Dungeons

This chapter is attempting to answer the following question:

Are there any differences among the dungeons in difficulty?

It does so by trying to figure out if there’s a score difference between the dungeons. We’d expect harder dungeons will have lower scores in general, due to them being harder to time / complete.

From a view of specialization power, dungeon differences matter. If some dungeons are vastly easier to time than others, it has an effect on people’s M+ score. Suppose, for example, you are given a Holy Paladin and a Restoration Druid. You know they both ran a +25 in Dragonflight Season 1. At this point their relative strength is about the same. But if you are then informed the Paladin played in Ruby Life Pools, whereas the Druid played in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, your perception might change. Indeed, you may start thinking the Paladin is a better player, or is playing a better specialization.

That’s the reason why we want to control for dungeon difficulty, especially if we are only evaluating players score in single dungeons, like is being done in Subcreation’s data. If we know how difficult dungeons are, we can normalize across them, putting more value into a score from a more difficult dungoen, and less value for an easier dungeon.

We proceed by importing the data, and making some quick descriptive analysis first. Then we do a rather crude analysis like a kobold would. From there, we grab our goblin goggles and go to work with modern (frequentist) statistical tools on the data, before finally grabbing the Mechagnome rocket of Bayesian statistics.

Summary

Dungeon difficulty varies quite a lot from season to season. Here is a rough breakdown over the Dragonflight seasons:

• There are considerable difficulty differences in Dragonflight Season 1. We have measured that there’s almost 2 key levels in difference between the hardest and easiest dungeons. This is probably an unfortunate mistake; it creates imbalances in loot aquisition, irritates the group finder, and messes with the M+ scoring system.
• For Dragonflight Season 2, the dungeons still vary in difficulty, with “The Underrot” being the easiest dungeon. The spread of dungeons is less pronounced though, and many dungeons are viable as contenders for the easier dungeon.

Dungeon difficulty affects specializations. If a specialization has a distinct advantage in the easier dungeons, it can skew the numbers in favor of those specializations. Likewise, if another specialization are at a disadvantage in the eaiser dungeons, it will negatively skew said spec in the opposite direction.