How To Become a Mythic Raider in Less Than 20 Minutes:
Being a Better Player and Notes on Mythic Raiding

Hey guys, Mythic raider and card game enthusiast Tiraffe here. Given the recent announcement from Uro about looking at the possibility of pursuing Mythic Progression, I figured I’d whip up a guide to help out those that are looking to improve their play or are afraid that they wouldn’t make the cut for a Mythic roster now or in the future.

(Links to mentioned websites/addons and sources listed at the bottom)

DISCLAIMER: Some of what I’m going to say is going to be very direct and very to-the-point, so don’t take anything personally; nobody likes being told that they’re not good enough, that’s a matter of human nature. However, there are only 20 spots available in raid at a time and a couple more will be needed to float for a constant Mythic roster. If you don’t have the patience to sit down and raid at a Mythic level, don’t waste your time. To put it simply, Mythic raiding is not for everyone and it is supposed to be far more difficult than Heroic. It’s easier to make mistakes and new mechanics can leave little to no room for error. For some bosses, certain classes are absolutely necessary or the fight will be much harder to complete. I’ll go over which bosses are which later. This article based both on my personal experience as well as talking to other Mythic raiders.

There is a tl;dr at the bottom for the Being a Better Player portion via a video

For now, here are some general tips before I get into the meat and potatoes of this.

General Info:

1. Get some sleep
2. Make sure to eat some food before raid
3. Stay hydrated
4. Take a shower
5. Get other stuff (homework, taxes, etc.) out of the way
6. Check if your car needs an oil change

These steps might seem a bit out of place on a guide for, but it’s important for two things:

1. Mythic can and will be a high stress environment, you’ll want to avoid extra stress from outside sources.
2. Preparation is very important for Mythic raiding, from strategy to food/flask/runes to running the right talents/traits(if you have them) for the right fight.

In all seriousness, doing the above is just good in general for well-being and it helps relieve some tension. It isn’t required, but it’s highly recommended.

The following is just some general info you might have heard before for heroic, or just raiding in general. A lot of this has to do with preparation or mechanics.

General Raiding Info:

1. Do your research.
2. Show up, preferably early.
3. Be honest.
4. Pay attention to mechanics while avoiding tunnel vision.
5. Be willing to make changes in order to benefit the raid group.
6. Be willing to admit when you mess up.
7. Be willing to provide suggestions.
8. Be willing to listen to suggestions.
9. Don’t take it personally if you get benched.
10. Leave your ego at the door.
11. When your resolve is tested, don’t falter.
12. Have a combination of the weak aura pack for the raid and either DBM or BigWigs.
13. It’s ok to make mistakes, so long as you make an effort to correct it.
14. Make sure you’re still having fun at the end of the day.

So What Does It Mean to be a Mythic Raider/ do Mythic Raiding/ do Mythic Progression?

In a general sense, a Mythic raider does all of the above, but better. These aren’t exactly difficult things, but many of them are ways to combat bad raiding habits. I’ll go over some of these concepts in-depth. However, in order to be specific, someone who is planning on doing Mythic raiding should be able to stay cool, calm and collected, while handling multiple mechanics at the same time while being able simultaneously improve and play their class/spec at a high level while also having the capacity to withstand being stuck on a single boss for more than a week.

It’s a bit of a laundry list.

Strategy

To segue into strategy, this section will be split into two parts. The first part will encompass the differences going from Heroic to Mythic. The second part will go over general the raid strategy for each boss.

Differences for Mythic:

Champions:

All three adds, as well as all previously killed adds, now cast a special ability.
The melee adds send out divine hammers in a rotating cross pattern that needs to be dodged.

The caster adds cast ‘Angelic Renewal’, which will fully heal the boss if it goes off.

Grong:

There are now 2 adds. Interrupt orders are required for each add. This also means there are now 2 charges to zap the boss with, these charges last a whole minute. Tantrum needs to be timed correctly for the boss to die, mainly to interrupt the Bestial Combo before the tank gets thrown.

Jadefire:

There’s an extra cat add and an extra bomb add. During the maze intermission, you have about 40~ish seconds to exit this phase before the raid gets trampled by Niuzao. Pyroblast from the mage is an instant kill if it goes off. It’s important to bait the flame traps outside of the living explosives.

Opulence:

2 players from each side are randomly selected to swap sides during the boss. The shadow damage protection buff from the amethyst now only lasts 15 seconds, so healers that grab it need to be more diligent about applying the buff due to the swaps and Wail of Greed. Liquid Gold needs to be taken as far out as possible, the boss will cast Surging Gold enlarge the size of the pools periodically throughout phase 2. Boss should be dead around the 4th set of adds.

Conclave:

Bwonsamdi appears periodically to put a complete healing absorb as a curse. Everything else is the same as heroic and you’ll want to have the bosses die at the same time as heroic.

Rastakhan:

Zombie Dust Totem now mind controls 2 people. The Seal of Purification now leaves fire behind on the ground. Plague of Toads sends out 5 toads instead of 3.  Roka should be dead before the 2nd leap, same as heroic.

Mekkatorque:

Mekka does an Argus impersonation, causing his Gigavolt Charge to leave a Radiation Zone when it drops that does 78.5k damage every 2 seconds for 30 seconds. This forces people to drop the charge in different spots.

In addition, his Wormhole ability now does additional bullshit, by tossing 3 players into the air and polymorphing 2 players. Players can now only be in the bots for 25 seconds instead of 45 seconds. This means that people will need to jump in the bots at the same time and there isn’t a lot of room for error.

World Enlarger also makes a single person Enormous, increasing damage/healing by 10% and allowing them to trample regular sized people and deal about 1 million damage to shrunk people. Shrunk move, then regular move, then Enormous move to dodge Buster Cannon, Enormous person should be by themselves if they can.

Blockade/Jaina:

Don’t worry about this until Mekka dies

Comp Recommendations:

Champion:

Specs with aoe cc to interrupt Angelic Renewal

Grong:

5-healers. The 2 people picking up the cores should have some self-sustain to mitigate the damage.

Jadefire:

Hunters/Rogues/Paladins to soak multiple flame traps at a time. Warlock necessary for the maze.

Opulence:

Need to have 2 Amethyst, 2 Sapphire, 4 Ruby, 3~4 Topaz, rest grab Opal. Healers grabbing amethyst should have an easy, efficient way to apply the buff (Healing Rain, Efflorescence, etc.).

Bring a warlock to help people come back after dropping the Liquid Gold. 1 Blood Deathknight for pulling the adds back together. The more immunities available, the less punishing phase 2 is, this goes double for paladins to BoP people without immunities available. The tank holding Yalat’s Bulwark will need to hold the boss next to the exit for the flame jet rooms, with the Bulwark facing the entrance to the room.

Conclave:

Classes that can remove the curse applied by Bwonsamdi’s Wrath are absolutely necessary. (Druids, Shamans, Mages). Bwonsamdi applies one additional curse for each Bwonsamdi’s Wrath that he’s previously cast. Prot War, Guardian Druid, and Brewmaster Monk tanks recommended. Need 1 Resto Shaman for raid healing during winds. Classes with Stuns/Purges for the raptors are also good.

Rastakhan:

9 ranged, 1 healer to go into the death realm. Door strat required. Need 2 Shamans to rotate Tremor Totem for the mind control. Prot War, Brewmaster Monk tanks recommended.

Mekkatorque:

Need BoP/Leap of Faith/Slowfall if you have any shamans in the group. Locks should run Demonic Circle. Deathknights can Death’s Advance to avoid the wormhole. The raid will be stacked as  a whole for most of the fight. Multiple monks/druids, 2 Warlocks, 2 Blood Deathknights recommended.

Order of Difficulty (Easiest to Hardest, based on going from Heroic to Mythic):

1. Champions
2. Rastakhan
3. Jadefire
4. Grong
5. Opulence
6. Conclave
7. Blockade/Jaina/Mekka

Compared to bosses from Legion and Uldir, the BfD bosses aren’t as soul-crushing, until you get to Mekka, but he’s still not as bad Mistress Sassz’ine from Tomb.

Attitude/Mentality:

It is important to remember that, not just for Mythic, raid teams are a team. It is just as important for every member of that team to be willing to listen to each other when it comes to concerns and suggestions. This goes doubly so for raidleads listening to their raiders since they can and will have a very different perspective of the fight that can lead to making the boss far easier than it was previously. Be willing to try new tactics before grabbing torches or ignoring what can very well be a reasonable discussion. Don’t be surprised if people start knocking on doors otherwise.

On that note, when suggesting ideas, be clear and specific about what you want to happen so that others can get a clear idea of what you want to accomplish. Try to avoid being passive-aggressive, especially as a raidlead; it causes more harm than good. Mechanics are often the big thing being brought up, since a change in how a mechanic is handled can make or break a fight. To quote an example from a friend of mine from Zul’jin: “We’ve got the dps to get Mythic Grong down, but we haven’t been able to convince our guy calling the shots that the cores from the adds should be used to interrupt the Bestial Combo on the tanks before they get thrown. As a result, the tanks are dying and we’ve been getting a lot of 1 and 3 stack Tantrums that are preventing us from getting past 30%.”

General Callouts vs. Individual Callouts

First off, being called out in a raid does not mean that people are calling you out just to be rude to you, it is an attempt to prevent you and/or others to correct your fault in a mechanic/part of your rotation so it can improve next time. No one likes being told what to do if they feel that it’s personal nor that they are doing something wrong, because not wanting to fail is a universal trait; it is important to stay calm during these scenarios. However, if you refuse/can’t seem to improve, don’t be surprised if you get booted down to a bench for the boss. Being individually called out lets you know specifically the mechanic that you need to fix and, generally, how to fix it. It is expected of you to attempt to make sure to do the mechanic correctly from now on/with good efficiency. People will begin to get frustrated if you continue to fail the mechanic over and over, since a person dead makes the fight much harder.

General callouts helps the raid itself know if there’s a specific mechanic multiple members are struggling with, and for everyone to attempt to improve on that mechanic. While this may involve a large number of people, that doesn’t mean individuals just got away with it beforehand. Raid leaders and raiders alike can see who dies to what or is not listening, whether it be during the fight or after with logs. General callouts do not mean you have to worry less about it then an individual callout, but it is important to know when to use them. General callouts when only one person made a mistake can lead to more people thinking they did something wrong when it was just one person. This in turn can make them second-guess themselves at a crucial moment or just cause unnecessary stress.

For both types of callouts, the goal is to make sure mechanics are done correctly to prevent death and other issues that cause a wipe. The “Stop/Slow DPS” callout is an important one, but it both needs to be called at the right time and actually followed. On Blockade for example, calling for dps to stop/slow right before the shield comes out for either boss results in that shield being up longer and causes the shields to desync. As such, timer dependent mechanics need to be watched by those calling them or designated to someone who can.

Mythic Loot:

Only care about this section once the boss is dead. That being said, gear available from Mythic raiding is the highest baseline item level, at 415. That usually means that anything that drops will probably be an item level upgrade unless you’ve been lucky from m+, Heroic/Normal or have been doing rated pvp. Any additional warforge/socket will mean you probably won’t be replacing it anytime soon. Personal Loot will, of course, goober things a bit if someone gets a downgrade they can’t give to someone else.

For gear that can be traded, it will be worthwhile to make sure gear can go to the person that can best use it in Mythic. I.e. Gear up main specs and main alt characters first based on who gets the biggest upgrade, then alt specs. Different classes will be necessary at different points and funneling all of the gear into a few characters hurts if they are absent or need to be on a different character for the fight. Furthermore, different groups may do loot differently, even across different difficulties, so be sure to ask your raidleads how loot will be handled.

If you’re low on gear or are looking to make the most of azerite traits, be sure to level up your Heart of Azeroth and farm m+ and/or Heroic for slots that need to be upgraded. The 415 residuum from the vendor should be an upgrade from almost any 400 azerite piece. Plus, you can always get more residuum from the weekly chest by doing higher m+ keys in addition to the 410+ gear for doing at least a 10. Honorable mention goes to the weekly conquest reward which gives gear for specific slots based on the week and the weekly pvp chest that can be upgraded by increasing your rating in pvp.

Farm Bosses vs. Progression Bosses:

Just because you kill a boss once on Mythic does not mean that you will one-shot it in the future. Just because you top the meters on one boss does not mean you’re a god at your class; the same goes for Mythic raiding bosses. A boss is considered a farm boss when you’ve downed them at least a couple of times comfortably, and can either one-shot them or kill them within two wipes. Bringing alts is fine at this point and some wipes can be expected on farm bosses if the comp changes significantly enough.

It’s important to note, when killing a boss for the first time, how far it is into the raid and if it is worth the time going back and farming other bosses only to try at that boss again. If you just downed Mythic Grong, you can usually reset the lockout and farm him and Mythic Champs again on the next reset. For downing Conclave, however, it may be a wise idea to extend the lockout and continue progressing on Rastakhan before trying to kill the earlier bosses again due to the difficulty of both Opulence and Conclave.

On a personal level, someone who’s looking to do Mythic, raiding or otherwise, should be looking to optimize every aspect of their gameplay. This isn’t so people can kick themselves when they aren’t performing well, but rather that they can perform well in spite of mechanics. Someone who freaks out when they get a mechanic can be quite distracting, especially when that ends up killing someone or it covers up the comms.

Progression raiding can be very stressful and very frustration due to both lack of progress and perceived lack of progress. To put it bluntly, be surprised if a boss dies within a night or two of the group getting there. On the flipside, the faster people can pick up the fight and learn any mechanics that require personal responsibility, the more the fights will shift from mechanics checks into dps checks, and in turn, progression turns into farm. Examples include Volatile Charge and Liquid Gold for Opulence.

Practicing mechanics in Heroic and Normal can be worthwhile provided that the mechanics function the same across different difficulties. For example, the maze is the same every time regardless of difficulty for Jadefire, but you likely can’t practice Multi-Sided Strike unless you’re in Mythic, since it only targets a few people in Heroic instead of the whole raid. In addition, the orbs only spawn in Heroic and Mythic, so going into Normal won’t help with knowing the spots to pick them up.

Most importantly:

Stay motivated:

Performance

Gear Requirements

Now, it’s obvious that Mythic bosses will do more damage and have more health than their Heroic counterparts. As such, people should have around 230k health with the Stamina buff from a priest at a minimum. Having more health means more room for error before people keel over from unavoidable mechanics. An item level around 403 should give this amount of health, depending the the slots that have the higher item level.

It is also important for people to work on increasing the level of their Heart of Azeroth. Filling it out completely is not as nearly as important as making sure the level is high enough to unlock the defensive traits, as any extra defensives become less health the healers have to heal.

Recommended DPS

For most fights, the dps will want to aim to be above 20k dps at the end for most the boss fights, except for Mekkatorque. Classes that can multidot should aim for 23k for fights that allow it. For progression, it’s important to try and push as much damage as possible without getting yourself or anyone else killed. This applies to tanks and healers to a lesser extent, with tanks trying to go for about 8k to 10k at the end if the boss doesn’t hurt too much and healers should be trying to help dps when comfortable. Don’t worry about trying to top the meters, just worry about doing your best.

Playing at your item level:

This ties into the recommended dps quite a bit, but I felt it was important enough to include in its own section. To put it simply, nobody should be pulling a gray parse unless they died in Mythic.

To avoid having to describe each one individually, take a look at the following chart; the chart assumes that there is a sufficient sample size.

This mainly applies to dps, tanks and healers can follow this to a lesser extent. The goal for this isn’t to aim for a good parse when trying to kill a progression boss, it’s that getting a good parse is a direct result of good play. I repeat, don’t worry about parses until after the boss dies and use whatever information from Warcraftlogs, Wowanalyzer and Wipefest to improve on a pull-by-pull basis. It is also important to note that sample sizes to play a role here, so if you’re playing a less popular spec, parses may be skewed for or against you, so take the chart as a rule of thumb.

There is also the case, where this chart does become less useful as you get more gear because you get closer to the pool of players that have been farming Mythic/heroic for quite some time and their ilevel may be dragged down by one or two pieces, but are otherwise doing extremely well for their itemlevel bracket. As such, maintaining a Blue parse may become more difficult, but that’s part of the challenge of improving yourself towards a goal.

Dodging Mechanics

Mechanics in Mythic, and in general, are important to avoid. At the Mythic difficulty, many of these mechanics will, of course, kill someone in a single hit or make it so they’ll die on the next hit. As such, it’s important to take precautions in order to prevent people from dying, since a dead player presents nothing but an example of what not to do. No one should be dying 16 seconds into the fight, even if it’s not Mythic. That being said, make sure to be looking at a boss  (i.e which way they’re facing) if it’s necessary to dodge a mechanic.

If you’re truly having trouble with a certain mechanic, communicate that you’re having trouble with it and focus on what to do when that mechanic comes out. You cannot be so afraid of dying that you end up dying by overreacting. It’ll take some practice and you might need to jump into a lower difficulty to do so without dying. Once you have a handle on it, work on maintaining dps/hps while dealing with the mechanic, since every point counts.

It’s also important to not panic when you realize something bad is going down; there will be times where you just have to focus on dealing with a mechanic and ignoring everything else. Make sure to pop a defensive or a healthstone if you’re close to dying, especially if you’re running out of the raid to drop a debuff. If you’re thinking far faster than your body can act, you’ll end up tripping over yourself and end up with a fist to your face, as shown below.

Effective Healing Required

EHRPS, also known as Effective Healing Required per Second, is a metric that can be found under the Damage Taken portion of Warcraftlogs. It gives a clean idea of how much healing a tank needs for that specific pull. Different classes will require different healing amounts due to how the class functions. Classes that rely more on self-heals than mitigation will have a higher EHRPS on average than other tanks, but if that’s the case, make sure they’re healing themselves appropriately.

For tanks specifically, they also need to have a good idea of when to use cooldowns on cooldown, when to save cooldowns and when to make sure abilities with charges are being used so that they aren’t sitting on charges, such as Fracture or Frenzied Regen. This is to ensure that they aren’t going to go dry on defensives before their co-tank can bail them out. Tanks that rely too heavily on healers healing them as a result of not using their cooldowns will end up killing the raid just as much as dps that take extra damage or don’t use defensives. On that note, tanks also need to be comfortable calling for external cooldowns such as Life Cocoon, Guardian Spirit, Blessing of Sacrifice, Ironbark or Pain Suppression.

Side note: Some of the bosses hurt the tanks a lot, so keep that in mind. That being said, certain tanks will perform much better on certain bosses, and it’s important to let people use the alts that they’ve geared up if it means the boss becomes easier to manage. Refer to the comp recommendations above.

Non-trait Off-healing, and Scenarios for Crowd Control

Being able to perform off-healing and provide other utilities is an important thing to take note of when it comes to doing Mythic. Extra healing helps ease mana usage for your healers and can help the raid survive during periods of high damage. If a fight has lots of constant damage or moments where immunities prevent certain death, then be sure to adjust both traits and talents accordingly. Vampiric Embrace from Shadow Priests and Word of Glory from Ret Paladins are mainstays for off-healing without sacrificing a lot of damage. If you can maintain both high off-healing and high damage, that’s even better.

On a different note, keep note of your spellbook and your talents. You may have options available to your class/spec that can make you crucial for killing a boss. For example, Warlocks can banish elementals and demons, removing them from the fight and both Paladins and Priests have Repentance and Shackle Undead to shackle undead. When it comes time for Opulence/Blockade, having Earthgrab/Earthbind Totem or Tar Trap or Consecration/Desecration talented into their respective slows (Prot Pal/UH DK/Blood DK) are handy. That or just bring a Frost Mage.

Picking Traits

Scenarios for Picking the Right Defensive Trait

Bulwark of the masses may be a good trait for tanking dungeons, but it is near useless for raiding, while Gemhide is often good for m+, raids and pvp (against physical damage). Self Reliance is useless for melee. Vampiric Speed is a fantastic trait for fights where adds are constantly dying. Resounding Protection is basically Prydaz. The list goes on, so make sure to identify when a trait will actually be useful.

Active vs. Passive Defensive Traits

Most classes also have 1 or 2 class specific defensive options, such as Sanctum for priests and Duck and Cover for hunters. Traits that require another spell to be used at all are generally stronger than their passive counterparts. For example:

• A 400 ilvl trait of Resounding Protection only absorbs 14.7k damage, but is active for 30s.
• A 400 ilvl Duck and Cover can absorb 20.7k damage, but is only active for 6 seconds and also uses up the Hunter’s Feign Death in order to activate it; Feign Death’s cooldown is lowered to 25 seconds to compensate.
• A 400 ilvl Sanctum can only absorb 18.5k magic damage, but it’s active for 10 seconds and uses up a Priest’s Fade, which isn’t as crucial as Feign Death.

Of course, the player actually has to press the button either before for absorbs or after for heals in order to actually get any benefit from the trait. Other healing traits usually buff abilities that heal or prevent damage already, but don’t usually apply that to an ability that doesn’t already heal the player.

Mobility and Other Options

In addition to pure defensive options, mobility and other styles of traits are available that can help make it easier to avoid damage altogether such as March of the Damned for Deathknights, which further increases the movespeed granted by Death’s Advanced reduces its cooldown to 40 seconds from 45 seconds. Other examples include:

• Footpad, which causes Sprint to act as a mini-Stampeding Roar for its duration for allies close to the rogue.
• Gallant Steed, which is like Footpad, but for Paladins, lasts 5 seconds and it also reduces Divine Steed’s cooldown to 40 seconds.

And to show some other traits that can provide bonuses aside from pure speed, mobility or healing, take a look at the following:

• Reawakening, which causes a druid’s Rebirth to not only provide a massive absorb when they res, but also gives them a Well Fed buff that grants mainstat. This makes druids the best class to brez someone if they die for getting someone back into the game if they have this trait. However, this also means that the druid is missing a defensive trait for themselves and its useless in modes where Rebirth can’t be used, such as arenas.
• Intimidating Presence, which causes a warrior’s Intimidating Shout to not only slow the enemies it affects, but also prevents an amount of damage for each enemy affected when the fear ends. This means it can help tanks in dungeons or save allies in pvp.

All-in-all, make sure to plan ahead and judge how useful a certain trait will be based on what you have available.

Interrupts:

Use them, but make sure to callout when you’re doing so. If you’re not sure what your interrupt spell is, looking in your spellbook and mouse-over the icons until you find the one that says something along the lines of “Interrupting spellcasting” and “Preventing any spell from that school from being cast”. The following classes also have blanket silences: Spriests have Silence, Boomkins have Solar Beam, Veng DH has Sigil of Silence, Prot Paladin has Avenger’s Shield, Assassination Rogues have Garrote. For Boomkins and Spriests, this doubles as their interrupt.

Getting Your Head in the Game

Preparation is key

As mentioned at the start of this guide, make sure you’ve prepped accordingly. This includes:

• Knowing your spec’s rotation based on the style of the fight and your available gear/talents/traits
• Knowing your spec’s preferred stat distribution
• Simming your gear/talents/traits for the highest possible output
  • Make sure to gamble your residuum for 415 azerite pieces if you don’t need a specific one
• Selecting the right talents, based on the fight
• Selecting the right traits, based on the fight
  • Please note that some traits provide a one-of benefit that does not stack
• Selecting a good tmog, druids too
• Making sure you have the right sockets/enchants on your gear, based on the stats needed
• Any extra enchants such as the engineering absorb shield that can be put on waist pieces or the tailoring enchant for cloaks that reduces threat (good for skittish)
• For the following spec/classes, make sure your higher itemlevel weapon is in the main hand slot: Rogues, Fury Warrior, Enh Shaman, Frost DK, WW Monk, and Demonhunter.
• Make sure your UI isn’t cluttered and that all the information you can see on-screen is actually important. I.e. Make sure you can actually see what’s going on.

In addition, it’s important to have the following:

• Personal health potions and battle potions
• Personal Flasks (if none are provided)
• Personal stat food (if no feasts are provided)
• War-scrolls (if missing a Cleric, Fighter, and/or Wizard)
• Make sure any on-use trinkets are on your bars
  • Feel free to combo these trinkets with any damage/healing cds

• The same goes for any active talents, make sure they’re on your bars
  • Make sure to actual use these too
• You know what, put everything on your bars
  • You can enable additional action bars under Interface -> Action Bars with the default UI, if you need more room
• If you’re Hunter, make sure to have one pet of each specialization
• Addons such as BigWigs or DBM that callout mechanics
  • Also consider getting the weakaura pack for the raid, it makes it much easier to handle hard to see mechanics such as Death’s Door and Liquid Gold
• Damage Meters. Don’t look at it during the pulls, it should mainly be there to show what your current dps is in-game, nothing more.
  • You can also check other stats such as Damage Taken, Healing, Buff Uptime, Crowd Control Used, Interrupts, etc.
    • The two best ones right now are Skada and Details. Neither require a lot of setup to use.
• Augment Runes
• Vantus Runes (Just in case, use these sparingly for progression bosses unless you won’t be able to kill the next boss before reset)

Preparation is only half the battle

So you’ve done all of the above. You’ve done your research, gotten the gear, applied any available buffs and enchants and you have a really cool tmog. But you’re underperforming for your itemlevel or you’re hitting every single avoidable mechanic on the way to the bench. If this is the case, something is wrong. Just because you’ve managed to nail all of the prep, doesn’t mean you get a free pass on your performance. On the contrary, having good gear and a bunch of buffs does not automatically make someone a good player. It just means that both the minimum dps and maximum dps a character of your class/spec can pull off has increased, but that doesn’t mean the player has. Good gear won’t play your class for you.

How Do I Know if I’m Underperforming?

The easiest way to know is if you died. If you’re dying regularly, then your damage/healing will always be low.. Your number one focus should be to make it through a raid night without dying more than 3 times, without counting wipes.

For a more visual approach, once the dying stops, consider downloading a damage meter so you can see how much you are outputting in real-time in-game. Skada and Details are the two best ones to use right now. This will be brought up again later.

Waiting for someone to come along and nicely inform someone else that they’re doing things incorrectly is just as unrealistic as waiting for Prince Charming to sweep you off your feet. It’s more important to be proactive and get out there to find new ways to improve. Even if you think you’ve got everything down, feel free to ask those around you if you’re doing things right. Somethings, a second opinion is necessary to push someone  in the right direction, even if the person giving advice isn’t playing the same class or spec or hasn’t been playing the game as long.

But How Do I Find Ways to Improve?

To start, every class has a class discord as a result of Legion’s Class Halls, with some classes having two.  Links to the class discords can be found in the link below, along with other discords that be of use.

https://www.wowhead.com/discord-servers

These discords should have a frequently-asked-questions section available as one of their text channels, though some of them may be incomplete. Some of these discords also have specific websites that can be visited, such as:

Druids: https://www.dreamgrove.gg/

Mages: https://www.altered-time.com/forum/

Priests: https://warcraftpriests.com/

Rogues: http://www.ravenholdt.net/

Warlocks: https://lockonestopshop.com/

Monks: https://www.peakofserenity.com/

RSham: https://ancestralguidance.com/

EleSham: https://stormearthandlava.com/

Note: for some of the ones that aren’t listed, make sure that the information you’re looking at is actually up to date.

You can also check out the class guides available on Wowhead or Icyveins. I personally wouldn’t recommend following the guides from Noxxic due to them being either out-of-date or incorrect.

Lastly, if your spec is popular enough, you can use Wowanalyzer in conjunction with logs from Warcraftlogs to analyze individual pulls for individual characters. This includes information such as dps provided by proc trinkets and mana/cooldown usage for multiple spec. Do take it with a  grain of salt when it comes to defensive usage though, since not every ability needs to be used on cooldown. Other cooldowns might also be saved to line up with Lust. I won’t go over the specifics for this right now though, since that’s another guide for another time.

So How Do I Know What Gear/Talents/Traits to Use?

In a general sense, following your spec’s stat distribution according information available from the class discords and class guide.

If you want to be specific, you’ll have to sim your gear. This means running your gear through multiple trials to find what gives the highest dps/hps/etc. Mainly dps though. In order to do this, most people use raidbots in conjunction with the simulationcraft addon.

By doing so, you can find your stat distribution, your best gear/talents/traits for that specific character, what gear would be the best upgrade from m+/raid/azerite vendor and even just a quick sim to find your current dps with your equipped gear. Make sure to simulate the kind of fight you want use the gear/talents/traits on, so you’re not trying to sim single target while wearing dungeon gear with aoe talents.

One thing to note, however, is that some of the sims assume perfect play with optimal buffs. Don’t be discouraged if you’re having trouble reaching your simulated dps if you don’t have all of your buffs available for a target dummy. This also means that certain talents may be better to take, not because they sim higher, but because they allow room for error if you are unable to cast everything on cooldown.

For example, most shadow priests should be taking the Shadow Word: Void talent, not because it always does more damage than Fortress of the Mind if you get to stand still all fight, but because having a charge of SW: V rotating reduces the punishment of not getting to cast while moving. Having 2 charges also synergizes really well with the Whispers of the Damned trait, which provides extra Mindblast damage and 30 extra insanity on Mindblast crits. The same goes for choosing Legacy of the Void instead of Dark Ascension, for slightly different reasons as it unnecessarily increases the difficulty of the rotation for a very small dps gain.

In the picture below, Fortress of the Mind is the brown icon with guy touching his head had Shadow Word: Void is the purple icon (real specific, I know) with the girl touching her head.

Legacy of the Void is the purple diamond icon and Dark Ascension is the purple N’aaru icon. Surrender to Madness is the faceless icon at the bottom and he’s just happy to be here.

The idea is that talents that allow room for error at a very slight, simmed dps loss, are usually the go-to talent for that row, because it makes getting targeted with mechanics less punishing and it also makes performing the rotation less strenuous, allowing more attention elsewhere.

So You Know What to Wear and What Talents to Bring, What’s Left?

The rotation.

Going over every specs/classes’ rotation would take too long, so unless you’re doing pvp, you’ll want to focus on your main spec, and then branch out to the main spec for your alts, and then go from there. If you are having a hard time picking up the rotation for your alts, this is a good strategy to do so.

The rotation is the absolute most important thing to know. At a Mythic level, it should be like muscle memory so you can focus on mechanics, glancing down every once in a while to see if cooldowns are back up. It’s like checking your mirrors and glancing out the window before merging lanes in traffic. Pay attention to what’s in front of you, what’s around, then react accordingly and continue driving.

That being said, there are a couple things to go over in regards to rotations. For the most part, it can boil to apply any necessary buffs to yourself/debuffs to the boss, press the big cooldown button and press whatever spell has the highest priority at the time. Most rotations are actually just a priority list, and different talents and traits will affect when to use different spells.

For example, Survival Hunters use a different talent build depending on whether or not they have Blur of Talons as one or more of their traits. Demonhunters with Chaotic Transformations should always go with the Demonic talent build, especially if they have traits for Furious Gaze. A Shadowpriest’s talent build is unaffected by their traits for single target.

Nuances and Resource Management

This will just be a rough list of things to keep in mind:

• Classes that have resources that automatically refill (Hunters, Rogues, WW Monk, Feral Druid, DK, and Arcane Mage to an extent) should try to start pooling their resources if their cooldowns are coming off of their cd soon
  • If your damage cooldown gives resources or increases resource generation, do your best to avoid hitting your resource cap and wasting precious energy/focus (Adrenaline Rush for Outlaw, Tiger’s Fury for Feral)
    • This also applies to specs that have to build resources and have a resource cap. (Havoc DHs with the Blindfury talent, Veng DH, Warriors, Shamans)
    • This is less extreme for specs with discrete resources (5 holy combo points for Ret, 5 fel combo points for Locks, 5 monk combo points for WW monk)
• On that note, if you know for certain that your cooldown won’t be back in time for Lust, consider holding onto it in order to combo both Lust and that specific cooldown
  • This is more important to judge for classes with shorter cooldowns, since it’ll be easier to misjudge when Lust will be called for depending on the group. Longer cooldowns have more room to consider if it’ll be up again before the fight ends or not.
• Make sure to use your regular abilities on cooldown if you aren’t pulling resources for a big cooldown.
  • Certain specs will have “mandatory” downtime due to how the spec functions (Guardian Druid, DK Runes)
  • Other specs will have to use spells that are really just there as filler in there regular rotation to fill in gaps (mainly Veng DH using Throw Glaive while also rotating one charge of Infernal Strike when talented into Flame Crash + Abyssal Strike)

In short, wasting resources = bad. Use all of the tools in your spellbook when appropriate.

The Time before a Pull

Usually, raids will start a timer of some sort in order to make sure everyone starts hitting the boss around the same time. Different classes will have different ways to begin the pull. DoT classes will want to ensure their DoTs are on the boss as soon as the timer hits 0 before they pop their cds. Classes with long cast times such a full Pyroblast may start casting 4 seconds before the timer hits 0. Shadow Priests can use their Hallucinations passive to launch Void Eruption right before combat starts for more upfront damage. Specs with applicable buffs such as Stormkeeper and Double Tap may want to cast them well before the timer hits 0. Make sure to pop battle potions before someone hits the boss and don’t pull early, especially if you’re ranged.

It’s important to note that some resources will reset either completely or partially if they’re used before combat starts. For example:

• If a Spriest has more than 25 Insanity before raid combat starts, it’ll be set back to 25
• If a DH has more than 20 Fury, it’ll be set back to 20
• If an Arcane Mage as any Arcane Charges before pull, all charges will be reset

Cool Tricks to Show Your Friends

1. Stutterstepping
   1. Stutterstepping is a term that comes from tennis and other sports as a footwork technique
   2. In modern times, it has been adapted to videogames, mainly in the RTS and MOBA genre
   3. The goal is to have a unit fire an attack and issue a move command as soon as the damage is dealt or the projectile is launched
   4. A similar concept can be used in WoW by taking advantage of the global cooldown, or GCD
   5. In short, a casted ability such as Aimed Shot already uses up the GCD as it’s casting, meaning that the next spell can start casting as soon as Aimed Shot finishes
   6. Using Marks Hunter for the same example, as Aimed Shot finishes, the hunter can begin moving and can cast an instant cast spell with no wait at the same time
   7. Thus, the Hunter can cast Aimed Shot directly into Arcane Shot, Rapid Fire, Multi-Shot, Steady Shot, Double Tap, Trueshot Aura, Freezing Trap, Tar Trap, Hi-Explosive Trap, Mend Pet, Exhilarate, Aspect of the Turtle, Racial Abilities or Concussive Shot while moving away from a dangerous mechanic
   8. This same concept can be used for instant casts as well, such as moving only when you have an instant cast nuke (Spriest’s Void Bolt) or instant cast proc (Ele Shaman’s Lava Burst)
   9. This helps minimize unnecessary movement for ranged characters and helps specs with charges to make sure they aren’t capped on charges for their abilities
2. Calming Down
   1. This was mentioned earlier, but I wanted to reiterate
   2. Calming down during boss fights is important, as it helps reduce the chance of tunnel vision as well as dying accidentally
   3. Calculated risks are a separate matter, but that comes after calming down
   4. The point of this is to prevent overshooting a goal and missing as a result
   5. It’s like keeping your car under control if you start hydroplaning
   6. If anything, the best course of action is to slow down in a controlled manner
3. Practice Your Rotation
   1. You don’t need all your buffs up for this
   2. Just find a training dummy and go through your rotation until you feel that you’ve got it down
   3. Once that’s done, try it out on a dungeon or lfr boss so you can get used to performing while dealing with mechanics
   4. Work your way up, not every improvement is going to be an immediate one
   5. It’s very hard to Mythic raid by accident
4. Always Be Casting
   1. If you get targeted with a mechanic, and damage needs to be pushed, then it’s important to do your ABC’s
   2. ABC’s stands for Always Be Casting
   3. If you need to move for something, toss out an instant cast spell as you’re doing it, even if it’s something like a shield that does no damage
   4. Only when you’re out of range should you stop worrying about this
5. Killing the Boss
   1. This is a pretty big one
   2. This is more important than ignoring mechanics
   3. Don’t get people killed in the process
   4. Make sure to apply the appropriate reaction to each mechanic
   5. You can’t parse if the boss doesn’t die
   6. Shit happens

TL;DR

There’s a lot to look into for Mythic raiding, and every bit of research helps. The morale and mentality of the raid team is just as important as the strategies used. Resolves will be tested, that much is certain. It is difficult, and difficulty is relative, but it’s far from impossible.

Here is a video featuring how it feels to play a different class in a completely different game that pretty much sums up how to improve at a game when you realize that you’re not satisfied with your current play.

Conclusion

Mythic raiding is a stressful place, that much is true. It’s chock full of expectations and perceptions and strategies and executions. It’s complicated, and it can be a lot to take it. This doesn’t mean it can’t be fun and maintaining that ideal while performing meaningful progression is a must. It’s easier to hit a wall on Mythic, but there will also be times where everything ‘clicks’ and the boss falls over.

For any hopefuls that are unsure about if they can make the cut now or in the future, I hope this helps. There’s a lot of information in here, some of it may be old news and some of it will be brand new. What’s important is that in order to do Mythic raiding or any other high-end content, it’s important to spend time and effort on improving gameplay, because in the end, you’re the only one who can play your character. Even if you end up doing something else, knowing that there’s a way to improve is always a good feeling.

Remember, reading is one thing, understanding is another and performing well based on the first two is the final step. Being a Mythic raider isn’t a title, it’s just the level of difficulty you do.

If you want a good way to practice a new class for rotations and mechanics, go complete the Brawler’s Guild.

Resource Links for Addons:

https://wago.io/bfaraid2 – Weakaura pack for Battle For Dazar’alor

https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/skada – Skada Damage Meter

https://wow.curseforge.com/projects/details – Details Damage Meter

https://www.raidbots.com/simbot  – Website for running sims

https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/simulationcraft – Addon for grabbing info for sims

Sources:

Tiraffe. “Dude, Just Trust Me.” Tiraffe, 1 April, 2019, Tiraffe.

“Informative Mythic Mistress Sassz’ine video” Youtube, uploaded by Derp Derperson on 9, Sep, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAMFVFkaDuY

“Matsuoka Shuzo [松岡修造 ] – あきらめかけているあなた (NEVER GIVE UP!!) [English]” Youtube,

uploaded by Ryuujin131 on 25 Jun, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGRhd_iWuE

“I believe in all of you” Youtube, uploaded by A. L. G. on 28 Sep, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Rk2OFddZs

“How it FEELS to play Sniper in TF2” Youtube, uploaded by LazyPurple on 23 Mar, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjWbtUBKuUc

xd, Fokola mage. “Fokola Mythic Raiding Fun Times.” Google Docs, Google, 2 Apr. 2019, 6:43pm, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DzU6dcsJcHC8Ycyo792S9GBP4of8lNILlcd__n4iejA/edit

(Fokola offered to help write a couple sections, so sections of the same name are paraphrased/edited from this)