The RWF and Dungeons: Why Top Guilds Spam Mythic+
Each new Raid that gets released ushers in the excitement and intense competition of the Race to World First (RWF). It is one of the most popular events on Twitch and certainly for World of Warcraft.
With so many viewers flocking to the various broadcasts, we often take for granted that there are many intricacies or the ins and outs of how the RWF works, and some viewers might not be familiar with them beforehand. A key feature of any Race is the time spent not in raid, but instead spamming Mythic + content over and over again. A new viewer might be wondering why their favorite streamer is running Freehold 400 times, instead of participating in the boss pulls happening on the main broadcast stream. The reasons that go into deciding who should be in the raid or who should be doing keys, or even sometimes forgoing boss pulls to focus entirely on running dungeons, often vary from season to season, but a few things stay consistent across each patch.
Read on to learn more about what the advantages of Mythic+ are for raiding and why the RWF guilds spend so much time in dungeons!
Table of Contents
Why are Keys so Important?
To gain a competitive edge, RWF guilds must maximize the gear they can obtain from all possible sources. One of these avenues of gear acquisition is Mythic+ keystones. Despite how much time and effort is dedicated to maximizing gear acquisition from the raid through “splits”, there will always be a few slots of gear where raider did not receive an an upgrade. These are the perfect pieces to replace old gear with items from Mythic+. However, getting specific item slots to drop is based upon pure chance, and so it can take many, MANY Mythic+ runs to completely replace all of the items a character brought with them from the previous patch. This is why it is essential to spend as much of the time available to a player in keys.
Beyond replacing any piece of gear that has fallen behind in item level, there are often specific items from dungeons that are also extremely valuable. As was seen last tier with Lorgok, obtaining these items can take A LONG time, but they can sometimes be worth holding up the entire raid team for one extra chance at looting it.
Because the item itself is what matters more than the item level in the case (as shown in the Twitch clip above), you will often see these keys run at significantly lower keystone levels in order to minimize the time invested as well as increase the range of helpers whom the competitors can use keystones from.
These high value items mostly tend to be trinkets and weapons. Once obtained, the item can be upgraded to a higher item level later on. With traditional upgrade systems seen in the past, such as with valor points, trinkets were typically one of the cheapest item slots to upgrade, making them excellent candidates to spam as many Mythic+ dungeons for, regardless of keystone level. Conversely, weapons were one of the most expensive items to upgrade.
The new system in 10.1 has a more universal upgrade path that is not dependent on item slot, but the tradeoff is that keystones of all levels will need to be done to efficiently obtain the upgrade currency. This further increases the value of time that raiders can spend inside of dungeons.
Why is [Favorite Streamer] doing Mythic+ Dungeons?
As explained in our article about Split Raids, when clearing the raid on Normal and Heroic difficulty, a roster of dozens of raiders may be broken down into several separate raid groups and allot 5 main characters per group, with the rest of the members of each raid being alt characters or outside “helpers”.
To raid in a RWF guild, players are typically required to have a large number of alt characters for a couple of reasons – one of which is to help fill up Split Raids. Unfortunately, that still leaves a number of slots that must be filled. This is where competitive raiding guilds bring in Split Raiders from outside of the guild. This strategy has been employed by top guilds for a handful of years now, and has swiftly become standard practice.
For RWF guilds in particular, outside helpers are a crucial component to the Split Running process. Helpers are people that are not part of the main-raiding force, who voluntarily give up their own ability to acquire gear. While having many alts helps plan and organize Splits, volunteers are the bread and butter of modern-day Split Running. Because of this high level of participation from external helpers, the raiders that are not receiving a loot funnel are often not needed, and will instead spend this time focusing on doing as many Mythic+ dungeons as they can.
The other most common circumstance where you will see a player running Mythic+ dungeons instead of raiding on a particular boss is simply because that raider is not currently needed. RWF guilds tend to be comprised of nearly 40 people, almost double the amount that can be brought to an individual boss. As a result, a significant portion of the roster will simply not be used at every given moment. This provides an excellent opportunity to still do something worthwhile and run some keystones.
This way, if you find yourself wondering why a player is doing keys instead of pulling bosses with their raid team, then the short answer is that they have some free time where they aren't needed on a specific boss fight; they are using the time to their advantage to do something productive while waiting.
If you are a fan of the RWF, or of any of the competing guilds in particular, participating in Splits or volunteering your keystone is a fantastic way to get involved! Look out for posts on Twitter, in guild Discord servers, and in event streams for info on how to sign up as a helper. You can be a part of the RWF, get a little extra gold in your pocket, and feel the pride of your “home team” winning, knowing that you helped them get there.
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About the Author
Zephyr has been playing WoW since August 2005, shortly before TBC launched. Zephyr is a raiding enthusiast who enjoys every melee DPS spec, but their first and favorite class has always been Rogue. Outside of WoW, Zephyr is from Atlanta, Georgia, and enjoys playing tennis and piano.
