The first week of the season is over and the data gathered by Raider.IO is good enough for us to do a breakdown of the total numbers. The early days of the week were quite rough, but hotfixes on Friday improved the entire experience quite a lot. As shown in a previous breakdown, success rates after the nerf went up by a large margin. So today Nightstalker314 will take a look at the entire data.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
Unlike the previous season, the distribution across all 8 dungeons is way closer together. No dungeon has fallen out of favor right from the start. The 2 most popular dungeons couldn’t be more opposed to each other. Priory of the Sacred Flame is slightly ahead, probably because it drops – among other items – the BIS trinket for a lot of specs (
Signet of the Priory). With just a 70.83% success rate it sits on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to the Rookery with a solid 84.96%. Keep in mind that the timer for the Rookery has also been reduced with the latest hotfix. This will make it probably a bit harder to time.
The next 3 dungeons, Theater of Pain (76.79%), Cinderbrew Meadery (73.59%), and Mechagon Workshop (76.97%) are rather close together in terms of metrics. Cinderbrew Meadery is falling behind in terms of timed keys but further nerfs within the latest hotfix could improve it. Operation Floodgate (69.54%) is currently the worst-tuned dungeon. This is due to rough trash pulls and the 3rd boss which also received adjustments to alleviate the stress for healers. The MOTHERLODE (80.33%) is presenting an above-average success rate. However, the long timer of 39 minutes is making it less attractive for runs in general. And last: Darkflame Cleft (87.67%), the easiest dungeon but – probably due to its mine cart section – the least popular dungeon by now.
Split Across All Key Levels
As in every early week the entry key levels are dominating the data. And especially key level 2 and 3 were rather rough for new players given that the tuning floor for keys had been increased while the scaling per key level up until 10 had been reduced compared to previous seasons. So as soon as you get the new rewards it becomes a lot easier moving forward. And that’s pretty visible in the curve leading up to key level 6. The drop-off this week is rather harsh but to be expected, given that Tyrannical is becoming active at this level. And a lot of people are yearning for those gilded crests that are rewarded with 6 per run even if you deplete the key.
And once we hit key level 10 the additional Fortified affix is only making it harder to finish in time. But for an early week, these numbers are quite common. And they’re actually better than week 1 of Season 1 – for total runs as well as in time percentage. The levels beyond 11 are seeing early progress towards the new Keystone Legend reward. With just 1.3% of all keys, this is far from the long-term value that will end up somewhere between 10 and 15% or higher.
Conclusion And Early Numbers For Week 2
With an overall success rate below 80% this was a rough start into the season. But the developers reacted quickly and applied nerfs across the board. This made way better metrics at higher key levels possible. Within the next few days Nightstalker314 will be presenting a comparison between data from this week and the 1st week of the previous season. Both look similar in their basic metrics. However, changes to crest rewards and a better progression through key levels lead to major differences in the details.
Meanwhile, we are seeing early data from week 2. The current timed percentage is already a bit higher (~79%) and especially the +10 key level runs are shaping up a lot better and are already dominating the key level split – roughly 20% of all runs with 73% of all keys being timed – as of the writing of this article. We have also seen efforts to adjust tuning for dungeons earlier which will hopefully continue throughout the next weeks of the season. Down the line, we will present this data regularly while highlighting the consequences of affix changes and balancing efforts.