Special Edition Data Dive: Mythic+ Group Comps, Dungeon Success Rates, & Time Trials (Week 5)

As Week 5 of Season 1 of The War Within came to a close, we are finally seeing the emergence of a meta group composition on Live Servers. However, with MDI Time Trials over, the biggest question on our minds is…how will MDI group compositions affect the meta for the rest of us?

To answer this burning question, we present this Special Edition Data Dive, comparing the most popular group compositions on Live Servers vs. the MDI Time Trials. And…guess what? The results may surprise you!

Once we look at all the data from Week 5 on Live Servers, we’ll compare that to what transpired in the MDI Time Trials. Then, we’ll discuss our insights on why we think these changes occurred, and what it could mean for the meta development throughout the remainder of the Season.

Read on to see how top group compositions compare between the MDI Time Trials and Live servers, and how to target specific dungeons for rewards based on dungeon success rates.

Table of Contents

Most Popular Group Compositions: Live Servers

The following graphs display the most popular group compositions used for timed keystones completed for these keystone ranges on Live Servers:

KEYSTONE LEVEL	AFFIXES
+2 to +6	Xal’atath’s Bargain + Fortified or Tyrannical
+7 to +9	All of +2 to +6, and Challenger’s Peril
+10 to +11	All of +2 to +9, and the other of Fortified or Tyrannical
+12 and Up	Xal’atath’s Guile + Fortified and Tyrannical

These graphs show the top 5 group compositions used during Week 5 for timed Keystones at each of the designated thresholds (see above).

The Xal’atath’s Bargain affix for Week 5 was Xal’atath’s Bargain: Oblivion, and the first “Base Affix” added at +2 was Tyrannical.

It is interesting to note that in dungeons from +2 to +11, there continues to be a clear “meta” of 4 of the same specs, with the final 5th DPS slot being the difference-maker. This “core” of Protection Warrior, Restoration Shaman, Frost Death Knight, and
Retribution Paladin continues to be fairly pervasive across all keystone levels save for the highest dungeons. Once we hit +12 and up, however, we start to see a fall-off of
Retribution Paladins, seemingly making way for Augmentation Evokers.

Most Popular Group Compositions: MDI Time Trials

Last week saw the beginning of this season’s Mythic Dungeon International (MDI), with the Time Trials starting Wednesday last week. After five grueling days of pushing and speedrunning keys in both City of Threads and The Necrotic Wake, we saw some interesting changeups happening to make the most of the Tournament Realm environment which allows for quick switches in characters and comps, thanks to the Tournament Realm vendors.

This time around, the MDI Time Trials were a little less fierce than in previous iterations of the tournament, which was evident in that many teams put in less hours into improving their times than we would normally expect. In many cases, we saw teams being happy with a Top 15 run, even if it was far from the best run they could possibly do, since it still guaranteed an entry into the Group-stage phase of the tournament. Work smart, not hard! We still got to follow along some interesting group composition switches, which we want to take a closer look at now.

CITY OF THREADS

In City of Threads, the go-to team composition for the top teams early on ended up being Protection Warrior, Restoration Druid, Assassination Rogue, Frost Death Knight and Enhancement Shaman. While many teams opted for a Vengeance Demon Hunter over the Protection Warrior initially, the top timers on Day 1 and 2 of the event were made with a Protection Warrior.

These teams eventually tried to follow the majority, with more and more Vengeance Demon Hunter runs being posted during the later stages of the Time Trials. However, right at the end, Team Perplexed ended up switching back to the Protection Warrior lineup to post the #1, #2 and #3 fastest runs in City of Threads, back to back to back! Clearly, it seems that the Meta may not necessarily be the best choice if you end up having a strategy that really utilizes the niche-pick!

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THE NECROTIC WAKE

The name of the game for The Necrotic Wake was massive pulls, and there has always been one class that excelled at those kinds of big MDI pulls in the past: Death Knight. The class excelled so much in the Necrotic Wake that teams quickly ended up playing two of them – one of each DPS spec. With both an Unholy Death Knight and a Frost Death Knight, teams complemented this with the other king of massive pulls – the Augmentation Evoker.

Pulling vast amounts of trash onto bosses is a very viable strategy in The Necrotic Wake, especially since interrupts are rarely an issue thanks to the Discharged Anima orbs silencing all targets around the player who uses it. Pair that with a Vengeance Demon Hunter, and no cast ever goes through. This group was complemented by a Restoration Druid or Restoration Shaman, at least early into the tournament.

However, about halfway through the Time Trials, Perplexed and a handful of other teams suddenly started playing a Discipline Priest instead. Their new timers were a sight to behold, and their best runs were over half a minute faster than their previous best with a Restoration Druid! In the end, we even saw a sub 10-minute run in Necrotic Wake. All of the teams that switched over to the same comp saw great success with it as well, as all of them beat their previous best runs with a Druid by over 30 seconds, in some cases almost by a full minute. Once again, the meta had been broken with a smart, last-minute adjustment!

Success Rates by Dungeon

We continue onwards with our regular Data Dive programming, as we examine how often groups were able to successfully time each of the Dungeons available in Season 1, at various keystone levels. Instead of looking at the same keystone ranges as above, we will now hone in on some specific levels that players may be targeting for rewards.

To illustrate the Success Rates, we use a Box Plot graph.


We wanted to introduce these graphs indicating Success Rate by Dungeon because we believe they can help your dungeon groups make informed decisions. If your goal is to time any dungeon at level +9 or +10 to get Gilded Crests and/or Mythic-level gear, or if you’re trying to get Heroic-level gear at +7, these graphs can help you determine which dungeons will statistically give you the higher chances of success!

WHAT DOES THIS DATA MEAN FOR ME?

If your goal is to complete keystones at +9 to earn as many Gilded Crests as possible or at +10 for Mythic-level Vault gear, then this data suggests that you might want to try and target Mists of Tirna Scithe and The Dawnbreaker for the highest chances of success. Ara-Kara, City of Echoes also looks to have a strong success rate, but you’ll want to take notice of the Whiskers for this dungeon. There’s a lot of variance in success – meaning that if you head to Ara-kara, you have a good chance of timing the dungeon, but you could also have a very rough go, depending on your group. It is certainly not a “free” key in any sense of the word. You may also want to avoid City of Threads and Grim Batol as they have the highest rates of failure at +10 especially.

Keep in mind that, until level +12, each week includes a different Xal’atath’s Bargain affix, so one week’s data may not necessarily carry over. It is, however, a good starting point!

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HOW TO INTERPRET BOX PLOT GRAPHS

The X-Axis shows Time Remaining as % of Dungeon Timer. As 0% means a dungeon was completed, in-time, at the exact timer (00:00:00 time remaining), higher numbers (5% and up) mean that the dungeon was completed with time remaining. The higher the number, the faster the dungeon was completed by percentage of the timer. Dungeons on the left of 0% were thus depleted, and where they land on the X-Axis shows by what percentage of the timer they were depleted.

The box in the middle of each bar shows the Inter Quartile Range, or IQR. This is where the middle 50% of dungeons fall. If the box is small, it indicates that dungeon completion times were very consistent. If the box is large, it means there is greater variability in completion times.

The line in the middle of the box represents the Median Clear Time. If this line is closer to the left of the box, this indicates the distribution is skewed towards slower times, and vice versa.

The Whiskers, the lines that come out of each side of the box, indicate the range of the data outside the IQR (the middle 50% of all dungeons completed). This shows how far the data spreads. If the Whiskers are long, it suggests there is a wide range of dungeon clear times, suggesting the performance varies more. Shorter Whiskers indicate more consistent results, and if they are asymmetrical, it shows that the data is skewed in a particular direction (depleted vs. completed in-time).

Outliers are singular dungeons that fall way out of the range. We have only chosen to show positive outliers, meaning dungeons that were completed significantly faster than the average. Those are represented by a dot, should they exist.

Insights

At first glance, there are some stark differences between the most popular group compositions on Live Servers versus what we in the MDI Time Trials. Discipline Priests? Resto Druids riding high? No Ret Pallies, Mages, or Protection Warriors? What’s going on?

The first thing to keep in mind is that the name of the game in the MDI is speed. The levels cap out at +10 (for Time Trials), and once you hit that cap, your score/ranking can only be improved by going faster and faster. The second thing to be aware of is that, on the Tournament Realm, players have access to the highest possible level of gear, meaning we sometimes have classes and specs in the MDI that aren’t seen as often on Live Servers if they require a certain gear threshold and group coordination to be viable for speed-running in a more punishing environment. We all know the consequences for learning bigger and crazier pulls on Live Servers where keystone levels will deplete upon any failure from trial-and-error, making the Tournament Realm the most desirable place to see what a class is truly capable of in a well-oiled group of 5 speedrunners.

As for why we’re seeing some of the specific specs emerge from the Time Trials, Wolfdisco of the currently top-seeded Perplexed provided us with some brief insight:

“The main reason we are seeing Discipline Priests is actually a callback to an old MDI strat used during Shadowlands. Mind Control can be used in multiple places in The Necrotic Wake, but is especially useful when used on the Flesh Crafter in the Stitchwerks. By using Mind Control (and a consistent root or other crowd control) to initially drag the Flesh Crafter away from other trash, you can then position it so that its Throw Cleaver ability is intercepted by the boss for a good chunk of free damage. Better yet, it can be kept alive and used for this purpose on both Surgeon Stitchflesh and the final boss of the dungeon: Nalthor the Rimebinder.”

Here’s a clip of the strat in action:

“ Restoration Druids were the healer of choice for City of Threads as Mind Control was not needed. This is primarily due to the fact that with
Enhancement Shaman being one of the go-to DPS choices, the groups already had Skyfury, so they were able to bring a Druid for an added buff ( Mark of the Wild). Additionally, Restoration Druids can put out decent damage numbers on top of bringing the Versatility buff.

Vengeance Demon Hunters were often the tank-class of choice for the Time Trials mostly due to their ability to rapidly set up gargantuan pulls and provide effective AoE crowd control and silence when fighting large groups of caster mobs.”

Stay tuned for more Data Dives, coming soon!

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