Raider.IO and the New Mythic+ Rating System: What to Expect

By Hulahoops — Jun 30 2021 21:53 CEST

It’s Patch week! The long-anticipated Patch 9.1: Chains of Domination is finally here. With it comes many changes, including some substantial updates to the Mythic+ system in World of Warcraft, and with those changes come many questions from our community. This announcement will provide you with a general overview of what you can expect from Raider.IO for Patch 9.1. Before we get into the details, we want to point out a few important factors:

With every patch day there will always be some amount of instability in services.

Please be patient as everyone (us, Blizzard, addon developers, etc.) work towards getting everything running smoothly in the patch.

Now, onto the info you’ve been waiting for:

Raider.IO is Adopting Blizzard’s Mythic+ Rating System

We’ve been asked about our plans for 9.1 ever since Blizzard announced their Mythic+ Rating system. We’ve read through feedback both for and against Blizzard’s algorithm versus ours. However, after much deliberation we’ve decided to adopt the new Mythic+ Rating system for Season 2, and the current “Post-Season 1”.

There are many reasons behind this, but the main one is that we felt it would end up being confusing for players to have to care about multiple scores within Mythic+. On top of that, the built-in game’s score will be directly tied to reward systems that players will be motivated to earn. The LFG system can already be difficult enough to navigate, so the existence of two different scores would just further complicate things.

How Does the New Scoring System Work?

The new Mythic+ Rating system is similar in several ways to the scoring system we've provided for years, but it also deviates in some important ways, as follows:

The scale of Mythic+ Rating is not exponential, so the numerical difference between a person doing +20 keys and a person doing +15 keys will not be as stark
Your individual score for each dungeon is a combination of your best overall key for that dungeon, and your best key of the opposite of that run's Tyrannical/Fortified affix. Meaning, if you have a +18 Necrotic Wake on Tyrannical as your best overall key for that dungeon, then your "alternate" key would be your best Fortified run there, and it would contribute to your Necrotic Wake dungeon rating.
The colors used by the Mythic+ Rating system are at static thresholds (meaning > 2200 is always Epic). We will continue to calculate colors based on percentiles though.

The TLDR for how to best increase your score and climb the leaderboards remains similar:

Focus first on the dungeons where you haven't run any key as you'll get the biggest increase to your score this way
Next focus on dungeons where you do not have an Alternate key listed
Finally focus on increasing either the key level on your Best & Alternates for each dungeon, or how fast you completed them

For more information, check out Blizzard's blog post about the new Mythic+ Rating system here.

What Can I Expect to Happen to my IO Score this Week?

With the launch of 9.1 players can still continue to earn Mythic+ scores to reach different reward tiers from Season 1. However, due to the extensive system and dungeon changes we will be starting a one week “Post-Season”, and inheriting your runs from all of Season 1 as part of this short season. What this allows us to do is rank all players in Post-Season 1 with the new scoring algorithm, while still maintaining the ranking integrity of the original season by partitioning it off on its own.

Shadowlands Season 1 rankings will be concluded with the launch of 9.1 in each region, and you will not be able to gain any more score within that season. That season will also remain scored with the Raider.IO scoring algorithm, so the rankings remain exactly as they were.

Once Season 2 officially begins on July 6th, your IO Score and Mythic+ Rating will reset to 0 and everyone can climb the leaderboards under the new system!

What Can I Expect to Change on the Raider.IO Website?

We are making a number of changes to the website to better visually represent the formulations behind the new score:

On individual character pages, you will now see two columns of runs labeled “Best Run” and “Alternate”. When you hover over the tooltip on this information you will see how much base Rating each dungeon is worth, and how much additional Rating you earned through affixes and time taken for keystone completion. Your overall score for each dungeon is shown at the end of each row, which is the added total of your Best Run and Alternate run.

On the various Character and Team Leaderboards you will normally see a row of icons indicating the player’s best runs. We’ve added to the top of this table a toggle “[Show Alternates]”, and when clicked this will display a second row for each player with their alternate run from each dungeon so you can see exactly how they earned their ranking.

What Can I Expect to Change on the Raider.IO Addon?

The information available in-game via the Raider.IO addon will continue to provide a plethora of additional details about players’ Mythic+ and Raiding experience in-game. This also includes features like showing Roles alongside your scores, having a “Main’s Score”, and showing “Previous Season Score” with historical data.

Download the Raider.IO addon here.

As always we recommend you install the Raider.IO Desktop Client to provide the simplest way to keep this supplemental information updated on your computer.

Download the Raider.IO Desktop Client and addon together here.

My Raider.IO Score and My Mythic+ Rating are Different Colours. Why?

Players who use Raider.IO are familiar with the myriad of colours the IO Score comes in. The basis of our colour system is actually the World of Warcraft item rarity colours: common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, etc., and then turned into a gradient. The new Mythic+ Rating system will also be using the item rarity colours. The difference between them is what the colours represent.

The new Mythic+ Rating system will have certain Rating thresholds, similar to the PVP system. Once your Rating reaches a new threshold, it will upgrade in colour quality. There is no gradient system so your Rating colour will remain the same until you reach the next highest threshold, at which point it will “upgrade” again.

The colour system of Raider.IO Score has been used in the past not to show only thresholds, but to represent percentile rankings. The colour of your Score changes based on where you rank amongst the Mythic+ player population. We prefer this method as it shows at a quick glance not just how high a score a character has reached, but what that actually means in relation to the player-base as a whole. We will be retaining the functionality of our percentile-based colour system in 9.1.

In the addon we provide an option you can use to simply match the standard quality colors if that is your preference, as shown here:

What Season Will Show As My Previous Season In-Game?

During Season 2 the "Previous Season Score" shown in the Raider.IO in-game addon will be your score from Shadowlands Post-Season 1. This means it is all of the runs you completed during the regular Season 1, along with the runs you are doing this week -- converted into the new scoring algorithm. This way the scores from the new season and the old season are both on the same scale, which will be simpler for players to be able to compare and contrast.

Anything Else I Need to Know?

Other than adopting the new Mythic+ Rating in the numerical sense as your IO Score, everything you currently know and love about Raider.IO will continue: we will still maintain the Leaderboards as we do now, including views by class, spec, and role. Our Mythic+ Team System will be alive and well, and we will still be your home to find detailed information on Mythic+ runs, character information, and more!

We also have many new features in store for Season 2 (some previously announced, and others that are still secrets).

In addition, we have many Push Week (and other) events planned for Season 2! We’re working on lots of new and exciting things, so make sure you keep your eyes open. Stay in touch with all things Raider.IO via our Twitter. Instagram, and Facebook.

Questions or Feedback?

The new Mythic+ Rating System will take some getting used to, but we want to ensure that the Raider.IO add-on and website continue to provide the best support and service possible to the community. We welcome constructive feedback in our Discord Server, as well as provide support and answers to any questions you have about the future of Raider.IO.