After a rough start, the glaring issues in Season 2 have been identified rather quickly and also showed their footprint in the early data. At first, we only got adjustments to the death punishment in key levels 2 and 3 but on Friday the developers pulled the rip-cord and pushed massive nerfs in a major hotfix.
Up until then, the tuning was quite uneven with some dungeons that were doable on higher keys and those that turned into a complete nightmare. Ever since players have reported massive progress towards Keystone Master and beyond. Since Nightstalker314 took snapshots from the Raider.IO data on Friday right when the nerfs hit, we can now compare metrics from the last ~40 hours and show how much things have improved so far.
Which Dungeons Improved the Most?
First, let’s take a look at the dungeon numbers. The sheet and graph display the keys logged within 41 hours between Friday midnight and Sunday at 17:00 CET. Overall the dungeons look much healthier. The distribution in general hasn’t shifted much though the higher and lower end are closer together.
Priory of the Sacred Flame is now the most popular dungeon probably because it drops – among other items – the BIS trinket for a lot of specs (
Signet of the Priory). Operation: Floodgate and Priory used to be the worst dungeons completion-wise pre-nerf and still hold those positions. But since the nerf their in time percentages have improved by 12.6% (63.3 to 75.9) and 12.5 (65.1 to 77.6) percentage points, respectively. The MOTHERLODE and Cinderbrew Meadery have gone up by 9.3% and 8.2%. Theater of Pain and Mechagon Workshop followed with 5.6% and 4.7%. And the two best dungeons could only slightly improve: Darkflame Cleft and the Rookery saw their success rate improve by 3.8% and 1.75%.
The average in time percentage grew from 75,23% to 82,46%. For this week overall it will still even out somewhere in between. But compared to the first week of previous seasons the post-nerf performance is closer to DF S3 and S4 than TWW S1.
How Did the Individual Key Levels Improve?
Now we’ll take a look at the key level breakdown. Compared to the first 3 days the focus has clearly shifted towards keys between 6 and 10. The amount of +10 keys alone went up almost 5-fold. The respective in time percentage went up from 39% to 59%. Compared to the entire first week of TWW S1 an additional 5,000 +10 keys were completed by now and also an additional 17,000 keys were timed. We still have more than 2 days left in this ID.
Key level 6 which represents the best spot to farm Heroic track gear and runed crests sits at almost 94% completion. The drop-off from the step up to 7 is still quite harsh due to Tyrannical becoming active but is only a reduction of 16.7 percentage points instead of 24.3. And looking at the entry key level: +2 went up from 73.4% to 86.3%. It is still quite rough for your first Mythic+ experience (usually with a 90% to 95% success rate) but a good improvement.
The single outlier in the direct comparison to pre-nerf tuning is key level 12. However, before the nerf we only saw 22 completed keys (13 timed) on this level. Now those numbers have gone up by a factor of 36.
Did All Dungeons Improve on the Important Key Levels?
Note: For this graph, Nightstalker314 couldn’t get a snapshot right around the time the hotfix went live but the starting point for the comparable timeframe wasn’t that long before.
Key level 6 reflects the overall increase in success rate (+7.23%) and it is nearly irrelevant where you farm your runed crests and first Hero track items. On key level 7, the gains are even higher. Priory of the Sacred Flame almost gained more than 21 percentage points from 50.5% up to 71.27%. Theater of Pain on this level is still most affected by the Tyrannical affix becoming active, but even here the success rate increased by 15.5 points. Overall the in time percentage went up by 14 points.
On key level 7, the gains are even more exaggerated. Priory of the Sacred Flame almost gained more than 21 percentage points from 50.5% up to 71.27%. Theater of Pain on this level is still most affected by the Tyrannical affix becoming active but even here the success rate increased by 15.5% points. Overall the in time percentage went up by 14 points.
When it comes to the vault grind at key level 10 we are still looking at rough numbers but the average in time % here went up by 18.7 points. The MOTHERLODE, Cinderbrew Meadery and Priory benefited the most from the nerfs by gaining between 25 and 26 percentage points. Though Priory is still the hardest dungeon on this difficulty and should be avoided if you don’t really need it for some desired loot. Darkflame Cleft and The Rookery are still the reigning champions of easy keys at any level and a good option to secure timed or at least successful runs for your first weekly vault entries.
In Conclusion
The order of best to worst dungeon compared to the early hours of the week hasn’t changed much. However, the overall quality of the Mythic+ experience within the first week has increased massively. This is a level of tuning that a lot more players enjoy and which was also mentioned by several of the high-profile M+ streamers and content creators.
With way higher chances for loot upgrades, not just during the week but also from your vault, the next steps into this season of Mythic+ are looking much easier and more promising than during TWW S1. A few more pain points need to be addressed for the high-end keys, but for the average player, this season might be shaping up like the goated Dragonflight Season 3.
After the reset, we will take a look at the full data and draw some comparisons to the first week in TWW S1 and also give you a breakdown of how much more efficient crest acquisition turned out to be.
