Just finished pugging every 20 in time, my thoughts on this season as a tank.

Hey all!Being a retired mythic raider, I decided to set my own goals for the patch. Initially that was just KSM and AOTC but when I was done with that 3 weeks into 9.1 I figured I might as well go for the next thing up which was getting all 8 Keystone hero achievements. I didn't have a dedicated team so while I did have 1 or 2 friends present for a few runs I always had several randoms in the group as well. I wanted to share my thoughts stand-out dungeons and perhaps help others that are in the pugging world out a little. This is all from the perspective of a Vengeance DH.Proof of 8 TP's unlocked.General thoughts​20s are certainly a different ballgame than 15s-16s. Things that you barely paid mind to before suddenly are extremely important and the general slow and steady wins the race mentality that'll always net you a clean but slower run at slightly lower keys is no longer globally applicable unless you have absolutely bonkers DPS. Speaking of DPS, I feel the general idea that people have is that Tyrannical is a harder affix than Fortified but I'm not sure I agree anymore. The overall damage required to complete a dungeon is much higher on Fortified keys and while there's certain dungeons I'm sure are harder on Tyrannical, I had an easier time with this affix than I did Fortified in general.I also noticed that 20s are generally abandoned if the key isn't timeable. Initially I found this weird, but when rating is all you're playing for, it makes sense that a dead run is not worth finishing.Having said all that, I quite like the reward structure for doing higher than 15s. I personally think that if completing all 20s, 25s etc. would give further cosmetic rewards it'd only strengthen the already cancerous enough boosting culture of retail even further. A teleport to the dungeon entrance is a nice little QoL thing that's not too impactful to chase while still being a neat little unlock to have. It's really about the personal achievement and rating, which I like quite a lot.This season was the easiest in recent memory, it certainly felt a lot easier than season 1. While I still got slapped around by certain mobs (Obliterators in Halls of Atonement lmao) it was easier to tank keys in general. You don't even have to go far back in my comment history to see me give a dumb-ass take about Shards not making a big impact for tanks, don't believe every idiot on Reddit folks. They absolutely do and provide a super meaningful HPS and DPS throughput increase worth much more than stamina, armor and main stat.​Thanks, me from 3 weeks ago! Very cool!​Dungeons​Attempts per Dungeon:NW: 1DOS: 1TOP: 2HOA: 1PF: 2MOTS: 4SOA: 5SD: 3​Easiest dungeon: Necrotic Wake. No real argument here, this place is just a gimmick dungeon made even easier by the stupidly strong Kyrian ability. I highly recommend going for this dungeon first if you're looking to do your first out of your comfort zone key. Good use of weapons will get you over the finish line handily and the DPS requirement is therefore much lower.Hardest dungeon: Spires of Ascension. Staying in Bastion, I was expecting this place to be a pretty smooth run but reality slapped me in the face when I was 4 runs deep with my best attempt being a depleted 20. It makes sense, trash in this dungeon is insanely hard-hitting on not just the tank, but the entire group. Between Foresworn Castigators spamming high damage hits on random targets, Usurpers and Skirmishers throwing spears into your dome and the covenant ability of this dungeon honestly being pretty mediocre compared to almost every other one available, this place was a victory well earned once it was done and I'll never set foot in a higher SOA again.Sleeper hard dungeon: Mists of Tirna Scithe! I'm not sure if I got unlucky with the groups I ran with, but this dungeon took me the second most attempts of all to time. Spiteful is particularly annoying in Mists due to it locking you in combat during the maze puzzle, but this dungeon's timer is pretty damn tight. I acknowledge that there's a lot of cheesing strategies that make this dungeon easier between lock gate skips, wall pulls with pet classes and stuff like that, but even in my timed run it was a tight race to finish this place with 1 minute remaining.​Meta, routes and comps​When I was starting out, I was entirely guilty of only wanting the best of the best classes in my groups. Boomkins, mages, holy paladins and windwalkers were my favourite comp to run with. Sure, there's a lot of great players playing those classes as well but equally many flavour of the month rerollers that lack time and experience on the spec meaning they're only playing at 90% efficiency. I learned pretty quickly that your comp doesn't require much more than a bit of logical thinking. I'd naturally buff magic damage users as a DH and I'd probably be better off not running with more than 1 melee DPS on storming and spiteful weeks. The Mists that ended up being the successful one for me was timed with a Sub rogue, Fire mage, Enhancement shaman and MW monk. Not bad classes by any means, but also not the comp you'd think up when drafting your ideal S tier blaster group. In fact, I'll double down and say that a lot of stubborn one-tricks playing low-key specs are usually extremely good at utilizing all parts of their kit as well as doing great damage/healing, and sometimes will pull stuff out of their bag of tricks that makes you go ''Holy shit that works?''What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't get too fixated on getting the specific 1 class/spec when building your team. As a DH I'm pretty reliant on my healer to keep me alive when I'm not kiting but while I definitely have my preferences of healer to run with I've timed a 20 with every individual healer class keeping me topped. I'd rather take a 2400 holy priest than a 2150 venthyr paladin for example. My general recommendation is to have 1 melee DPS for 2 short cd kicks, one lusting RDPS and 1 flexible slot depending on what you feel your comp is lacking.Finally, I wanna talk about routes. While it's good to have a basic route for every dungeon memorized, it's even better to be open-minded and not get married to your idea of how a dungeon should be ran. There's always going to be people with more experience than you, don't be too proud to let them teach you things you didn't know before. I had never used 2 different lanterns before Executioner Tarvold in Sanguine Depths, now it's my main route only because a mage I played with pointed it out as a strategy. All I know is that I know nothing, be a sponge for new ideas and be open to adapt.​TL;DR Happy I did every key, don't be a metaslave, let people teach you, fuck Spires of AscensionIf you have any questions I'll happily answer them! Thank you very much for reading and good luck with your own goals for 9.1!