The twentieth and final week of Mythic+ in this season is over, and Nightstalker314 is taking a look at the weekly data provided by Raider.IO. Unlike in many other seasons, the final-week drop-off was just 9.67%. In the final stretch, efforts to earn the top 1% mount seemingly exploded. Both the absolute number of runs and the relative share at the required key level reached season highs on Western servers. So let’s look at the details.
Weekly Total Run Performance Compared to Other Seasons
Once more, week-over-week activity showed a night-and-day difference between the Western and Asian servers. While activity on the EU (-1.39%) and US (-0.63%) servers barely changed, KR (-17.20%), TW (-15.23%), and CN (-22.01%) seemed to have locked in their goals long before the final week. Especially at higher key levels, the difference couldn’t have been more drastic.
Compared with previous seasons across the four regular regions, MN S1 had a decent finish. While the other seasons ran for a few more weeks, MN S1 kept up quite well in terms of completed runs. And the larger relative drop-off can be mostly attributed to the massive difference in week 2. On a global scale, week 20 ended up at 12.33% of the week-1 numbers. KR (16.97%) and TW (15.66%) reflected the more sustained efforts on Asian servers. But CN (11.45%) completely cratered in the second half of the season, with multiple weekly drop-offs above 15%. US players, as usual, represented an average pattern, with 13.77% of the week-1 numbers. And the EU dropped to 11.82%. Raw efficiency meant a faster shift toward lower weekly efforts after the seasonal start.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
The spread across all dungeons widened slightly in the final week. The order saw two swaps: ranks 2 and 3, as well as 5 and 6. This could be tied to efforts to secure ratings in less popular dungeons for cosmetic rewards. And Maisara Caverns managed to be the least popular dungeon in 19 of the season’s 20 weeks. Seat was the only dungeon to be less popular, in week 1, and that might have been due to the negative bias carried over from the final seasons of Legion in 2018. But Caverns never fell as far behind as City of Threads did in TWW S1.
The success rate climbed by 0.32 percentage points to 93.86%. This was the highest weekly value of the entire season. Ascendant weeks were the worst-performing of the entire season, but seemingly not bad enough for the devs to intervene once more.
Split Across All Key Levels
83.92% of all keys were completed at level 10 or higher. Globally, the lower levels saw no major shift in their relative share. But there was a stark contrast between China and the other regions. Activity compared with the previous week cratered to below 75% for most high-level keys in China. Here, +16 saw 23.81% fewer runs, while runs at key levels +21 to +23, required for the top 1% and top 0.1%, dropped by almost 40%. On the other hand, every key level required for cosmetic rewards saw major boosts in the other regions. The increases were 2.26% at +10 (portals), 5.8% at +12 (KSL), 3.53% at +16 (3,400 rating), and 22.75% at +21 (top 1%). At +23, required to secure a top 0.1% finish, runs only dropped by 10.73%.
The success rates also reflected these efforts. At the lower key levels, there was no major fluctuation. But every level required for KSM, KSH, or KSL showed slightly higher rates than the previous week. The +16 success rate was up by 0.49 percentage points and marked a local peak at 89.94%. And the success rates at +20 (86.03%, +1.88) and +21 (90.03%, +1.84) clearly reflected the massive efforts to earn the desired top 1% mount.
Conclusion and Week 1 Expectations
Multiple content creators have alluded to massive boosting efforts on Western servers in the final week. This is blatantly obvious when looking at these numbers. +21 keys saw the highest number of runs in any week of the season. Outside of China, we saw 3,378 additional +21 runs. Split across all 8 dungeons, this could represent 422 single-character boosts. Estimates of sold titles reach into the 1,000s for the final weeks of this season. If activity is lower in MN S2, the number of title slots will also decrease, and this pattern might become even more intense. Since the cutoff is not set at a specific rating, it might turn into an arms race between boosting premades.
Looking at the drop-offs from Season 1 to Season 2 in older expansions, we could expect a drop of around 20% in the first week of Midnight S2. So instead of around 5.2 million runs, the number might be closer to 4.1-4.2 million. Given the approach of providing easier content for most players, the success rates should again be quite high this time. But that will be part of our reviews after the first 24 hours and during the next weekend. The full week 1 breakdown will go up the weekend after that.
