Updated for Dragonflight 10.2 patch – 10/31/2023

You know who it is: Tiraffe and Quetzie, back at it with another raid guide, this time for the Mythic team.

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 things that heroic raiders do, but better. Not to stroke our egos, but we are the best of the best! We are the sort of raider that everyone else strives – or should strive – to be. We are the best prepared, we are the best communicators, we are the best at mechanics, we are the best reactors, we are the best at our classes, we are the most versatile within our class or role, and – perhaps most importantly – we are the most selfless. We are the most willing to compromise our personal goals to get the job done for the rest of our team and our friends. These aren’t exactly difficult things individually, but taken together it can be difficult and exhausting, especially if you aren’t used to this kind of repeated focus – and failure.

What we expect of our Mythic Raiders

If it isn’t obvious by now, Mythic Raiders are held to a higher standard than their heroic counterparts.

In short, someone who is planning on doing Mythic raiding should:

  • Be able to stay cool, calm and collected
  • Handle multiple mechanics at the same time
  • Be able simultaneously improve and play their class/spec at a high level
  • Have the capacity to withstand being stuck on a single boss for more than a week

Mythic raiders are expected to do the following when they get into Mythic. It’s a bit of a laundry list.

  • Read the raiding announcement channel and the pins present in the mythic progression channel.
    • Get used to looking multiple times a week. Rosters are often posted Tuesday or Wednesday; notes may be posted Friday or Saturday post-raid, or Tuesday after reset.
  • Use the attendance channel to communicate any scheduling conflicts or attendance issues. Don’t DM individual raidleads.
  • Listen to the raid leads for directions and call-outs during raid.
  • Practice your rotation for AOE and single target. If you aren’t using keybinds, try to pick it up in the process while practicing. Learning keybinds is always worth the long-term investment.
    • Be aware of fight styles between single target, cleave, aoe and multidotting. Some bosses are really single target fights disguised as aoe fights in terms where damage is prioritized.
    • In addition, most bosses on mythic end up boiling down to single target at the end in order to finish off the boss. Make sure your single target doesn’t fall too far behind if you spec into aoe.
  • If you’re new, try to pick up on the group’s dynamic.
    • It can be intimidating to join a pre-established group like ours that have been running for over 4 years now. Don’t worry!
    • Joining M+ runs or heroic clears is an excellent, lower-stress way to get involved and pick up on how the group acts.
      • We tend to be goofballs. Who else argues about cereal for 3 hours of Mythic Ra-Den progression?
  • For healers, the onus is on you to know where to have your healing cds for that boss.
    • Check the pins to make sure, especially if you’re new or filling in for another healer.
    • MoD also has a healer chat to organize healing cds
  • Anyone in the group should be ready to fill in for assigned mechanics. Those filling in should follow the lead of the folks that have been doing the mechanic.
    • Check the pins, again
    • Try to avoid pushback if you get assigned a specific role. You should defer to the experience of others who have been doing the mechanics for longer. If you have suggestions for changes, try to make them on breaks, or before the night begins.
    • If possible, practice the mechanic outside of progression (maybe heroic clears or PUGs) to be ready to step in
  • Mythic raiders in MoD are required to have a working microphone
    • You don’t always need to talk in voice, but certain mechanics are objectively easier to handle if you can communicate instantly
    • If there’s excessive background noise, we’ll ask you to enable push-to-talk
  • Your performance as a person matters just as much as your performance as a player.
    • Don’t be an asshole.
    • Everyone can see the combat logs, including the twitch chat. If something doesn’t seem right, the warlords probably know about it already.
      • The logs are (mostly) absolute. Don’t be the fool that ignores the reality of them just to save face.
    • Everyone agreed to the same rules, and everyone is here to get the bosses down and have a good time.
  • Be familiar with how to use warcraftlogs.com and wowanalyzer.com/specs to improve your play.
    • If wowanalyzer isn’t available for your spec, that does not mean you should ignore all advice it tells you (high downtime, overcapped resources, etc are still available for all specs).
    • Keep the group’s comp in mind since some parses are cheesed – overall high parse is not always an indicator of what is best for progression.
      • Healers should try to find similar healing comps
      • DPS should look for similar fight lengths
  • As a courtesy, if you do decide step away from Mythic raiding with MoD, please make an announcement in the raiding attendance channel after communicating with the raidleads
    • You don’t have to go deep into detail, but it’s a preferable alternative to having multiple raiders ask where so-and-so is

Attitude and Mentality:

It is important to reiterate that, especially for Mythic, raid teams are a team. We need to be a cohesive unit. It is just as important for every member of that team to be willing to listen, not just to the Raid Leads, but to each other when it comes to concerns and suggestions. It’s quite possible for different roles to have a very different perspective of the fight that can lead to making the boss far easier than it was previously. Be willing to research new tactics and why they work before grabbing torches or ignoring what can very well be a reasonable discussion thread. Don’t be surprised if people start knocking on doors otherwise because Joe down the street is being stubborn and stressing everyone out.

On that note, when suggesting ideas, be clear and specific about what you want to happen so that others can get a better idea of what you want to accomplish. Don’t tunnel on the end-goal either, keep the steps needed to reach that goal and the effects each step will have in mind. Avoid being passive-aggressive, and think about how the rest of the group will take the information before you say it. In the middle of a raid, the group will likely defer to the pins, this page, and the logs. Leave more complex suggestions for breaks, or between raid nights.

Failure is Inevitable, Success is Earned

We would be doing you a disservice if we didn’t stress this. Truth is, failure is a given in Mythic raiding. It is an exercise in failing forward – for every failure, we learn from it, make a little more progress, fail again, and repeat. We are going to fail more often than we succeed. Bosses may be pulled hundreds of times before we kill them, and we may only kill them a half a dozen times. The most notable example is Mythic Carapace, the 11th boss out of 12 in Ny’alotha, with 118 wipes across 6 weeks of progression before the first kill.

If you can’t handle the mental load of failing for 6 hours a week for weeks on end, Mythic raiding is likely not for you. There are a few quotes about failure – and success – that are worth noting here.

“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that do not work.”

“A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.”

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

“We rise, fall, and rise again!”

The gratification of success, of course, is worth all the failure involved – at least for a Mythic raider it is. Gotta love the dopamine rush of finally getting a kill after weeks of progression.

Getting Your Head in the Game

Pre-Game Preparations

These are things you should do before you even think about logging in for the evening.

  • Get some sleep
  • Eat food, drink water, take your meds
  • Take a shower
  • Get other stuff (homework, taxes, etc.) out of the way
  • Check if your car needs an oil change
  • Reapply thermal paste to your heat sinks
  • Purchase the Gateway Control Shard

These steps might seem a bit out of place on a guide for WoW, but they’re some of the most important things you can do to prepare for a Mythic raid night.

Why? Mythic is often a high stress environment. You want to avoid as much external stress as possible, as it can often translate to being a source of internal stress for both you and others in the raid. Make sure to cut down any background noise as to not distract other raiders when your mic is open.

In all seriousness, doing the above is just good in general for well-being and it helps relieve some tension. If you’re splitting focus on external factors that are bothering you, you’re going to be too distracted to perform to your best ability. You’re also a lot less likely to have a good time.

PLEASE NOTE: If you have to leave the raid because you are facing a mental health dilemma, please do so. This is just a game, but it is a very stressful one at this level. If you can let us know a pull or two ahead of time so we can find a sub, that’s great – but we understand if you simply have to leave. Do what is best for you. We will manage it as best we can.

Getting Ready For Raid:

These are things you should do after logging in and before accepting a summons:

  1. Be ready for a summons when the group starts forming
    • No Worldquests, no Torghast, no keys, etc. when grouping starts. Being in a non-raid activity (irl stuff notwithstanding) is not an excuse for being late to raid.
    • We want trash done and bosses being pulled on time, not 10 minutes after.
  2. Ensure you have all gems/enchants on your gear
  3. Apply 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)
  4. Double-check which boss / bosses the group is planning to head into (rosters are pinned in the mythic progression channel on discord)
  5. Select the right talents, based on the fight
    • With the release of Dragonflight, a character can have up to 10 talent loadouts saved across all of their specializations
  6. Make sure you have:
    • Personal health potions and battle potions
    • Personal Phials (if none are provided)
    • Personal stat food (if no feasts are provided)
    • Augment Runes
    • Vantus Runes (For progression bosses; these are usually provided by the raid leads when deemed necessary, characters off-server will need to supply their own)
    • Gateway Control Shard

Stuff to work on during the week:

  • Sim your gear/talents/etc for the highest possible output
    • If you don’t have raidbots premium, find someone who does
    • This includes utilizing the droptimizer. You may find that a trinket or stat-perfect piece from a certain M+ dungeon could be worth your time farming during the week.
  • Know your spec’s preferred stat distribution and gear choices
    • Check Warcraftlogs and Subcreation.net for what the top people in your class are equipping. If it differs from sims, consider why the top players may be doing something different.
  • Know your spec’s rotation based on the style of the fight and your available gear/talents/traits
  • Select a good tmog. Druids and Evokers too. (If you look good, you feel good. The better you feel, the better you play)
  • For the following specs/classes, make sure your higher item level weapon is in the main-hand slot: Rogues, Fury Warrior, Enh Shaman, Frost DK, BM/WW Monk, and Demon Hunter.
    • This will cause you to do more damage. The only time this changes is if you have a weapon that can proc an effect from on-hit, which means it goes in the main-hand slot instead, provided that it does more damage despite the loss in item level. This is where you’ll need to sim which piece to put in which slot.

General Raiding Info, Reiterated:

  1. Do your research.
    • Preparation and practice is very important for Mythic raiding. This cannot be stressed enough. You cannot show up unprepared and expect to perform well.
      1. Read about the fights
      2. Watch videos about the fights
      3. Ask the raid leads, or other mythic raiders questions (in the #mythic-progression channel) about the fights.
    • Practice leads to routine; the more you make your rotation a routine, the less you have to worry about your rotation in the middle of mechanics.
  2. Show up, early.
  3. Be honest. Especially with yourself.
  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.
    • It’s ok to make mistakes, so long as you make an effort to correct it.
  7. Be willing to provide suggestions.
  8. Be willing to listen to suggestions.
  9. Don’t take it personally if you get benched.
  10. Don’t ask for a personal healer.
  11. Leave your ego at the door.
  12. When your resolve is tested, don’t falter.
  13. Have a combination of the weak aura pack for the raid, ERT and either DBM or BigWigs.
  14. Make sure you’re still having fun at the end of the day.

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 your DPS is low for your item level and you’re hitting every single avoidable mechanic as you keyboard turn your way in the direction of the bench seat.

Getting Good:

If you’re having repeated mechanical failure and missing DPS checks, something (or multiple somethings) 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, nor does ilvl guarantee a spot on the mythic team. “Will getting another socket make you a better player?” Probably not by itself. It just means that both the minimum dps and maximum dps you can pull off has increased, but that doesn’t mean you will pull it off. Good gear won’t play your class for you.

Remember to optimize your DPS performance.

Avoiding Complacency

If you’ve made it to the Mythic team, feel free to cheer in celebration and pat yourself on the back. Just be careful – even though you’ve made the team, that doesn’t mean you should relax and take your spot for granted. You should be constantly striving for reasonable perfection.

If someone else in the group manages to significantly beat your damage despite having the same experience or gear, you should be doing everything in your power to improve. This is more imperative if they are running the same spec or build as you. And if they’re relatively new to the spec or are comparatively undergeared, then you really need to consider changing things up to improve your performance, or they may surpass you.

It’s also important to note that playing a top tier class does not guarantee your spot on the team, though obviously high damage can help (though it’s important to note that high damage doesn’t make up for mechanical failure). That said, getting carried by your spec should not be your goal as a mythic raider, either. If you’re playing something top tier, you should be on top of the meters and matching others of the same spec. If you are parsing poorly, it means that all it will take is one round of nerfs to put your spot on the team in jeopardy. Don’t get complacent with thinking that you can coast along for the rest of the tier, or expansion, without further effort on your part.

Circa Uldir, Patch 8.1. Don’t be a Chumblerr.

Furthermore, gear should never be blamed for something rotation or mechanics can fix. If gear is the first thing you jump to as to why you’re underperforming, you’ve probably grown complacent.

If you are noticing that others are surpassing your output, or beating your parses, reasons why should be checked in the following order (with examples):

  1. Rotation
    • “They have 100% uptime on their DoTs and I don’t.”
    • “I’m clicking my rotation instead of using keybinds.”
    • “I’m not using or am wasting my procs”
    • “I’m not using my cooldown resets correctly, wasting damage.”
  2. Mechanics
    • “I’m going farther than I need to in order to dodge mechanics, which is causing my uptime for my rotation to suffer.”
    • “I didn’t use defensives/healthstones that were available to me before I died.”
  3. Gear
    • “I’m going for double on-use, but I don’t actually have the right trinkets for it.”
    • “I don’t have the right stats I need for the build I want.”

Raiders that become complacent and don’t seek to constantly improve their dps to meet the increasing damage checks on Mythic are liable to being benched, swapped out, or replaced. There are plenty of folks that are itching to prove their mettle in Mythic. We expect those on the mythic team to be self-sufficient with improving their play, and they should not be surprised when logs, wowanalzyer, etc. are used to back-up rostering decisions. As mentioned in the Intro to Raiding guide and the Improving Your DPS: Revisited guide, Quetzie and Tiraffe will most likely be your best options outside of raid if you’re unfamiliar with analyzing your own performance. We as raid leads may also do individual write-ups throughout the tier, typically as the group first transitions into mythic and when the group hits their 1st and 2nd Wall in mythic. More information about what a “Wall” is can be found in the Farm Bosses vs. Progression Bosses vs. Walls section.

Getting Benched

Getting benched is as inevitable as death in a mythic raid. Some players may be benched more often than others. Every one of the raid leads were sat at multiple points during Ny’alotha.

Mythic raid spots are not guaranteed; only 20 people can be on a boss at a time. That said, a healthy mythic roster usually has around 25 people on it. That means 5 people won’t be involved on a boss fight at a given time, but should be available and ready in case of absences or for swapping around raiders during breaks.

If you cannot handle being benched for a boss, a night, or several of both, consider the following:

  • Don’t sign up for mythic raiding

If that comes off as offputting…sorry, not sorry. Unfortunately, there’s just not a better way to put it.

  • People are usually swapped around on  bosses for mechanics and loot, especially on reclears.
  • If you get swapped out on a boss, don’t take it personally. Maybe your class wasn’t needed for gear passing, maybe your class isn’t effective at certain mechanics (invulnerability soaking, speed, ranged VS melee, etc)
  • Maybe you do need to improve your performance

Before you contact a raid lead about being benched, consider investigating the logs. We log every fight, every night. Just because you aren’t bottom DPS, doesn’t mean there’s not another metric we are considering.

Reasons we may bench someone besides low DPS:

  • Early deaths / low survivability
  • Inability or lack of effort to communicate
  • Low uses of defensive abilities or healthstones
  • Repeated mechanical error
  • Lack of improvement from week to week on any or all metrics

If you’re concerned about being benched for one reason or another, especially if the logs don’t show you the reason, contact a warlord directly – after raid night is over. Don’t get mad pre- or mid-raid, because that is one of the fastest ways to wind up sitting on the bench for an even longer period.

When you get benched, please do not aggressively ask the reasoning for it (publicly or privately – we have received both), even if you believe you did not deserve to be sat. A poor attitude does not belong in a team environment, and just makes the raid lead’s lives more stressful. Instead, take a deep breath, and take a more introspective approach. Review the above bulleted lists and consider why you may not have been included. “Was I benched from X fight because I had lower DPS than we needed?” or “I know I failed a few mechanics on this fight last week – is that why I wasn’t included this week?”. These questions show us that you’re aware of your faults, that you’re not looking to place blame on anyone else, and that you’ve left your ego at the door.

If you want to make a raid lead grumpy, message them and say “I wasn’t the bottom DPS, so I shouldn’t be benched!”. This implies that you think DPS is the most important metric in a fight, someone else is worse than you are in all metrics, or that you have an inflated opinion of yourself. There are many factors why a person with lower DPS than you may not be benched. Perhaps they executed every mechanic perfectly. Maybe they are even executing unique mechanics that you do not have to do (seeds on Xy’mox, pedestals/offhealing on Sunking, etc). Maybe they are more communicative, or faster to respond to callouts. No one is perfect. Perhaps their faults were less likely to interfere with killing this boss than your own. Think about how best to improve and we will strategize how to get you back on bosses sooner rather than later.

Let’s take a moment and do the usual: if you’ve read this far into the guide, and are currently on the mythic team (hopefuls need not do this yet), shoot Quetzie or Tiraffe the message “hotdog glowstick”. You know why. Those that aren’t on the mythic team are still free to message the aforementioned to let us know your interest, but be aware confirming that you’ve read this post does not guarantee a spot on the mythic team by itself.

Strategy

To segue into strategy, Mythic bosses often have one or more additional mechanics to spice things up. Changes can include doubling (or adding new) adds, doubling or overlapping of heroic mechanics, and entirely brand new mechanics, all of which can combine in terrifying and initially incomprehensible new ways. Some of the final bosses from prior expansions even had entirely new, secret phases. Understanding how these new mechanics mesh with the Normal and Heroic mechanics is paramount to success in Mythic.

As is tradition, Mythic bosses in Dragonflight have more changes going from Heroic to Mythic, so while that won’t necessarily make them as bad Mistress Sassz’ine from Tomb from Legion, it will be a noticeable increase in difficulty compared to prior expansions where the group’s ability to cooperate and coordinate will be tested. Informative Mythic Mistress Sassz’ine video is located to below for reference.

Staying Alive

Given the increase in difficulty when it comes to Mythic, staying alive is pretty important. As previously mentioned, dying early or requiring an excess amount of healing can be particularly harmful to a group’s progress.

As such, mythic fights often require different defensive or mobility talents in order to survive the mechanics. Mythic Wrathion is a prime example, where being able to removes slows/snares either as a baseline ability or through a talent heavily reduced the impact of one of the mythic mechanics. Moving during parts of the fight would apply a stacking slow that would deal lethal damage at 50 stacks, so being able to remove the stacks yourself was very useful. A full list of these abilities can be found at here under the About Wrathion… section. Other fights, such as Mythic Vexiona, Mythic Ra-den, Mythic Xy’mox, etc. required or heavily encouraged having multiple specs with immunities either baseline or as talents.

If you’re not sure what defensive talents to use, you should check Warcraft Logs and see what the top talents for your spec are. While the mythic raiders should already know what offensive talents are the best overall on a per-fight basis, as those often don’t change between difficulties, a mythic progression boss might have different defensive requirements than prior difficulties. Shown below are the Boomkin talent and azerite choices for Mythic Huntsman from Castle Nathria, whose mechanics required a high amount of personal healing outside of direct healing from the healers.

Warcraft Logs Mythic Huntsman Altimor Reports

From that page, select your class and spec from the dropdown. At the top of the list, you’ll see “Top Talents”. You can look on a ‘row by row’ basis to see what most people take. Then, you can look on the right-hand side of the long list to see any variants. Perhaps some people are taking a slightly different talent. You can investigate further as to why. Maybe their group comp requires it, or maybe it’s personal preference.

Here, you can filter further by class, role, spec, etc.

Voice Comms and Callouts:

First off, Mythic raiders should expect to use microphones, as stated near the top of this post. There are very, very few times where not having a microphone is not a problem, especially in progression. Even if you are normally muted, we ask that you have one available in case of an emergency callout that needs to be made (consider progression on Mythic Mekkatorque without a microphone. Yuck.)

That said, Mythic raid can be noisy and full of voices on Discord. A good mythic raider can filter voices and noise that are important and unimportant on the fly. An excellent mythic raider can make this easier for other people.

As a DPS, Quetzie finds herself tuning out our tanks 95% of the time – them talking to one another isn’t important to her. They are discussing when to taunt swap or asking for externals from the healers. As a druid, she can probably throw a Swiftmend on a tank that is struggling, but for the most part she can ignore their communications. Likewise, she can usually ignore the healer discussion as well, unless it involves general group positioning or requests for innervate (other DPS can ignore any talks about innervating). The better you can get at filtering useless information, the better off you are.

As a general rule of thumb, call out your name, need, and location if you need something. Mythic Il’gynoth is an excellent example of a fight that requires these specific callouts. The more specific a callout in the shortest amount of time, the better a situation can be handled. A good mythic raider can drill-down into extremes in a short amount of time based on small but effective callouts.

Consider the following:

“Quetzie needs add help near the door”

  1. Near the door.
    1. DPS on the opposite side of the room can safely ignore further communication on the issue.
      1. This means filtering out further noise from healers discussing the situation, DPS rearranging their circles to get close enough to help, etc.
  2. Quetzie is the one who needs help
    1. Quetzie is a ranged DPS
      1. Don’t look for her on top of the boss
      2. Quetzie plays a boomkin
        1. She is likely farthest back from the action compared to any other class
          1. Tanks can safely ignore this. Their priority is the boss, and a Boomkin is likely to be too far away to provide assistance.
  3. She has an add chasing her
    1. DPS need to focus the add
      1. Quetzie is a boomkin
        1. She lacks a lot of hard CC and may have already used everything available to her.
          1. DPS should prioritize CC instead of DPS
    2. Healers may need to spot her if she has stacks building
      1. Quetzie is a boomkin
        1. Because she is far away (See: 2-1-2-1), healers may have to chase her a bit to get in range to keep her alive.
          1. Healers should call out if she is outranging you
        2. She has a lot of self-heals in her kit.
          1. If a healer calls that she is outranging (See: 3-2-1-1-1), she may respond that she is fine.
            1. You can return your focus to the rest of the group.

That is a lot to filter and drill-down (and is probably not even comprehensive!), and this happens almost instantaneously in the mind of a Mythic raider. The more you practice active listening, the better you will be at this sort of filtering and drill-down. Likewise, the more you will come to realize how very specific callouts can be incredibly effective in a Mythic raiding environment.

Individual Callouts, General Callouts and Shotcalling:

In addition to calls from individual raiders, the raid leads will usually do one of three specific callouts during boss fights or in-between pulls to address mechanics. These are known as individual callouts, general callouts and shotcalling.

Individual Callouts

Individual callouts may happen on the fly in a fight, or between pulls. It’s important to note that being individually called out in a raid does not automatically mean that the raid leads are being rude, or that the person in question is in trouble. Chances are something is being majorly goobered that is preventing success. If you can’t handle being called out, consider the first bullet under the “Getting Benched” section. Mythic bosses usually require a precise mechanic rotation, often found in the pins on Discord; someone moving at the wrong time, or soaking out of order, will lead to one or more guaranteed deaths (consider what happens on Xanesh when someone soaks the wrong eyeball, or Ra-Den when zaps go through the group).

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 mythic raiders to attempt to know how the mechanic works even if they’re not usually the ones assigned to handle it. However, if you can’t seem to improve, don’t be surprised if you get sat down to a bench for the boss until the group has a better handle on the situation.

An example from Castle Nathria was the Mythic Darkvein fight. If a person called out “Quetzie, move left!” during Shared Suffering (beams), it means that she has been taking too long to figure out where she needs to go to finish the mechanic quickly, causing others to take excess damage. Having someone tell her exactly how and where to move will make the mechanic finish faster. It’s possible that she already knew and was waiting for an opportunity, but that’s why using your microphone is effective!

General Callouts

General callouts are made between pulls, and help the raid as a whole know if there’s a specific mechanic multiple members are struggling with. While there may have been a large group of people that were making the mistake previously, that doesn’t mean individuals were “getting away with it” beforehand. Raid leaders and raiders alike can see who dies to what or who is not listening, whether they notice during the fight or after by examining logs. The mythic team has multiple raiders running logs to ensure information is accurate. We may not call out a mechanical issue the first time we see it happening, because we want to give people a chance to learn from their own mistakes. If we see repeated performances from one or more individuals, that is when we tend to call out mechanical failures.

Avoid whispering the raid leads about any issues you see, especially between pulls. Any issue that comes up, the raid leads probably know about it already, but it’s a good idea to ask during break to confirm in case you have any suggestions. When general callouts are made, it’s just as important for folks to avoid over-correcting, especially if others were already doing the mechanics correctly.

Shotcalling

Shotcalling is a bit different than the other two, and is usually done during fights. Raid leads will often call out specific mechanics or specific target to focus. Many of these shot calls are often “all or nothing” calls, where anyone out of position is likely to die or wipe the raid, even if the call is for a wipe. For example, a call to stop or slow dps is done to ensure the target dies at the right time, but it requires everyone to be on board to be effective.

For all types of callouts, the goal is to make sure mechanics are done correctly to prevent death and other issues that cause a wipe. It’s important to stay calm and focused on understanding what’s going on and how to rectify it.

Mythic Lockouts:

Mythic raid lockouts also work a bit differently compared to the Normal/Heroic raid lockouts. When a group kills a boss on Mythic, everyone in that group is locked to that specific instance. They cannot enter an instance that their character isn’t part of and can only enter the instance if they or the first person inside the instance shares that same instance lockout. This means that you can’t go pug mythic bosses and then bring that same character to our progression unless the group uses your specific lockout for the bosses that have yet to be killed on that lockout. This also means that you can’t kill the same mythic boss on the same character more than once per week on mythic.

Mythic lockouts will also advance whenever a boss is killed, instead of being a personal lockout in normal/heroic. For example, if you partake in killing the 1st boss, and then have to step out on the 2nd boss, you will not be able to go back and kill the 2nd boss on your own. You will still be able to partake in the 3rd boss, and missing a boss won’t lock you out from any remaining bosses in the instance.

Mythic raids are the most likely difficulty to have a lockout extended. For those unfamiliar with extending raid lockouts, this allows the group to start on the last boss they left off on from last week, at the cost of being unable to reclear any prior bosses for that lockout for the current week. The penultimate bosses of each raid will be the usual spot for the group to extend their lockout, if they haven’t already, since it may be difficult to reclear as some folks first join on the later bosses. Shorter raids may see the lockout extended sooner if everyone already has all the loot they need from earlier bosses.

Mythic Loot:

Only care about this section once the boss is dead. While gear available from Mythic raiding is often the highest baseline item level, Dragonflight gear that drops from raid bosses will now gradually increase in ilvl over the course of the raid, rather than being the same static ilvl for (almost) every boss. Anything that drops will probably be an item level upgrade unless you’ve been lucky from your Great Vault or you’ve been getting Gladiator. Any additional socket(s) will mean you probably won’t be replacing it anytime soon.

With the Sepulcher of the First Ones raid in patch 9,2, tier set tokens have finally returned and will be used going into Shadowlands. These tokens function similarly to the weapon tokens that popped up in Nathria and work almost the same as the tier set tokens from Legion, albeit with different class groupings and you can get them both in and out of raid.

In addition, the default loot rules for Dragonflight have changed. All raid gear is now on a need/greed basis, but all pieces are tradable automatically and sometimes gear can drop for classes that aren’t present. You should recap the MoD loot rules, as different groups might do loot on mythic different from how it’s done with MoD. Someone who is going to use a trinket 100% of the time (BiS or upgrade) should get it over someone who’s going to swap it in and out depending on the boss (sidegrade).

Due to the circumstances of the progression raiding in Mythic difficulty, the aforementioned MoD loot rules will be slightly altered for the mythic team. They are as follows:

Loot Roll Priority:

As the need/greed system does not handle offspecs well, in Mythic, the group will have EVERYONE pass on the loot, and then trade the loot to a designated person to roll off the loot, according to the rolls below:

/roll or /roll 100 – Actual upgrade to the main character’s main spec (i.e. gear that will be used 100% of the time on that character)
/roll 50 – Everything else (including, but not limited to: sidegrades, alts, and tmog)

  • Tier Set pieces have additional priority rules, as getting that set bonus as soon as possible will have the biggest impact on your performance AFTER your rotation and mechanics.
    • If you have 1 or 3 pieces you get priority to get the 2nd or 4th piece
      • This will give the wearer the set bonus
    • Likewise, if you have 2 pieces and someone else has 1 or 3, they get priority if they roll
    • Suggested Great Vault priorities:
      • Tier Set pieces
        • Keep in mind that M+ and Rated PVP boxes can have Tier Set pieces appear in them.
        • We’ll eventually be asking mythic raiders to get 4 +15 keys per week, but we won’t be requiring them to grind out 8 +15 keys or do rated pvp.
      • Weapons
      • Trinkets
        • Try to avoid double on-use
        • Dungeon trinkets are often really good or really lackluster
      • Non-Tier-Set gear slots
  • If you want a second weapon for aoe / ST enchants, please put as ‘offspec’ on the sheet if you’ve already gotten a weapon of equal ilvl
    • Reminder that the raid is very single target focused
    • For those dual wielding specs, this will apply to a 2nd off-hand weapon

For managing who needs which bosses for loot, MoD uses Readycheck.io. Raid Leads will be using RC.IO to determine what a main spec or off spec is per character, as well as doublecheck who should be rolling on which pieces. Members of the mythic team are expected to keep Readycheck updated with what gear from which bosses will be an upgrade, both before the raid releases and as they get more gear. With the aforementioned ilvl ramp, the BIS marking will be slightly different to accommodate it.

  • Select 1 thing as BIS from the first two tiers of the raid, and then a BIS from the last tier of the raid, per gearslot
    • For reference, the first 4 raid bosses of Dragonflight drop 389 ilvl, the next two drop 395 ilvl gear and the last two drop 398 ilvl gear
    • Example: Casters, select up to 1 staff, 1 mainhand and 1 off-hand as BIS out of the available drops from the first 6 bosses.
    • Then select up to 1 staff, 1 mainhand and 1 off-hand as BIS from the last 2 bosses

The most straightforward way to do this is using the Droptimizer section of Raidbots, to see which pieces will be an upgrade based on your equipped gear. This requires the Simulationcraft addon. If you have trouble getting raidbots to run, you can read the Quickguide to Simming post, or you can bug someone in the guild that has premium.

On that note, it’s best to sim yourself often, as what may be BiS now may not be your BiS later. It would also be a good idea to sim a Topgear sim on raidbots before running a Droptimizer sim. The gear you have on hand will definitely affect what will end up being an upgrade. This is especially true if you’re trying to sim between 2 different builds for your spec, now that several specs have options for dualwielding or using a 2-handed weapon.

If you’re low on gear, patching up holes in your gearset from the Great Vault, running M+ or farming Heroic raids should be your main path to gearing up for mythic in Sragonflight. Gear from ranked PvP matches can also shore up low itemlvl slots, but it’s not recommended due to poor secondary stats for most specializations. Refer to the above suggested priority for the Great Vault.  After that, you should be picking gear that will stay an upgrade for a long time, or just going for the currency if there’s no good options.

Farm Bosses vs. Progression Bosses vs. Walls:

Mythic bosses are often very scripted fights, so expect a high initial learning curve that plateaus later on. Most bosses don’t die within a night or two of the group getting there, but might be very easy on farm as the fights will shift from mechanics checks into dps checks. Later mythic bosses may take multiple weeks of work to get the first kill. However, just because you kill a boss once on Mythic does not mean that you will one-shot it in the future. Note: regardless of prior kills, having multiple inexperienced members present will make it more difficult to progress on, or reclear, a particular boss.

All bosses fall under one of three categories:

  1. Every boss is initially considered a progression boss.
  2. Bosses with particularly difficult progression (dps or mechanics) are considered walls and require a significantly higher throughput than other bosses.
    1. Notable examples of walls include:
      1. M Xanesh from Ny’alotha (extremely heavy initial learning curve, heavy dps check, interrupt order req., exact positioning/character direction aiming, target switching)
      2. M Darkvein from Nathria (heavy dps check, heavy positioning check, healing check, interrupt callouts, target switching, communication check, utility/mobility check)
      3. M Xy’mox from Nathria and Sepulcher (positioning check, timing check, utility/mobility check, communication check, composition check)
      4. M Painsmith (lag check, heavy positioning and timing check, strict dps check, multiple one-shot mechanics, pure mechanical phases)
      5. M Desaugne (lag check, heavy positioning and timing check, mobility check, composition check, friendly fire, multiple one-shot mechanics, range issues)
    2. Walls often continue to be troublesome and groups can get stuck on them despite having multiple kills
  3. Bosses that become easy to reclear may be considered farm bosses
    1. A boss is considered to be ‘on farm’ after a handful one or two-shots on a boss.
    2. Some bosses die on the first night the group gets to them and are generally on farm for the rest of the tier.
      1. M Skitra from Ny’alotha
      2. M Tarragrue, M Nine from Sanctum
    3. Some bosses may have a harder initial learning curve, but relatively scripted or straightforward mechanics that become very difficult to mess up once practiced.
      1. Examples include:
        1. M Champions and M Conclave from BoD
        2. M Hungering Destroyer from Nathria
        3. M Eye of the Jailer from Sanctum
        4. M Skolex from Sepulcher
  4. There’s a section between farm and progression bosses where a certain % of the raid can’t be swapped out on that boss due to the sheer amount of time spent on the learning curve.
    1. Mythic Shriekwing, Darkvein, Xy’mox (Nathria) and Xy’mox (Sepulcher) are all examples of this, where it might be farm if everyone that was present during progression is there for the reclear, but you can only fit in so many new people to the fight before anyone new is completely relearning the fight.
    2. Mythic Nathria and Mythic Sanctum are a different example, where the initial group changed due to attendance issues, and were forced to sub in inexperienced folks on subsequent kills. This caused severe issues with reclearing multiple fights and hampered progression immensely.
      1. In both cases, this makes it progression again.
      2. This is rather noticeable on fights where it is preferable to phase the bosses within certain time windows
        1. M Remnant is the most notable example from Sanctum, where the roster was drastically  different week to week and we had to restructure healing cds weekly based on who was available, who could run orbs and the raid’s damage output.

Bringing alts may be allowed for certain farm bosses, but likely only if others do not need loot from the boss on their mains, but the group still needs to be able to reclear it. Check with ALL raid leads first to determine if an alt is ready to even be inside mythic raid in the first place. Any single raidlead can veto bringing an alt. Make sure to have more than a handful of recent logs ready for the raidleads to look over. Be patient if you can’t bring an alt during a certain week, as issues such as attendance or insufficient logs will require switching back to mains and/or pulling in other raid members to ensure a smooth raid.

Practicing mechanics in Heroic and Normal can be worthwhile, provided that the mechanics function the same across different difficulties. For example, the maze mechanic path is the same every time regardless of difficulty for Jadefire Masters from BfD, 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 for the maze only spawn in Heroic and Mythic, so going into Normal won’t help with knowing the spots to pick them up. In a similar vein, the pillars for soccer on Mythic Xanesh are static for each round. Once everyone gets the positioning down, the fight becomes a dps and interrupt check, but you won’t be able to practice the specific positioning on Heroic or Normal. Mythic Nathria had multiple fights where either old mechanics would overlap and/or be present throughout the fight, or would introduce completely new mechanics like invisible donuts on Mythic Shriekwing or a dps/hps absorb shield that needed to be broken on a strict timer for Mythic Sunking. Mythic Sanctum on the other hand often introduced mechanics that altered how the raid dealt with Heroic mechanics, such as the adds on M Soulrender, or managing the how the raid splits for M Eye’s intermission.

And Now For The Mandatory Section About Class / Spec choice too (Mythic version)

Choices Matter

Now keep in mind, your class / spec choice will matter more in mythic than it will in normal or heroic. While in theory it shouldn’t really matter what class and spec you use for mythic raiding, there will likely be classes and specs that will clearly outclass other choices and others that are so far behind that they aren’t worth considering. You can play what you want for one reason or another, but be aware that it can and will affect performance. For example, make sure to take time to learn off-specs (if possible) in the chance that the boss’ fight style heavily rewards those different playstyles. Stay up-to-date on what’s best for your class and/or spec if you’re thinking about mythic.

Switching Around

The raid leads usually leave the choice of what specs members of the mythic team bring up to the members themselves. That said, having the versatility to play at a mythic level for multiple classes / specs is highly valued, such as when we need more ranged, cover specific raid buffs or to fill in for possible absences is always helpful.

Likewise, we probably won’t ask folks to switch classes or specializations as they enter mythic unless several conditions are met:

  1. Individual output based mostly on Talent choices (you know, the one you picked)
  2. Everyone is already playing their heart out (i.e. doing rotation near perfectly)
  3. The group still isn’t making the dps check
  4. Switching would provide a drastic increase in dps or hps
    1. Drastic would something like a 25% dps increase, not a 5% dps increase
  5. The person in question is fine switching? It is mythic, afterall.
    1. The person is fine with switching, crisis averted. They’re a team player.
    2. The person is not fine with switching.
      1. There’s always the weekend team.
      2. You can’t have your cake and eat it too
      3. Consider not signing up for Mythic raiding.

The raidleads won’t take responsibility for people’s class/spec choices, so long as you do well as your chosen class/spec. If a specific spec was needed at the time, then it was needed at the time. Similarly, it’s generally not a good idea to switch to an underperforming class/spec unless the individual in question is going to put in the time to outperform their previous choices. We advise that those switching classes or specs that are going to be lower throughput should be aware that their place on the progression team may change if they’re already struggling with damage and/or mechanics.

Most importantly:

Stay motivated:

A short rundown of this guide can be found here.

(Just read the guide lmao)