---
title: 'What Route Guides Don''t Teach You (Important)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=w5s8kGyqcbQ'
video_id: 'w5s8kGyqcbQ'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 706
---

# What Route Guides Don't Teach You (Important)

> Source: [What Route Guides Don't Teach You (Important)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=w5s8kGyqcbQ)

## Summary

This video explains why standard Mythic+ route guides fall short: they give you a route, but not the judgment to adapt it. Drawing on Mez's expertise as a multi-MDI champion and World First raider, the video breaks down three layers that determine when to pull big or small — cooldown cadence, group composition, and time/distance — using real dungeon footage. It also shows concrete mistakes (e.g., pulling with no interrupts, playing too safely) and how to fix them.

### Key Points

- **Smart Tanks Beat Fearless Tanks** [00:01] — Most people think better tanks handle bigger pulls and take risks. In reality, being a good tank is about being smart — knowing how and when to pull small, not just how big you can pull.
- **Adapt, Don't Memorize** [00:28] — You can't blindly follow a pre-planned route and press W. You need to adapt your knowledge of each player and the mistakes that will inevitably happen during a run.
- **Mez Partnership and Skillcap Course** [00:42] — The video teams up with Mez, a multi-MDI Champion and World First raider from Ekko, to teach adaptive dungeon routing for Season 3. Mez's full commentary is available in a new course at skillcap.com.
- **Three Core Concepts for Route Adaptation** [01:30] — The three layers are: cooldown cadence (how CDs affect pull size), group composition (class strengths/weaknesses), and time/distance (travel time between pulls to optimize CD recovery).
- **Layer 1: Cooldown Cadence** [02:07] — Cooldowns are the most fundamental variable for pull size. More CDs means bigger pulls; fewer CDs means smaller pulls. Mastering this nuance is key to adapting routes.
- **Skipping a Pull to Save Defensives** [02:49] — In Ara-Kara, Mez skips a small pull because it requires only defensive CDs and no major offensive CDs. This lets the group enter the boss fight with all important cooldowns ready and no damage taken.
- **Pull Small When CDs Are Missing** [03:17] — When the Warlock and Demon Hunter are missing major cooldowns, Mez plays conservatively, pulling just three mobs. This safe play allows the next, much larger pull to go smoothly because CDs are ready.
- **Should You Send CDs on Trash or the Boss?** [04:38] — When a boss follows a big pull, decide based on boss mechanics. For a boss like Transfusion, where no CDs are needed if players do their job, Mez adds an extra mob in front of the boss to use CDs there instead.
- **The Goldilocks Problem** [05:20] — Tanks either play too aggressive or too safe. Example: a tank pulled small three times in a row for 2 minutes, so the Paladin never used Wings, causing the key to be untimed. Tracking CDs prevents this trap.
- **Layer 2: Group Composition** [06:14] — The classes in your party influence pull size. Interrupt budget (kicks) is especially important — a pack with many casters is only viable if your group can lock down the dangerous casts.
- **Bad Pull Example in Throne of Tides** [07:11] — Mez admits adding a third pack without enough kicks was a mistake. Two back casters kept casting Water Bolts, the tank dropped low, and a DPS died. The added pack gained almost nothing and wasn't worth it.
- **Layer 3: Time and Distance** [09:21] — Conceptualizing travel distance between pulls helps optimize cooldown recovery. Mez takes an unconventional route through the center of Ara-Kara, calculating the time to the next big pull and chaining two big pulls back-to-back.

### Conclusion

The key to smarter tanking is not memorizing a route but adapting it in real time to your group's cooldowns, composition, and travel time — a skill that separates great tanks from merely aggressive ones.

## Transcript

thing that low-rated and high- rated tanks do differently what would you say most people think that better tanks can handle bigger PS after all that's what Mythic plus is all about tanks need to be Fearless willing to take a few risk
for the chance at a massive payoff but here's the truth being a good tank is more than just being cool what matters the most is being smart in fact what about how big they make their pulls but more about how and when they decide to
pull small we're not playing Mario Kart here you can't just plug in a route and press the W key all dungeon instead you need to learn how and when to adapt your knowledge of each player and the mistakes that are bound to happen that's
why we teamed up with Mez a multi MDI Champion and World first Raider from Ekko to guide us through every dungeon in season 3 with the goal of teaching you how to adapt your runs based on the millions of things that can and will go
wrong he even took the time to go through his own keys in a brand new course at skillcap tocom where he explains his thought process in each dungeon one poll at a time along the way he points out his own mistakes showing
you exactly what to avoid during your runs this is a rare opportunity to learn from one of the best players in WoW history and Implement proven strategies into your own gameplay that are guaranteed to make you play better and
smarter in your next run so after this video be sure to check out our brand new course at skillcap tocom and learn more about our rating gain guarantee you can even use the links below for an exclusive discount offer to sign up for
now let's get back to the video there are three Core Concepts that affect how and when you need to adapt your route we will be getting most of our value at the base level coold Downs which directly affect how big or how small we can pull
most people would stop here but not you because the next layer is group composition and how the unique strengths and weaknesses of your party matter a lot more than most people think and finally we have our last layer time
being able to conceptualize the distance between pulls to optimize cool down recovery if you can manage to master all three then you can pull just like Mez and Mythic plus to build our foundation let's dive into a tall desar where Mez
will teach us about our most important layer cooldowns most of you probably fundamental variable for determining pull size more CDs means being able to pull bigger and vice versa this is basic information but even the basics have
nuance and later in this video we will explain why Mez chooses a slightly while most people would simply grab these small mobs here Mez actually in the middle of the dungeon and if you look at any popular route right now for
a tall desar there are almost zero guides that tell you to do this Mez made explain why later in this guide but one part of this decision was based on his team's defensive cool Downs let's hear what he has to say therefore we opt out
to do this small pull here um as this pull doesn't require any cool Downs in just defensive Coons um this is quite nice because as you can see from the boss fight no one take Tak takes any damage basically so
you can see the demant has blur ready the through has B ready the warock has ready so no one in his group should be in danger apart from the shaman he has his Earth Elemental but he also has a group utility any he does damage he will
heal us now let's move on to a poll later on where once again we need to budget and already you should tell that we are a bit limited all right let's Warlock and Demon Hunter are missing multiple major cooldowns our Shaman is
less cool down dependent but now we need to make a decision should Mez pull big or pull small the answer should be obvious pull small with a limited cool aggressive so for now we will play conservatively pulling three mobs into
our group while we wait for cool Downs to recover even though this might seem too safe we will be rewarded next pull because right after this we're going to be dealing with a much larger pull where we will be dealing with a five mob pack
that can deal a ton of damage but since we just played safe we will have everything we need to deal with this new challenge here Mez will also do his group is still positioning for the pull in this moment he is indirectly
sweeps not only as a form of damage leeway for positioning in the room anyways because he played conservatively safely take his group into a more dangerous pull since now is the right
moment for cool Downs to carry it should be no surprise that once this pull is done Mars will then go back to pulling small only taking three mobs while we wait for cool Downs to recover and this is where things get interesting because
now we not only have a big pull in front of us but a boss immediately after most of their cool down budget which means we need to make another decision do we send CDs now or do we save them for the boss here the answer is a bit
more complicated we need to think about the difficulty and mechanics of the boss themselves with with transfusion which means as long as everyone does their job we really don't need CDs at all for this encounter this is why Mez introduces an
extra mob in front of the boss when his group CDs are ready that way we can use point knowing that CDs probably aren't needed for the upcoming fight actively tracking CDs helps avoid the classic Goldilocks problem in wow where tanks
either play too aggressive or too safe and is one of the many traps we actively try and teach players to avoid especially in our tanking course to see the goldilock problem in action let's check out some gameplay here this group
will advance past the first boss with Paladin and Hunter CDs almost ready but instead of pushing towards a larger pull our tank will decide to pull small not just one time with these non- Elites and not just two times with this small pack
on the bridge but three times in a row resulting in a 2-minute period where our R Paladin doesn't even use Wings because using it on these smaller packs doesn't safe was the reason why this key went untimed so just to recap when deciding
how to navigate your route the first step is to think about cooldown Cadence to go big but when they're limited this is one clear sign to scale things back using our team's available cooldowns to affect our decision- making the next
level is more advanced your group composition and how the classes that make up your party can influence the size of polls to begin to understand how this works let's look at the first pull in this Throne of Tides where Mez admits
that he makes a big pulling mistake but let's it in his own words so we're trying to stack up a big pull here as you can see is here we're Gathering the first two mobs at the second pack we're trying we're going to kick the second
Caster in here and we're also adding the third pack in this is actually quite here now is that we don't have really interrupts for these back mobs here and used on the front mob here and now we used a single kick from a warlock of the
doesn't walk in this makes it really difficult to stack was something we should have not done we should have not added this last pack here that has two castom Ms or comp can straight up just not deal with it good
um so don't do this if your group comp is looking like this if you can stack up the pack Easier by moving in this other caster and you have more kicks in your group comp this is definitely a viable choice but not for us in this case we
can see here the tank is dropping very low Aon is a little bit struggling using defensives left right and Center uh we can see here clicks even dying because there's too many water bolts of these C
is going off we straight up do not have kicks to deal with them we only have one melee kick that's got used we have one Mage kick ready that we could use but he's also getting chased on by
Spide generally just a very bad pull should not have done this as you can see this first Caster here that we left the load in the back at 80% HP basically basically and we didn't almost gain anything from adding this last pack into
the mix here going back to a tall desar we have a similar situation with two witch doctors that will chain cast but this time we have a kick budget that can actually support this with four short CD interrupts in fact at this point we
might be over budgeted with kicks for this pull but the point still stands your group comp affects how your decision- making you can't just think of further and adapt your pulls around the
hand sometimes doing slightly larger pulls can be beneficial for your group Mar's pulled this pack on the right before jumping down to the first boss this is because Enhancement Shaman can
do a lot of funnel damage with more mobs to attack and since this is an easy boss and the additional mobs pose no threat it's a no-brainer to introduce them into the fight later on the group will intentionally spawn some Raptors once
without much additional risk it's crucial as a tank to understand the tank decides to pull the first boss without introducing any of the non Elites this is really bad considering that our Shaman Fury Warrior and frost
Mage will all benefit from introducing additional mobs all without any risk to established that coold Downs are important for pull size but so is group right tools to manage larger poles especially if multiple stops are needed
pull size can be handled by damage profiles now we need to add our final layer time here's what they things get a bit abstract but have you ever put a timer thinking to yourself I know when it's going to be 10 minutes but then 10
minutes go by and instead of a golden brown crust you arrive to the most diabolical creation your oven has ever created the truth is we are all bad at keeping track of time in our head and more often than not we underestimate how
long it takes to get from point A to point B at this point you might be asking what any of this has to do with Mythic plus let's go back to our pyramid important consideration from pulling
based on the time it takes for cool Downs to recover remember at the start of this video when we said that marz chose a slightly different route after calculating the time it would take to go to the next possible big pole in the
dungeon by thinking about distance marz is able to choose the best route based on cool down recovery this leads him down a relatively unconventional route the center of the dungeon and by the time the pull is over he can then use
some important cool Downs allowing him to chain two big pulls back to back party's cool down budget when navigating your route and deciding what to pull you have to think about more than just group cooldowns now keep in mind that there
deciding how to pull and what mob to prioritize and in a follow-up video we will cover dungeon pacing and the micro decisions you need to make on every pull because let's face it Mythic plus is complicated for that reason we had marz
put together full commentaries for every dungeon this season which can only be found at skill cap.com in this brand new course Mars explains his thought process some of the most common mistakes that players make when navigating pushing
higher keys this course goes hand inand with all of our class guys which teach you high level information you need to do the biggest damage while also increase the value of your entire toolkit including CC and survivability
all of this and more is why skillcap continues to offer a rating gain guarantee where we promise that you will be able to increase your IO score while ahead of the competition this season visit skill cap.com using the link below
until then we want to thank you all for watching see you