The ${rm SU}(3)$ pure gauge theory exhibits a first-order thermal deconfinement transition due to spontaneous breaking of its global $Z_3$ center symmetry. When heavy dynamical quarks are added, this symmetry is broken explicitly and the transition weakens with decreasing quark mass until it disappears at a critical point. We compute the critical hopping parameter and the associated pion mass for lattice QCD with $N_f=2$ degenerate standard Wilson fermions on $N_tauin{6,8,10}$ lattices, corresponding to lattice spacings $a=0.12, {rm fm}$, $a=0.09, {rm fm}$, $a=0.07, {rm fm}$, respectively. Significant cut-off effects are observed, with the first-order region growing as the lattice gets finer. While current lattices are still too coarse for a continuum extrapolation, we estimate $m_pi^capprox 4 {rm GeV}$ with a remaining systematic error of $sim 20%$. Our results allow to assess the accuracy of the LO and NLO hopping expanded fermion determinant used in the literature for various purposes. We also provide a detailed investigation of the statistics required for this type of calculation, which is useful for similar investigations of the chiral transition.
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