The first week of Mythic+ this season is over, and Nightstalker314 is taking a look at the weekly data from Raider.IO. Similar to any summer release patch, this season dropped off in activity compared to the previous one. With -22.61%, this is in line with previous season-to-season drop-offs. The massive nerfs to Altar of Fangs managed to save this dungeon from remaining the worst of the season. But the rest of the lower half of the roster still has its issues. So let’s look at the details.
Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons
The individual regions diverge from the global drop-off of 22.61%. The EU (-27.54%), KR (-26.48%), and the US (-26.17%) fall on the lower end of retention. Meanwhile, CN (-14.95%) and TW (-8.32%) did a lot better. The Chinese players also started with a higher global share than last season. With 38.24% of all completed runs, they improved from 34.80% but are still far off from the start of TWW S3 with 41.93%.
The number of logged characters on the RaiderIO leaderboards at reset also fell off. 17.05% fewer characters were active in week 1. This differed a lot from region to region. The EU (-24.68%) and the US (-22.30%) again represented the lower end. On the Asian servers, KR (-10.35%) and CN (-5.10%) also saw a decrease, but TW (+9.14%) showed a positive development.
Compared to previous seasons, activity for the four regular regions remained ahead of all TWW seasons. For the corresponding TWW S2, the lead is 22.89%. MN S3 will start sometime around February 2027. Usually, post-Christmas activity decreases. But in between, we have BlizzCon 2026, which could build up some more hype. Long-term, the activity could develop quite differently compared to MN S1. Bonus rolls don’t come in at the same pace, and Labyrinths might shake up the reward structure again. And at the same time, we’ll be getting the next solo boss raid.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
The spread across all dungeons is a bit wider by now. The two leading dungeons have highly sought-after jewelry and trinkets. In addition, they are among the easier ones for this season, specifically after Altar of Fangs received major nerfs. The dungeon was sitting at 77.98% right before the nerfs were implemented. At that point, the success rate across all dungeons was at 86.80%, not too far from the final value. Post-nerf, Altar of Fangs landed at 86.89% after the nerfs, a massive improvement.
As long as we don’t see major nerfs with future resets, Murder Row (90.80%) should remain the easiest dungeon. King’s Rest (89.50%) and Temple of Sethraliss (88.65%) are good examples of reworks for older dungeons. Voidscar Arena (87.07%) was almost at the global average but suffers from risky pulls prior to the first and third boss.
The Lower Half of Dungeon Tuning
Ruby Life Pools (86.34%) has carried over some of its issues from TWW. Groups still tend to overpull before and after the first boss, leading to a deep red death heatmap in those sections. The first narrow corridor and the Thunderhead mini-boss require a bit more attention. The Blinding Vale (85.44%) had some rough trash pulls in week 1, which the nerfs in week 2 also couldn’t fully defuse. And Den of Nalorakk (84.12%), after the Altar nerfs, was dead last. This dungeon has a few choke points towards the second boss and wastes a lot of your time with RP events.
The Improvement of Altar of Fangs
Altar of Fangs (83.72%) was the worst-tuned dungeon across the entire week, but is already at rank 5 in week 2 by now. After the nerfs, the overall in-time percentage improved by 8.90 points across all key levels. From +7 to +13, it increased by up to 20.07 points.
Split Across All Key Levels
54.75% of all keys were completed at key level 10 or higher. That is an improvement from MN S1, where this value was just 45.96%. In general, all key levels above 9 saw a higher share in this first week, compared to MN S1. The absolute number of completed runs was also higher for any level from 11 to 18. And key level 19 was also the ceiling this time, with the exact same number of completed runs. Just one more +19 run was timed this season.
With 87.00%, the in-time percentage was 0.66 points lower than in MN S1 (87.66%). But this was not reflected across all key levels. The lower range from 2 to 9 fell behind by between 0.55 and 1.48 points. Key levels 10 and 11, on the other hand, stood out. Here we saw an improvement of 3.34 and 2.11 points, respectively, making it the easiest first vault week ever. The affix combination was exactly the same in both first weeks.
Conclusion and Week 2 Forecast
The start of the season was similar to MN S1, making MN S2 the easiest second season in all expansions so far and, for now, the second easiest season after the key level squish. With the changes to the bonus roll cost and acquisition, as well as the vault rewards from heroic raiding, focus on certain dungeons and M+ in general will differ from MN S1.
As of this writing, the hourly numbers for all regions have again fallen behind quite a bit. Looking at a snapshot 120 hours after the season start, run numbers have dropped by 36.12% for the EU, 33.05% for the US, and 22.60% for CN. These values will decrease until reset. Activity was a lot higher early on in week 1 compared to week 2. And early in week 2, players focused on Wrath Timewalking since it is rewarding a normal and heroic raid cache. But we will examine this further in next week’s breakdown.
