Not Even Close: The Mythic+ One-Shot Survivability Calculator
Not Even Close is a Mythic+ survivability calculator: import your stats and see if you live through a specific dungeon one-shot ability.
By:
John Langan
Key Takeaways
- Not Even Close is a web-based Mythic+ survivability calculator at not-even-close.com, backed by a companion in-game addon that imports your live character stats. It is a website first, not a standalone addon.
- The tool answers one question: does your effective health survive a specific unavoidable one-shot ability, and how much overkill or leftover health is left after it lands.
- It was built by Ortemist of Zul'jin, a Mistweaver Monk player, and spotlighted by Wowhead in February 2024 during Dragonflight Season 3.
- The classic worked examples came straight from the Season 3 Mythic+ pool: surviving Soulrend from Yazma in Atal'Dazar and Shadow Bolt inside Black Rook Hold.
- Manual inputs like the Phial of Tepid Versatility and armor (entered as a Custom DR) have to be added by hand, so the numbers are a strong starting point rather than a guarantee.
- The project outlived its season: it was updated for The War Within in September 2024 and the domain is still live in 2026.
Here is how the calculator worked, what made it useful for key pushers, and where its numbers stopped short.
What Not Even Close Actually Is
Not Even Close is a damage and survivability calculator for World of Warcraft Mythic+, hosted as a web app at not-even-close.com. A lot of players called it an addon, and there is an addon involved, but the core tool is the website. The companion addon on CurseForge exists to capture your character's live stats and buffs so you can import them into the calculator instead of typing every value in by hand.
The utility was created by Ortemist of Zul'jin, a Mistweaver Monk player who got tired of guessing whether a group would live through the nastiest incoming hits. When Wowhead spotlighted the project in February 2024, Dragonflight Season 3 was in full swing, and the tool spread quickly among players pushing into higher keys where a single unmitigated cast can end a run.
How the Calculator Worked
The interface was built to be quick. You set the key level and affix, then picked a dungeon with preset abilities or built a custom instance by filling in the relevant fields. The only missing piece was your own character: stats and toggled buffs, entered manually or pulled in through the in-game addon.
On the results side, the tool reported your effective health against the selected ability and told you plainly whether you survived, along with how much overkill or leftover health there was. From there you could experiment with defensive layers, swapping a personal cooldown or an external buff to see exactly how much it moved the survival line. Group leaders could add multiple characters at once to read the whole party's defensive picture, spot who needed the most help, and assign externals where they mattered most instead of spending them blindly.
Why Effective Health Mattered in Season 3
Pushing Mythic+ is never only about damage and the timer. Past a certain key level, unavoidable magic bursts scale up until they simply delete an underprepared character. The Not Even Close spotlight used two Season 3 dungeons to make the point. Soulrend, cast by Yazma at the end of Atal'Dazar, and Shadow Bolt inside Black Rook Hold were both the kind of spike that a group either planned for or died to.
That is where a survivability model earned its keep. Instead of guessing, a tank or healer could confirm ahead of time whether the party lived through the hit, and whether a Phial of Tepid Versatility or a well-timed external tipped a fatal spike into a survivable one. Because the phial was one of the values the tool did not read automatically, it was a good reminder that the model was only as accurate as the inputs you fed it.
The Limitations Worth Knowing
Not Even Close never claimed to be perfect, and it is worth being honest about the gaps. Armor was not calculated automatically; it could be entered as a Custom DR if you wanted it in the math. In practice that mattered less than it sounds, because most of the dangerous one-shots in Mythic+ deal magic damage, and armor only reduces physical damage. For the specific problem the tool solved, surviving magic spikes, leaving armor out changed very little.
The bigger caveats were the manual values, like the Phial of Tepid Versatility, and the abilities the model did not cover, especially ones with obscure or randomized mechanics. It was a maintained fan project, not an official Blizzard readout, so the right way to use it was as a fast sanity check that saved a pile of guesswork, not as gospel. The project also carried its own support Discord for feedback, linked from the site.
The Tool That Outlasted Its Season
Plenty of community tools fade when the patch that spawned them rotates out. Not Even Close did not. After the Dragonflight Season 3 spotlight, it was updated for The War Within in September 2024, and the site at not-even-close.com is still standing in 2026. The Season 3 dungeon examples above are a historical snapshot, but the underlying idea, checking your effective health before a key rather than after a wipe, is exactly as relevant now. If you would rather have a title handled outright than model every incoming spike yourself, you can always compare our Mythic+ dungeon carries.
FAQ
Is Not Even Close an addon or a website?
It is primarily a website, hosted at not-even-close.com. There is a companion in-game addon on CurseForge, but its job is narrow: it captures your character's live stats and buffs so you can import them into the web calculator. You can also enter everything manually, so the addon is a convenience rather than a requirement.
Who created the Not Even Close calculator?
The tool was built by a player known as Ortemist of Zul'jin, a Mistweaver Monk. Wowhead spotlighted the project in February 2024, during Dragonflight Season 3, which is when it reached a wide audience of key pushers.
What is effective health in Mythic+?
Effective health is how much raw incoming damage your character can absorb before dying, once mitigation like Versatility, absorbs, and active defensives are factored in. Not Even Close used that number to tell you whether you survived a specific ability, such as Soulrend in Atal'Dazar, and by how much.
Does Not Even Close account for armor?
Not automatically. Armor could be added as a Custom DR, but it was left out of the default math. That is a reasonable shortcut, because armor only reduces physical damage and the overwhelming majority of Mythic+ one-shots are magic damage, which armor does nothing against.
Was the tool built around a specific Mythic+ season?
The February 2024 spotlight used Dragonflight Season 3 dungeons, including Atal'Dazar and Black Rook Hold, and consumables like the Phial of Tepid Versatility. Those examples are tied to that season's affixes and pool, even though the calculator itself is general-purpose.
Is Not Even Close still online?
Yes. The site at not-even-close.com is still live in 2026, and the tool was updated for The War Within in September 2024. There is no publicly documented Midnight-era rebalance, so treat any current-patch numbers as something to double-check against live values.
Last reviewed 2026-07-03 against Patch 10.2 Guardians of the Dream. Maintained by WowCarry's WoW team.