and Earth Elemental. A full five copies of either of these makes it possible to have almost full uptime on them which is hugely helpful for the trash pulls. Both teams ran into many more challenges with bosses - neither Force of Nature nor Earth Ele can actually taunt bosses, so they had to get even more creative. The Boomkin team had access to Heart of the Wild and Guardian Affinity plus Restoration Affinity to try and set up some pseudo tanks and pseudo healers, but this strategy still ran into a lot of trouble and deaths, and even wipes to bosses. The Shaman team instead decided to use almost all of the Necrotic Wake weapons to make the bosses easier - this was critically important and combined with their great execution to mean their key was completed in time, which is incredibly impressive!
Highest No-Healer Key
Finally in this roundup of Mythic+ creative excellence, we have a group that timed a +21 Mists of Tirna Scithe without a healer! Aeristides, Whitexiong, Demonkreight, Teme, and Bradpaisley pulled off what might be a Shadowlands first, taking advantage of the Protection Paladin tank and some very skilled DPS players:
The runs keep getting more and more impressive, both from the angle of strange and unorthodox group compositions to the constantly climbing key numbers. While it remains to be seen if we’ll get an actual live server +29 before Season 2 arrives, we're sure to see plenty more creative off-meta runs...and we'll certainly keep an eye out for them!
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About the Author
Starym is an old-school raider with a wide history of World Firsts under his belt. He is a long-time news writer and interviewer for Icy Veins and formerly Manaflask. Having raided in the Race to World First (RWF) until the end of The Burning Crusade, he has been covering the events since Cataclysm and the RWF has become his greatest passion in WoW. A (Tauren, obviously) Warrior main at heart, when pushed, he will admit to loving Diablo more than WoW and, thus, should be punished.
