We had a really big and also slightly disappointing day in the RWF, as Liquid cleaned house, but also ran into a severely undertuned boss along the way. Echo, Method and FatSharkYes battled it out, and there was plenty more to talk about so let’s get started.
The EU guilds still took quite a bit of time to get into Mythic, with Method starting in the afternoon and Echo in the evening, but both guilds (and FatSharkYes) found themselves at the same boss going head-to-head in the end, clearing the 4/9 requirement very quickly indeed. But before the EU guilds could face off (and before Echo even entered Mythic) Liquid woke up, and after their double-sub-1%-wipes in the morning, they just went in there and blasted the boss, claiming the World First within a couple of pulls of starting their raid day.
A mighty brawl erupted at Rashok, the Elder after that, as quite a few guilds faced off, vying for that World 2nd and access to the next boss, Zskarn. It was really neck and neck for a while, with all three guilds being in the lead at one point or another. This was peak RWF, as we had many guilds going for the 5/9, while Liquid was pushing for 6, and the progress just kept on coming from all over the place – a stark contrast to the first few days of the race. Method and Echo were really close, with both guilds getting the boss under 5% and then 2% in parallel at one point but, as you may have expected, Echo pulled ahead of the pack and was the second guild to down Rashok… and then immediately went to bed, following their regular stop time.
Method kept pushing, however, and were getting painfully close, with 2% wipe after 2% wipe, then 1%, and then…
They had even more low % attempts after that, including a 0.8%er, but eventually went to bed without a kill. Hopefully for them they have the same turn of events as Liquid did on the boss, with two very low % wipes followed by a night’s sleep and then a kill. Instant Dollars came in a little later and downed the boss, claiming the World 3rd. Here’s all the guilds that progressed on Rashok in that period, the first true test for the top guilds:
Method’s bed time coincided almost exactly with Liquid’s return from their lunch break, and the guild was ready to push Zskarn, and then some. The fight is really impressive visually, as the lava vortexes fill the room and it gets more and more hectic. What happened next was a little bit out of nowhere, as Liquid had gotten the boss down to 20% in one of their previous pulls, but were getting many attempts around the 40% mark for quite some time… until they just killed the boss. No sub-20, sub10, or sub 1% wipes, just a straight 40 > 0! While the previous bosses all took under 20 pulls for Liquid, Zskarn doubled that, keeping the raid’s upward difficulty trend going, but in the end also fell to the top US guild, 43 tries in:
The guild comms are particularly interesting here and you should give them a listen throughout the pull, as they weren’t necessarily expecting to get that far considering their previous pulls:
What happened next was quite the disappointment, and I’m sure Liquid would agree, as boss number 7 of 9 was a huge Hydra… and a huger bummer. It started normally enough, with a 70% first pull, but then already in the second things were getting weird as the guild had the boss down to 40. And by pull 3? 20%.
20 quickly became 10 by pull 9 and it was becoming increasingly obvious that the boss was not tuned properly for its position in the raid. By pull 11 Liquid were at 5%, and then entered into the 1-3% twilight zone for a while, as the final phase was very tight and extremely chaotic, the entire room covered in lava tornadoes:
In the end it took 17 pulls and around 3 hours to take the seventh boss of a nine boss raid down:
Here’s the raid composition for Liquid’s World First Magmorax Mythic kill:
That was it for Liquid’s night, despite having 3 hours and change left in their raid day, but they decided to go finish off their Mythic+ runs and then maybe pull Echo of Neltharion off-stream a little.
In response to this little Magmorax fiasco, Blizzard seem to have buffed the hell out of Echo of Neltharion and Sarkareth in Mythic, as Wowhead datamined here, upping the damage of some abilities by 2-3x and extending stun durations!
The rest of the night was uneventful, as the EU guilds woke up a little while ago and are heading in right about now, so we’ll see what happens and how fast they can catch up. In closing, here’s Echo’s RogerBrown with some comments on how the new gear upgrading system was interacting with the RWF as well:
This new upgrade system is so great, we get to kill bosses in 5 minutes and then talk about the loot for 30 min ‘but if I get it I can keep 3 crests… then I will craft my embelishment ….’
Should have been released 1-2 months into the patch imo
— George (@RogerbrownWoW) May 12, 2023
Previous entries:
Aberrus Mythic Race to World First Day 3: 4/9, Liquid Enter, Many Guilds Compete
Aberrus Mythic Race to World First Day 2: 3/9, Many New Faces
