We’re rolling out some changes to Mythic+ with the release of The War Within Season 2 and wanted to share a few more insights on what you can expect to see when those changes arrive on the Undermine(d) Public Test Realms (PTR).

Season 2 Mythic+ Updates

Over the course of The War Within Season 1, the development team has received extensive feedback on Mythic dungeons, much of which revolved around frustrations, especially in trying to progress through the system primarily in pick-up groups. Common areas of criticism have included the sense that players were faced with too many mechanics at once, that failure was too punishing, that rewards felt insufficient for the challenge and effort required, and that it could be hard for many players to find groups as the community gravitated towards “meta” specs to help cope with these difficulties.

We have already approached our Season 2 dungeon rollout on the PTR, and ongoing tuning, with an eye towards addressing mechanical issues: Cast times on critical enemy spells have been significantly increased, tank damage spikes reduced in magnitude and/or given better telegraphs, the overall number of threats in an average pack of enemies has been reduced, and more.

We also made improvements to rewards (and especially reducing the penalty of failing to finish a dungeon within the timer) in the Siren Isle content update, but we understood that there was still more to do in order to fully address the feedback we’ve been hearing. Now, as we approach our second season, we have a chance to make some broader changes to the structure of Mythic dungeon progression.

A factor that we see as an underlying cause of many of the cited issues, is the lack of smooth and healthy difficulty/reward progression in the current system, and rewards are an essential part of that picture.

The introduction of Delves has significantly changed the endgame reward ecosystem. Players who were accustomed to doing M+ in past expansions may have geared up in Delves at the start of The War Within Season 1 and then looked at the M+ reward track and found few or no rewards worth their time below the Mythic 7 level or so. That had two main effects:

• Lots of players would enter the system at Mythic 7, since they didn’t need more Champion gear and Mythic 7 was the first level to drop Hero-track items from each run. However, often these players frankly lacked the dungeon experience required to succeed at that level. Dealing with a 77% bonus to enemy health and damage, on top of Challenger's Peril making deaths more costly, was never designed to be an environment in which to learn mechanics for the first time, and yet many players ended up doing just that. This heavily impacted success rates, led to a sense of inconsistency from group to group, and made many players more wary and more selective in filling groups for their keys.
• Meanwhile, keys in the 2-6 range had a shallow applicant pool, especially past the first weeks of the season. This meant that even players who tried to start at a lower difficulty level in order to build the experience to succeed at 7+ keys, also often had a hard time finding and forming groups, experiencing many of the same frustrations.

Looking ahead to Season 2, our aim is to make the Mythic dungeon system more rewarding from the outset and to smooth out the difficulty progression so that each step feels approachable.

To that end, we are making the following changes:

• Baseline Mythic (aka “Mythic 0”) dungeons will now award Champion-track gear from each boss, with a weekly instance lockout. The health and damage of enemies in those dungeons has increased to reflect the improved rewards, while keeping Mythic 0 an accessible point of entry for players beginning their Season 2 gearing journey, and those looking to learn dungeons in a lower-stakes environment.
• From Mythic 2 through 10, each new level will now increase the health and damage of enemies by 7%, down from the previous 10%. Per-level scaling will remain at 10% for Mythic 11 onwards.
• The Xal’atath’s Bargain rotating affixes will move up from Mythic 2 to Mythic 4, leaving no affixes (other than the existence of a timer) at the two entry levels of the M+ system.
• The alternating cycle of Tyrannical and Fortified will move up from Mythic 4 to replace the Challenger’s Peril affix at Mythic 7, with the other one continuing to take effect at Mythic 10.
• At Mythic 12, instead of an additional 10% increase to enemy health, Xal'atath's Guile will now include the increased timer penalty for deaths that was formerly part of Challenger's Peril, as a replacement for the rotating Bargain affixes. While the mechanic could feel overly punishing for groups still learning and progressing towards gear rewards, a focus on clean execution remains appropriate for the upper echelons of the system, and removing the extra 10% stats should make the transition into the prestige tiers of the system feel like less of a wall.
• The requirements to achieve some key reward tiers have been reduced (e.g. Hero-track gear is now available in end-of-run chests from Mythic 6 dungeons; Gilded crests are available from Mythic 7 and up).

A breakdown of the new rewards and affixes at each level follows:

On balance, this version of the system should have a more rewarding point of entry, smoother progression, and overall lower difficulty than players experienced in Season 1.

One additional note and of relevance to players at the upper end of the system: We are changing the rating requirement for the new Keystone Legend achievement being added in Season 2, moving it from 2850 to 3000. This is being done to keep it at a comparable level of challenge and prestige after the changes to overall scaling. We will also be decoupling this achievement from the system that allows players to set a “floor” for their high-level keystones. Instead, once a player has finished all eight seasonal dungeons at Mythic 12 within the timer, their keystone will no longer automatically delevel below 12; once a player has timed all dungeons at Mythic 13, the new floor will be 13; and so on for all key levels at or above 12.

These changes are rolling out on the Public Test Realm over the course of the next week or two. We look forward to your feedback!