Mythic Dungeon Invitational World Championship

For those who missed it, the Global finals were bloody awesome to watch! With 2 Aussie teams in the top 8 and also making it to the grand final - how could I not be super excited!


I didn't watch the first round, but I did watch the semifinals!

The first semifinal was Honestly vs Premonition, and in game 1 (Cathedral of Eternal Night - Bolstering, Explosive, Fortified) Honestly smashed Premonition who had a wipe on the first boss which put them on the back foot. Dorfie (the resto druid) was doing lots of feral damage which was pretty impressive. The other cool thing was with the spider queen mini boss they got 95% mob count and then they shadowmelded, left the warlock to die and they all dropped combat and then ran away and rezzed the warlock after. That spider miniboss gives me a headache on fortified bolstering!

Game 2 (Blackrook hold - Raging, Grievous, Fortified) was taken by Premonition who had a very clean run with good control rounding out the games to one all.

Game 3 (Arcway - Explosing, Volcanic, Teeming) had an unfortunate wipe for Premonition on the spider trash before Nal'tira. Honestly did the mass stealth thing to get up to Xakal, skiping tons of demon adds between Naltira and Xakal (after sacrificing their sacrificial warlock, poor Warler)

In the Raider.io vs Free Marsy game 1 (Cathedral of Eternal Night) we saw a wipe on the first boss (though a clutch Brez saved them from the run back from the beginning) from raider.io which allowed Free marsy to gain some traction and pull ahead. Free Marsy took the game with less deaths overall and a faster time, leaving Raider.io to pick the next map.

Game 2 (Lower Karazhan - Raging, Grievous, Fortified) the healer for raider.io, Meowchan, did 850k dps on his holy paladin for that boss! Man, that is insane! However, Raider.io was clearly the superior team in their pulls and damage for the whole instance, easily taking out the dungeon.

Game 3 (Maw of Souls - Explosive, Volcanic, Teeming) was Marsy's pick, and they started off with a small advantage at the start as the healer died in the first pull on raider.io's side so Free Marsy was ahead for a bit, but Raider.io pulled ahead as they went towards Harbaron. Free Marsy pulled more trash in the boat compared to Raider.io and perhaps that was a huge advantage. Raider.io was clearing trash towards the miniboss before Helya when Free Marsy got to Harbaron, but then when Free Marsy was done, they pulled the entire left side and got them all down and jumped down to Helya ahead of raider.io who still hadn't made their percentage. Once raider.io started on Helya they caught up a lot and were only 2% behind Free Marsy and Free Marsy also had an extra 5 second penalty because of an extra death! But, at the end, Free Marsy got Helya down and in a huge upset raider.io didn't get Helya down before she submerged and so they lost the game! Free Marsy, the underdogs of the tournament were through to the grand final against Honestly!

Game 1 (Seat of the Triumvirate - Explosive, Volcanic, Teeming) was almost like watching my first mythic plus SotT, though of course they did the trash much better than we did. I didn't realise you could root the first boss (Zuraal) when he's fixating on you - something I should try next time! Total wipefest! Free Marsy was saved from having their wipes intensely scrutinised as a lot of the focus was on Honestly as they were progressing faster through the instance. The death counter by the end was 20 for Honestly and 38 for Free Marsy (and they hadn't finished doing 3rd boss Nezhar yet).

Game 2 (Eye of Azshara - Raging, Grievous, Fortified) had some surprisingly sloppy deaths for Marsy on Parjesh, which unfortunately cost them that game. A bummer since they chose that map! One thing I should try is the travel form with passenger and the leap forward ability to get people up the map. Useful with a warlock and one other person who can get up there! But with the mount hanging the butt low over the edge, it negates that need. Poor Warler, I did wonder did he die at the end as part of a running joke? Or was that a for real death!

Game 3 (Halls of Valour - Bolstering, Explosive, Fortified) had a bad start - there was a wipe on the first trash pull and I was wondering why they didn't release - were they rage quitting? No, it turned out there was some glitch and they couldn't release and so they restarted the dungeon. They had a much cleaner 2nd run and Free Marsy beat Honestly quite solidly though I think if the first run had worked out, Honestly would have been the winner. It turns out that the GM observer got in combat with a drake (which is part of the boss) which is why they couldn't release. Luckily that was at the beginning of the instance so not too huge an issue.

It felt like Free Marsy woke up after that one and realised they were still in it with a shot and in Game 4 (Upper Karazhan - Teeming, Volcanic, Tyrannical). I wondered if Honestly was getting tired because their runs weren't as clean as the earlier competition ones - 5 deaths in Halls of Valour (which should be an easy instance since it's one that would have been well practiced). On Mana devourer they had 2 deaths from the rogue (and already 2 deaths from earlier in the instance) - though were they planned? They did sacrifice the warlock a lot for sneaking past things, so perhaps the rogue picking up the orbs and getting high stacks and then dying was part of their plan. Honestly was ahead at chess but another death from the warlock put their deathcount at 5 and Free Marsy had 0 deaths on their run. Come Viz'aduum, Honestly had a death and then a full wipe with the boss on 2%!!! And then Free Marsy had a full wipe on Viz'aduum too! Hmm, Honestly was running back and then they had a full wipe again, but Free Marsy didn't release again. Time is ticking, and it turns out Free Marsy got rezzed back in the room to start their boss run again. The warlock on Honestly dies again from an orb putting the Honestly death count at the end at 16, and Free Marsy at 7. And the game goes to Free Marsy 4 seconds ahead! But there was heaps of outroar in the stream - if Free Marsy had run back instead of being rezzed in the boss room (and they had 2 adds that they had skipped as well), would that have extended their time? Sloot tweeted something to try to pacify the outrage.


So now we have a game 5! Talk about a nailbiter! Game 5 (Arcway - Sanguine, Quaking, Tyrannical), chosen by Honestly, seemed to be their trademark selection - they love tyrannical instances that people normally avoid! I think they're banking on people not being good at tyrannical bosses on 17 and wiping on bosses. Honestly stealthed past the trash sacrificing their warlock (again!) which just added another death to their count. Free Marsy did more trash and with less deaths. Free Marsy caught up quickly, pulling the last boss Advisor Vandros with only a 17% difference. By transition it was only an 11-12% difference! The run back between the two was better on Free Marsy's side and then overtook damage Honestly! Free Marsy takes out the MDI! What an amazing finisher!

Big cheers and dancing! Meh, yes there were a lot of people whinging about the unfair resets and bugs that worked in Free Marsy's favour, but they still played well and came in as the underdogs and took the competition!

I took some screenshots of the setups of the druids for my own learning. I noticed they were doing a lot of feral DPS, and looking at their legendaries (also depending on the instance) they were switching legendaries. For the earlier fights they used this setup.

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I noticed for HoV it was a more standard setup with Prydaz and Velen's.

The guardian druids were all using Lady and the Child and Galactic guardian, making their moonfires very powerful.


I only managed to get one of Meod in an AoE setup.


Slootpuns:

COEN Agronox (Big tree boss)
"His fave subject is trigonometry - it was pretty elementary for him"
"This boss is no oak, so no oaking around" 
"Premonition now finishing off Agronox, that should be a huge re-leaf for them"

COEN Mephistroth (Demon)
"Pump doing a good job finishing it off quickly - It would have taken aegis otherwise"

SOTT Saprish (Ethereal with cat and flying adds)
"The leap from Darkfang can be cat-astrophic"

SOTT L'ura (Na'aru)
"Lots of void energy running through her, without a shadow of a doubt!"
"A lot of damage going out leading to a shady situation there..."

I had a quick word with Xera (who plays Xerase - resto druid in Ego) about his win, whom I saw online not long after the MDI. When I asked him why he was online and not out partying, he said he had to raid tonight.

Navi: Did you guys change anything between APAC and world championships? ie change strats, try anything different after watching other teams?
Xerase: Yeah, learnt a lot from the euros tbh, they weren't f***ing playing around. Our approach to practicing vault/cath/maw/DHT (DHT was our first round map 3 pick but we 2-0'd so we didn't get to play it). It was a lot more intense. In regionals we literally just relied on raw damage/being better.
Navi: Now I did wonder if you guys threw the first game to get a pick for 2nd map in the grand final...
Xerase: Oh, na defs not. We just never practiced it, or any of the finals map to be honest. We spent so much of our energy trying to beat raider.io - we didn't really expect to beat them.
Navi: I thought it might be one of those lets make them feel overconfident
Xerase: Just wanted to scare the $%#@ out of em.
Navi: OK, one last question, which map do you personally think you did best on in the grand champs, of all the games you played?
Xerase: Vault, without a doubt. Sub 19 minutes, no other team was even close. We had the fastest vault, the fastest cath and the fastest maw, but Vaults was defs the best.
Navi: I'll quit bugging you, Xerase, grats again to you and all of Free Marsy :) thanks for taking the time to chat to me!
Xerase: Thanks for the support!


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