Another big day in the race as we saw a World First, a lot of progress on the Vault’s penultimate boss, Echo catching up (to a point) and a fair amount of guilds entering the raid and getting some kills!
Kurog Grimtotem was looking like a very challenging fight as Liquid put pull after pull into him, choosing and setting up which element to bring in when, and it was looking like a proper roadblock for a while there. And then Blizzard’s “it’s Christmas next week” alarm sounded and we got another round of significant nerfs. Liquid managed to get the boss down to 28% before the nerf (which took them 40 pulls) and immediately got that down to 10% after it, with the (many) adds getting their HP lowered by 8%. This didn’t entirely trivialize the fight, however, as Liquid needed another 19 pulls to get the boss down, including this 2% wipe:
They did manage to defeat the Grimtotem and claim the World First in pull 59, moving to 6/8.
The full kill pull:
And the raid composition:
Meanwhile Echo finally entered Mythic during the day and managed to catch up fully, if for a short time. They tore through the first bosses as you’d expect, taking 1 pull for the first two, 5 pulls for Terros, 10 for Sennarth, but then hit a bit of a wall. Despite her nerfed state, Dathea took them quite a while to take down, 59 pulls and most of the afternoon and evening, in fact, as they finally downed her as Liquid was still progressing on Kurog. There was also a crazy moment of synchronicity for the two guilds, as both had their best attempts on their respective bosses at the same time – and both were at 4%, deep into the enrage phase! Echo got the kill soon after, claiming the World 2nd after 59 total pulls.
Echo were on 5/8 with Liquid for about an hour before the US guild’s Kurog kill and took a few shots at the big tauren themselves, getting him down to 45% after 7 pulls before calling it a night. Liquid had the rest of the night to push Broodkeeper Diurna, the penultimate boss of the Vault, and spent a fair amount of time just discussing their potential strategies, as this one is no joke. They managed to get her down to 40.5% so far, but they’re still going right now! They seem to have the mechanics of how to consistently get her that low down, but that’s a lot of HP left…
BDGG also managed to take down their nemesis of the day before, Sennarth, and after only 3 new pulls, making the total 56 and grabbing them the World 3rd. Instant Dollars followed soon after with the World 4th, and while BDGG didn’t choose to touch Dathea after their kill, ID did and got her down to 56% after 43 pulls.
The day also featured quite a few other guilds deciding to move past that 2/8 mark and braving Terros, as FatSharkYes opened the gates, taking 16 pulls to get the big earthy fellow down, followed by Imperative, XD and Poptart Corndog, all of whom are now on 3/8.
We’re getting very close to Raszageth and the race between Liquid and Echo is intensifying, as this was just their first day in the Mythic raid in parallel. It remains to be seen how tough Broodkeeper actually is (and whether Blizzard pull another “oh no, race must end soon” nerf), whether Echo can catch up and just how hard Raszageth the Storm Eater herself will be.
