With the first week of Mythic+ of The War Within Season 2 finished we saw better tuning in general due to fast reactions from the devs to correct major issues. But how does it compare to the start of Season 1? S1 left a bad impression on many players in the early weeks. Major changes to affixes and crest rewards have happened ever since. Nightstalker314 is once again using data from Raider.IO to give us a breakdown of the data. Though the absolute numbers are lower when comparing the two first weeks, the actual outcome and progression have massively improved in S2.
Comparing The Raw Numbers
Overall the amount of completed runs is 17.46% lower than in week 1 of S1. The average in time amount is also 0.7 percentage points lower. The latter is mostly due to rough tuning within the first 78 hours (75.33% until then) of S2 which drags the weekly average down by a lot.
On the upside, we see a more even spread for all dungeons in general. They range from 11.56% to 13.53%. Meanwhile, S1 week 1 showed us a spread from 8.92% to 19.24%. The in time % also showed a much wider range in S1. 25.25 percentage points from best to worst compared to 18.13 points in S2.
Key Levels
Comparing both 1st weeks per key level we see a massive bloat for S1 within the first 5 key levels. This shows the major reason for the drop-off from season to season. But once we get into the overlap of former and current gilded crest territory – 9 and above in early S1 vs. 7 and above in S2 – we clearly see equal or even higher numbers of completed runs in S2. For direct comparison: 144% more keys were completed on level 10 during the recent 1st week. And their success rate was also a lot higher: +15.25 percentage points.
Looking at the in time percentage curve in general we can clearly see the 2 big drop-offs in both seasons. While S1 had an easier start within the first 2 levels – which is the main reason for the higher in time % – it got rougher much earlier due to Tyrannical kicking in during week 1. Meanwhile the experience in S2 was quite stable for the first 6 levels until Tyrannical also became active in this first week. The drop-off at key level 10 was a lot lighter though. And keep in mind that with the recent changes to affixes and crests, you can earn and upgrade hero track items without ever stepping into any key with Tyrannical or Fortified being active.
The Massive Difference For Key Level 10 Vault Runs in Detail
Speaking of key level 10, the highly sought-after source of BIS vault gear from your first week: the numbers for the start of S2 look a lot better. The dungeon spread in S1 was heavily skewed. Meanwhile, the general pattern for season 2 is almost identical even on a really high key level for such an early moment in the season. The S2 dungeon with the worst success rate on this level (Priory with just 32.09%) is still above half of the dungeons in S1. And leaving the worst one out, only Mists of Tirna Sithe and Ara-Kara were decent competitors to the rest of the dungeons in S2.
Overall we saw more timed keys in S2 week 1 than completed runs in S1 week 1 – 95,132 vs. 75,710. To add insult to injury, the 2 best-performing dungeons for S2 combined have more timed runs than all of S1’s dungeons. And the worst-performing S2 dungeon had more timed runs than the 4 worst-performing S1 dungeons combined.
The Huge Changes and Improvements for Crest Drop Rates
Having a better general experience in Mythic+ is always a good thing. But what about the outcome? Below we are listing the key level splits for both 1st weeks of S1 and S2. The upper data sheet represents S1. There, we can clearly see that a lot of the runs still rewarded carved crests with which you were already flooded from most delves, world events and normal mode raiding. In S2 you immediately get crests that benefit most of the loot you will get from Mythic+ in general. And gilded crests already start dropping at level 7. Three weeks into S1 that threshold was only reduced to key level 8.
The end-of-dungeon loot also shifted a bit giving you hero track items from +6 keys in S2. Given that we loot at least 2 items per run we get the following numbers: in S2 week 1 players received at least 2,161,650 hero track items from M+ runs compared to just 1,217,516 items in S1 week 1 – an increase of 77.5%.
The War Within Season 1
Looking at the general crest outcome we can see that S2 is only falling behind at key level 2 and 7. Overall more than 790,000 completed runs rewarded gilded crests in S2 week 1. In S1 week 1, the number amounts to just above 200,000. We can suggest that S2 week 1 hypothetically got players almost 5 times the amount of gilded crests. However, we have to keep in mind that some players would still run M+ keys once their weekly crest caps are already filled.
The War Within Season 2
Comparing the average outcome per key level – ignoring total numbers – we can clearly see that on any relevant key level in S2 week 1 you would get up to double the amount of crests. And the only key levels that drop below the previous averages are – as explained above – the ones that wouldn’t even drop those crests last season. If we normalize the values according to the overall key level split, the increase in crest drops comes out to only 17.72%. This is mostly impacted by the massive bloat of keys in lower key levels. If we normalize the value for runed and gilded crests separately, we get increments of 26.53% and 27.23%. But you can be sure that these factors, especially for gilded crests, will only increase with a shift towards higher key levels later in S2.
In Conclusion
We can clearly see a decline in total overall run numbers from season to season. However, the quality of the experience has improved as well as the general outcome of doing Mythic+. And with that in mind, we can make a clear argument that you don’t have to run that many keys to get a similar outcome compared to last season.
With a higher entry level of basic tuning and rewards compared to TWW S1, M+ is seen more as a high-end gearing and progression system these days. The question going forward is: Will comparatively more characters make their way into M+ later in the season? While we will be giving regular round-ups for weekly data, we will also be looking at long-term comparisons for the entire season in future articles.
