The ninth week of Mythic+ this season is over, and Nightstalker314 is reviewing the weekly data from Raider.IO. Despite the release of the new single-boss raid and the new Labyrinth delve, total runs dropped by only 16.47% week to week. Kith’ix saw 16,748 heroic kills, and more than 150,000 characters claimed the Labyrinth endboss kill title during its first week. After 8 hours of maintenance, early M+ numbers looked abysmal. The focus was clearly somewhere else at first. So let’s look at the details.
Weekly Total Run Performance Compared To Other Seasons
The global decline of 16.47% split up into 22.17% in KR, 20.35% in TW, 19.53% in the US, and 16.96% in the EU. CN was the only region below the average with 14.51%. US players usually shift towards novelty and variety. EU players in general are more likely to need a gearing incentive or exclusivity, and the Labyrinth title offered at least that. Looking at the snapshot comparison for weeks 9 and 8, we can see that for the first 2-3 days after reset, players definitely avoided M+.
Compared to the previous seasons, MN S2 follows the trend of MN S1 with the usual distance. It got undercut by TWW S3 in its ninth week because Legion Remix, as a different ecosystem, drew away a large chunk of the player base. We expect that the same will happen with the official WoW Forever launch. Retail has another dungeon quest event in the same week, but that won’t budge the numbers that much. And the 12.1.7 patch, 4 weeks later, might also draw players away to the Talebound game mode. This season should end somewhere around 30,000,000 total runs and below 4,000,000 active characters in early February 2027.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
The massive nerfs as part of patch 12.1.5 reshuffled the dungeon pool a lot. From week 8 to week 9, rank 7 climbed to rank 3, and rank 5 climbed to rank 4. Ranks 3 and 4 fell to 5 and 6, and rank 6 dropped to rank 7. The participation gap between the most and least popular dungeon decreased from 5.26 percentage points to 3.94. The overall success rate improved by 1.15 points. It was dragged up by massive changes to Altar of Fangs, Ruby Life Pools, and the Blinding Vale.
Murder Row (93.36%) stayed at the top spot, despite being the only dungeon with a decreasing success rate. When looking at the key level spread, it seems that a general lack of interest, especially in the mid- to higher key levels, led to worse runs overall. Kings’ Rest (92.53%) remained in second place, but Altar of Fangs (92.25%) almost caught up to it. It was the worst dungeon at the start of this season. The Blinding Vale (92.16%) also managed to get into the upper half. Ruby Life Pools (91.96%) landed above Temple (91.87%). Voidscar Arena (91.42%) barely changed, and Den of Nalorakk ended up in last place (90.81%) despite slight improvements. The gap between first and last place shrunk from 4.54 percentage points down to 2.55. A massive improvement.
Split Across All Key Levels
88.91% of all keys were completed at key level 10 and above. With a 20.14% share, key level 10 hit a new low point for the season. 25% fewer runs than in week 8 and 64.61% fewer than in MN S1 week 9 speak volumes. The higher key levels saw continued growth above +16. But compared to the previous season, only key levels 23 and 24 are still ahead in total runs. At +18, we can already see the first trace of the Keystone Myth grind for 3,600 rating. It took until week 14 for MN S1 to see the first timed +25 key. This could happen sooner in this season, but those teams might need the mythic BIS items from the final two bosses. A major complaint from M+ core players that has not been commented on by the devs.
The improvement of the overall success rate from 90.95% by 1.15 points to 92.10% is all due to the massive nerfs to Altar, Pools, and Vale. Except for the outliers at +2 (-0.02 points) and +24 (-50), every single key level saw an uptick. So this is not tied to affix changes or gear progression. Above key level 4, the success rate improved between 0.77 and 11.89 percentage points. And for week 10 so far, this might repeat. Farm groups for Venomstones and the increased item level pushed +10 runs to 99% and above right after reset.
Conclusion and Week 10 Forecast
Unless players need end-of-dungeon rewards, M+ will remain irrelevant for the vault in this season. For the longest time, it was the go-to gameplay mode to progress your character. But the massive shift towards raid rewards, intended or unintended, soured the taste of it for many players. At some point, heroic raiding will also see a major decline, when the 341 BIS items have been acquired by most characters. There is a small benefit to the RNG vault loot table from M+ for a few slots. But given the rather large loot tables of this season, this gamble doesn’t feel good in the vault and for your remaining bonus rolls. 12.2 needs to address all of these issues across the board.
As of this writing, 144 hours after the US reset, the hourly numbers for all major regions are still ahead of week 9. But the early massive boost, especially compared to the reset day, with 49% to 89% more runs, has now died down. The US servers are still ahead by 18.38%, the EU by 24.65%, and CN by 15.52%. But these values might be closer to 10% at the end of the ID. We’ll examine this further in the next breakdown.
