---
title: 'History of the Race to World First in World of Warcraft'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=c7aV1azYemg'
video_id: 'c7aV1azYemg'
date: 2026-06-18
duration_sec: 0
---

# History of the Race to World First in World of Warcraft

> Source: [History of the Race to World First in World of Warcraft](https://youtube.com/watch?v=c7aV1azYemg)

## Summary

This video chronicles the comprehensive history of the Race to World First (RWF) in World of Warcraft, from its early days as an obscure taboo to its transformation into a massive live-streamed global event. It details the rise of guilds like Method, Limit (later Liquid), and Echo, highlighting key raids, breakthrough strategies, controversies, and the evolution of the competitive scene across multiple expansions.

### Key Points

- **Origins of RWF** [0:49] — Before Legion, world first raiding existed but was taboo to stream. Guilds like Future and Alpha broke the mold by streaming progression, paving the way for public RWF.
- **Method Streams Uldir** [3:13] — In Battle for Azeroth, Method decided to stream their world first attempt from the Red Bull Gaming Sphere, making Uldir the first public RWF event.
- **Fetid Devourer Wall** [4:57] — The fifth boss Fetid Devourer was overtuned and unkillable without nerfs, requiring two nerfs before Method and Limit could down it after 133 attempts.
- **The Extend Incident** [8:56] — Limit chose to extend their lockout on G'huun instead of reclearing, but Blizzard nerfed Vantus Runes, making the boss harder and costing them world first.
- **Method's Jaina Burn Strategy** [17:21] — In Battle of Dazar'alor, Method used an all-out burn strategy with troll racials and double disc priests to kill Jaina Proudmoore world first, defying the reset disadvantage.
- **Limit's Solo Tanking Za'qul** [24:57] — Limit pioneered solo tanking with a Brewmaster monk and a Havoc DH leeching tethers, setting a new standard for future encounters.
- **Limit's First World First (N'Zoth)** [38:19] — Limit killed N'Zoth after a grind from 40% enrage to 2.2% death, securing the first NA world first since Heart of Fear and ending Method's dominance.
- **Echo Formed After Method Scandal** [40:57] — Due to sexual misconduct allegations, the Method raid team split to form Echo, while Method attempted a revival with a weaker roster.
- **Echo's First Win (Sylvanas)** [55:33] — Echo defeated Sylvanas Windrunner after a 45% secret phase reveal, claiming their first world first and proving they were a top contender.
- **Sylvanas Secret Phase** [67:56] — Echo discovered Sylvanas died at 45% HP, not 50%, leading to a memed reality check and forcing guilds to optimize phase 3 damage.
- **Halondrus: The Mechanical Hell** [85:21] — Halondrus became the single most mechanically challenging boss with 358 pulls, involving countless pass-fail bomb mechanics that forced both guilds into split farming.
- **Liquid Goes Dark on Sarkareth** [109:49] — Liquid turned off streams and competition logs during Aberrus to hide strategies, gaining a surprise lead and ultimately winning world first via an early morning pulling session.
- **sneak.lua Scandal** [126:21] — Echo used a script called sneak.lua to automatically press macros for private auras on Fyrakk, which many in the community considered cheating, though no action was taken.
- **Gallywix Anti-Climax** [149:32] — The final boss of Liberation of Undermine, Gallywix, was massively undertuned, dying in under 24 hours for Liquid, leading to widespread criticism of Blizzard's tuning.
- **Hopeful's Ban** [157:03] — Liquid mage Hopeful was banned at the start of Manaforge Omega for account sharing in a previous tier, forcing a 12-hour gap to create a new account.
- **Dimensius and Expansion Sweep** [165:33] — In the final boss of the expansion, Liquid completed an expansion sweep by killing Dimensius first after Echo had multiple sub-1% wipes, securing back-to-back RWF wins.

### Conclusion

The Race to World First has evolved from an obscure inside-raid activity into a globally streamed esport, driven by guild rivalries, innovative strategies, and controversial tuning decisions. The history shows that success depends not only on skill but also on preparation, adaptation, and sometimes a bit of luck.

## Transcript

Let's [ __ ] go. WE
GO.
COME ON.
COME ON.
>> [screaming]
>> LET'S [ __ ] GO. LIQUID
HAS DONE IT. THIS IS THE RACE TO world
first, an event that garners hundreds of
thousands of concurrent viewers each and
every single season to watch top guilds
in the world progress the brand new raid
and the newest patch inside of World of
Warcraft. But it always wasn't like this
though. The analysts, outside raid
leaders, theory crafters, add-on
developers, casters, organizations with
their private chefs, those are all brand
new additions. Race to world first, it's
always been about the glory of downing
the boss before competition. Weeks and
days of 16 hours a day of non-stop
gameplay.
How do we get here though? Well, this is
the history of the race to world first.
And so for this video, we're going to be
talking about the race to world first
event, not just all of world first
rating inside of World of Warcraft. And
with that being the case, we need to
start by talking about how the race to
world first even got started. So to get
context about how it was formed, we have
to go back to the pre-race to world
first era. And as long as there have
been raid bosses, there has been world
first rating. From vanilla all the way
up through Legion, there was world first
rating, but there wasn't really eyes on
the event itself. And if anything, it
was more like taboo to even stream raid
progression. Very infrequently
did you even have guilds within the top
50 streaming raid progression at all. Uh
this kind of ended up changing very late
in the Legion through two guilds. The
first one, they were Future. After the
world second guild Serenity blew up in
Nighthold, basically a lot of the
players from this guild ended up forming
Future. Some of the most well-known
players that you probably know are like
Nagura Sloot Naowh Wolfdisco Kush
DoctorJ, Viklund, just to kind of name a
few.
And the plan for Future, it was fairly
simple. They wanted to stream
progression on an evening raid schedule
and I kind of enjoy it for what it was.
And for a lot of high-end content
creators, this was, you know, a pretty
good opportunity for them because they
had previously been locked away into
higher ranking guilds, but now they have
an opportunity to stream. And this
guild, they ended up having a pretty
good performance in Tomb of Sargeras, uh
getting world 12th Fallen Avatar. They
ended up taking a break on KJ, letting
their rank slide a little bit, and ToS
they ended up getting world 23rd. So,
this guild, they're very good. And like
I said earlier, no guild within like
really the top 50 had actually been
streaming progression up until this
point. The other guild that ended up
kind of breaking away from this mold
ended up being the world fourth guild,
Alpha. So, they really busted down the
barriers for top-end raiding, showing
the secret phase on Argus where he gets
really big and red and glows, and this
kind of changed everybody's perspective
for what high-end raiding could be.
And historically, you know, raiding had
a lot of old-school norms holding it
back. Similar to the no streaming thing,
there was norms where guilds wouldn't
release the first kill video until five
guilds had killed a boss. I also
remember when the term video guild
actually became popular in Legion where
basically if you progged a boss with
ample amounts of world first videos out,
you were a video guild. Needless to say,
there were a lot of norms in 2017 and
prior to that, that kind of made the
world first scene what it was, but at
the same time it set us up for the race
to world first era.
So, Battle for Azeroth. We move into
Battle for Azeroth and we have some
pretty exciting news. The defending race
world first champions, Method, have
decided that they are going to stream
progression during Battle for Azeroth's
first raid, Uldir. They ended up having
three players that would be live from
the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London,
UK. Those players were Sco, Ginji, and
Nakkiles. This would kind of be the
first look under the hood of world first
raiding and what it really could be. And
taking kind of a look out at the
landscape of what the world first scene
really looks like, it looked kind of
bleak going into Battle for Azeroth.
Paragon, they had died. Exorsus had
taken a pretty significant step back in
terms of their roster post-Antorus.
Serenity, like I said earlier, they were
dead. And so, it kind of looked like it
was just ripe for the taking for Method
that they were going to have pretty much
no competition. What's changed? Like
what made it possible now all these
years later? Um I guess you could start
with saying the first one is that in
general there isn't as much competition
in the rating scene as there was in the
past. That's obviously a big one.
And Method at this time they were also
going pretty hardcore for the expansion
launch. They were requiring three
characters minimum for splits, but a lot
of players were maintaining a fourth alt
for splits. This is probably funny if
you're kind of looking at how players
are running 15 characters in 2026, but
having that many characters leveled and
geared in 2018 is a big deal. Another
thing that's kind of important to know
about the Race World First event is that
Method is going to be streaming without
comms. This is going to end up changing
in the future, but for the first few
tiers that we're going to be talking
about the Race World First, just know
that no comms is going to be the norm.
Voice communications not the, you know,
fully shown. Like obviously we're going
to be chatting in private what we should
do cuz okay, you can still watch the
stream, you can still see the weak
auras but
you don't understand fully everything. I
think that's from that.
>> [laughter]
>> So with all of that set up, the
self-named World First Race begins.
It's about as expected. Method looks
dominant and there is no other
competition realistically.
And that's kind of a lie on multiple
fronts.
First off,
the fifth boss of the instance, Fetid
Devourer, ends up being literally
unkillable. Corpuscular adds on this
fight just had way too much HP. Perfect
play wouldn't really allow you to have
enough DPS to kill them in time. It was
very clearly overtuned and it was not
particularly close. And the second lie
is that there wasn't really competition.
And at this time a relatively unknown
North American guild named Limit had
decided that they wanted to go a little
bit harder in Uldir than they had in the
past. They'd been US First for a while
now, but they were raiding evenings
only.
However, it looks like their schedule
has changed and they're doing a full day
raid schedule. But at the same time
they're notably not streaming. Nobody
really knows a bunch about Limit at this
time, nor is it known how long they're
going to be able to keep up with Method.
But, both of the guilds were deadlocked
onto Fetid Devourer, and with two nerfs
to Fetid Devourer, both Method and Limit
are finally able to down the dog after
133 attempts and move further on into
Uldir.
Then, Method and Limit are trading blows
where Method downs Zul with a world
first nice five sub rogue strategy.
Limit ends up killing the penultimate
boss Mythrax world first on a Saturday
with some really cheeky intermission
strategies where they force spawn the
ads on a rock, proving that not
streaming actually has a lot of
advantages. And that ends up being the
strategy that Method ends up adopting
and killing the boss later with.
However, while Limit did end up killing
Mythrax first, that is just the
penultimate fight. And [music]
at this time, the first to the moon
first to G'huun meme is born. Uh NA
basically at this point had not had a
world first in boss kill since the heart
of fear in Mists of Pandaria, and at the
same time, a lot is kind of on the line
for Method here. This was the first time
streaming world first progression. If
Method ends up losing, there is a high
degree of likelihood that we just kind
of end up going back into the shadows
where world first progression may never
be streamed again. It kind of depends on
what ends up happening with sponsors and
how successful this event ends up being.
So, yeah, Sunday comes and goes, and we
finally get two more guilds killing
Mythrax with Exorsus and Method.
Vanquisher's Runes also at this time had
been used basically for all the race
world first contending So,
Vanquisher's Runes at this point were
also criminally overpowered. They were
5% versatility, aka 5% increased damage
dealt and 2 and 1/2% damage reductions.
Most of these Vanquisher's were not
saved for G'huun, instead being opted to
use on the wall, which was Fetid
Devourer all those days earlier.
But, realistically, with the Mythrax
kills, it's only kind of a two-horse
race between Method and Limit. And we're
kind of in the dark for how leading
guild Limit is doing on G'huun. However,
we do see what Method is up to. Four
warlocks were basically required on that
fight, and progression is steady.
Unfortunately though for Method, it
seems like there may be a snag in the
plans.
G'huun
is hard. And Method, their best attempt
pre-reset is 4%, and this is the first
time this ends up happening in a realms
notably have their resets lockout 16
hours prior to European realms, meaning
that something crazy can happen where
Limit can enter the raid on Tuesday,
get their Vantus Runes unlocked, get
their
chests that you have in BfA, and get the
additional gear from the previous
re-clear. And we saw that Method earlier
had a 4% wipe. This means that honestly
if Method is able to actually use their
Vantus Runes on G'huun, then G'huun
would have already previously died. And
if the North American guild is at the
exact same point,
you know, this is like a near guaranteed
world first for the upstart guild.
And this is a situation where if Limit
is anywhere near where Method are, this
should be a near guaranteed world first
in their first tier of trying to push
for this. That is until the extend
incident.
All right, so explain to me the extend
incident all the way back in the day on
G'huun. What exactly happened? So
basically, they got G'huun like really
really low. Yeah, it was extremely close
on G'huun, and they just knew if we
extend or not extend this, if we kill
this we get world first, first time in
NA in forever. The lockout comes up,
they can either re-clear, they know
Method is really close, or they can do a
little risky
extending of the lockout, which means
they don't have to re-clear. In that
time, Blizzard made some changes to the
Vantus Runes. They made changes to that
so you didn't get as much versatility,
and basically made the fight just like
a percent 2% harder and that was kind of
the difference between killing it right
after the extension or or not. So as you
can probably tell
Method ends up winning on stream. They
down G'huun after 285 attempts. They end
up having north of 150,000 viewers
watching them kill G'huun and the pilot
for the Race to World First is
green-lit, springboarding us forward
into the future.
>> [screaming]
[screaming]
>> IN OTHER GOOD NEWS, LIMIT'S GM AT THE
TIME, MAX announces on Twitter that
they're going to be going whole hog for
the next year meaning that there was
going to be good competition for
back-to-back-to-back
World First Race champions, Method.
And now moving into the next season,
everything is bigger and better with the
Race to World First. The competition's
more fierce with both Limit and Method
committed to going hard versus one
another. Method is also dedicating to
putting on a larger-scale production
with bigger sponsors. They're also going
to have more casters, more players at
the venue, and even renamed the event to
the Race to World First. Which honestly,
this has a better sound than the World
First Race, admittedly. On top of that,
there's even me casting the event.
Anyway, talking about the landscape of
the race a little bit post G'huun.
Limit's still going to be raiding off
stream but dedicated to pushing for
World First once more. We also kind of
know that they already had the promise
and potential to win given all the drama
surrounding G'huun.
But Method has the experience and that
has to play into the thought process
between, you know, both of the guilds.
World First Race rating, it kind of
comes down to who can kill the final
boss as fast as possible and it's always
about doing everything you can,
asterisk, that's not an exploit, double
asterisk, sometimes it's an exploit,
we'll talk about that later. This is
also very involved prior to the release
of Battle of Dazar'alor as both guilds
were going harder on farm and split
characters. Additionally, there was also
a cheeky piece of heroic gear that could
be available to NA Alliance from a quest
through the gated content of war mode
PvP. And obviously Limit at the time
took this opportunity to throw down
$1,500 worth of gold for one piece of
Heroic tier on 51 characters.
And European fans at the time, they were
pretty salty. Uh they stated that this
is just another
disadvantage on top of the 16 hours that
EU has, and this would never allow them
to win or something.
Basically, it was just free gear after
all, and that's where the picture of the
fame guild this game is bad comes from.
So, this is kind of all the setup that
we need for pre-BOD. Once Battle of
Dazar'alor comes out, it's all pretty
clear that the raid is quite a bit
easier than Uldir was with no mid-tier
walls at all. Method ends up waking up,
and Limit, they're already on the
penultimate fight in Stormwall Blockade.
Everybody kind of assumed that
Mekkatorque and Ra'wani were going to be
very challenging due to lore
implications that kind of came out prior
to this raid. At the same time, Ra'wani
ended up having a cheese strat for the
intermission, and Mekkatorque, well,
Mekkatorque was actually hard. It ended
up having a pretty insane amount of heal
checks and pass-fail mechanics due to
bombs and LOS. Method ended up stinking
it up on Mekkatorque, and ended up
taking 8 hours for an encounter that
only took Limit at the time three. In
modern race to world first,
this would likely be race-losing,
especially for a fairly trivial boss.
It's all good though, as we have a
pretty hard penultimate encounter,
right?
Well, that was also wrong. Stormwall
Blockade was actually quite a bit easier
than Mythrax from the previous season,
and by the time Method had reached
Stormwall Blockade, Limit had already
killed it.
>> [screaming]
>> And so now, guilds end up making it onto
the end boss, Jaina Proudmoore. And with
Limit raiding in the dark, reaching the
boss far earlier, they should have a
very significant advantage.
There was kind of one weird thing that
caught guilds off guard with Jaina
Proudmoore though. So, previously, you
could actually use one singular immunity
ice block in order to be able to remove
her chilling touch debuff. Uh this is
like the main source of raw damage
throughout the entirety of the
encounter. This meant that mages were
going to be incredibly powerful on Jaina
and worth gearing throughout your mythic
progression. However, uh during mythic
week, Blizzard ended up slamming down a
hotfix to how how ice block worked on
that chilling touch debuff on Jaina,
meaning that all the gear that both
Method and Limit that ended up giving to
mages, it was completely irrelevant.
Mages aren't like the worst DPS in the
game this season, but you would probably
not have prioritized them for year. And
both Limit and Method are not happy
about this. They have made pretty
drastic uh comp allocations due to this.
At same time, it's pretty even playing
field and Jaina, well, she was really
hard. She also ended up having a quirk
where bloodlusting her would end up
causing her to ice block herself during
the duration of bloodlust, meaning that
there's only one time that you can
actually lust on her during the fight.
Her intermissions, those were brutal and
they actually took days of real time to
actually progress as the technical
nuance of getting to these intermissions
and dealing with these intermissions was
pretty high. And so, all of this for
Jaina Proudmoore is to say hard boss.
Uh for progression purposes, Stormwall
Blockade died like Wednesday for Limit,
Thursday for Method, and we continue to
push on into the reset. Monday, it rolls
around and Jaina Proudmoore, she's still
alive. Method 300 pulls in, Limit's
unknown as to like where they are, how
deep into the fight they are, and
publicly Method is actually trying to
progress the end of the fight. The
damage check, it looks absolutely
insane. You're supposed to kill off this
stupid water ele and have this
controlled burn at the end of the fight
where players are getting ice blocked at
the same time. The amount of raid-wide
damage is is insane. So, you're on a
timer for when you need the boss to
actually die.
Uh we were faced with quite a big
dilemma.
Do we kill the water elemental or do we
leave it up?
And do we get people ice blocked
intentionally to break them out, or do
we just nuke the boss?
These were probably the biggest choices
we had to make, and ultimately what
enabled us to get world first. I think
it was making the right choice.
We decided to leave the water early up
and just have people that were debuffed
with heart of frost move out of the
raid, and we decided to just burn the
boss rather than doing some sort of
control strategy with the ice blocks.
So, the best defense for something like
this is obviously just kill the boss as
fast as possible. And the burn strategy,
like you heard Chris Potter talking
about there, is the one that Method
ended up opting for.
And at this point in time, it's still
relatively unknown if the burn strategy
is even possible. So, yeah, Monday
morning rolls around, and all of Method
shows up to the raid, and they're troll.
And I'm not talking about their players,
I'm talking about the race. They're
trolls. And this, it was due to the
pretty unknown racial ability, the
voodoo shuffle, which reads that it
reduces the duration of all movement
impairing effects by 20%. And this ended
up working on chilling touch. So,
chilling touch, it had a slow component
to it, and by having the voodoo shuffle,
it allows you to drop stacks of the dot
two ticks earlier. At this moment in
time, this is just classic Method. Come
up with a new innovative strategy, and
have some of the absolute weirdest tech
ever.
So, with this marquee troll strategy,
and the boss is already really low,
Method doesn't kill the boss. And
unfortunately, Monday comes and goes,
and there's still no kill for Method.
What is their best attempt at this point
though? It's 7%. Boss notably dies a
little bit higher than normal bosses. It
dies at 5.5%, which it doesn't really
die, but not really relevant.
And the damage check, it just kind of
seems like it's not there for Method.
And we're running into the same problem
that we had last year. Limit, they have
a few more hours in the reset before the
re-clear happens, and Limit inevitably
wins off the back of 16-hour head start.
And this is what I would say,
except for the fact that Method woke up
Tuesday morning and had an absolutely
miraculous kill of Jaina Proudmoore.
>> [screaming]
>> LET'S [ __ ] GO.
Method like we saw earlier,
they basically all land on a burn
strategy with things like battle
restoration shaman and double disc
priest and committed to try to just
doing as much damage as possible to beat
all of the mechanics on the fight. This
is an incredibly risky strategy that
could have lost them the race. However,
this was the only way of actually
killing the boss on week one and in
hindsight, Limit, well, they opted
actually for a safer strategy that
required more HPS and less DPS.
And Method, they are dominant and
continue to prove why they're just so
damn good. And that's basically the end
of Bot. There was a surprising lack of
drama post here. Limit seemed more
committed now more than ever before to
continue to push forward in the race
world first scene. And Method, well,
they've won four races in a row, so
they're really cementing like a legacy
level performance here, proving that
they are the best.
How were the vibes coming out of Battle
of Dazar'alor? Were things like really
down in the dumps after two tiers of
like, you know, not streaming, like like
fully committing to getting trying to
get race to world first? Like how were
the vibes after that tier? Yeah, that
was a rough. That was very rough. Um
the the one good thing was it kind of
was like, "Here's a bunch of things we
know we can improve on."
Cuz like same with the extension, it was
like, "Okay, never do that again." Like
at least you know like
how to do better, but
yeah, Battle of Dazar'alor, there was
some math on Jaina with what to do, how
many healers to use, where to use the
lust and stuff like that. So at least
like we had something to work off of,
but I remember it being pretty rough cuz
I mean, every one of these tiers, it's
like, "This is the one. We're going to
do it." And then we fell flat and I
mean, Eternal Palace
I think was much worse on the vibes, but
maybe that was just uh
I don't know. That At least for me,
Eternal Palace is the worst one, but
Battle of Dazar'alor was pretty rough
cuz like we thought we had it. We were
so far ahead and then
you know, you just hit that I mean, the
wall literally on Jaina.
BOD wraps up and there's a mini raid
that contains two bosses. It's not
especially relevant to the story of the
Race to World First as it's one, not an
end-tier boss, and two, Limit and Method
both end up not throwing too many
attempts at it in any real manner. Limit
does end up doing two days of
progression. Method did a few days worth
of prog in total. This raid ends up
overlapping with the MDI and many
players from both Limit and Method are
competing in said MDI. And so, the end
boss of Crucible of Storms, it's Uu'nat.
This ends up actually being one of the
hardest end bosses of all time. It ends
up eclipsing 700 attempts prior to the
first kill. And most of the time I
probably would have ignored this, but
there's some context that's actually
relevant with this raid that sets us up
for future tiers. Method ends up killing
the boss world second.
Limit ends up killing it like world
25th, so weeks later.
And this may lead you to wonder, who
killed this boss world first? And so,
that is where the next contender,
Pieces, shows up. Where Pieces, this is
a brand new guild that is brand new to
the Race to World First scene. They're
previously an evening raiding team that
normally raids 5 to 6 hours a night, 7
days a week. They've decided to actually
participate in the Race to World First
in both Crucible of Storms and moving on
into the future. And downing Uu'nat,
this is actually a really powerful first
statement for them. Taking 730 attempts
for an end boss, that's no small feat.
That's largely regarded as one of the
hardest end bosses of all time. I think
that goes down in history as the the
most attempts that have ever been taken
on a boss. Unfortunately for them,
Crucible of Storms not really seen as a
real world first due to it not being the
end boss of a tier. However, everybody's
kind of on alert that Pieces could be a
real contender moving into Azshara's
Eternal Palace, making this a
three-horse race.
Now, here comes the drama. It's not
really relevant to the story of the Race
to World First,
but it's still pretty fun drama. So,
previously Method had actually been
doing their Race to World First events
in the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London,
UK. Red Bull was giving them the venue,
running the production for the event as
what I would describe as a production
partner for Method. So, Red Bull, they
decide that they want the Race World
First product larger and under one
umbrella. This makes sense. Basically,
what the pitch was is that they want to
migrate the Method stream onto the Red
Bull Gaming stream, pick up additional
guilds to make the World First race a
cumulative product. Basically, putting
all of the guilds that would participate
in the Race World First on one channel.
They also wanted to get all guilds
involved in one singular location. This
sounds really cool, right? However,
Method, they don't really want this.
They continue to want ownership to their
product. This is just standard business
stuff that normally people don't hear
about. So, Red Bull and Method, they're
parting ways. Not really dramatic,
right? This is until Sco just slammed
down a TwitLonger, airs all of this out,
tries to pin the blame solely on Red
Bull, he ends up stating that a
third-party corporation tried to steal
away the community event from the
community. The irony is not lost here.
And then he announced that Pieces and
Limit are going to be streaming the Race
World First at the Red Bull Gaming
Sphere. For obvious reasons, leaking
your competition's event and, you know,
claiming that the corporate an evil
corporation's trying to take your event
from you is a little bit weird.
Unfortunately, Red Bull ends up never
working in WoW again after Eternal
Palace for obvious reasons, and nobody's
really happy about this entire
situation.
But good news, there's a three-horse
race.
We're also blessed by some equally as
exciting news. We're going to be able to
see both Pieces and Limit raid on
broadcast for the first time at the Red
Bull Gaming Sphere. And Method, well,
they found a new venue in Krefeld,
Germany, so everybody's got a broadcast.
All right, drama's out of the way. We
set the stage. Now, Azshara's Eternal
Palace. This raid comes out, and the
raid kind of goes pretty much as
expected. That is, however, until Limit
encounters the buzzsaw that is probably
the most difficult fourth boss in
history, Lady Ashvane. So, she ended up
requiring a stupid amount of healing if
the strategy of the boss was done the
intended way. Guilds eventually opted to
three tank this boss and more or less
ease the most difficult part of the
fight and turning it into mostly a
damage check instead of a staunch heal
check. And now, Limit, they end up
killing it, but it's not until their
second day. And Method, they on the
other hand end up downing Lady Ashvane
world first in 35 attempts after seeing
Limit swap to a three tanking strategy
late into their first day. And this this
is actually the earliest I've ever
actually seen a European guild get a
world first. And something that I end up
mentioning earlier, and that's common
trope that we're going to have to keep
watching out for into the future, is
that if Method ever ends up killing a
boss ahead of Limit, they win the race
to world first outright. Uh is that
going to stay true on something like a
fourth boss with pretty minimal stakes?
I guess we're going to have to see. Now,
with these minimal stakes here, Limit,
they come back and they end up downing
the fifth boss of the raid, Orgozoa,
world first. Method fires back, gets
Queen's Court world first. And this kind
of sets us up where the penultimate
encounter of the raid here, Zul, is
standing in front of both Method and
Limit.
As Zul, this is kind of an encounter
that relies on a couple individuals to
do 90% of the work on the fight. Two
sets of three players end up going down
into a phase called the Delirium Realm.
They need to kill adds in time. There's
also an upstairs phase, and they have to
kill an add in time as well.
Uh
there's core people doing very specific
jobs and a majority of the work on this
fight. And the tank is probably the
other most important person there, where
tentacles are constantly slamming down
alongside, you know, over the course of
the entire room, where, you know, it's
cutting off and denying space rather
quickly. So, the tank positioning the
boss effectively is a huge deal.
And so, having a tank who could quickly
assess and determine where the safe
spots in the room are was integral to
being able to progress this encounter at
all.
And so, Limit, they actually end up
going on to pioneer this strategy that
every guild ends up using for the rest
of time on this fight, where they relied
on one tanking this encounter with a
Brewmaster monk. And so, there's a tank
mechanic on this fight that involves the
two tanks
being tethered together.
And apparently, if you just didn't have
a second tank, it would go on the
nearest DPS. And Limit discovered that
they could just put that on their Havoc
Demon Hunter. Their Havoc Demon Hunter
can leech through all the damage that
they're taking from this tether. This
allows the DPS checks on this fight that
were so hard earlier with the Delirium
Realm and the upstairs phase to be met a
lot easier than otherwise anticipated.
And Limit, honestly, they were just far
more consistent on their Delirium
Realms. Method is struggling a ton
getting their players to be able to kill
the ads downstairs without dying.
So, we had never actually seen this
before. What was it like to take a step
out of the raid and have been one
tanking Za'qul and like, you know, you
pivoting to that outside the raid leader
role? Ben, I haven't been asked a
question like this in such a long time.
Yeah, it was really interesting. I I
mean, the way we were doing it is like
back then the your raid leader had to be
in the raid. It was the only thing you'd
ever thought of.
So, we actually didn't have Ben in
initially. Like when we started solo
tanking, I think it was like an hour or
two before dinner and I was doing it
while raid leading and I'm like,
"This is doable. This is fine.
It's just like I could just like walk
over to your computer,
put on your headset, and just like raid
lead basically from your mic." And
that's what we did. It wasn't like
high-tech at all. I literally he
couldn't even hear his weak auras going
off or anything. Like I was just or
comms. He was He had no headset on. I
was just raid leading from behind his
computer basically for an hour until we
figured out a more elegant solution than
that.
And so, Limit is so far ahead going into
Queen Azshara, but we see Limit ahead a
lot of the time cuz they're,
you know, an NA guild. But, how far
ahead were they going into Queen
Azshara?
26 hours. Uh so, a 26-hour head start
going into the final boss, this is
should be race winning. Uh, under almost
all circumstances, this should be race
winning. Until we saw what Queen Azshara
was all about. And Queen Azshara, she
had an intermission phase where you
needed to kill three of Queen Azshara's
minions, uh, these ads
frankly just had way too much HP. The
phase was not completable in time, and
for Limit they were just waiting.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
pulls deep into the boss,
there is no end in sight. This boss is
actually just not killable. And whenever
something like this happens, this is
actually perfect for Method, who they
have a 26-hour disadvantage, but the
hundreds of pulls on a boss that's not
killable for Limit, Method's able to
completely catch back up. And both of
them are walled at the same phase two
intermission. So the guilds, they're
kind of sitting there, they're in limbo,
and then it happens. The boss is
hotfixed.
Arcane Vulnerability, which is the main
damage source on the entire encounter
gets nerfed, but the most notable nerf
to the encounter was the intermission
that had this impossible possible DPS
check, it went from a 2-minute enrage to
a 3-minute enrage. And that meant the
DPS check was now doable from something
that was previously impossible. And
Method and Limit, they end up busting
through the P2 wall that had walled
everybody off fairly quickly. After
these hotfixes happened, Method ended up
playing a better composition throughout
the entirety of progression, and they
win the race world first again off of
the back of many people would say pretty
poorly timed nerfs.
The compositional differences basically
Method was two healing with double disc
priest. They ended up having Maras on a
moonkin. He was slamming off heals
whenever that was required. And this
meant that any other DPS check that was
associated with the fight was completely
irrelevant. And so coming out of the
raid, a lot of the story lines
surrounding this raid were about a
couple of things. One, Method goated.
Downing Queen Azshara in 350 pulls to
Limit's 550 pulls is downright
impressive. Every tier it feels like
Method and Limit are very close, but
somehow Method ends up pulling a rabbit
out of the hat any point at any time
it's necessary. And the other storyline,
it involves Limit. Limit really kind of
did get robbed here.
Um they get robbed for a chance at the
Race to World First due to an impossible
boss and shitty hotfix timings. If these
hotfix timings weren't preferred for
Method, you know, we'd probably have a
different story where it would be Limit
killing the boss ahead and Method's, you
know, complaining about hotfix timings
at the same time. Limit did get screwed
here. There's also a narrative at this
time about Limit choking, and this is a
hard narrative to ignore since they were
ahead on three bosses going into the
final boss, and then they lose. And the
common kind of sentiment is maybe Method
winning these Race to World First is
something that's going to be inevitable.
So, storyline-wise, we're going into the
final raid of Battle for Azeroth.
Method, they're basically looking for a
sweep. Limit had been on the cusp of
winning World First, but Method has just
figured it out every single time
whenever they needed to. In the final
tier of the expansion, this was Method's
to lose. Limit also at the time has been
making some pretty big moves. They end
up inking a deal with Complexity,
turning them into Complexity Limit. They
also end up committing to streaming
pretty much every POV with almost all of
their players in person at the GameStop
Performance Center, home of Complexity.
At the same time, they also end up
picking up two outside the raid
{quotation marks} helpers in the form of
WeakAuras guru Relo and DBM's Mystical
OS. And there's also a brand new system
for this patch, corruption. Corruption
basically made characters very, very
overpowered. And corruption could
actually be as high as 20% of your
damage, and for the Race to World First
guilds, uh Echoing Void, I remember that
one was super broken. Corruption in
general was just turbo OP. I remember at
the time as well, Naggie ended up
putting on a piece of cloth pants,
breaking his uh armor mastery bonus in
order to be able to wear more
corruption. Absolutely ridiculous. But,
how does the corruption equate to the
Race to World First? Well, the drops on
corruption pieces, they were RNG,
kind of. Uh BOEs could actually at the
time contain corruption, meaning you had
race world first guilds shelling out
hundreds of millions of gold in order to
outfit their entire team with
corruption. And this is where the gold
arms race really begins, where there was
basically no amount of gold that could
be offered up to these guilds that they
would decline if it meant that they had
an advantage in the race world first.
You would spend 100 million gold if you
had to. We are gone from the days where
swapping factions is taboo. We are
emptying the bank.
And so now moving on to the raid itself,
Ny'alotha is a 12-boss instance, and
this is one of the largest raids in
history.
And everybody's kind of expecting a
multi-week affair as you do with 12-boss
instances. In the race, it kicks off
fairly standard. First few bosses go
down easily.
There's only a couple of bosses that end
up being race world first relevant.
First is the seventh boss of the raid,
Ra-den. Ra-den was fairly controversial
by the community, but not really to race
world first guilds. Uh he basically had
a fairly quick respawn rate, which
allowed guilds to do some I would
describe them as creative strategies
with things like havoc demon hunters
metamorphosis and destro warlocks
grimoire of supremacy. Basically,
players were stacking buffs over and
over again because Ra-den ended up
respawning every 20 seconds. Uh this
allowed things like havoc demon hunter
to have 20 more seconds of demon form up
time. Warlocks ended up having 160%
damage amp during their first infernals
for destruction.
Blizzard goes through and eventually
fixes this on the reset by having Ra-den
respawn 20 seconds later.
But it was an integral strategy in both
Limit and Method killing Ra-den, where
some people called for the banning of
the guilds for this.
It's kind of laughable, really. Uh you
know, these weren't really that big of
exploits in the grand scheme of things.
Both guilds ended up taking down Ra-den
in around 80 pulls. And you know, this
is a fairly tough encounter. Even with
it being a pretty tough encounter, both
Method and Limit roughly kill it at the
same time during their second day of
raiding, meaning that NA still had the
16-hour advantage.
The only other pretty early race world
first relevant boss was the eighth boss
in Drest'agath. This is an encounter
where you just kill ads over and over
again. Limit ends up making it to
Drest'agath first. They end up killing
the boss in 15 pulls. AKA this took them
2 hours. Method on the other hand ended
up taking 50 attempts. And when asked
about this post race, Max from Limit
basically said, "I don't know, we just
yolo'd the boss." On a boss that Method
literally lost 6 hours to on the
encounter compared to Limit.
And Limit yolo'd the boss. Impressive.
Something else has kind of been
happening during this race.
The long time raid leader for Limit,
Maximum, he has not been in the race
almost at all. He was in on Drest'agath
as a tank. Otherwise, he's been sitting.
Originally, the statement from the crew
was that now was tanking in order to
just get gear as a tank. And tank gear
at this point in time is much less
relevant than DPS gear, especially with
how personal loot worked. However, at
some point everybody just kind of
realized Max was going to be 21st
manning the entire raid. And this this
was Limit's trump card. This is a huge
deal for the future of the race world
first as bringing your raid leader
outside the raid is a massive advantage.
Most teams hadn't done this up until
this point as it's just frankly less
fun. At the same time, all the race
world first teams are really pushing the
envelope here and getting world first is
the only thing that matters.
And yeah, I don't know. We we did it
there
on Zul'jin cool and then obviously in
Ny'alotha we went into the tier. We
actually had tried to do it previously.
We recruited a bunch of tanks. We tried
to have Trill tank. We recruited two
trial tanks all with the intention of
let me do this outside the raid thing.
Uh but every time the tanking situation
just didn't work and the feedback from
the guild was like, "This isn't going
like we're going to be worse if we do
this." basically cuz the tanking options
weren't great. Uh and then we when we
recruited now it just made sense and it
was uh
it was like, "Okay, we finally have
someone where this makes sense. Let's
send it, and then Ny'alotha obviously
was super OP, and then everyone's doing
it now.
So, we're chugging along. Limited Method
both make it to the penultimate
encounter in Carapace of N'Zoth. Limit
has quietly just been playing straight
up better than Method. There's no Lady
Ashvane hiccups or anything like that.
And then something unexpected happens.
Limit kills the Carapace of N'Zoth 24
hours ahead of Method. This is the exact
same situation that happened with Za'qul
in the previous tier. And I said in the
previous section, but a 24-hour head
start going into the final boss should
be unloseable. Again, should be
unloseable. However, will Method be able
to pull magic out of the hat twice?
That's kind of the question that's
looming on everybody's mind. Method
seems to be able to make magic out of
absolutely nothing time and time again.
And Method were the undeniable favorites
coming into this tier.
N'Zoth, well, he's hard. He's not Queen
Azshara pre-nerf hard, but he's really
tough. There's also a secret phase,
allegedly. And the core of the N'Zoth
encounter revolves around the sanity
mechanic, where if you get too low on
sanity, you get mind controlled. That's
roughly the core of the fight. There are
adds that try to drain your sanity, and
you have an extra action button that
lets you replenish your sanity, but
there's a finite amount of uses of this,
and that's what happens, and then we get
to the secret phase.
How did you feel about the secret phase
on N'Zoth? Obviously, the casters were
kind of cooking up, you know, maybe
Magni and Mother shoot this cannon, and
the boss starts taking bonus damage. As
somebody who was playing it, you guys
get to the boss or get to the secret
phase, the boss is 70% HP, and you come
out of the secret phase, and it's
I guess kind of nothing. What What were
kind of the vibes like for you guys with
that one?
Well, part of it was like, is there I
mean, I think everybody in Telepasta was
like, is there actually more? And coming
out of Eternal Palace with like
I know we had such a lead there, and
then fumbled it. It was like, "Okay,
the boss has to have something else."
Like, "What is the thing that's going to
hard wall us? Are we hard walled right
now and they're going to need to nerf
the boss? Are we losing progress?" It's
kind of like this weird
like, "There's got to be more to this
boss.
What is going to catch us off guard
that's going to let the other guild like
kind of leapfrog ahead?" But, luckily,
the boss is weird and kind of just
incremental progress on a down. But,
yeah, that secret phase was
kind of meh, but
I mean, when you win, it doesn't matter.
You [laughter] know what I mean? Yeah.
>> Like, it was like, "Okay, cool. Good
boss. Good raid.
GG." I mean, this is my first race
casting it. So, I was really excited to
see like what was going to happen.
Uh I I mean, I think it was the same as
like heroic. You went down and they were
just like the orbs you had to soak and
you just killed the dude and went
upstairs and lasted and the boss died
eventually, right? Like, it wasn't a
whole lot to it, I don't think. Yeah.
So, that's heroic, right?
>> The speculation was that it was like
supposed to be like a secret mythic
phase and it was just
a whole lot of nothing.
So, the community, they think the secret
phase is going to be epic, but it's kind
of a nothing burger. Limit makes it
their first, but the boss is high, like
75% high. And as you heard from Kalamazi
and Cams, we didn't even think the boss
was remotely killable or we thought that
the boss had to have a damage amp or
something. But, as it turns out, the
plan was to just kind of kill the boss
from that health threshold. First time
the enrage was seen by Limit, how
healthy was the boss though on the
enrage? 40%. Uh this is going to be
basically a massive grind. There were
murmurs about the boss potentially
needing HP key nerf, but if you're a
race world first guild, you can't really
focus on these things. You really only
try to control what you can control.
Unfortunately, for the casters, there
was no secret Magni damage amp phase,
even though we were cooking on one hard.
And so then, Limit got to work
chipping away at the HP on the boss.
They hit the enrage at 35%. Then they
hit their enrage at 25%. 15%. Then
everybody begins to recognize that the
boss is actually killable.
Then Limit does the impossible. They
have a 5% wipe. The boss, it dies at
2.2%. So, Limit, they've taken the boss
from an in-rage at 40% HP where nobody
thought the boss was killable, all the
way down to 5%. And then they really do
the impossible. They actually kill the
boss, bringing home the first NA world
first since Heart of Fear.
>> [screaming]
[screaming]
[screaming]
>> And you may notice that I've only talked
about N'Zoth from the lens of Limit. And
that might ask
where's Method?
Well, Method, they've actually had a
horrible tier in Ny'alotha. They end up
not killing N'Zoth until 2 days after
Limit, which is a completely
uncharacteristic fumble by this squad.
And they had some pretty bad play by
them in total. And as a guild that was
trying to sweep the entire expansion,
this was pretty surprising from Method.
Uh and it was really surprising to see
Limit look so dominant, where the tier,
it wasn't even particularly close.
And now we end BFA and things feel
great. The race has started out of
nowhere. We have two regional
contenders, competition spheres, and the
landscape of the Race to World First is
growing ever more competitive. This is a
very, very bright future for the Race to
World First.
Okay. So, now I got to talk about a part
of the video that honestly, I didn't
really want to talk about too much.
During the period between Battle for
Azeroth and Shadowlands, a troubling
situation had emerged outside of the
realm of the Race to World First. But,
at the same time, it pretty much
deserves acknowledgement due to how it
changes the story.
Uh there were serious allegations of
sexual misconduct that were levied
against a key figure in Method. Evidence
of this indicated that the
organization's leadership
and their ownership, uh not necessarily
the rating team itself, had been aware
of multiple prior complaints, but they
failed to intervene. The person in
question had faced a Twitch ban multiple
months prior due to similar concerns.
This ends up highlighting a pattern that
was not addressed by upper management
from Method. In fact, it was actually
shown that Method was actually trying to
help this person instead of the victims.
And now the members of the Method raid
team, they felt like Method leadership
had acted inappropriately this time, and
they decided to break off from Method in
order to form their own guild. That is
how Echo is formed, and you know,
fortunately enough, we don't really ever
have to discuss Method again.
With all that turmoil in the landscape
of the Race to World First scene,
everybody is kind of preparing for a
Limit sweep of the Shadowlands
expansion.
That's kind of what's to be expected,
right? The fragments of Method ended up
forming Echo,
and
they look like they're probably going to
be behind in Castle Nathria progression.
Uh Method ends up trying to revive as a
new guild, but they're nowhere near as
good on a roster level as the previous
Method. Maybe Pieces can kind of step up
similar to where they were in BFA.
BDG is an NA guild, and you know,
they're starting to compete for the Race
to World First. Maybe NA can have the
top two spots. Also, at the same time,
the COVID-19 pandemic is also in a full
swing at this moment in time, and people
are still in lockdown at their homes.
This creates this weird dynamic where
the Race to World First broadcast and
productions are all going to be remote.
Maybe this ends up being a new era for
the productions themselves. Everything
was kind of in turmoil, but one thing
was pretty consistent. Everybody
expected Limit to be super dominant. And
another thing is certain here. This is
actually the largest amount of
contenders that we will ever have for
the Race to World First at the same
time.
Everybody really was expecting a
dominant Limit victory. Again, talking
about the 21st manning of the raid. At
this point moving forward, every guild's
going to be 21st manning. They're all
going to have outside raid leading and
add-on help. Uh that stuff, you know,
from one tier to the next, those were
some of the biggest pickups and biggest
changes on a structural level. Moving
into the raid, the raid kicks off and we
have more or less the same stuff
happening. The first few bosses in
Shriekwing, Huntsman Altimor, Hungering
Destroyer, these first couple bosses,
they're essentially one-shots. Uh then
we end up at the decision point of Lady
Inerva Darkvein, Artificer's Imax, and
Sun King's Salvation.
You know, most of guilds end up going to
Sun King's Salvation. At the same time,
these are not especially hard bosses.
So, all these bosses, they end up dying
day one sub 45 cumulative pulls. This is
all very typical for the Race to World
First. Kill as many bosses as you can on
day one of Mythic. So, Limit that kills
Imax, like I said earlier, but it was
pretty late in the day. They decide to
pull a boss, Council of Blood, a couple
times off stream to see timings and
mechanics and to test a couple of
different kill orders of bosses.
But, the boss
died after 13 attempts
off stream. Now, the kill of this fight
is locally recorded. But, this is
definitely the first time where we ever
experience a Race to World First guild,
quote unquote, going dark. Uh this
unfortunately would not be the last
where going dark is essentially where a
team decides that is the most
definitely in a massive advantage
to pull a boss off stream. Where
otherwise you would be getting a massive
disadvantage if you were to pull it on
stream. This tends to be reserved for
end bosses or, you you know, you reach a
boss at the very end of your raid day,
you pull it two times, you turn your
stream off, and you go to bed. On top of
that as well, it could potentially be to
not give up any strategies, weak auras,
add-ons, or similar things. And it's
something that ends up becoming
increasingly common as of late as we'll
see being discussed in future tiers, as
well.
But, the reason it was notable here was
first off, this was basically the first
time this ends up ever happening, and
the viewers were not happy. Uh some
would even claim that it was a fake race
world first due to this. This ends up
being pretty funny considering where we
are now, but uh you know, I remember
viewers at the time as well calling for
sponsors to drop the organization and
whatnot. But, viewers and being
clueless, name a more iconic duo. But,
yeah, Limit kind of weirdly killed
Council of Blood off stream, which is
which is really, really strange. And the
European contenders, they actually end
up starting their raid day, and it's
pretty apparent that Echo, this is a
very real team. Method and Pieces look
pretty much like they'll be battling
with BDG for third through fifth. We're
back to a situation where it's a
two-horse race.
And we get to the meat of the race,
Sludgefist, Stone Legion Generals, and
Sire Denathrius. All three very brutal
encounters. Sludgefist, this is widely
regarded as the best patchwork fight of
all time with incredible damage amps,
insane healing checks, and just an
absolute tightest DPS check of a modern
race world first boss. Race world first
kills, they end up killing this boss 10
seconds post enrage, and the boss like
crashing into the wall, all the rubble
is crumbling down. Uh Limit ends up
killing it first around 15 hours ahead
of Echo. However, what happens next ends
up halting progression.
Tell me about your favorite boss of all
time, Stone Legion Generals, and what
made that boss just so epic for the race
world first?
For the race world first? Okay, in the
race world first,
Stone Legion Generals?
Uh it was really cool because there were
so much exciting different things that
could happen. Like, the boss's abilities
could cast in a a different order, and
that would really change how you had to
play the fight. That was actually kind
of cool for the race world first because
it required a degree of adaptation. But,
it also some combinations were a lot
harder than others. There were also a
lot of exciting I don't want to call
them bugs, but uh little mini features
that that fight had. Uh for instance,
you had this part of the fight where
General Draven was fighting these
enemies up in the air, and he would hit
them down to like 30% and then they
would drop down and you would try and
kill them and you try and kill them all
around the same time, but he could miss
them and they would just stay up in the
air for way longer. And he could also
crit them and they would drop with like
way less health. So, that was really
fun.
Uh the intermission also, you would have
a void walker tank some of the tank hits
that General Call would do when she was
down because it was too brutal for your
tank to actually live that. So, you
would have but you'd have to be far
enough away that the void walker was the
only target because she would target
like any player within 30 yards over the
void walker in melee. So, you would
bring the boss all the way over to
Narnia and then you would like double
leap away and the void walker would
still be there. And you're warlock, so
your warlock would get to do this really
fun gameplay where they would be
re-summoning their void walker and then
they would be doing a curse rotation as
well. So, of every 60 seconds, like 10
of their globals would be summoning pets
and casting curses, which they really
enjoyed.
Um
yeah, and then also you would have your
priest. You'd use all your your resses.
I guess you'd also use ankh totem on
your priest. Mass dispelling and just
getting themselves killed was this
debuff that was like a it was a
moderately dangerous dot for 30 seconds.
And then when you dispelled it, both the
person who got dispelled and the person
doing the dispelling got a nasty dot for
6 seconds, but you could just MD it and
then just the priest would die and you'd
basically delete all of the extra dots
and
then you'd have them angel form and take
the angel form res thing or the
ankh totem. So, that was pretty fun as
well. And you'd also just get to go
healing immune every time you put the
any of the gargoyles below 30% health.
And the best part was phase one was like
one general plus gargoyles. Yeah. Phase
two was the other general plus
gargoyles. And then phase three was just
both generals, but that was way easier
than either phase one or phase two
because gargoyles were more difficult to
deal with than either of the actual
bosses. So once you got to phase three,
you got there a couple of times and the
bosses died which was really fun and
satisfying to kill. Worst fight of all
time?
Yeah. Yeah, not not close.
But both guilds they end up being stuck
on Stone Legion Generals for multiple
days, whole wiping bugs, DPS checks,
spell queuing, and just needing to work
through every possible overlap. That
proved to be a very difficult challenge.
As historically, this is where Method
won many of their race to world firsts.
Whenever the going got tough and
progression started to halt for the NA
contenders.
On a boss that feels impossible to kill,
this is where that 16-hour advantage
completely gets erased and you can just
begin to out strat the other team.
And kind of an insane comp stack was
required for this boss where you ended
up having like three to four Night Fae
hunters in order to be able to kill the
ads during the intermission. And this is
widely regarded as one of the worst
bosses of all time due to difficulty
bugs and comp stacking that was
required.
And both Echo and Limit end up killing
this boss a day before their reset. So
Limit ends up killing it on Monday, Echo
ends up killing it on Tuesday.
Oh. They go even and we have to get one
more eruption soak. One more eruption
>> go. Let's go.
COME ON.
COME ON.
YEAH. [screaming]
LIMIT ENDS UP PULLING SIRE DENATHRIUS
FOR A FEW HOURS ON stream and goes to do
some chores and pieces out until the
Tuesday reset.
Echo ends up killing Stone Legion
Generals a bit earlier in their raid
day.
Um so a bit faster than it took Limit,
but it still wasn't enough to be fully
catched up on that 16-hour disadvantage.
They had end up cutting their 15-hour
Sludgefist split down to 9 hours, but
we're onto the final boss. This is where
you can actually end up making up the
most time. I also forgot to mention this
at the time,
but this is like the 21st of December.
People are less than thrilled about the
idea of the Race to World First
overlapping with Christmas.
However, this is the most important week
of the year for a lot of these
competitors. Christmas, it can wait.
What was it like, the decision to go
dark on Sire Denathrius? You know, not
many guilds had ever raided off stream
before. Obviously,
uh Limit at the time ended up killing
Council of Blood off stream, which was a
little bit controversial. But then you
guys pushed the envelope and decided to
not stream the first beginning
progression of Sire Denathrius. What was
that decision like? I don't remember
100% if what I'm about to say is
accurate. It was already like a little
bit later in the day uh when we killed
Stone Legion. The idea was that, hey,
you know, because we're going to
go to bed, we don't want to give too
much information out.
Um
so
especially because phase one generally
was pretty easy to get through, right?
Like one way or another, you could make
it to phase two. Try to get some info
cook overnight for phase two, but try
not to give that out. It was a little
bit uncharted territory, I must say as
well. It's been so long, so I don't
remember the exact thought process, but
it was more like maybe it was a reaction
to the Council of Blood situation. Uh I
would say that's when we started
thinking a lot about, you know, like we
have like a real competitor because
in Ny'alotha, we got a little bit
stomped back when, you know, Method was
a thing, right? Um Mhm. But uh yeah,
coming out of a loss also
recently forming Echo, it was a lot of
stuff going on in our mind, so
I don't know, It was It was not like
super like it was not super planned, I
would say. It was more like, "Oh, great.
We got Stone Legion General."
Then we go to Sire Denathrius and we
were like,
"Okay, we don't want to give too much to
you know, give away too much of our
advantage here." Yeah, that was it. Now,
having said that, okay. [laughter]
We failed at doing this. I don't know if
you remember because we said, "Okay,
guys, we'll just play phase one and I if
we manage to reach phase two, like as
we're falling down, just turn off the
stream, like turn it to black or
something, right?" And we thought
actually it's going to be a little bit
funny as well, right? Like for the
audience, like little did we know
people would be up in arms about it. But
>> Yeah.
Yeah, but but one of our the players
did not manage this. So, we actually
ended up streaming phase two.
It really is a pretty significant
competitive disadvantage to show some
stuff on stream, especially that
relating towards the end boss.
At the same time, fans are also rightly
upset. This is just the natural order of
how the Race to World First works. Good
news, Denathrius doesn't die off stream.
Reset happens, both guilds re-clear, no
G'huun incidents. However, when Limit
Echo make it back to Denathrius,
something interesting happens.
Echo turns back on competition mode on
Warcraft Logs, and they had previously
had a 25.9% wipe prior to the reset.
Earlier I had stated that Limit's best
pull was around 50%. So, that going dark
sentiment, it was actually heavily
rewarded. Immediately rewarded. On top
of all of this as well, there's also a
secret Mythic phase that pretty much
everyone had known about. Echo's P2
Denathrius strategy ends up being a bit
better than where Limit's are. Every
other guild in the world ends up copying
the Echo P2 strategy, and this is set up
in a way where Echo should win in Race
to World First. As a brand new
organization coming on the race to world
first scene, winning would be
unbelievable. So, I say
should win.
Unfortunately, though, Echo actually
ends up having an insanely bad time on
their Mythic re-clear, while Limit was,
I would say, fairly effortless. This
includes a one-shot of Stone Legion
Generals by Limit.
Um this is a huge deal as the additional
reset worth of gear for both sides is
going to be make or break on an end boss
like Sire Denathrius that we see Echo
already has it at sub 50%. And so, the
time that it ends up taking these guilds
to re-clear, this ends up being around 2
and 1/2 hours for Limit and over six for
Echo. Not a great feeling. And now,
Echo, they were still doing heroic
splits, and Limit is pulling Sire
Denathrius with that 16-hour head start
with the a few additional hours that
they gained from being able to do their
re-clear faster. They've already
finished all of their chores, and Echo
believes that they want a little bit
more gear for the end of Denathrius.
However, Limit catapults themselves into
the lead and makes it into P3 on
Denathrius, basically just busting down
that wall, and
they forced Echo, I guess is the best
way of describing it, to call splits
quits early prior to where they wanted
to,
and then immediately start pulling
Denathrius. This put us in a great
situation where both Limit and Echo are
simultaneously pulling a sub 30% end
boss and progging the final phase
together.
And even though Echo was really far
ahead coming out of the reset, the
superior play from Limit on the end
points of Denathrius, this proved to be
instrumental, ends up allowing them to
take down Denathrius world first, giving
in a a back-to-back champion, and
Christmas
Christmas was saved.
>> [screaming]
>> Narratively, Echo looked really good.
Even though everybody kind of expected
Limit to sweep, Echo actually proved
that they didn't need Method. Method
needed them. And with a few
improvements,
everybody kind of expected that we could
see Echo winning Race to World First
again soon.
At the same time, you know, Limit does
feel like they're a little bit ahead. If
they continue to put their foot on the
gas, it's going to be tough for Echo to
be able to come back from this.
In the wake of Limit's victory over
Echo, and Echo honestly having a pretty
positive showing in Castle Nathria, the
next raid that we have in front of us is
the Sanctum of Domination. With this as
well, we also have the COVID-19
pandemic. It's still raging at this
point. And with most of the world
sitting inside, the number of eyes on
the Race to World First has never been
higher. However, unlike Castle Nathria,
this raid is not viewed as favorably as
Nathria was. Uh this was due to a couple
reasons, but probably the most relevant
one towards the Race to World First is
the Shards of Domination system, where
this was supposed to work like tier
sets,
and they were RNG drops from the raid.
The shards themselves, they were gems
that you put on gear that you obtained
from the raid. But the shards had only a
chance to drop once per boss, regardless
of difficulty, or from the world boss
outside the raid. And the gear that you
would end up putting it on, obviously,
there was only specific slots that you
could put these Shards of Domination in.
And for the Race to World First, this is
an even bigger emphasis on doing normal
and heroic splits. And the difference in
splits, it was pretty massive, where
between the two main contenders, and
Limit and Echo, Echo ends up doing a lot
more splits, and they have a one item
level advantage throughout the entirety
of the Sanctum of Domination Race to
World First. So, that is some context
just from the Race to World First
perspective. You know, this tier wasn't
viewed super fondly for other reasons,
but that's probably the most Race to
World First relevant thing that you need
to know.
Raid opens. Limit and BDGG start their
days doing chores like Korthia farming,
Torghast, splits. You you kind of get
the the gist of like what's going to be
going on. You got to do a bunch of
chores. Uh first guild inside the raid
is Imperative. They had partnered with
esports.org Sonics before this race.
Also hoping to join in on competing for
the race to world first. We're probably
never going to mention them again, but
you know, they ended up securing world
first on three bosses and then before
Limit wakes up, gets world second on the
nine overtaking Imperative. Then they
get the world first on Remnant of
Ner'zhul, the fourth boss in the raid.
BDGG was looking pretty promising on the
first day taking down the first three
bosses at quick pace and even spending
less pulls on the second boss Eye of the
Jailer than Limit did. However, after
killing the third boss, BDGG decided to
go to Soul Render instead of towards
Remnant of Ner'zhul. And for BDGG, you
know, this was pretty costly. Limit goes
for Remnant of Ner'zhul, they kill it in
a couple hours like I said before moving
on to Soul Render. But Soul Render, that
was a pretty massive step up in
difficulty. BDGG eventually has to
backtrack, goes and kills Remnant of
Ner'zhul, then comes back to Soul Render
Dormazain and you know, everybody's kind
of locked on that boss.
Limit takes some time and after some
20-odd pulls, Soul Render was getting as
low as 20%. They actually decide to
pause their mythic progress figuring
that this boss could not be killed
without snagging some gear upgrades and
instead they go and opt to heroic and
normal splits. Yes, I said normal
splits. Again, like like we were talking
about earlier with Shards of Domination,
splits were very important in this tier
in order to be able to get the unique
armor pieces and your Domination's
Shards and those Domination Shard slots.
And with a few hours of splits, Blizzard
decides that Soul Render Dormazain may
be a little bit too hard. Uh they end up
nerfing it down a little bit and greatly
reducing the damage it dealt on mythic
difficulty. And after hearing this,
Limit walks back into raid, downs Soul
Render Dormazain in three pulls, they
get the world first on that and then
they're on to the fifth boss of the
raid. Limit immediately turn off their
streams for after Soul Render and it's
the end of their raid day. They don't
want to reveal any strategies for what's
inevitably going to be the first
roadblock of the raid, Pain Smith
Raznal. Echo on the other hand, after EU
reset happens, they wake up, they do a
little bit of chores, they step foot in
the raid as early as possible. It still
does take them a solid eight hours to
catch up to limit at the five out of 10
bosses mark due to the chores that you
have to do with things like Torghast and
splits and whatever else that you have
to do to be able to participate in the
race world first. The other
participating European guilds in Method
and Pieces, they only end up making it
to four out of 10 on their first day
while American guilds BDGG and Instant
Dollars joined in at the five out of 10
mark with only an hour left in the day.
So, we're actually seeing competition
that is relatively close more so than
ever before realistically, but at the
same time it still feels like there's a
two-horse race only between both Limit
and Echo. And after catching up to Limit
and reaching the sixth boss, the first
real wall of the race presented itself
in
Uh basically, this is an all-time very
cool boss fight. If you talk to a bunch
of people from this era, they might cite
this as one of their favorite bosses of
all time. Everyone is standing on a
platform suspended in the air over a
pool of lava. It's held up by four
chains, one in each corner. The boss had
seen some tuning changes during the day
before guilds even made it there, but
none of those hotfixes end up really
affecting the race. So, what's the deal
with this boss? Why is it an all-time
wall? Well, as the second day comes to a
close, the current standings see Echo
with a slight lead with less pulls as
they go to sleep on Pain Smith reaching
38.5% on that boss after only 48 pulls.
Now, the important part about Pain Smith
is at the 40% mark since that is around
the time that you were making it to the
second intermission. During the
intermission, several spike balls come
hurtling towards you where you have to
find gaps in between them while trying
to dodge fire on the ground. In some of
these sets, the spike balls don't even
have a gap to go through. So, players
need to find increasingly clever
solutions to be able to clear this gap.
Things like Venthyr Door of Shadows,
Night Fae Soulshape, you know, Demon
Hunters could glide and backflip, Goblin
Rocket Jump. I remember most of Limit's
guild at this time as well. They ended
up changing Goblin for this boss to be
able to jump off the platform and then
rocket jump back onto it. Just an
absolutely terrible strategy if you were
a poor Disc Priest on this fight. And
the very last set of spike balls, the
entire raid takes a Demonic Gateway to
be able to clear it to drop a cluster of
adds that need to be killed within 12
seconds, else it is a wipe. All this is
just to say it's a bunch of mumbo jumbo
to say the fight's really hard. And
realistically as well, Painmsith, it is
a boss that is phased based on
percentages and the need for immediate
damage in each intermission. This
naturally leads players towards wanting
to stop DPS on the boss during the end
of each phase in order for him to be
able to phase at the correct timer based
on both healing and offensive cooldowns.
For offensive CDs, this was usually
dictated around the balance druid
cooldowns as what those were some of the
best in the game. However, there's also
a difference between guilds here where
Echo, they end up having their moonkins
playing the night fae covenant where
Limit end up going for the venthyr
covenant, meaning that the moonkin CDs
for Echo, you know, they can do whatever
they want. And balance druid, well, it
was definitely the stack in this raid
where Echo ended up playing four of them
and Limit ended up playing three of
them. It was just OP.
And so to recap, at the end of the
second day, both the highest guilds were
pretty deep into progression on
Painmsith where Limit, they end up
ending their day around the 20% marker.
So the third day, that starts for Echo
and they have the knowledge from Limit's
struggles on Painmsith the day before
and everyone is thinking that Echo are
going to jump into heroic splits to eke
out some more power to help them kill
the boss. However, this immediately did
not happen. Echo just opts to do a few
normal splits instead for some socketed
gear before going straight back into
mythic.
Now this turns out to be a really good
decision as they would end up taking
some pretty advantageous turns during
their day.
And even though it ends up taking almost
their entire day, Echo eventually kills
Painmsith securing their first world
first for the race and moving into the
lead.
And fresh off a kill on Painmsith, Echo
decides to go to Guardian of the First
Ones. Now this boss could was expected
to be an all-time banger like
Sludgefist. Especially after seeing
Painmsith Raznal, I remember the
casters, we thought this was going to be
Sludgefist 2. It's in a later part of
the raid, it's a single target boss with
a relatively simple mechanics check. You
know, if this fight has some tight
tuning, it could end up to be another
wall.
Unfortunately, well, that didn't happen.
Guardian of the First Ones is more like
a loot piñata than a real boss.
In 24 pulls and over 2 and 1/2 hours,
that's all it took for Echo to be able
to down this fight.
And Echo, they're starting to take a
pretty commanding lead. Meanwhile, over
on NA, Limit, they start their day by
diving into heroic splits, and they
don't finish their splits until after
Echo had gone to bed. Once Limit has
finished their splits, they walk in to
Painsmith with a considerable two and a
half item level lead over Echo. And with
this two and a half item level lead, it
was time for them to make some pretty
real strides in the race. At least that
was the plan. But in reality, it took
Limit 6 hours and 40 additional pulls to
finally kill Painsmith Raznal with that
two and a half item level advantage.
Something that's probably not supposed
to happen.
Now, at least after the horror of
Painsmith, Limit could go to Guardian of
the First Ones, which dies in around 17
pulls in less than 2 hours, and that
kind of ends their third raid day. Both
guilds are seven out of 10 on the
leaderboards. Echo has made some really
big strides, bigger so than Limit, but
Limit has pulled the eighth boss a few
times with Fate Scribe Roh-Kalo being
pulled off stream prior to going to bed.
Day four, fairly underwhelming. Limit,
you know, they're sporting a
considerable item level lead over Echo.
Echo wakes up, and they head immediately
into heroic splits, which they've been
putting off since the week started.
And they continue with their heroic
splits for the entire day. Limit,
however, they don't really have any more
heroic splits. They put their gear into
drive, and they keep going. Fate Scribe,
this is a fight that actually not as
challenging as you would expect. And
Limit gets him down to around 20% a few
hours into their day.
And Fate Scribe, it's not really a hard
wall. Limit ends up getting him down in
a pull count of 53 attempts after just a
couple of hours because pull count
doesn't always reflect exactly how hard
a fight is. Fate Scribe was was
relatively easy.
And Echo, they're still doing heroic
splits. So, the fourth day of the race
was fairly uneventful, but it's
seemingly now all about Limit as they
approach the final two bosses of the
raid. This is the part of the race where
the viewers are at the edge of their
seats waiting for any singular point of
progression to be able to happen.
So, you know, we got the penultimate, we
got the final boss. The penultimate boss
in this raid is Kel'Thuzad, the very
same Lich Lord that players defeated all
those years prior in Naxxramas. I don't
really know how How many times are we
going to kill this guy? Like, do we
really have to kill this guy again?
Well, in this fight, we actually have to
kill him some more times, four to be
exact. Yes, the answer is four. We are
killing him four more times. And you
have to repeat the same phase of killing
him over and over and over again and
sending players downstairs to kill his
remnant. And after securing a Fate
Scribe kill and getting into the lead,
Limit had felt good about the time that
they had left on their day, and they
actually started making pretty steady
progress onto KT, reaching about 44% on
the boss over 64 pulls during their day.
The fight does have some pretty annoying
adds with some enrages, and there's also
some nasty overlaps of copies and the
tanks spawning around the room that has
to be interrupted fairly quickly,
otherwise it can, you know, you can
start to cause a problem. But, you know,
the phase is pretty much rinse and
repeat, which race world first guilds
tend to be pretty good at dealing with.
So, queue day five.
The race is getting exciting now. Echo
swiftly kills off Fate Scribe Roh-Kalo
at the beginning of their day, and
they're heading onto KT.
And judging by the day before, it seemed
like we were going to see a lot of KT
progression in the coming time. However,
Echo, they had different plans. They
cooked up a strategy overnight using a
cheat death trinket that dropped from
Fate Scribe itself, and this fight had a
I would describe it as UDK interaction
where the copies of the tank add
whenever they would spawn. And this is
the messiest part of the fight. If the
tank dies, the adds will also disappear.
And since they were now all wearing
cheat death trinkets, this meant that
you could essentially skip the mechanic.
And so, you would put the cheat death
trinket on things like your havoc Demon
Hunter, your Death Knights, your tanks,
just anybody, and they would taunt the
boss and kind of cheese these tank adds.
According to players, this bug was also
reported during PTR testing, but it
never ended up getting fixed. Now, this
is a little bit unfortunate for viewers
of the race, but it was really huge for
Echo as this allowed them to spring into
the lead and killing Kel'thuzad the
penultimate fight in a measly 22 pulls.
Echo, they're also completely done with
their splits at this time and they have
amassed a considerable lead over Limit
and Aversion level all things considered
that they have a one item level lead
like we cited earlier.
And Limit, well, they end up adopting
the Echo strat for this boss shortly
after Echo killed it and a little over
an hour after Echo ends up killing it,
Limit Limit ends up downing the boss as
well.
And realistically judging by the pull
counts so far in this raid between the
two guilds and their average item level,
it's pretty clear at this point that
Echo is the favorite to win this race.
But, we have a final boss ahead of us
and I mean we've seen some stuff so far
during the history of the Race to World
First and here comes the fun part, the
final boss, Sylvanas Windrunner.
And both guilds they reach it about at
the same time and they start pulling
almost immediately and it doesn't really
take very long for the guilds to reach
phase two of Sylvanas Windrunner where
you end up walking up this gauntlet to
Oribos where Sylvanas' final stand
really takes place. Now, on this fight
there have actually been mutterings in
the community about a secret mythic
phase for a while. Um the Sylvanas fight
on other difficulties usually ended at
50% HP. Granted, the rumors of a secret
mythic phase, they kind of happen every
single tier, but there was weird data
mining around this time as well where
Sylvanas wouldn't trigger or she would
trigger something at 45% HP. So, players
were kind of wondering like what was
this 45% trigger that was actually
happening.
But, the guilds they actually kind of
expected that this was going to be the
actual kill percent for the fight as
opposed to something like a completely
secret mythic phase.
And the guilds they can't really focus
on this at the same time. All they can
really do is control what you can
control and they just need to continue
to reach the end point of this fight and
that's the most important thing on these
guilds' minds. So, day five it
concludes. KT's gone down for both
guilds and uh both of the guilds are
reaching pretty deep into Sylvanas.
We've actually seen Limit reach into the
final phase, phase three, finishing at
70% while Echo, unfortunately, they had
not seen the final phase yet, but the
moment that they woke up, this wouldn't
actually last very long as, you know,
day six starts and Echo immediately
starts gaming, reaching a 65% marker
before Limit is even awake. And this is
easily the best part of the race for
viewers as Limit and Echo are
simultaneously pulling the end boss at
the exact same time, racing side by
side. This is the part of the race where
pretty much everybody tunes in. You got
the multi-monitor setup where you're
watching both guilds, main monitor
content type of beat. And it's truly a
special experience if you're a fan of
the race for world first. Now, for
Limit, they did seem to struggle,
however, and they were, you know, kind
of stuck more or less at 63% as their
best pull while Echo, they were edging
ever so closely to that 50% marker,
wiping on 50.6% twice. And players, you
know, the boss died at 50% on heroic.
And for a lot of people, it was still up
in the air as to whether or not Sylvanas
would die at 50% or not or if you had to
push the boss further. But the answer to
that was something that Echo would
eventually have to find out, much to
their own despair.
This moment of Echo players seeing the
health tick below 50% and the boss not
dying and you know, you see the life
kind of drain out of their face as they
realize that they got to get the boss 5%
lower to 45% spawned a ton of memes and,
you know, you watch their faces get hit
by the reality check of a lifetime was
easily the best moment from this entire
race.
Roger Brown's face is just unbeatable.
>> [laughter]
>> Like it's such a good clip.
So, this is where the news breaks and as
the news about the boss dying at 45%
breaks to Limit, they actually
immediately decide to do something a
little bit bold. They go back into
heroic splits to try to secure the very
last amount of gear and the
last amount of upgrades that were
possible. There weren't really that many
that could be obtained, but there were
some.
But Limit kind of recognizes at this
point as well that gear is going to be a
main limiting factor since Echo already
had more gear than them and that fight
was really hard.
Echo on the other hand, they actually
take some time off to reassess and they
don't pull the boss again for a while
since they got to figure out where we're
getting 5% boss HP from.
Uh it's a huge deal for them. They're
just like sitting there trying to math
out like what is the cleanest possible
phase three where we're able to chunk
away as much HP from the boss.
And most and while most of the damage
optimization should happen in P3, Echo
ends up devising a new strategy for
phase two.
A little bit of a cheese strategy with
now on a blood death knight
solo tanking one of the sides while
everybody else kills the other side of
the platform in order to be able to save
cool downs for parts of the phase where
you can actually damage Sylvanas
Windrunner. This would end up making her
significantly lower entering phase
three.
Blizzard was not happy about this and
they immediately hot fixed that. You you
should not be doing that. Although Echo
probably would have killed it with the
strategy rather quickly if they didn't.
It was a bit more of a flash in the pan
than anything weird and the hot fix
actually does not end up slowing them
down tremendously and Echo continues to
dominate on their day ending at a best
pull of 46.5%
into phase three. They're 1.5% away from
the finish line and Echo call it a day
on pull 155. Now for Echo,
you just got to be terrified. Uh
calling an end of day whenever you were
this close could be scary as there's no
guarantee that you're not going to wake
up and already have lost. And with Echo
I've gone to sleep, you know, this is
pretty much make or break for Limit. For
Limit it really seems like Echo can just
like wake up and kill the boss anytime
they want. Uh you know, 1 and 1/2%
that's just some additional crits and
that boss ends up going down. Limit did
however actually move into the lead
eventually and once they did it was pull
after pull after pull where you see
between 175 and 185 attempts, they were
making it all the way into deep P3 as
often as possible and their best
attempt, what is it at? 45.4%.
However, at this point in time Limit,
they were really feeling the time crunch
as they decided to not end their raid
day yet and they just had to keep on
pulling the boss.
And Limit, they ended up staying up so
late in fact that Echo had time to wake
up and continue to pull the boss.
Talking about the decision to stay up
really late and push for a kill on
Sylvanas, what kind of factors in to the
decision to stay up super late,
especially whenever you're up against
the reset versus, you know, just going
to bed and, you know, waking up,
collecting all the loot, and then being
able to kill the boss with the extra
reset worth of gear? So, Sylvanas was
interesting. I I think just in general
across all bosses, it's basically never
worth it to stay up 1 minute late to
kill any boss that isn't the end boss.
And I that includes like second-to-last
bosses. Uh recently you've seen guilds
like stay up to kill those for like
better vaults and stuff. I actually
think that is still hurting you in the
long run unless you kill it like right
away, which that's like slippery slope,
right? Oh, we'll kill it soon. And an
hour goes by, what do you do now, right?
Kind of thing. Uh but on Sylvanas,
yeah, I mean, we basically knew they
were going to kill it really early into
their next raid. That whole raid it we'd
made a few mistakes up until that point
and we were kind of uh especially
Kel'Thuzad where we felt like kind of
behind and we knew we could kill it. Uh
so, we were like, okay, let's stay up
and do it because we feel like if we go
to bed, they're they're definitely going
to kill it. And part of it is
we could have gone to bed, woke up as
soon as the reset was there. Maybe
there's no maintenance. I remember there
was some maintenance. And then we could
maybe sneak in a kill, open our vaults.
And I think I I think literally even
after we lost, we one-shotted on the
reset if I remember correctly.
>> Mhm. Um so, like that could have been
our way to winning. But I think that
wouldn't have been okay
to a lot of us.
Like like if if we won the race to world
first by getting a reset of gear and
one-shotting it
and then they killed it in their first
reset, we would have literally killed it
first, but it wouldn't have felt like we
won the race to world first. So, I think
there was a lot of pushing because we
knew they were definitely going to kill
it in the reset.
So,
we felt like we had to do the same and
we basically pulled the boss until we
could [music] no longer do it. Uh we had
one wipe where I feel like it validated
our reason to stay up. We we had our
healer DC
uh for the entire last phase when we had
a 1% lower push than we ever have and
this is coming off of
like five or six back-to-back [music]
seeing to the end of the fights. We were
as locked in as humanly possible
and that DC
would have been the kill. I'm so sure in
my mind that it would have it would have
died on that pull. And then after it
didn't, I feel like the entire guild
felt like
their entire sails were deflated, you
know? Like that it just it took all the
wind out of us. We were basically
running on fumes at that point but
knowing that all of us kind of no one we
didn't this wasn't vocalized but I feel
like all of us felt like
like that would if we're going to kill
this boss, that was going to be the
kill. And then we like shambled wiped
for like an hour and a half, called it
and then woke up and lost. Right, so.
That was
They're not able to get over the finish
line in time. You know, with the reset
looming, if Echo is unable to kill the
boss on reset one, it would have been
catastrophic. But unfortunately enough
for them, Echo's got that fresh sleep
buff. They've already seen everything
that Limit has been doing up until this
point and Echo are able to take down
Sylvanas, claiming that world first for
them. And this is the first world first
for Echo after their split off from
Method. You know, people didn't really
know what we were going to expect from
this brand new bootstrap up and starting
org. But they are not only serious
contenders, they are the real deal and
you know, they should be favorites to
win the race world first or best case
scenario, they should at least be 50/50
and shown a lot of respect.
So, normally we don't talk about
downtime between tiers but the 9.1
downtime between Sanctum of Domination
and Sepulcher of the First Ones, this is
a pretty turbulent time for Blizzard.
They were still dealing with the after
effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and try
to get people back in the office. Uh
they also had internal lawsuits going on
at this time. Um and without going too
much into details, the downtime between
SOD and Sepulcher of the First Ones was
an unprecedented 8 months, making it
possibly one of the longest durations of
a mid-expansion raid tier we've ever
seen.
Now, I wouldn't talk about this time if
we didn't have something specific to say
about the Race to World First. The
biggest shakeup actually comes from the
team Limit. They originally inked a deal
with Complexity to become Complexity
Limit all the way back in 2019, and
they've been competing for a while.
Their contract was set to expire, and
they were actively looking for new
representation. There was, you know,
some bait tweets about who their new
team was going to be, and they end up
finally announcing that they were going
to be partnering with Team Liquid,
marking the end of the Limit branding
era as they were going to be simply
renaming to Liquid. Now, we are just
going to simply refer to them as Liquid
for the rest of the video. God, I've
been trying so hard to not call them
Liquid the entire time. I hope I didn't
mess it up at some point, but they were
Limit, and now they're Liquid.
In comes the Sepulcher of the First
Ones, and you better strap in as viewer,
because this is the longest and most
difficult raid that we are ever going to
see, and this raid was absolutely
bananas. So, during PTR testing for this
tier, we saw some differences between
this and previous tiers, mostly related
towards where PTR testing ended up
working. So, the testing for Sepulcher,
it stopped after Anduin, which was the
eighth boss of the raid of an 11-boss
raid tier. This meant that the last
three bosses would release without any
public testing. The seventh boss,
Halondrus, this was a boss that was
completely different during raid testing
than what ended up being shipped for the
raid. We'll see some context for that in
a little bit later as to how that turned
out.
The raid tier also eventually came with
the inclusion of double legendaries and
the full return of tier sets, meaning
there was a large chunk of power that
would be backloaded uh that your
character would get throughout this
raid. The top five guilds were already
aware of this during the PTR cycle. The
double-edged theory is could release on
week five of the patch, meaning the
third week of Mythic. We've never seen a
raid make it to that long. You know,
it's basically been since Hellfire
Citadel. So, you know, pre-race world
first era, not really a thing that
people were planning for, but it could
happen. And, you know, maybe if the raid
is tuned around it, could be a natural
way to nerf the raid. So, with Liquid
newly signed and the guild riding the
high of new representation, a new venue
to play from for the race world first,
the raiders are ready for the final tier
of Shadowlands. Will this new-found
passion be enough to be able to defeat
the reigning champions from Europe?
So, the raid releases, and for heroic
week, you could only kill bosses up to
and including Anduin. So, what did this
mean for tier sets? As a lot of power
were contained in these tier sets, this
meant that the world first guilds were
doing a ton of splits, trying to get as
much tier as humanly possible off of all
of the bosses that it was available
from. Unfortunately, though, two
important pieces of tier were locked
behind Lords of Dread and Rygelon,
meaning that you could not guarantee the
four-piece. The only thing that you
could guarantee, even with the most
splits possible, were three pieces of
tier. And this created the situation
where we saw full days of splits, and,
you know, these full days of splits
become increasingly more common as the
race to world first unfolds over the
next couple of tiers. Uh doing splits
can be tedious and repetitive, so
naturally, raiders find any source of
entertainment for themselves that they
can possibly consume.
>> [screaming and cheering]
>> This group owns.
So, we have the heroic week, Mythic
comes out, splits are being done for
Lords of Dread and Rygelon, like I said.
Day two of Mythic being released, Liquid
is the first of the competing guilds to
step out of splits and get some
progression going. And it goes exactly
how you kind of expect, uh especially
with whatever we've seen so far from the
race to world first. Liquid kills the
first four bosses within four hours of
stepping into Mythic. They take some
pulls on the fifth boss, Prototype
Pantheon. They go back to heroic splits,
and they decide to return the day after
with a little bit more gear. And in
typical Race to World First fashion, the
NA guild always takes the initial lead
before EU gets into gearing, and they
start catching up. And this raid was
also no different. Liquid ends up also
taking the fifth and sixth boss,
Prototype Pantheon and Lihuvim, before
Echo even steps foot in the raid. Echo
follows suit the day after, and for
Lihuvim, it was pretty clear that having
a good strategy that mattered a lot. And
with all the information that they
learned, Echo swooped in, took all that
information, and killed all the exact
same bosses that Liquid did, and, you
know, it saved them a lot of
troubleshooting on the fight. And this
is where things actually start to fall
into Echo's favor. As Liquid's waking up
for their fourth day after Mythic has
released, Echo has already started
pulling Halondrus. Let's talk about
Halondrus for a bit. This boss
is probably the single most mechanically
challenging boss that Blizzard has ever
released. Uh it ended up amassing a
whopping 358
pulls before falling, which is very rare
considering there's four bosses still
left in this raid. Uh you know, we did
see something similar to like a mid-tier
wall with Painsmith, but it's it's
pretty rare. And for viewers though, you
know, this was a fairly fun back and
forth to witness, as there was always
this tension of you could wipe it at any
point. And it was a lot of days of
progression. Echo ended up stopping
their first day on 109 pulls with their
best attempt being only 50%, and Liquid
eventually ended their first day of prog
at 187 pulls with a 41% best. So, I
think you could tell that you were just
wiping on CD to bombs exploding. There
was just 100
pass-fail mechanics, a thousand
pass-fail mechanics at any point here.
And the days, they start to run
together. Uh they keep going down the
exact same, Liquid and Echo basically
just pulling Halondrus, making very slow
progression. Somehow they continue to
keep finding more split characters to do
at any point. It was very strange, and
it was pretty clear at this point that
it was a two-horse race for Liquid and
Echo. 358 pulls and several hot fixes
later, the boss got nerfed a couple
times. Liquid finally manages to secure
the world first on Halondrus on the
seventh day of the race with just one
day left on the first reset. So, to give
some context for the length of this
race, previous race tiers guilds were
either at the last boss at the time of
the reset or the boss was already dead.
At minimum, you were at the penultimate
fight, but Sepulcher of the First Ones
was now nearing the end of the first
reset and there's four bosses still left
standing including the final boss and
the Jailer. By all intents and purposes,
this raid is already shaping up to be
more of a marathon than a sprint. And
then as they're in a reset happens and
EU has their final day on the first
reset, both Echo and Pieces manage to
kill Halondrus. Echo went for a quick
look and it took a couple pulls on
Anduin. They didn't really commit to
anything. They had some chores that they
wanted to do on that weekly reset with
like Mythic Plus and filling up their
vaults and whatnot. So,
somehow they just found more splits to
do. And after the reset, Echo and Liquid
are pretty much doing mostly the same
thing where they finish their splits and
then they started chipping away at
Anduin. For some reason, he also proved
to be a very difficult boss. Anduin
eventually does end up falling with
Liquid taking it down on world first. It
was a very thrilling kill with the only
man left standing being the Blood Death
Knight. This is the kind of kill that
players always hope for where
everybody's used up all their resources,
19 players are dead, and then the tank
is the only person left standing. It is
truly one of those hype moments that you
can only get in World of Warcraft and
it's it's just an example of how cool
raiding can truly be. Let him focus.
Let's go.
Let's go.
So, Anduin dies to Liquid and this
leaves three bosses still left to go in
the race. Echo also eventually kills
Anduin four and a half hours after
Liquid. So, Echo is catching up
dramatically. Even though the reset just
happened, Echo is right on the heels of
Liquid here. So, we got the final three
bosses and you can either choose Lords
of Dread or Rygelon. The initial idea
from Liquid, since they were there
first, was to go to Lords of Dread,
which seemed like it was supposed to be
the easier of the bosses, where Rygelon
was kind of anticipated to be this like
patchwork wall, huge gear check type of
boss. And whenever you like looked at
the amount of HP, it was just
ridiculous. Uh Lords of Dread, it seemed
like it was supposed to be more of a
mechanics check than a damage check.
And Liquid, they end up getting there
and they get the boss to 40% after seven
pulls. Maybe this is the reprieve that
we need from Race World First Halondrus,
have been just hundreds of pulls on
Halondrus, hundreds of pulls on Anduin.
Maybe Lords of Dread is going to be a
little bit easier. Unfortunately,
though, the boss was definitely not as
easy as it seemed, as uh very quickly
the guilds started to hit the enrage.
Liquid hits the enrage and the boss is
like nowhere close to being dead. Then,
Liquid kind of takes a U-turn. They go
to Rygelon. Oh, maybe maybe this boss is
a little bit more killable. Uh they also
soon realize that Rygelon was not any
easier of a boss. And as a viewer, you
kind of take a look at this and you're
just like, "Oh, oh goodness gracious. We
are going to be here for a very long
time." So, Liquid now has Rygelon at 70%
HP. Lords of Dread is at like 20% HP and
they've seen the enrage. And Liquid's
done and they called it a day.
But if you're Echo here, you've killed
Anduin and you're now starting your day
and you have all of this information
that what Liquid has done. And so, you
see that Liquid has not made strides on
either Lords of Dread or like Rygelon.
So, now Echo has really good information
on both of those bosses. What do they
do?
Well, Echo ends up Lords of Dread and
they actually end up killing the boss
after only 62 pulls with a raid comp
that was stacked with primarily melee
specialization and only four ranged DPS
or ranged players in general.
This makes Lords of Dread one of the
first bosses in years without a mage in
the comp, as the intellect buff would
only be relevant for the healers and the
token warlock. So, basically, we didn't
need a mage. There was also this
narrative at the time where Liquid said
that Lords of Dread was mathematically
impossible. I'm not actually sure where
this narrative came from and while I
started doing research for this video,
I'm wondering if like Dratnos and I
ended up making up this narrative.
[laughter]
Um like it could it could have been
legitimately made up. I'm not even 100%
sure, but there was a narrative that
Lords of Dread was mathematically
impossible because for both Echo and
then Liquid whenever they go to kill
Lords of Dread, they do this cheeky
strategy where they use the Bonesmith
cheat death, uh Bonesmith and Army's
cheat death on Death Knights in order to
extend the boss enrage far, far, far
past where it was anticipated to go
because like I said earlier, Liquid hit
the enrage in the boss at like 15% HP so
it looked like it was like, "Oh, okay.
This enrage isn't insane." But with
cheating it, it was possible. So Liquid
yoinks the strategy from Echo, they kill
Lords of Dread 3 hours later. Echo ends
up going to Ragnaros. Now Liquid's on
Ragnaros and we have both guilds
simultaneously pulling Ragnaros
who has a lot of HP, you know, it is
just one of it's going to be one of the
hardest patchwork bosses of all time in
the hardest raid tier.
And by this point in the race, we were
in pretty much unprecedented territory.
We had the second reset of Mythic week
uh slowly approaching. Two bosses are
still left standing. At this point,
everybody realizes that we're going to
the third reset and that double
legendaries are on the table meaning
that if you were slacking on your
reputation to be able to get double
legendaries unlocked, you were in
trouble. Fortunately enough, all these
race for world first guilds have uh
people who, let's say, have no life and
they were already farming reputation
even even though it was very unlikely to
get to double legendaries.
At the same time, you know, we've been
here for a very long time and being
fully locked in for that period of time
already takes an insane amount of
determination, but being away from your
family, not sleeping in your own bed,
there is a serious mental strain that's
being told on all of the players from
both of the competing organizations and
everybody's starting to feel fatigue
setting in. This race seems to kind of
be boiling down to a test of endurance
and for Echo having killed Lords of
Dread before Liquid and establishing a
lead of sorts, And kind of get the
second win for them as they're now
starting to push down the doors of the
Jailer.
How is the mental strain on a raid tier
that ends up being that long? That is
like the first raid tier that we've seen
in a very long time
that went over two resets. Like what is
what is the mental strain like on a raid
tier like that?
I mean, you were there. So, you you also
have some some insight into this. I
don't know if I felt that
big of a difference. Like obviously you
do realize some point hey, it's been so
many days. Like what's going on? But
I don't know, maybe the fact that it was
such a good raid. Like I enjoyed the
bosses. I don't think that we felt like
super exhausted. At least from our side.
Um especially after getting ahead like
on um
the the the Dreadlords.
>> Yeah, yeah, Lords of Dread. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Lords of Dread, yes. Like after
getting ahead on Lords of Dread, I think
we got kind of like the second wind
effect. Like we we started getting hyped
again. So, I I would say actually the
worst it got was
around Halondrus and Anduin.
But then when you start getting closer
to the end,
it almost felt like
more excitement. Uh so, yeah. I don't
know.
Now, the next couple days, they're about
Ra'gelon and Echo, they're managing to
keep the lead that they had found on
Lords of Dread, and they eventually end
up killing Ra'gelon on pull 204. Liquid
follows suit some hours later tying up
the race with only one boss left
standing as we're approaching the third
week of Mythic. Now, the guilds they
reach the Jailer on a Monday right
before the third week of Mythic, the
week where double legendaries become
available. So, we know at this point in
time, casters all know this, players all
know this, that the boss is going to be
killed with double legendaries in some
capacity. And so, now all of the guilds
are kind of scrambling to make sure that
everybody's got enough rep. And with
this additional time, both Liquid and
Echo do end up pulling the Jailer a
little bit, but a lot of this time is
honestly just spent trying to recoup,
recharge, do any additional chores that
are ready for the next reset, and just
preparing yourself for the long haul
that is the final boss in the Jailer.
So, both resets happen. Echo actually
gets to see Liquid do a few hours of
pulling the Jailer after the re-clear,
and at this point, guilds have both seen
a little bit of phase three, the final
phase of the fight, but they really
struggled to get their consistency with
both phase one and phase two, and none
of the guilds had really put any serious
distance on that final phase. And Echo,
their re-clear went about as good as it
could, and it only ended up taking three
pulls. You know, they were able to kill
Halondrus rather quickly, something that
seemed impossible. And this is where
Echo really starts to kind of break away
from Liquid. And on the Jailer, Echo
start to look like the definitive
favorites to be able to win the race to
world first, making bigger strides for
every raid day, and they're conserving
energy, and it looks like they're just
kind of getting that second wind.
Blizzard does end up pushing kind of a
hot fix to Jailer to nerf the fight a
little bit while guilds were progressing
it. It doesn't really end up, you know,
changing realistically the [music]
essence of the race to world first. You
know, you do see some large nerfs.
Basically, what this did was it
increased the consistency of guilds for
phase three, where it reduced the number
of people that needed to be alive in
phase three to be able to
continue to progress the phase.
Initially, you had to have all 20
players alive, then it got nerfed down
to 17. This meant that, you know, the
fight just was easier to continue to see
progression on. It wasn't like a a
kill-changing kind of nerf.
And whenever this nerf came through,
this is where the learning process sped
up, and Echo really hit the gas.
In the days, they were really slow, you
know, at some point we had Liquid and
Echo at 48 and 41%, then it was like
Liquid and Echo at Liquid was at like
35%, and Echo was at 20%, and then it
happened. A secret phase.
The hardest end boss of all time has a
secret phase.
Watch out for the file. Don't don't
spread the Yeah, if that touches one
person, Deep Shades in a little bit of
danger there. Lar got also running away.
Jailer now at 14% 4 seconds until we all
get in a little bit of extra time. All
ads are dead. 12 + 2
come on and he's walking through the
middle of the room. COME ON 11% 11 10 5
10 5
10 5 COME ON HIT THE 10% GUYS 10 10
10 9 WHAT
WE SAW
>> [screaming]
>> LET'S GO
WE SAW IT.
OKAY, SECRET PHASE THE WIPE HAPPENED
BECAUSE THE ETERNITY'S END ALREADY WENT
OFF. They have to hit it before. No,
man.
But we saw it. This 10% IS CONFIRMED.
>> [laughter]
>> IT'S REAL.
It's real. We're going to get to go
home.
>> [laughter]
>> And this is something that you just love
to see as a viewer and as a caster just
this miraculous secret phase. I remember
Dratnos, Ginji, and myself were all
casting for Echo at this point in time
and
>> [laughter]
>> just the resonance of we get to go home
was like it was the most genuine thing
between the three of us. It was like oh
my God, the boss is almost dead. Please
send us home.
And in the liquid camp having seen the
secret phase and the liquid continuing
to fall further and further behind Echo
wakes up on day 19 of this race. Let me
let me just say day 19 of this race is
insane.
And they start to see huge progress and
it was evident very early on that this
boss was going to be Echo's kill. Echo
did not take their foot off the gas just
because of this though and they very
deservedly took home another world first
title as they emerged victorious on the
last rate of Shadowlands, the hardest
rate of all time. All the buffs up. Get
away from there. Get away from there.
You're okay. I mean soak the frontal.
YEAH.
So annoying.
>> And this raid it goes down in history as
one of the most iconic Race to World
First ever. It's just unbelievable how
long and how difficult it truly was, and
having the pleasure of watching Race to
World First guilds compete against the
hardest content that WoW has to offer in
this manner is truly a pleasure.
And as Shadowlands finally comes to an
end, we now enter Dragonflight. In the
game it saw some pretty big fundamental
changes where there were things like new
talent trees, no more borrowed power,
revamped profession systems. Uh there
was like a simultaneous release for
heroic and mythic all the time.
There was also the inclusion of powerful
items that were tagged as very rare. And
of course, there was the brand new class
Evoker with a healer spec and a DPS
spec. And then with all of that, we also
have a brand new raid and a brand new
Race to World First to talk about in
Vault of the Incarnates.
Now, the biggest change for Dragonflight
concerning the Race to World First was
definitely the game moving away from
borrowed power systems that had been a
staple for three expansions at this
point. This would affect the Race to
World First pretty uh greatly, honestly,
as the value of heroic and normal splits
would skyrocket. Then, you'll factor in
the very rare tagged items, which have a
lower than normal drop rate. And with
their power, all 20 players in your raid
basically want them. These are very good
items to target for all of your 14 mages
if you are one of the persons who mains
mage.
Race to World First at this point as
well has also gained a huge audience
compared to where it first started. So,
the arms race of adding more and more
splits was natural for guilds.
Optimizing your splits for even like a
2/10 or 3/10 of an item level lead can
actually make the difference between a
world first and losing the race.
This race here also marked the first
time that they would actually release
all difficulties at the exact same time,
meaning that our top two guilds would
not step foot into mythic for the first
few days while they were basically doing
all of their splits. While simultaneous
release is going to be the staple going
forward, I would say it's not exactly
fantastic for viewership, I will admit.
So, for the first couple of days after
Vault of the Incarnates released,
nothing really happened. The guilds were
just kind of doing their splits, and it
really wasn't until day three of the
raid where we finally got some Mythic
action just straight across the board.
Liquid was the first of the competing
guilds to step foot into the raid on
Mythic, shocker, I know. The world first
kills on the first and the second boss,
though, they did come from this really
great guild called Vesper, who happened
to have this really good Moonkin player
on their roster, believe it or not.
Little bit of casting experience, little
bit of world first experience, you know.
With the real race world first aside,
Liquid made swift work of the first
couple of bosses as they took down both
Eranogorr and Primal Council on one
pull. Then they went on to bang out
Terros in five pulls and Sennarth in 12.
Liquid also ends up poking their head
onto the Dathea encounter for a couple
of hours and choosing to go to there
instead of Kurog Grimtotem.
And the next day would be fairly similar
with Echo still opting to finish up all
of their splits while watching Liquid
and gathering information, but Liquid,
they didn't really waste any time, and
after some initial Mythic Plus farming
at the very beginning of the day, they
went into the raid to continue their
Dathea progression. And Dathea, she was
a little bit overtuned, and after a 30%
wipe on pull 50, Blizzard decided that
the boss was way too hard to kill, um
and they nerfed the health of the boss
by 15%.
By the way, just for context, a 15% nerf
is massive. Normally people get up in
arms about a 5% nerf, but 15 is just
crazy. The first pull after this 15%
nerf as well, Liquid gets the boss
immediately to 7%, and then another
seven pulls after that, the boss dies.
And Liquid, well, they were five out of
eight before Echo even stepped foot into
the raid. Then, loaded with all of the
gear and all of the information that
they normally have, we see Echo finally
enter the raid with an attempt to catch
up, which they did in almost no time,
spending one pull on most of the initial
bosses. They ended up spending like five
on Terros, another 10 on Sennarth. then
they went to Dathia, you know, even
though Dathia had been nerfed, you know,
it was still a little bit of a tough
wall, rough mechanics check. Echo ends
up spending 59 pulls on a boss that
Liquid had already killed, which is
tough. However,
you know, Echo does kill it before going
to bed, so no harm no foul. Um Liquid on
the other hand, they're farming Kurog
Grimtotem trying to get him killed, and
then eventually they kill him on pull 59
after the raid catches another round of
nerfs. So, for context, to this raid
tier was also very close to Christmas,
and the uh Blizzard dev team probably
didn't want to work over the holidays, I
think is the biggest estimate here. Um
and they were sounding the alarms trying
to make sure that the race world first
did not go over Christmas. So, yeah,
Kurog Grimtotem died, and uh honestly,
this is kind of notable. This is the
first raid boss in modern WoW history to
have actually been killed without a
warlock present in the world first kill,
but just more of a fun fact than
anything else. And so, the general story
for this race so far has kind of kind of
been around nerf timings and splits. Uh
really unfun parts of the race world
first, admittedly. And more than once
now, Liquid has gone to a boss, spent
pulls progressing it, seen Blizzard nerf
it while they're sitting there, and you
know, then moved on to the next boss.
Echo on the other hand, they have fully
tied it up with Liquid, they secured a
world second kill on Kurog Grimtotem,
and for the rest of the day, we were
going to be seeing both guilds
progressing the penultimate encounter,
Broodkeeper Diurna, at the exact same
time. And by the end of the day, Liquid
would still have but as the boss got
lower and lower, the differences got
smaller and smaller. Then, Liquid
finally reached this 10% mark on the
boss,
and that's kind of where Echo kicked it
into gear, ending up their day only 1%
behind Liquid. Except, Echo didn't end
their day. Even though it was the time
that Echo was supposed to be finishing
the raid, they decided to stay up a
little bit longer to try to secure the
Broodkeeper kill. And both guilds were
pushing for the final
10% at the exact same time. And for
Liquid, they ended up snagging the world
first kill on Broodkeeper Diurna, but
Echo, they followed suit an hour or so
later, so this is a huge deal. And in
real time, we're on day seven, and this
is due to all the splits. Thus, we're
approaching the new reset. Uh we have
both guilds progressing the final boss
at the exact same time, and both guilds
having spent a few pulls on Raszageth
phase one, which was an insanely
difficult phase, and it straight-up made
the new Evoker class mandatory in order
for everybody to live through the new
[100:00] phase.
[100:01] I will say though, for Raszageth, the
[100:03] first few pulls of this boss are
[100:04] incredibly iconic as players are just
[100:06] blasted off the platform by
[100:08] hurricane-strength winds. And this
[100:11] fight, it looks very, very tough. Okay,
[100:13] so we made it to the reset, you know,
[100:15] guilds are progressing phase one of
[100:17] Raszageth, and Liquid make gets a start
[100:20] on all their splits and reclears. Echo's
[100:21] taking a chill day to kind of try to fix
[100:23] their sleep schedule, do a couple
[100:24] chores, that kind of thing, getting
[100:27] themselves ready to start heroic splits
[100:29] at their reset time as well. But, even
[100:31] if this was a splits and reclear day, it
[100:33] didn't go without any action, as
[100:35] Blizzard decided that, you know what?
[100:37] Maybe we missed the mark a little bit on
[100:39] the Raszageth tuning, and they reduced
[100:41] the intermission ad HP, and the phase
[100:43] one damage got reduced a little bit.
[100:45] Now, the ad HP, you know, I cited
[100:47] earlier that a 15% health nerf was a
[100:49] lot. The ad HP got nerfed by 50%.
[100:56] Why do you think the tuning of Vault of
[100:58] the Incarnates was such a big miss,
[101:00] particularly Raszageth?
[101:02] Uh do you think it was because of talent
[101:04] trees, or is it, you know, sometimes
[101:06] Blizzard just hits you with the the
[101:08] Queen Azshara Raszageth type of tier? I
[101:11] mean, to be honest, that's a good
[101:11] question. I think in reality, it was the
[101:14] talent trees, and the I'm pretty sure
[101:16] the designer of the boss
[101:19] did not know that you cannot just do AoE
[101:21] and single target at the same time with
[101:23] many classes, right? That was the
[101:24] biggest issue.
[101:25] And then, on top of that, I think there
[101:27] were two issues. One of them was that
[101:29] they thought we can do AoE single target
[101:31] all the time, and it will be fine. And
[101:33] the other thing was that I swear the
[101:34] designer
[101:35] did not think that you go and split up
[101:37] the rate or something. I don't know.
[101:39] Whoever did it half tuning basically,
[101:41] yeah? Because I mean, you could barely
[101:43] kill one side with everyone, which
[101:45] indicated that they knew how much damage
[101:47] we will do, which kind of worked in the
[101:49] previous bosses, right? Yeah. But it was
[101:51] clearly that one side was put over with
[101:53] everyone, so you have to half
[101:54] everything.
[101:55] Which was
[101:56] I mean, it was very questionable. I
[101:58] don't think it had happened again this
[101:59] bad tuning.
[102:01] So, for the EU reset, Echo did wake up
[102:04] at 5:00 a.m. to start their day,
[102:05] and they didn't end their day until
[102:06] 11:00 p.m.
[102:08] And after 18 hours of splits and
[102:09] reclear, they were back to Raszageth.
[102:11] They didn't get a ton of progression on
[102:12] this day, but they got they got
[102:14] time. And since Blizzard had both nerfed
[102:16] phase one damage and the phase one
[102:19] intermission, this allowed both Liquid
[102:21] and Echo to kind of springboard
[102:23] themselves forward and bash their head
[102:25] into the storm surge shield that exists
[102:28] in phase two. Unfortunately, they
[102:30] weren't really making much of a dent in
[102:31] it at the time. That is until Blizzard
[102:35] decided to nerf the boss again.
[102:38] With another hotfix, the boss's health
[102:39] reduced by another 5% and the storm
[102:42] surge shield reduced by a whopping 50%.
[102:45] That's just a tough look at that point.
[102:46] [laughter]
[102:47] And it's been pretty clear so far during
[102:49] this raid that Blizzard has missed their
[102:52] initial tuning target. You know, but at
[102:54] this point, there's not really much you
[102:56] can do.
[102:56] Um we're just kind of hoping that this
[102:58] is the last one for the race. All the
[103:00] casters are like kind of over this
[103:02] entire thing. Because
[103:04] you know, you go back to Eternal Palace
[103:07] and you have this tuning that completely
[103:08] swings the race, it just feels really
[103:10] shitty. At the same time, if there are
[103:12] any new nerfs that are coming, let's
[103:14] pray they kind of ship them on a time
[103:16] that's not detrimental to one guild and
[103:18] beneficial to the other.
[103:21] And now with Christmas only a couple of
[103:22] days away, it's you know, there might be
[103:25] another round of nerfs depending on how
[103:27] hard the end of Raszageth really is.
[103:29] That's just future speculation, maybe.
[103:32] With the phase two shield nerfed, we
[103:33] kind of start to see some really big
[103:35] movement on the boss HP itself. Liquid
[103:38] finally take the boss down to 48% from
[103:40] the 65% that they got hard walled on for
[103:42] forever. Then, you know, we start to see
[103:45] the ninth day of the raid, and this is
[103:47] where things really begin to pick up.
[103:49] Liquid and Echo were, you know, they
[103:51] bust through the storm shield. They
[103:53] actually are making it finally to see
[103:55] phase three and virtually seeing to the
[103:57] end of the fight.
[103:58] And when you reach that point of
[103:59] progression where you know that you've
[104:00] seen the end of the fight, the only
[104:01] thing that matters is optimizing your
[104:02] damage for when you're getting there,
[104:04] while also trying to get there
[104:05] consistently with all 20 players alive.
[104:08] This would actually prove to be pretty
[104:09] difficult since the enrage would come
[104:11] creeping in, and the damage that was
[104:13] taken in the final phase was just really
[104:14] high. Now, Echo, they would have the
[104:16] best attempt at the end of their day,
[104:18] and they would stay in the lead for a
[104:20] pretty extended period of time, reaching
[104:22] 19.6% before ending their day nine.
[104:25] Liquid, during their day nine as well,
[104:28] uh they kept going for a little bit,
[104:29] even though it took them a little bit
[104:30] longer to reach phase three, but they
[104:33] had gotten a taste of that. They began
[104:35] to lock in, and just two pulls after
[104:37] their first introductory introductory
[104:39] pull into phase three, they would
[104:40] overtake Echo for a best of 17%. So,
[104:43] we're seeing some really intense back
[104:44] and forth here.
[104:46] But, this race,
[104:47] as I said, it really revolved around
[104:50] nerf timings.
[104:51] And there would be one final nerf coming
[104:53] out of Blizzard to phase three in
[104:55] particular.
[104:57] Are you kidding me? The timing of this
[104:59] nerf would also fall right at the time
[105:01] that Liquid were waking up, and their
[105:02] players were going over to the venue to
[105:04] start the day. This would result in Echo
[105:06] actually taking down Raszageth like
[105:08] almost before Liquid could even pull the
[105:10] boss, and allowed them to secure their
[105:12] third world first win in a row
[105:15] before Liquid even had the opportunity
[105:17] to pull the boss after the nerfs.
[105:19] And obviously, these nerfs, they left a
[105:22] sour taste in the mouths of the Liquid
[105:24] players.
[105:25] And I remember long-standing tank for
[105:28] liquid Ben. He just announces after this
[105:30] that he's quitting the race and citing
[105:32] that constant Nerf timings being the
[105:34] main issue. There was also a couple
[105:35] tweets from Echo Raiders like now
[105:37] addressing that the Nerf timings aren't
[105:38] fun for any of them.
[105:40] This was a bit of a fiasco. Echo
[105:42] repeated on the positive note, but you
[105:44] know, everybody's kind of watching this
[105:46] feeling like we missed out on the
[105:48] opportunity to have a really cool race
[105:50] to world first. You know, obviously you
[105:52] would hope that the tuning would have
[105:54] been right to begin with. At the same
[105:56] time having tuning timings that are so
[105:59] consequential for the race to world
[106:00] first feels shitty. There's no good way
[106:03] of just kind of tiptoeing around it.
[106:07] So moving forward, you can safely say
[106:09] that between the simultaneous raid
[106:10] difficulties of releasing, the new
[106:12] talent trees, renown, profession
[106:14] systems, whatever else, Dragonflight was
[106:16] basically the expansion of reworks. And
[106:18] heading into the second tier of the
[106:19] expansion, Blizzard completely reworked
[106:21] gear progression.
[106:22] Basically, every single item would be
[106:24] put onto different upgrade tracks and it
[106:26] would allow you to upgrade items with
[106:27] crests that you got from just doing
[106:30] miscellaneous content. For the top race
[106:32] to world first guilds, basically what
[106:34] this ended up meaning meant that you
[106:35] would make big spreadsheets to figure
[106:37] out from the different splits what gear
[106:39] you're getting, where you're going to be
[106:41] spending your crests, what are you going
[106:42] to be crafting on, what classes to use
[106:44] what tier set token on, and what is the
[106:46] optimal way of kind of like spending
[106:48] your crests. Aberrus is also the first
[106:50] race here that had this brand new and
[106:52] successful feature, private auras. Yay!
[106:56] So basically what would happen was some
[106:57] boss abilities were hidden from add-ons.
[106:59] This made it impossible to create weak
[107:01] auras or add-ons that assigned positions
[107:04] or roles based on what players got the
[107:06] debuffs from these privated aura
[107:09] abilities. Now, how did the players
[107:11] respond? Well, they could create some
[107:13] degenerate workarounds like spamming
[107:15] pressing a macro when you got a mechanic
[107:16] to tell your add-on that you have a
[107:18] debuff. Then, that add-on, without
[107:21] reading your debuff, could assign people
[107:23] based on whoever pressed the macro. This
[107:25] tech was specifically useful for the
[107:27] penultimate boss in Aberrus, the Echo of
[107:29] Neltharion. Then we move on to the
[107:30] Incarnates.
[107:31] All raid difficulties are opening at
[107:33] once. This means that there's not a lot
[107:34] of movement during the first couple of
[107:35] days of the race from top guilds. Echo
[107:37] and Liquid are basically just spending
[107:39] all of their possible time doing splits,
[107:41] and they don't enter Mythic until other
[107:43] guilds had killed some bosses, where
[107:45] this time three bosses had died during
[107:48] the first two days of the raid. The
[107:49] fourth boss died while Liquid was
[107:51] starting to clear up the first few
[107:53] bosses. And having racked up 442 heroic
[107:56] and normal boss kills so far, and
[107:58] countless amounts of Mythic Plus runs to
[107:59] optimize their gear, Liquid swiftly
[108:02] overtook all the guilds that had killed
[108:03] the bosses before them. They killed the
[108:05] first four bosses in no time, moving on
[108:07] to Rashok, who is in prime position to
[108:09] be the first wall of the raid. This is a
[108:11] single-target boss with a lot of stuff
[108:12] to dodge, a pretty tight enrage timer,
[108:15] and it was at a similar spot in the raid
[108:16] where Pain Smith was. This ends up
[108:18] meaning that this could be a real test
[108:19] for the guilds, or it could kind of be a
[108:20] pushover. It's hard to really tell.
[108:23] While Echo were still doing splits,
[108:24] Liquid kept pulling Rashok, and they
[108:25] were getting pretty close, repeating
[108:27] wipes at 0.3 and 0.2%. They eventually
[108:30] are able to kill off that boss. Echo, on
[108:32] the other hand, they're finally entering
[108:34] Mythic after dinner on day four of the
[108:37] raid being open. And it's kind of crazy,
[108:39] you know, how many splits and how much
[108:41] time it really takes. Liquid ends up
[108:43] killing Rashok after 20 pulls, and they
[108:44] were heading on to Zskarn. Rashok didn't
[108:46] end up being too much of a wall, but it
[108:48] was definitely the first real challenge
[108:50] of the raid. Even a 20-pull boss for
[108:52] race world first guilds, that means that
[108:53] this boss is actually kind of hard, but
[108:56] uh race world first guilds are kind of
[108:57] built different.
[108:58] And Echo, while they might have a little
[109:00] bit of a time disadvantage, they got the
[109:01] EU buff of learning. They're lifelong
[109:04] learners over there, and they enter the
[109:06] raid, and they pretty much tie up with
[109:07] Liquid almost immediately. They kill
[109:09] Rashok in seven pulls, having basically
[109:11] the entire strategy available to them.
[109:14] And now they are fully caught up with
[109:16] the competition. Echo goes to bed and
[109:18] Liquid is finally starting to get some
[109:20] pulls on the Zskarn. And Liquid doesn't
[109:22] really waste too much time taking down
[109:23] not only Zskarn but also the next boss
[109:25] Magmorax with still 3 hours left in
[109:27] their normal raid day. Magmorax however,
[109:30] this was pretty much a disappointment.
[109:31] Everybody was kind of hoping that this
[109:33] was going to be a well-tuned patchwork
[109:35] single target check. Unfortunately, it
[109:38] only took 17 pulls and like 3 hours for
[109:40] Liquid to get down. After Magmorax dies,
[109:43] uh Liquid basically just breaks for some
[109:45] chores to get some Mythic plus done,
[109:47] maybe potentially get some additional
[109:48] crests. They you know there's probably
[109:50] going to be a couple of pulls of Echo of
[109:52] Neltharion off stream, nothing too
[109:53] intense. We're talking like five pulls
[109:55] just for just to test some strategies,
[109:58] test some potential private aura
[109:59] workarounds, those kind of things. And
[110:01] so the next day for both Echo and
[110:02] Liquid, uh you know, it's pretty
[110:04] similar. Echo wakes up, sees that Liquid
[110:06] have both killed Zskarn and Magmorax. Uh
[110:09] they yoink the strategies, they down
[110:11] Zskarn in 37 pulls, Magmorax Magmorax in
[110:14] 16, and they head towards Echo of
[110:16] Neltharion. And they start pulling Echo
[110:18] of Neltharion first, and even without
[110:19] information from Liquid, Echo begins
[110:21] smashing into Echo of Neltharion in the
[110:23] end of their day five with a 24% best
[110:26] pull.
[110:27] Not not a bad showing by them. And by
[110:29] the time Echo ended up going to bed,
[110:31] Liquid were sitting at a 47% best with
[110:34] some attempts on the boss as well, but
[110:36] less time spent on the boss and almost
[110:38] their whole day left to try to finish
[110:39] the boss. By pull 30 though, Liquid had
[110:42] tied up Echo's lead and it took another
[110:44] eight additional hours before they
[110:46] finally killed the boss. Liquid only had
[110:48] 15 minutes left in their raid day, and
[110:50] you know, at this point in the race
[110:51] world first, you're going to pull
[110:53] Sarkareth, but it's mostly just to get
[110:54] some timers and think about your comp.
[110:56] We're not having some weird Council of
[110:58] Blood thing happen where the boss could
[110:59] potentially die. So where are we at in
[111:01] the race? Liquid has killed Echo of
[111:03] Neltharion, Echo is waking up here soon,
[111:06] and Liquid is at the final boss.
[111:08] Um
[111:09] we're rapidly approaching the part of
[111:10] the race where things get really
[111:11] exciting. We're kind of We kind of call
[111:13] this slingshot season where, you know,
[111:15] you wake up behind and you go to bed
[111:18] ahead. For both Echo and Liquid, this
[111:20] ends up happening. And for Echo, they
[111:21] really didn't disappoint. They end up
[111:23] killing Al'tharix on their 81st pull, 3
[111:25] hours before Liquid got to wake up. And
[111:27] for Echo, they've actually started
[111:29] progressing the boss by the time Liquid
[111:30] wakes up. And this meant that it was
[111:32] time for Liquid to sit back and finally
[111:34] watch from some of Echo's strategies.
[111:37] And for Echo, they had an absolutely
[111:38] phenomenal day. They took down Echo and
[111:40] Al'tharix. They have Sarkareth down to
[111:42] 49% and all eyes are kind of now on
[111:45] Liquid to see how far are they going to
[111:47] be able to shoot that slingshot and are
[111:49] they going to be able to make some real
[111:50] progression onto Sarkareth? And Liquid,
[111:53] they didn't really sit idly by. They
[111:55] kept pulling for a few hours and they
[111:56] eventually ended at 37% by the time of
[111:59] their dinner break.
[112:01] So, there's about 4 hours left in their
[112:02] raid day.
[112:03] Then, something weird happens. There's
[112:05] some discussions and there's some
[112:07] whispers in the Liquid camp during their
[112:08] dinner break. And Liquid basically
[112:11] announces on stream that they're going
[112:12] to be turning off competition mode on
[112:15] Warcraft Logs and turning off all the
[112:16] streams. They're going to be going dark
[112:18] for a couple of hours.
[112:21] I'll check now. I mean, we're we're
[112:22] going to pull for a little bit off
[112:23] stream and get an early night.
[112:26] Uh
[112:28] which I know is going to make some
[112:29] people really mad. But, I want to be
[112:31] 100% clear.
[112:33] I don't give a [ __ ] All I care about is
[112:34] winning. I think everything we do after
[112:36] this point tonight is only going to
[112:38] directly benefit our competition, to be
[112:40] completely honest with you. And that's
[112:42] uh I don't know. That sounds like a
[112:44] really [ __ ] stupid idea. So,
[112:46] uh I'll [ __ ] uh I'll see you guys
[112:49] tomorrow.
[112:50] This was slightly controversial and they
[112:51] did end up getting some backlash. But,
[112:53] as Max said, the most important part is
[112:55] winning. Everything else comes second.
[112:57] If keeping information about the very
[112:59] last parts of the boss secret gives us
[113:00] the biggest chance to win, then that's
[113:02] the correct decision. Going dark
[113:04] honestly also So something that was
[113:06] brand new. Uh it is a little bit weird
[113:08] to take 4 hours on a boss that you're
[113:10] half progressed through. At the same
[113:13] time, it's not the most unprecedented
[113:14] thing ever.
[113:15] Um
[113:16] basically, Liquid needs to be able to
[113:18] convert something like this, though. And
[113:20] so the next day arrives. Echo were a few
[113:22] percent behind Liquid on the graphics,
[113:24] but they're rapidly getting better and
[113:26] better pulls, and they got that Echo
[113:27] buff. And of course, again, we're in
[113:28] slingshot season. So Echo overtake
[113:31] Liquid early on in the day. We're seeing
[113:33] them pretty low at that 28% marker. But
[113:36] then the craziest thing in race world
[113:37] first history happens. Around 3:00 p.m.
[113:40] CEST, so European time, Echo's best pull
[113:43] is at 28%. The Echo players and casters
[113:47] react as the broadcast updates. Liquid
[113:50] has turned on competition mode. And then
[113:53] the craziest thing happened. Liquid
[113:54] shoots up in the standings, revealing
[113:56] that they did an additional 20 pulls off
[113:58] stream the night before, but their best
[114:00] percent was 14.4%. So they were still
[114:03] ahead of Echo's 28%. strategies are
[114:06] known to everyone else. They can take
[114:08] them, change them how they like, use it
[114:09] for the comp that they need.
[114:11] Yeah, and I can't
[114:12] >> Oh.
[114:14] Oh, how much pulling did they do off
[114:16] stream last night? And what had
[114:17] happened, and this is crazy, the Liquid
[114:19] players had woken up at 5:00 a.m. local
[114:21] time and started pulling the boss by
[114:23] 6:00 a.m. I don't know how you got that
[114:25] many gamers awake at 5:00 a.m., but good
[114:27] good on them. And for Echo, it was like,
[114:29] "Oh, [ __ ] we're about to lose." And
[114:30] this struck Echo as they began basically
[114:33] just shotgun pulling the boss. Echo
[114:35] tends to be a little bit more
[114:36] calculated, a little bit slower to pull
[114:38] the boss, but there was no time to
[114:40] analyze because it was like, "Oh my god,
[114:42] we are going to lose." Now fortunately
[114:44] enough for Echo, Liquid didn't kill the
[114:46] boss immediately. Unfortunately enough
[114:47] for Echo, it would still take a couple
[114:49] of hours for the boss to die. I think
[114:50] Liquid were hoping that they could like
[114:52] one-shot the boss as they woke up. Echo
[114:54] did get pretty close with a best attempt
[114:57] of 5.8%. It was a fun back-and-forth for
[114:59] a little bit. This was until Liquid
[115:00] managed to finally finish off the boss
[115:02] and secure their win in Aberrus world
[115:04] first, retaking the spot as the best
[115:06] guild in the world, blocking Echo from
[115:09] winning their fourth race in a row. Just
[115:11] keep the infinite duracell alive. Just
[115:13] external them. I'LL CALL THEIR NAME.
[115:19] >> [screaming]
[115:25] [cheering]
[115:45] >> DRAMA TIME. I THINK WE'VE BEEN DUE.
[115:48] SO, the first thing that actually
[115:50] happens in a mirror still
[115:52] for the race world first is something
[115:54] that happened before the raid was even
[115:56] released. As it tends to, players get
[115:58] bored then they decide that they want to
[115:59] exploit some stuff. Um
[116:01] So, basically what happened as a handful
[116:03] of race world first players ended up
[116:05] doing something that we'd call seed
[116:07] farming for reputation in the brand new
[116:09] zone. Uh they were rolled back on their
[116:11] characters for abusing a bug involving
[116:13] planting seeds and growing flowers. Uh
[116:15] the reputation would end up giving you
[116:17] the infinite augment rune and a free
[116:19] hero track crest. So, getting rolled
[116:21] back wasn't great
[116:22] cuz it cost you additional hero track
[116:24] crest on crafting. It ended up kind of
[116:27] being nothing.
[116:29] But, it was still pretty stupid. I
[116:30] remember, you know, the community was
[116:32] more mad than anybody else realistically
[116:34] was.
[116:35] Uh if you look out for the landscape of
[116:36] the race world first, this hasn't really
[116:37] affect that much. But, anytime people
[116:39] are getting rolled back or banned, we
[116:40] got to talk about it. Additionally, with
[116:42] Aberrus fresh in their memory and all
[116:44] talks of the NA head start and EU is
[116:47] always late, Echo has announced
[116:49] something drastic. They have announced
[116:51] before the release of the raid that they
[116:53] were going to be playing on NA. Now,
[116:55] they didn't actually end up playing the
[116:58] race on NA, but what they had done is
[117:00] they had created characters, geared set
[117:02] characters, made a guild, and then they
[117:04] fought the Amirdrassil bosses on the
[117:06] first night before EU reset. They did
[117:09] end up basically going and getting world
[117:11] first on normal difficulty before going
[117:12] to bed and waking up early for EU
[117:14] splits. This was mostly just a publicity
[117:16] stunt to help the Echo esports
[117:18] broadcast. I thought it was very funny
[117:20] and tongue-in-cheek. I thought it was
[117:22] really cool by Echo to do something like
[117:23] this, very funny. As for the race
[117:25] itself, you know, the first couple of
[117:26] days of the race are going to be similar
[117:27] to what we kind of come to expect at
[117:29] this point. We're doing a lot of splits.
[117:31] At that point, you know, on day three or
[117:33] four, either Liquid or Echo are going to
[117:35] be entering Mythic, and then they're
[117:36] going to mow down the bosses that had
[117:38] not yet been killed, reach a wall, and
[117:40] then we're going to kind of continue to
[117:41] pivot there.
[117:42] For this raid, nothing, you know,
[117:45] dissimilar happens.
[117:47] Liquid goes in after three days of
[117:48] splits. They end up claiming some of the
[117:50] world first kills.
[117:52] Both Echo and Liquid, they end up
[117:53] actually mowing down the first three
[117:54] bosses rather quickly.
[117:55] Echo ends up killing the fourth boss
[117:57] rather quickly, then having trouble on
[117:59] the fifth boss in Larodar, where Liquid
[118:01] was able to mow down Larodar rather
[118:02] quickly. On top of having time to kill
[118:05] off Larodar and Nymue, Liquid also were
[118:08] able to take down Smolderon,
[118:10] which that basically took 56 pulls into
[118:12] what people thought was going to be a
[118:14] pretty big wall. Realistically, this
[118:16] fight was kind of hard, but it wasn't
[118:17] the hardest thing ever.
[118:19] Smolderon was honestly notable for
[118:21] having the first instance of the private
[118:23] aura workaround
[118:27] WeakAuras were able to read macro inputs
[118:29] of players that were targeted by debuffs
[118:31] on Smolderon. It was all just a bunch of
[118:32] nonsense, and I remember at this time as
[118:34] well, people were not happy that
[118:36] Smolderon had been private aura'd and
[118:38] that there was a workaround for it. So,
[118:40] it just made that fight a lot worse.
[118:42] Echo, while having a pretty tough
[118:45] intro to Mythic, they wake up, they dust
[118:47] themselves off, and they finish off the
[118:48] next two bosses. They get to Smolderon
[118:50] before sinking a couple of pulls into
[118:52] him and killing the Fire Lord just in
[118:54] time for Liquid to wake up. Now,
[118:56] basically, Liquid and Echo, they are
[118:58] staring down the penultimate encounter
[119:00] of the raid, Tindral Sageswift.
[119:02] And the guilds, they pretty quickly find
[119:04] out that this version of Tindral
[119:05] Sageswift that they fought in raid
[119:06] testing was very different than the live
[119:09] version that was testable.
[119:11] It's been described as if Blizzard had
[119:12] taken that Tindral Sageswift and then
[119:14] given him permanent Bloodlust.
[119:16] There's a ton of pass-fail mechanics on
[119:18] this boss that was absolutely insane.
[119:20] This was also their first fight where
[119:22] Blizzard incorporated the brand new
[119:23] dragon riding feature that came with the
[119:24] expansion with some players having to
[119:26] mount up during combat and fly above the
[119:28] platform picking up these big fire orbs
[119:30] and slam down on your team to free them
[119:32] from being rooted. I remember a clip of
[119:33] JPC where he's just like completely
[119:35] missing the orb for an extended period
[119:36] of time. It was really funny. But, by
[119:38] far, the hardest part of this fight
[119:39] though was 16 members of your raid
[119:42] needed to soak seeds on the ground at 3
[119:44] seconds. Basically, the boss would
[119:46] summon these seeds on the ground and
[119:48] everybody had to walk over one. If you
[119:50] walked over more than one, your raid
[119:51] instantly exploded. If not all the seeds
[119:53] were soaked within a 3-second window,
[119:55] then your raid exploded. And that
[119:57] created a situation similar to
[119:58] Halondrus' bombs going off where just
[120:02] a thousand pulls were going to be taken
[120:04] before this fight goes down because of
[120:05] just how difficult that one singular
[120:08] mechanic is.
[120:09] And after just one day of guilds pulling
[120:11] the boss, it was pretty clear to anyone
[120:13] watching that this boss could take a
[120:14] couple of days and the race was going
[120:16] over the reset. People had already also
[120:18] started talking about the boss needing
[120:19] to get nerfed where some raiders in both
[120:21] Echo and Liquid begged on Twitter for
[120:23] the boss to not get nerfed.
[120:25] However, Blizzard did not listen and
[120:27] they shipped a 20% HP to the boss, also
[120:30] increasing the time that players had to
[120:32] soak seeds. Now, you might expect this
[120:34] to allow the boss to immediately die.
[120:37] Uh unfortunately,
[120:39] it was not that easy.
[120:41] The boss, as it turns out, even 20% less
[120:43] healthy was still very challenging. And
[120:45] for the final day of the first in a
[120:46] reset, we had some hours of both guilds
[120:49] pulling Tindral at the exact same time.
[120:51] And they were running into issues in
[120:52] phase one and phase two for parts of the
[120:53] day because the fight is legitimately
[120:55] impossible to stay consistent on with
[120:57] just how soaking those seeds
[120:59] realistically worked.
[121:01] And Echo, they finished their day at a
[121:03] 38.6% mark. And like what they proc'd a
[121:05] few good hours of pulls, they went to
[121:07] dinner, and they came back, and they
[121:09] ended up having the boss all the way
[121:10] down to 24%
[121:12] over 387
[121:14] pulls taken for them to have the boss
[121:16] still at 24%.
[121:18] And so we're going into the new reset.
[121:19] New reset comes. For Liquid, it's filled
[121:21] with their re-clear, another rounds of
[121:23] splits. Echo ends up getting some
[121:24] attempts on Tindral during their like
[121:26] half-day window where they're a little
[121:29] bit behind. They end up going to bed a
[121:30] bit early to get an early night to
[121:32] prepare for their 5:00 a.m. reset.
[121:34] Liquid's re-clear was efficient though.
[121:36] They were back on Tindral fairly
[121:37] quickly, and they downed the boss within
[121:40] 30 pulls. Uh all the way up to 426
[121:43] pulls, the boomkin boss fell.
[121:46] Almost overtaken Fallen Avatar for the
[121:47] highest pull count on a penultimate boss
[121:49] ever,
[121:50] but definitely the hardest one uh we've
[121:52] ever seen.
[121:54] Again, just the the pass-fail insta-wipe
[121:56] mechanics
[121:57] make that fight unbelievable.
[122:00] And at this point for Liquid, you down
[122:02] Tindral, you finish your re-clear, you
[122:04] finish your chores, you're pretty late
[122:05] in your day. What are you going to do?
[122:07] Well, you're going to turn your streams
[122:08] off, and you're going to pull Fyrakk
[122:09] like probably 15 attempts before bed,
[122:11] get some weak auras, do some, you know,
[122:13] testing on things that you might think
[122:16] could happen based off of what you've
[122:17] seen from that boss on heroic. And then,
[122:19] you know, for Liquid, you're going to
[122:20] bed. Echo, during their re-clear, kind
[122:22] of a similar story. They wake up at 5:00
[122:23] a.m., they have their resets,
[122:26] and they're back in front of Tindral
[122:27] [clears throat] at 4:00 p.m. local time,
[122:28] 11 hours after their raid started. Not
[122:30] bad.
[122:31] >> [snorts]
[122:31] >> And for Liquid, we saw they took 30
[122:33] pulls to be able to kill the boss.
[122:34] For Echo, you're kind of expecting them
[122:36] to take 3 to 4 hours to be able to get
[122:38] 30 additional pulls.
[122:39] Um you know, so you're kind of expecting
[122:42] Echo to be able to kill the boss rather
[122:43] quickly. And for Echo, they actually
[122:44] have some really good progression pulls
[122:46] early on, getting a 5% attempt within
[122:48] the first hour, but
[122:50] um unfortunately, this is a boss that is
[122:52] impossible to find consistency, and it
[122:54] takes them over 5 hours before they get
[122:56] another 5% wipe. And then at this point
[122:59] in time, their raid had gone on for 17
[123:01] hours, and it was clear that they had
[123:03] not got gotten over the finish line yet.
[123:05] And for Echo, they made the call to end
[123:09] their raid at midnight local time.
[123:12] At this point, it's 11:30.
[123:15] So, they have another 30 minutes to
[123:16] pull. And the next pull after this call
[123:18] is made, they have a 3% wipe. Then
[123:19] another 16% wipe, okay, you know? The
[123:22] end time is creeping up, but they have
[123:23] one more attempt. And in some mythical
[123:25] fashion, Echo always ends up playing
[123:27] their best under pressure, and at the
[123:29] last pull of the night, number 399 in
[123:32] total, after 19 hours of playing,
[123:35] they down the Boomkin.
[123:36] And with that, they could breathe a big
[123:37] sigh of relief, as they were now fully
[123:39] caught up to Liquid. At the same time,
[123:41] you have to be a little bit worried, uh
[123:43] because now Echo is 17 hours behind
[123:46] Liquid. So, Echo is going to have to be
[123:48] in full catch-up mode at this point. And
[123:50] so, after Echo has gone to bed, Liquid,
[123:52] they're here, they're streaming their
[123:53] first real pulls on Fyrakk. They're
[123:55] easily pushing past the phase one
[123:56] intermission in the beginning, but they
[123:58] spent a couple of hours trying to figure
[124:00] out how to deal with the shield while
[124:01] soaking orbs in the intermission.
[124:03] There's also some private aura stuff
[124:04] that makes this fight pretty
[124:05] complicated. And just getting players
[124:08] organized without add-ons and without
[124:10] weak auras is is actually proving to be
[124:12] pretty tough.
[124:13] Then Liquid hits hits around pull 50,
[124:15] they enter P2, they get like a pretty
[124:17] decent attempt on the boss, and with
[124:19] that new information, they zone out of
[124:20] the raid, they go for some mythic plus
[124:22] farming, and they mute their comms. So,
[124:24] whenever they're muting their comms,
[124:25] they're talking about potential comms
[124:27] and strategies for phase two, and they
[124:28] had been muted for like an hour doing
[124:30] chores at this point. Then, they unmute,
[124:33] basically saying that they're going dark
[124:35] to do practice stuff before going to
[124:36] bed. This feels pretty reminiscent of
[124:38] Sarkareth, I have to admit, and
[124:40] everybody's kind of like, "Oh, wait. Is
[124:42] it about to happen again where they're
[124:43] just going to show up tomorrow with the
[124:46] boss at like 5% HP, kill the boss?" It
[124:48] would be a little bit of a buzzkill,
[124:50] admittedly, but, you know, at the same
[124:52] time, winning the Race to World First is
[124:54] honestly more important than showing all
[124:56] of your pulls on stream. And if you're
[124:58] going to put yourself at a severe
[124:59] disadvantage, all of the Race to World
[125:00] First teams will elect to go dark. In
[125:02] retrospect, it's pretty likely that the
[125:03] practice stuff that was mentioned was
[125:05] referring to the ads that spawn in a
[125:07] line across the platform, and figuring
[125:09] out how players could coordinate
[125:11] knockbacks and grips in order to be able
[125:12] to gather the ads. I also heard rumors
[125:14] after the fact that there is potential
[125:16] use of things like Vengeance Demon
[125:17] Hunter and whatnot, trying to see like
[125:18] what was possible for getting these ads
[125:21] gathered as quickly as possible. But for
[125:23] Echo, you know, they can't really let
[125:25] up. The next day, it was slingshot
[125:26] season for Echo, and taking what they
[125:28] had gathered from Liquid, from all of
[125:29] their attempts in phase one and phase
[125:30] two, and spending almost the entire day
[125:32] for Echo, they reached phase three.
[125:35] Unfortunately enough for Echo, though,
[125:37] they go and turn off their streams, pull
[125:38] a few attempts before going to bed a few
[125:40] hours early, and at this point it was
[125:42] getting increasingly common and kind of
[125:44] annoying that any guild that was in
[125:46] first place would immediately turn their
[125:47] stream off to make sure that the other
[125:49] team could not get additional
[125:50] information right as we were reaching a
[125:52] new phase where cool things were
[125:54] happening. So, people were not happy
[125:55] about this.
[125:57] In the middle of all of this happening
[125:58] where we're getting into phase three,
[126:00] we're seeing a new phase, the seed
[126:01] carrying is getting a bit precarious,
[126:03] kind of similar to Tentacle stage with
[126:05] uh uh pass/fail mechanics. Fyrakk also
[126:08] has an integral pass/fail mechanic where
[126:10] you have to carry seeds around.
[126:12] And the boss receives a 4% health nerf.
[126:14] And at this point, both of the guilds
[126:16] are lifting the veil of darkness. Echo
[126:18] was actually in the lead at this point
[126:20] with a 19% PB, and Liquid at a 27% PB.
[126:24] And this is kind of where everybody
[126:26] believes that the race is going to end.
[126:28] 19 and 27% on the final boss, especially
[126:31] after a nerf to the boss HP. Every
[126:34] Everybody's kind of looking forward to
[126:36] the end of the race looming. However,
[126:38] Echo hits a 20-hour raid day and they
[126:41] can't kill the boss and their best is
[126:43] actually 8%. So, as it turns out, the
[126:45] final phase of Fyrakk is just incredibly
[126:47] hard. There's a lot of blaze line and
[126:50] seed carrying management that's pretty
[126:52] difficult and a ton of pass fail
[126:54] mechanics that can wipe you on a
[126:55] moment's notice. In the precise and
[126:57] clutch moments that were needed for
[126:58] phase three of Fyrakk, those were
[126:59] insane. And you were basically carrying
[127:01] this seed around, adopting kind of a
[127:03] similar situation from the hot potato
[127:04] mechanic on Halondrus. The players were
[127:06] juggling the seeds between two different
[127:08] players that were taking damage on them.
[127:10] If the seed gets hit by an ability, it's
[127:11] an instant wipe. If the player gets hit
[127:13] by an ability, it's an instant wipe. Uh
[127:15] if anybody died who was carrying a seed,
[127:18] that was going to be a pretty much a
[127:19] wipe. That was inevitable.
[127:21] Players also had to deal with blaze
[127:22] lines and random swirlies on the floor
[127:24] while making sure their seed didn't get
[127:25] hit by anything.
[127:27] But Echo's day, it was over. 8% and for
[127:30] Liquid, this is the opportunity that
[127:32] they need to be able to finish it off.
[127:34] If Liquid are unable to kill this boss
[127:37] pretty quickly while Echo's sleeping, it
[127:38] is unlikely that they are going to be
[127:40] able to win the race world first.
[127:42] And Liquid end up pushing pretty deep
[127:43] into the night. They do have several
[127:45] late P3 wipes and they push their raid
[127:48] time back a couple of hours and
[127:50] unfortunately, they decide that they're
[127:52] going to be going to bed with the boss
[127:53] at 6% meaning that very, very likely
[127:56] whenever they wake up, Echo is going to
[127:58] have him down boss.
[127:59] However, the craziest [ __ ] happens.
[128:03] Echo starts their raid and you know, the
[128:06] boss is not that much lower whenever
[128:08] Liquid wake up. And then what would
[128:09] happen over the next couple of hours is
[128:11] going to make race to world first
[128:12] history as
[128:14] both guilds, Liquid and Echo, are
[128:16] getting consecutively low wipes down as
[128:18] low as 1% at the exact same time. And
[128:21] whenever you wipe the seeds exploding in
[128:22] phase three, it just kills the raid
[128:24] instantly. This kind of leads to some
[128:26] really weird anticlimactic moments of
[128:28] the boss looking like it's going to die
[128:30] until one small misstep wipes the raid.
[128:32] That's why you can't celebrate on a boss
[128:34] like Fyrakk because there's always the
[128:35] possibility of something going
[128:36] tragically wrong and you wiping at 1%.
[128:39] And Echo, they started their day at 8%
[128:42] at 10:00 p.m. CEST after hours and hours
[128:46] of back and forth, Echo finally are able
[128:48] to secure the kill and take back the
[128:50] throne as the best guild in the world.
[128:53] It took them 340 attempts. They were
[128:55] really far behind coming into Tendril
[128:57] Sage Swift,
[128:59] but they were able to make magic happen.
[129:10] >> [screaming]
[129:13] >> This moves Method into the top four Race
[129:15] to World First pull counts and almost
[129:17] the entirety of this was Tendril Sage
[129:19] Swift and Fyrakk. And oh yeah, you
[129:21] remember whenever I mentioned private
[129:22] auras whenever we were talking about
[129:23] Aberrus earlier? They were a little bit
[129:24] more prevalent on Fyrakk. This boss had
[129:26] two key mechanics that were both private
[129:28] auras making players click macros in
[129:30] order for a weak aura to assign how to
[129:32] deal with that mechanic. While these
[129:33] mechanics were technically possible to
[129:34] do without a weak aura, it was just a
[129:36] lot more consistent to use the weak aura
[129:38] um proving time and time again that
[129:40] private auras are rarely useful since
[129:42] there's always a work around. And that
[129:44] leads us to this insane drama alert. Um
[129:47] so God, first off God this video has a
[129:49] lot of drama, but secondly, you remember
[129:51] those private auras that we were talking
[129:52] about on Fyrakk? Yeah, so there was a
[129:54] program I'm surrounding them and it was
[129:56] called sneak.lua. While it was not known
[129:59] or public during their Method Race to
[130:02] World First, it would get out over like
[130:04] probably 6 months after this that Echo
[130:06] had created a script that would press a
[130:09] macro for you if you were affected by
[130:11] the private aura in question.
[130:14] The script was named sneak.lua. It also
[130:16] had a built-in random delay so that it
[130:19] wouldn't be obvious to any of the Race
[130:20] to World First competitors or viewers
[130:22] that a script was being used to be able
[130:24] to bypass these private auras. This
[130:26] ended up cutting down Echo's pull count
[130:28] on Fyrakk by a significant amount, and
[130:30] Liquid basically suffered probably 50
[130:33] wipes to mistakes related to the macro
[130:35] itself.
[130:36] It's been stated on the record by
[130:37] players that they're pretty sure that
[130:40] Echo loses without sneak.lua. And many
[130:42] people called this cheating, mostly
[130:44] because it was.
[130:45] Uh no action does end up being taken
[130:47] against the members of Echo, and the
[130:49] thing that makes this the most different
[130:50] from tech or clever use of game
[130:52] mechanics was
[130:54] mostly due to concept that private auras
[130:56] are added to the game with the specific
[130:58] reason to not be bypassed, and Echo
[131:02] bypassed them. That's why it was like
[131:04] cheating, right? And this is probably
[131:06] the most controversial thing the Race
[131:08] World First guilds have ever done, and
[131:09] it really has pushed the line for what's
[131:11] allowed and what isn't allowed.
[131:14] And coming off the back of sneak.lua,
[131:17] you know, you thought players, they were
[131:18] going to play it safe.
[131:20] But we got something new, brand new wrap
[131:23] exploits, because we needed more of
[131:24] those. Exploit early, exploit often,
[131:27] they say. Except this time Blizzard
[131:29] ended up banning people.
[131:30] Um good news was that it was only a
[131:32] 4-day ban. Bad news was that it was a
[131:36] couple of players in Echo, and most of
[131:38] the entire Method roster at this point,
[131:40] got caught up in a ban the day before
[131:42] the raid opened. Now, we talked about
[131:43] heroic week going away and how that
[131:45] ended up creating the split culture
[131:47] after Mythic opened, but the good news
[131:49] with this entire situation was that
[131:51] heroic week was back for Nighthold
[131:52] Palace, and this meant that the bans
[131:54] didn't really do anything.
[131:56] But some very mad Redditors wanted a few
[131:59] players' heads for sure. So, you know,
[132:00] drama aside, raid launches, and we are
[132:03] fortunate enough as viewers to have far
[132:04] fewer splits on Mythic since heroic week
[132:07] has returned. This means that we are
[132:08] graced with an A's Liquid downing the
[132:10] first four bosses all in one shots.
[132:12] "Wasn't straight under two?" was a
[132:13] pretty popular question at this point in
[132:14] the race. This was up until we saw what
[132:18] was next for the Race World First
[132:19] guilds. Rotface, Overax, and
[132:21] Nexus-Prince Valanar were the next
[132:22] couple of bosses that you could attempt,
[132:24] and both were just absolutely insane.
[132:26] Overax was an insane coordination check
[132:28] with things like egg breaks, CCing the
[132:30] mites, you needed to land kicks, and
[132:33] those were all like the biggest parts of
[132:35] difficulty on this encounter. The tank
[132:36] damage was also insanely high, and then
[132:39] all of it ended up culminating in guilds
[132:40] just standing in the black blood effect
[132:43] up the on the ground and out healing it
[132:45] with preservation evokers for as long as
[132:46] possible after the enrage was supposed
[132:48] to be over. But, that was just Overax.
[132:50] Valanar, on the other hand, was perhaps
[132:52] the hardest tuned damage check that has
[132:55] ever been killed.
[132:56] Um,
[132:57] he required a strategy which involved
[132:59] one tanking the boss, and you would
[133:01] utilize things such as soul stoning, uh,
[133:04] battle resses, and resto shaman's
[133:06] ancestral protection totem to facilitate
[133:08] a one tank strategy as it reset your
[133:10] debuff. Uh, on top of this, you could
[133:12] also get one shot at any time as a DPS
[133:15] or a healer, immediately ending your
[133:16] pull
[133:17] cuz you're utilizing all of your battle
[133:19] resses on your tank. And so, both of
[133:21] these bosses were just absolutely
[133:22] ridiculous and
[133:24] you know, for the landscape of just
[133:25] raiding in general, they ended up being
[133:26] pretty massive guild killers.
[133:28] And, but they also came after an easy
[133:30] boss in Rashanad.
[133:32] And if you thought we were done with
[133:33] drama, you were wrong. There was
[133:35] actually more drama inside of Naru'bar
[133:37] Palace surrounding the Star Liquid mage
[133:39] I'm Fired Up. Uh, the TLDR on this was
[133:41] he was basically exploiting a spell
[133:43] sling or hero tree interaction by
[133:46] turning all of his abilities into act
[133:48] focus abilities. This ended up giving
[133:50] him what I would describe as slightly
[133:52] more DPS on Valanar than he otherwise
[133:54] would have.
[133:55] And this ended up leading to this tweet
[133:56] by the recently banned Ginji. Fired Up,
[133:58] however, he didn't get any punishment
[134:00] for this beyond public backlash.
[134:02] Blizzard ended up fixing the bug. Um,
[134:04] the bug was also fairly low magnitude in
[134:06] in terms of how much damage it gave you,
[134:08] and Liquid was unable to kill Valanar
[134:10] even with the added damage by their
[134:11] mage.
[134:13] So, fairly low impact on the actual race
[134:15] world first, even though it was still an
[134:16] exploit.
[134:18] But, if Liquid did kill this boss with
[134:20] this exploit, and say Echo was actually
[134:22] unable to kill the boss without using
[134:23] it, it really makes you kind of think
[134:25] how people would have viewed this. But,
[134:27] it was it was kind of whatever.
[134:29] Anyway, when the dust had settled on
[134:31] both of these massive walls, Liquid had
[134:33] killed both the fifth and sixth boss
[134:35] ahead of Echo, but not before taking 120
[134:37] pulls for Brutallus and Overax, and 304
[134:41] for Nexus-Prince Kaveza. And it was
[134:42] pretty clear at this point in time that
[134:44] the race was going to be going to the
[134:45] reset. Uh the penultimate encounter was
[134:48] just started to be attempted in Silken
[134:50] Court, and a lot of people didn't expect
[134:52] Silken Court to go down week one given
[134:53] what we had seen thus far in the raid.
[134:55] People kind of anticipate more linear
[134:57] difficulty, which means we're going to
[134:58] be strapping in for the long haul. But,
[135:00] Silken Court, it was a little bit easier
[135:03] than what linear difficulty would make
[135:05] you assume. Um
[135:07] It was fairly challenging in the sense
[135:09] that there was pretty large intermission
[135:11] shields that had to be broken, but a
[135:12] large part of difficulty of Silken Court
[135:14] was the dance itself. Uh this was like
[135:17] basically making sure all of your
[135:18] players were in the right places at the
[135:19] right time. And race world first guilds
[135:21] tend to be pretty good on encounters
[135:24] that require high consistency. So, this
[135:27] kind of leads us up to the Monday night
[135:28] before the reset, and Liquid is actually
[135:30] very, very close to a Silken Court kill.
[135:32] Echo, at the same time, they're hot on
[135:34] their heels having had had a slightly
[135:36] better raid tier compared to Liquid up
[135:38] until this point. At the same time,
[135:40] Liquid really needs to get Silken Court
[135:41] killed off. Uh they're losing some key
[135:43] pieces of gear if they're not able to
[135:44] kill it. They also made some vault
[135:46] decisions that were with the assumption
[135:48] that Silken Court was going to die on
[135:50] reset one, and so it's a pretty big deal
[135:52] for Liquid to be able to down the boss.
[135:53] And so, the end of the raid night comes
[135:55] for Liquid, and they barely down Silken
[135:57] Court right before immediately going to
[135:58] bed. Race world first, I would they say
[136:01] they have a tendency to have like
[136:02] maker-break moments where the actual
[136:04] impact of these moments is fairly low.
[136:07] So, like Silken Court, all it's really
[136:09] going to yield you is a couple pieces of
[136:10] gear and a couple of vault slots, but
[136:12] the momentum and the morale hit that you
[136:14] get from being able to down Silken Court
[136:16] on reset one versus, you know, you watch
[136:18] Echo kill it on reset one and you're not
[136:20] able to, that that's a really big deal.
[136:22] So, it's more psychological than it is
[136:24] like, you know, the reality warping.
[136:26] But, at the same time, Liquid killed the
[136:27] boss, Echo comes in the next day before
[136:29] their reset, and they clean house on
[136:31] Silken Court as well, killing it around,
[136:32] I would say, 6:00 p.m. local time. And
[136:34] both guilds had killed seven bosses
[136:36] through the first reset. And now we
[136:38] [snorts] are finally on to Ansurek, and
[136:40] Ansurek awaits. In what I can only
[136:42] describe as the hardest boss of all
[136:43] time, Queen Ansurek was just absolutely
[136:45] insane. Uh phase one required you to
[136:47] play near perfect with the reactive
[136:49] frost drops and making sure that you
[136:51] didn't end up hitting two at the exact
[136:52] same time. The P2 intermission was just
[136:55] bananas as the DPS check on the P2
[136:57] intermission on breaking the shield in
[136:59] time was completely otherworldly. P2
[137:02] itself ended up causing both Liquid and
[137:04] Echo hundreds and hundreds of wipes
[137:06] alone. Because the damage check on
[137:08] getting the ads shield broken was also
[137:11] just as stupid as the phase one shield,
[137:13] getting that broken in time. And this
[137:15] was a fight where, similar to Kayveza,
[137:17] if you were down a single player, you
[137:19] would immediately be wiping. Fortunately
[137:20] enough, you did have battle resses on
[137:22] this fight, unlike Kayveza, but you
[137:24] couldn't meet any of the damage checks
[137:26] if you were trying to 19-man it. They
[137:27] would also use what I would describe as
[137:29] progression bloodlusts, both Echo and
[137:31] Liquid did, in order to be able to
[137:32] continue to see progression in the
[137:34] fight. At a moment in time that made the
[137:35] most sense, it was pretty just free form
[137:37] as to when it was going to be used.
[137:39] Early on, a lot of the time it was used
[137:41] on the intermission shield, and later it
[137:43] was used on the P2 ads. Uh the damage
[137:45] check in phase three was pretty unknown
[137:47] at this point. You know, everybody's
[137:49] kind of playing with the assumption that
[137:50] you're going to need it for the phase
[137:51] three push, especially by not having the
[137:54] bloodlust at a very set time. Hard to
[137:56] really say is it going to be required
[137:58] for that P3 push. So, P2 and P1
[138:00] progression, you know, it's not very
[138:02] steady. Uh there's a lot of wipes in
[138:04] phase one even though the guilds were
[138:05] progressing phase two. And this was
[138:07] until both Liquid and Echo broke through
[138:09] to P2 checks at 140 and 132 pulls
[138:12] respectively. And well, P3
[138:15] it's it's also unbelievable. Um you get
[138:17] the mythic mechanic and basically it's
[138:19] the vulnerability associated with
[138:21] carrying orbs across the ring from the
[138:24] acolyte drops.
[138:26] Um and basically you get ever increasing
[138:27] amount of these orbs that drop off these
[138:29] acolytes, meaning that the tanks have to
[138:31] run orbs with a 500% vulnerability at
[138:33] some point in time, creating a crazy
[138:35] situation on this encounter. Uh at this
[138:37] point in time the casters and the
[138:38] players don't even know if it was even
[138:40] possible. However, on day 10, uh we have
[138:43] a real breakthrough in terms of what's
[138:45] actually going on on this fight. Liquid,
[138:47] they find consistency in the
[138:49] inconsistent. They make it to P3 on
[138:51] probably what is 75% of their attempts.
[138:53] And Echo on the other hand, who's
[138:55] historically a more calculated and
[138:56] consistent team, has a terrible day 10
[138:59] where they were not making it to phase
[139:00] three nearly enough, wiping time and
[139:02] time again in both phase one and phase
[139:04] two, which we talked about being very
[139:05] turbulent. So, give it up for day 11.
[139:08] Liquid shows up on day 11 and the boss
[139:10] actually gets nerfed. And when I say it
[139:12] gets nerfed, it's not like a Razageth or
[139:14] Queen Azshara nerf. It's just a very
[139:16] light touch to help you get through
[139:17] parts of the fight that nobody's made it
[139:18] to. It just lowers the damage and take
[139:20] on some of the crazier overlaps. And
[139:22] well, Liquid continues to have an
[139:24] exceptional day for day 11. Uh they end
[139:26] up hitting the enrage on the Queen
[139:28] Azshara encounter at 15%. We're kind of
[139:30] having N'Zoth flashbacks to this point
[139:32] nearly six years ago. How are you
[139:34] supposed to find 15% boss HP? Obviously,
[139:37] there's still optimizations and I would
[139:38] describe it as like comfort damage that
[139:40] happens whenever you're able to make it
[139:42] to a part of the encounter over and over
[139:44] again. Your damage just eventually
[139:46] increases.
[139:48] But everybody's kind of wondering is
[139:49] Blizzard going to need to step in and
[139:50] intervene with like a 5% health inner
[139:52] for something like that. How do you even
[139:54] begin to find 15% boss damage even after
[139:57] you've moved the bloodlust onto the boss
[139:58] itself in P3. Dragnos and I ended up
[140:01] assessing it on a recap at the time, but
[140:03] Echo at this point of the race had
[140:04] basically a 0% chance of killing the
[140:06] boss before Liquid on day 12. Uh Liquid
[140:09] had a chance, but it was basically going
[140:11] to involve elite DPS, and then there was
[140:14] always the chance that the damage check
[140:16] is not makeable at all, and we are in
[140:19] trouble. Good news because day 12 showed
[140:21] up, and Blizzard didn't need to
[140:23] intervene. Liquid was able to down
[140:25] Ansurek world first with Echo grabbing a
[140:26] close second on the hardest end boss of
[140:28] all time, 404 pulls.
[140:41] Crazy. Uh it's just so hard to create a
[140:43] boss if you're Blizzard that is 400
[140:45] pulls, and at the exact same time it's
[140:48] also killable. So, kudos to Blizzard in
[140:50] that regard for creating one of the most
[140:51] interesting end bosses in history.
[140:54] There's also one last shoutout that I
[140:55] want to give for this tier, THD uh on
[140:58] his warlock, he had to have made one of
[140:59] the I would describe it as the craziest
[141:01] plays individually
[141:03] I've ever seen on Liquid's Ansurek kill.
[141:06] Raiding tends to be more of like a team
[141:08] sport than something an individual's
[141:10] plays play an integral role on, but he
[141:13] had one of the craziest warlock gate
[141:15] saving plays I've ever seen, and we are
[141:17] so lucky that we have the race for world
[141:18] first broadcast on a world stage so
[141:20] plays like that can actually be seen.
[141:22] And with over 1,000 cumulative pulls,
[141:24] Ner'zhul Palace cements itself in elite
[141:27] company with only Sepulcher of the First
[141:28] Ones and Tomb of Sargeras as truly one
[141:31] of the hardest raids of all time.
[141:34] Now, coming off the hardest tier ever,
[141:36] nobody really knew what to expect. With
[141:38] insanely hard tiers, Blizzard tends to
[141:40] have a bit of difficulty thresh where
[141:42] things swing back and forth to more easy
[141:45] than they were extremely hard. Uh we've
[141:48] had Amirdrassil into Ner'zhul Palace,
[141:49] which is two insanely difficult raid
[141:50] tiers in a row where people were not
[141:52] happy with just how hard they were.
[141:54] We're probably due for an Aberrus-level
[141:56] tier at this point. Raid opens up, and
[141:58] you kind of know the drill about tiers
[141:59] without heroic week. There's no heroic
[142:01] week in Liberation of the Under mine.
[142:02] We're due for 3 days minimum of splits.
[142:04] Hundreds and hundreds of characters.
[142:06] Very rare loot is probably the most
[142:07] important it ever has been with items
[142:09] like the Jauster Diamond, the Eye of
[142:10] Xanzith, and the House of Cards all
[142:12] being gigabits for pretty much every
[142:14] single spec in the game.
[142:16] This meant that you needed just a god
[142:18] split for your Race to World First
[142:19] character to for it to be playable,
[142:20] where you got all three of these items.
[142:23] And Echo and Liquid at this point, well,
[142:25] they're just running 15 splits a piece.
[142:27] So, the race doesn't really kick off
[142:28] until Friday, 4 days after the raid
[142:30] opens. And let me just say, as a Race to
[142:33] World First viewer and player of the
[142:34] game, I hate this part of raiding.
[142:37] Uh as a Mythic raider, realistically,
[142:40] all you want more than anything is to go
[142:42] into Mythic the moment it opens up.
[142:45] Being straddled with needing to do
[142:46] heroic once, twice, or I guess like Race
[142:48] to World First case, a hundred times, is
[142:50] just a huge vibe killer.
[142:53] My complaining aside, Friday shows up
[142:54] and Race to World First guilds finally
[142:56] into the raid. And the first two bosses,
[142:58] they're cake. Rick Ruberb is a
[142:59] surprisingly difficult damage check for
[143:01] a third boss. And then we have a fourth
[143:03] boss wall. Stokestank Chunker, he's not
[143:06] having it. And this fight, he'll
[143:08] probably go down in history as one of
[143:09] the hardest fourth bosses ever, usurping
[143:12] Lady Ashvane. And the difficulty of why
[143:14] it's hard is really, really stupid. And
[143:17] it's attached to a thousand passive
[143:18] mechanics, which are all really stupid.
[143:20] Whether it be, you know, you didn't run
[143:21] over the Scrap Master in time. You
[143:22] accidentally ran into a crab bomb. Uh
[143:24] you don't have enough DPS to get the
[143:26] bombs out of the ground. You had players
[143:28] selected to get the ball at the wrong
[143:30] time who were going to be propping their
[143:31] offensive CDs. Uh you had a healer get
[143:33] selected at the wrong time. You didn't
[143:35] have the perfectly crafted comp for the
[143:36] fourth boss that wasn't particularly
[143:37] good for anything else in the raid. Who
[143:39] really knows what to say about a fight
[143:41] like this? It's so rare that you
[143:43] actually need a comp stack for a fourth
[143:44] boss, much less balance druids, who were
[143:46] largely not geared by Race World First
[143:48] guilds, since they sucked.
[143:50] So, Sticks took 115 pulls. Echo ends up
[143:53] killing it around 5 hours after Liquid,
[143:55] and the race is incredibly close, even
[143:56] though we're only four bosses in. Sticks
[143:58] died on a Saturday, so we're definitely
[144:00] going to have an Arabar 2.0, and we're
[144:02] not going to have a one-week Race World
[144:04] First.
[144:05] And the reason that this was known was
[144:07] because there was a choice between the
[144:08] guilds. Did you want to go to
[144:10] Bonkertonker?
[144:13] And the fact that the guilds chose
[144:15] Sticks Bonkertonker first meant that
[144:17] Sprocketmonger was not going to be
[144:19] something that you could just walk over.
[144:26] What exactly is the process to kind of
[144:28] follow whenever, especially an early
[144:30] boss like Sticks being the fourth boss
[144:32] in a raid, whenever a boss is that hard?
[144:34] Do you just continue to pull it, or are
[144:36] there more splits to potentially be
[144:39] done? What do you kind of do whenever an
[144:40] early boss is that hard? I mean, I think
[144:43] it's difficult because most of time
[144:45] splits always done beforehand, and
[144:47] you only do splits for certain
[144:49] characters that are
[144:51] random procs, I guess. Let's say Sticks,
[144:53] there was Boomkin procs that you needed,
[144:55] and you just did splits for Boomkin,
[144:57] right?
[144:58] But most of time, I think all Race World
[144:59] First guilds just make a plan that gear
[145:01] like, I don't know, 50 characters for
[145:03] the everyone, like for to cover every
[145:06] base, basically, and every setup
[145:07] possible.
[145:08] And that is in the split plan, and you
[145:10] just run the splits, and you're done.
[145:12] And then there's only last-minute
[145:13] resurrections of some classes, of some
[145:16] players, I guess, potentially, to if
[145:18] some crazy things happen.
[145:20] And I mean, I think with Sticks, the
[145:21] thing was that we I mean, if we had the
[145:23] setup ready, I mean, Liquid had the
[145:24] setup to some degree ready as well, I
[145:26] think.
[145:27] Um like we knew that we wanted to go in
[145:29] with all the range classes and whatever.
[145:31] We obviously didn't expect that the boss
[145:33] would be this crazy OP, I guess, towards
[145:35] us.
[145:36] >> [laughter and gasps]
[145:36] >> But then we did kind of have everything
[145:38] ready, so that was good. There was some
[145:39] misplay on some crafting on one alt or
[145:42] whatever, which was a bit scuffed. But,
[145:44] um I mean, if a early boss is this
[145:46] difficult, the main thing I think that
[145:48] always happens is that you try to gear
[145:51] all the characters while you swap in and
[145:53] out of progress because it's not the end
[145:56] of progress. You're still thinking about
[145:58] all the characters you geared.
[146:00] And you might need to gear, I don't
[146:01] know, the Windwalker for the next boss.
[146:03] Like, you knew Windwalker was OP in that
[146:05] tier, right? So, you gear like the
[146:06] classes that you knew were OP for later
[146:08] bosses as well.
[146:10] And put them on the bench, even if they
[146:11] were maybe okay on the current boss. Put
[146:14] them on the bench, gear them, and I
[146:15] think that's how it often goes if the if
[146:16] the progress is still ongoing for long,
[146:19] right? I think often times it happen
[146:21] happen happens to many guilds as well
[146:22] that if you're on the seventh boss or
[146:24] eighth boss or whatever,
[146:26] I mean, the setup is not changing that
[146:27] much anymore unless there's some secret
[146:29] phase, of course. So, you probably don't
[146:33] care, I guess, and people can do other
[146:34] things that will benefit the guild apart
[146:36] from gear their character. But, if it's
[146:37] early progress,
[146:39] I mean, you'd only do it always, right?
[146:40] And especially with upgrade system and
[146:43] crest save and third series and I don't
[146:46] know, all the shenanigans you can farm
[146:48] many things, I guess. That's always the
[146:50] main main issue as well, right?
[146:52] And Sprocketmonger was next, and now
[146:54] that is a cool boss to make hard. While
[146:56] Six had Fire Ra'kan and Halondrus-esque
[146:57] moments of just raid-wide one-shots that
[146:59] nobody understood, Sprocketmonger is
[147:02] more of a controlled dance with intense
[147:04] micro, a pretty hefty DPS check, and
[147:07] everything kind of culminated in a phase
[147:08] three where all the mechanics were
[147:10] thrown at you at the exact same time,
[147:12] and getting hit by anything wipes the
[147:13] raid. It was really a beautiful
[147:14] encounter, very cool for the race world
[147:16] first whenever you're watching fights
[147:17] like that. And for Liquid and Echo,
[147:19] they're simultaneously pulling the boss,
[147:21] and the reset comes and goes, and
[147:23] Sprocketmonger's still alive.
[147:25] And so, we're strapped in for a really
[147:26] long race. The reset came and went for
[147:29] Liquid. And Echo,
[147:31] somehow, they actually down
[147:33] Sprocketmonger, lock, and stock on their
[147:36] first reset. And without Liquid being
[147:38] able to do it.
[147:39] And this is probably in this video the
[147:42] earliest Limit or Liquid has lost a
[147:44] world first kill since Lady Ashvane.
[147:47] This is one of those kills that doesn't
[147:48] mean much in terms of loot,
[147:50] but it can actually feel incredibly
[147:52] demoralizing, especially when Echo
[147:53] smells blood in the water. A huge
[147:55] momentum shifter for a guild like them,
[147:57] and they were able to do this off of
[147:59] utterly ridiculous chain P3 attempts
[148:01] with insane amounts of battle res
[148:03] available
[148:04] in an incredibly impressive fashion that
[148:06] everybody takes notice and is like,
[148:08] "Wow, they are very good."
[148:10] So, that was boss five. Three bosses
[148:11] separate these teams from the finish
[148:13] line though, and we have One-Armed
[148:14] Bandit, Mug'thol, and Gallywix.
[148:17] One-Armed Bandit, it dies without issue.
[148:19] Liquid ends up killing it world first
[148:20] off the back of the re-clear. If
[148:21] anything, Echo actually kind of throws
[148:23] away all of their lead on One-Armed
[148:25] Bandit, but I think it's pretty neutral
[148:28] given what the reset does.
[148:30] Then the teams enter Mug'thol, and
[148:32] Mug'thol, it was insanely difficult.
[148:34] Mostly off the back of an insanely hard
[148:37] phase two that had a lot of stupid bugs.
[148:40] The mines would sometimes not blow up
[148:41] correctly. The ramping damage the boss
[148:43] did from the enrage mechanic wiped
[148:45] people time and time again. And for
[148:47] context, race world first guilds spent
[148:49] probably 75%
[148:52] of their progression time just in P2,
[148:54] and it felt like guilds were really just
[148:55] gambling attempts, praying that one
[148:57] person didn't die in P2 due to how tough
[148:59] the damage check was on top of the jank
[149:01] mechanics. So, now we're down to the
[149:02] wire. Liquid started Mug'thol first.
[149:05] Echo has gotten more gear from Sprocket
[149:07] Monger over the course of this race.
[149:09] Historically as well, Echo just kind of
[149:11] has this ability to be able to have
[149:12] unreal consistency when it feels
[149:14] impossible to kind of have consistency.
[149:16] And then, you know, Liquid are able to
[149:18] figure it out. Liquid downs Mug'thol
[149:19] first, and Echo ends up actually choking
[149:21] on this boss pretty hard. And so, what
[149:24] does choking mean in this context? Echo
[149:26] spends an additional eight hours over
[149:27] Liquid in progression time on Mug'thol.
[149:30] This compounded with the lost time on
[149:32] one-armed bandit puts Echo at nearly 17
[149:34] hours behind Liquid. So now it's
[149:37] possible to recover from this as we've
[149:38] seen. We've seen some crazy stuff,
[149:40] especially like Tindral Sageswift and
[149:41] Fyrakk.
[149:42] That was until the Gallywix incident.
[149:45] So Gallywix's encounter didn't have much
[149:48] stated in the dungeon journal about
[149:50] Mythic at all. In fact, pretty much all
[149:52] of it was absent. Players were wondering
[149:54] about a secret Mythic phase, but nothing
[149:56] was caught on data mining. So pretty
[149:58] much everybody knows if there was a
[150:00] secret phase or not due to what's
[150:01] unveiled during data mining. So it felt
[150:03] unlikely that that was going to be the
[150:04] case. Maybe it could be encrypted, but
[150:06] unlikely.
[150:07] And doing a boss without the dungeon
[150:09] journal, effectively blind, can be
[150:11] unbelievably difficult.
[150:13] Unfortunately, Gallywix ends up being
[150:16] far easier than anybody anticipates. And
[150:18] you know, I like to tend to hype up end
[150:20] boss kills. They take the longest, the
[150:22] most drama happens on them. The guilds
[150:23] are in slingshot mode where one guild is
[150:25] overtaking one another. They get a bit
[150:26] ahead and they wake up behind.
[150:29] This is typical for race world first
[150:30] kills.
[150:31] Now for Gallywix,
[150:33] um well, this is a boss of all time for
[150:35] sure. And to cut to the chase, Gallywix
[150:37] died in 24 hours for Liquid and 16 hours
[150:40] for Echo. This is probably the most
[150:42] anticlimactic finish to a race world
[150:43] first ever due to the final boss being
[150:45] fairly under-tuned. And more than
[150:47] anything, Gallywix just kind of lacked
[150:49] tension. There was no hard damage check,
[150:51] no phase was individually difficult. It
[150:53] all just felt kind of easy.
[150:55] And I'll let this clip of Preach take it
[150:57] away as how it was received from a race
[150:59] world first level. I embarrassing,
[151:02] uh complete [ __ ] calamity. Um
[151:07] Yeah, a lot of words like that were
[151:08] being thrown around. I was furious, I'm
[151:10] not going to lie. I'm literally furious
[151:12] with what they did during that raid. I
[151:14] don't think we'll ever get an answer as
[151:16] to what the hell happened there. There
[151:18] is a million crackpot theories running
[151:20] around about what happened. But um
[151:23] ultimately, embarrassing is the word I
[151:25] will go with. Absolutely embarrassing
[151:27] for Blizzard. I have never in my life,
[151:29] and I really racked my brain,
[151:32] did they forget a phase? I don't know. I
[151:35] don't know. Like, if I run the run the
[151:36] [ __ ] gauntlet of crackpot theories,
[151:38] one, they didn't turn on the triggers
[151:40] for whatever was supposed to happen.
[151:41] Two, they deliberately didn't turn on
[151:43] the triggers for what was supposed to
[151:44] happen so the race would end. Three,
[151:46] they legendary ring does and literally
[151:48] didn't come up with anything
[151:49] at all.
[151:51] Four, they somehow ran out of time to
[151:53] create whatever the mythic phase is
[151:55] going to be. All of those theories may
[151:58] or may not be true.
[152:00] I have no idea. I have actually no idea,
[152:03] but it's embarrassing.
[152:05] There's also an iconic moment where THD
[152:07] and Max at the exact same time were in
[152:09] utter bewilderment as the boss ended up
[152:11] dying for liquid. Uh
[152:13] THD was basically dead for two entire
[152:15] minutes on the world first kill. In the
[152:17] raid, it was really fun as a raider, but
[152:19] for race world first, it was definitely
[152:21] deflating seeing the end boss be that
[152:23] easy. And as it turns out, Echo ended up
[152:25] playing the best for probably six out of
[152:27] the eight bosses, but their utter
[152:29] collapse on Mug'thol and just wasting a
[152:31] ton of time on One-Armed Bandit ended up
[152:33] losing them the race.
[152:35] What?
[152:39] How bad does it feel whenever you have a
[152:42] tier like Undermine where there is a
[152:44] stark difference in difficulty between a
[152:46] penultimate fight like Mug'thol and an
[152:48] end boss like Gallywix? Is it like super
[152:50] demoralizing or like
[152:52] does it feel just because you guys put
[152:54] in so much prep and you kind of expect a
[152:55] linear difficulty, right? I mean, it is
[152:58] very
[152:59] it's very disappointing, I think.
[153:01] Because I think Undermine if Gallywix
[153:03] would have been a good boss, I think
[153:05] Undermine would have been my favorite
[153:06] raid of this expansion, for sure.
[153:08] Because I think the bosses were good.
[153:10] The bosses were tuned for race world
[153:11] first, clearly, many of them, maybe too
[153:13] much as well, right? Um they were great
[153:16] design. I think the vibe of the raid was
[153:17] cool, the theme, overall, like they had
[153:19] different kind of bosses, like Mug'thol
[153:21] was a very difficult healing and
[153:23] coordination check, right? And I mean
[153:25] also maybe we got up, but
[153:27] a lot of tech issues as well at that
[153:29] boss, but I think all of the bosses were
[153:31] offering a lot of stuff. With sticks was
[153:33] like more of a personal gameplay fight
[153:36] and one armed was like a
[153:39] together kind of problem-solving fight,
[153:41] which was a little bit under-tuned,
[153:43] sadly, I think. But overall was good. I
[153:45] mean, the main issue I think with that
[153:47] tier in general was all of if a pin
[153:49] ultimate bosses this much harder than
[153:51] the final boss is that the race is so
[153:54] bad in terms of how bosses were are laid
[153:57] out
[153:58] that most of the time you reach the pin
[153:59] ultimate boss before the the first
[154:02] weekly reset, right? That's how the race
[154:04] world first again.
[154:05] And then kind of this the current tier
[154:07] was a good example. We reach
[154:10] the boss and liquid reaches the boss and
[154:12] you can't kill it. Yeah, because it's
[154:14] it's too difficult. And I think that's
[154:15] always the tuning Blizzard is going for
[154:17] because they don't want the race to end
[154:18] in one week, probably. That's my
[154:19] assumption.
[154:21] So, they always tune it so the pin
[154:22] ultimate boss does not die or has like
[154:24] some crazy check or potentially one
[154:26] guild kills it or something, I don't
[154:27] know.
[154:28] Um and then if you kill that boss
[154:31] you you like if you kill the pin
[154:33] ultimate boss, you should be looking
[154:35] forward to like progress on the final
[154:37] boss for like
[154:38] I don't know, like four more days or
[154:40] three more days, right? In that sense.
[154:42] But if you kill the pin ultimate boss
[154:44] and then the other boss just dies like
[154:46] Gallywix, I mean, it's very boring as
[154:48] well, I think. Like even like I I I
[154:50] would say like many people always say oh
[154:53] they I people say Under Mine was so bad
[154:55] or whatever. I think Under Mine was
[154:56] great raid, apart from Gallywix, of
[154:58] course. And I think it could have been
[154:59] the best race
[155:00] or the best raid to look at or whatever
[155:03] in the whole tier
[155:06] if the boss would have lived a little
[155:07] bit longer, right? And I think a big
[155:09] issue with a boss that is shitty tuned
[155:11] as well
[155:12] is that it's so
[155:14] it's so weird, right? Because we went to
[155:16] bed
[155:17] and we were looking at Liquid and we're
[155:18] like "Hmm
[155:19] does the boss maybe die?" Because they
[155:21] made a lot of progress early on, right?
[155:23] Um and we're like, "Maybe we shouldn't
[155:25] go to bed, but that would have been very
[155:27] difficult, right?" There's always a
[155:28] should have
[155:30] if situation, I guess, right? But we're
[155:32] like, "Maybe we shouldn't go to bed.
[155:33] Maybe we should stay up and progress the
[155:35] boss and then whoever dies first, either
[155:37] we die
[155:39] of exhaustion or the boss dies in that
[155:41] sense."
[155:42] And for Liquid, they're two and 0 in the
[155:44] world with their Will this be the first
[155:46] ever expansion sweep in the history of
[155:48] World of Warcraft?
[155:50] That brings us to Man nor Omega, the
[155:52] last raid of the world within in the
[155:53] most recent race. Uh the first day of
[155:56] the race, the NA reset was pretty
[155:57] standard with Liquid players getting
[155:59] into the raid when servers came up and
[156:01] they're posted up in front of the first
[156:02] boss and Plexus Sentinel. Then, suddenly
[156:05] one of Liquid's mages
[156:07] gets banned. His name, Hopeful. He gets
[156:09] logged out and receives a message that
[156:11] he had been banned. He looks clearly
[156:12] confused at this point and Liquid get in
[156:14] touch with a Blizzard contact who said
[156:16] the ban was going to stand.
[156:18] So, basically, when he was in Echo, like
[156:21] four or five months ago, Instant
[156:22] Dollars, he used to be in Instant
[156:24] Dollars, right? And he was in Echo and
[156:27] Instant Dollars was progressing
[156:29] Mug'Tharon and one of their mages' PC
[156:31] blows up blew up. He lives This part
[156:33] isn't really relevant, but he said they
[156:34] lived an hour away. So, he was like
[156:36] going to come over to his house and just
[156:37] play on his setup and he just
[156:38] eventually, as he said, caved in and let
[156:42] He just played his account for
[156:43] Mug'Tharon, didn't kill it, and then
[156:44] played his account one other time and
[156:45] killed Gallywix. And then, according to
[156:47] Blizzard, they know exactly what
[156:48] happened. They like clearly were like,
[156:50] "He's not getting unbanned. We know what
[156:51] he did." [music] And uh clearly he's
[156:52] guilty. He did do it. But they said they
[156:54] were not They did not sit on this and
[156:56] time it for today. It just came to their
[156:58] attention recently, which is why what
[157:00] they're saying as far as it being a race
[157:01] ban. So, yeah. Initial thoughts on that?
[157:03] Insanely [ __ ] stupid that he did
[157:06] that. I mean, just at such an obvious
[157:08] level it is
[157:09] just so [ __ ] dumb
[157:12] to do that and not surprising that he
[157:13] got banned for it. So, before people
[157:15] start like trying to like point fingers
[157:17] and stuff of like who told Blizzard
[157:19] about it or whatever, I think the moral
[157:21] of the story is like he did something
[157:23] extremely [ __ ] stupid and was
[157:25] obviously going to get banned for it.
[157:26] So, the it's his fault.
[157:29] Let's just
[157:31] let's keep that a buck, right? It's his
[157:33] fault. It's very dumb and he knows that.
[157:35] I'm waiting
[157:36] And Blizzard does allow Hopeful to make
[157:38] a new account. So, after 12 hours of
[157:40] level boosting a handful of characters,
[157:41] Hopeful was back in the raid and ready
[157:43] for the splits. But, it was a lot of
[157:45] drama at the very beginning and some
[157:47] people were not happy about this.
[157:49] Man Forge, it's got a lot of splits.
[157:51] Liquid ends up entering Mythic on day
[157:53] four. Liquid's first kill on the first
[157:54] boss of the raid, Plexus Sentinel, was
[157:56] actually quite a highlight. I remember
[157:57] Yeps at this point was basically the
[157:59] only one alive, practically soloing the
[158:01] last minute of the fight, allowing
[158:03] Liquid to kill the boss in one pull.
[158:04] Probably the most hyped first boss kill
[158:06] of all time, but it doesn't really
[158:07] matter through the grand scheme of
[158:09] things. And the next couple of bosses,
[158:12] you know, they're not that hard either.
[158:14] And before you know it, Liquid's staring
[158:15] down Forge Weaver Xaranz.
[158:17] At this point, there was kind of
[158:19] some information out there on Forge
[158:21] Weaver where Instant Dollars at this
[158:23] time had actually thrown attempts at the
[158:25] boss.
[158:26] And it was widely known that it was not
[158:28] going to be something that you could
[158:29] just completely walk over. So, Echo
[158:31] matches Liquid's day one performance and
[158:34] basically then both of these guilds are
[158:35] going to end up spending pretty much all
[158:37] of the day on Forge Weaver or farming
[158:39] Mythic Plus where Liquid ends up racking
[158:41] up over 70 attempts on Forge Weaver.
[158:44] They end up doing a decent amount of
[158:45] Mythic Plus breaks and the boss, Forge
[158:49] Weaver Xaranz, ends up taking a nerf
[158:50] halfway through Liquid's day where the
[158:52] original strat on the boss was to use
[158:54] three tanks in order to deal with the
[158:57] permanent and very healthy arcane echo
[158:59] ads. Since the ads were basically not
[159:01] killable while also doing damage to the
[159:03] boss, Blizzard ends up nerfing the ads
[159:05] HP by 40% and Forgekeeper Roxxane self
[159:08] by 5%. This basically kick-starts
[159:11] progression for pretty much all guilds
[159:13] involved in this fight. For Liquid, this
[159:15] allows them to skyrocket their pulls.
[159:16] They change the strategy. They brought
[159:18] They bring in another DPS. They blob a
[159:20] tank. And the boss is still incredibly
[159:22] hard even after the nerfs with a lot of
[159:24] mechanics coming at you super quickly
[159:26] and needing
[159:27] pretty stupid CC rotation with things
[159:29] like Demon Hunter
[159:31] Evoker's Oppressing Roar, a lot of
[159:33] stuns, and just, you know, Binding Shot
[159:35] I remember being on this fight as well.
[159:37] Be able to deal with the entire fight.
[159:40] At the end of the day,
[159:41] you know, the boss is kind of close for
[159:43] Liquid at 1.5% for Echo. They're, you
[159:47] know, trying to do the slingshot thing
[159:49] where, you know, they go to bed behind
[159:51] and they wake up ahead. And so, it's
[159:52] kind of interesting for Echo to see if
[159:54] they're going to be able to capture a
[159:55] world first kill on Forgekeeper Roxxane.
[159:59] And by the time Liquid ends up waking
[160:00] up, Echo had improved on their previous
[160:02] best and they had sank 60 pulls into the
[160:04] boss with a 2% best pull. So, both of
[160:07] the teams are basically at the exact
[160:09] same point. And over the next hour or
[160:10] so, we would see both Liquid and Echo
[160:12] trying to kill the boss at the same
[160:13] time, getting consecutive low health
[160:15] pulls before Liquid ends up killing the
[160:17] boss an hour into their raid day.
[160:19] Echo did not take too much longer. They
[160:21] ended up killing the boss around 20
[160:22] minutes after Liquid. So, really, really
[160:24] good for Echo, all things considered.
[160:27] Now, it was time for Soul Hunters. Now,
[160:29] this was a boss that originally was
[160:31] flagged as optional. Um and everybody
[160:33] was trying to confuse us. So, what does
[160:35] an optional boss mean in the context of
[160:37] the Race to World First? The Race to
[160:39] World First guilds basically decided
[160:40] that
[160:41] we're going to kill all the bosses. Um
[160:42] it wasn't really optional. It also
[160:44] dropped some pretty powerful loot.
[160:46] Echo ended up spending a couple of pulls
[160:47] here before going to bed. Liquid,
[160:49] though, has almost their entire day to
[160:52] kill as many bosses as reasonably
[160:53] possible. And Soul Hunters would receive
[160:56] a nerf while Liquid was also pulling it,
[160:57] reducing the health of all three bosses
[160:59] by 7%. Probably not the largest
[161:02] difference-maker, though. Liquid ends up
[161:04] killing the boss in 26 attempts and
[161:06] they're heading onwards to Fractalus.
[161:08] And for Fractalus, it's kind of weird.
[161:10] The intended strat to kill the boss is
[161:11] with two tanks, but after seeing how
[161:13] insane the DPS check was on this fight,
[161:16] Liquid goes and is like, all right,
[161:17] we're going to we're going to one tank
[161:19] this fight. They start one tanking the
[161:20] boss very similar to what happened with
[161:21] Nexus Princess Ky'veza. In the
[161:23] beginning, the Liquid strat for one
[161:24] tanking this fight was having a holy
[161:25] paladin just taunt the boss and bubble
[161:27] taunt. And due to the bug with the boss,
[161:30] the tank mechanic wouldn't spawn the
[161:32] mythic wall, essentially skipping a
[161:34] mechanic, a huge deal. But at the same
[161:36] time, I mean, while the strategy is just
[161:37] absolutely insane, Liquid did not swap
[161:40] over to one tanking until it was pretty
[161:41] close to the end of the raid day. They
[161:43] ended up only getting 10 pulls with that
[161:44] strategy. They ended up going to bed
[161:46] with the best attempt of 14%. And at
[161:48] this point in time, Liquid wake up and
[161:50] they are turbo behind. It was slingshot
[161:53] season again for Echo and having seen
[161:56] Liquid swap over to a one tank strategy
[161:57] at the end of the night, Echo ends up
[161:58] adopting the strategy. They make some
[162:00] adjustments and they have a better
[162:02] strategy than what Liquid did. In
[162:04] Liquid's strat, they were breaking a lot
[162:06] of these scary walls that gave a
[162:07] stacking debuff, uh the mythic walls,
[162:10] and sometimes they ended up stacking the
[162:11] debuff up to two to three stacks,
[162:12] putting a lot of extra stress on the
[162:14] healers.
[162:15] Echo ended up breaking basically none of
[162:17] them, opting for a much safer strategy
[162:19] while still maintaining the one tank.
[162:21] Echo ends up killing the boss first with
[162:23] this strategy. They also have killed
[162:24] Soul Hunters at this point in time.
[162:25] Method on the other hand also finishes
[162:28] Fractalus world second 4 hours later,
[162:31] basically yoinking the strategy from
[162:33] Echo. And for Liquid, they wake up and,
[162:36] you know, they're behind. They're in
[162:37] third place. And so, you know, [ __ ] kind
[162:40] of hits the fan. Liquid just got
[162:41] completely out-stratted on what is
[162:44] essentially just an easy patchwork
[162:46] fight. At the same time, you know, we
[162:48] have we have two end bosses left, right?
[162:49] We have or we have two bosses left.
[162:51] Nexus King Salan'dar, the penultimate
[162:52] encounter, and Dementius, the final
[162:54] encounter. And it's hard to really know
[162:55] how difficult both of these encounters
[162:57] were. And Saladar, he actually ended up
[162:59] being fairly tricky.
[163:01] Um there's a lot of stuff that can
[163:02] actually go wrong in this encounter.
[163:03] Moving Bloodlust was something that was
[163:05] fairly common. I remember there were
[163:06] intermission platforms that if you
[163:07] didn't have all 20 players alive,
[163:09] you would fairly regularly just miss the
[163:11] damage check on the intermission
[163:12] platforms.
[163:13] Um we're pretty close to the reset as
[163:15] well. So there it is a high degree of
[163:17] likelihood that an extra reset worth of
[163:19] gear is going to be happening for both
[163:20] Echo and Liquid trying to see what's
[163:22] going on with that.
[163:25] And for Liquid, they ended up spending a
[163:26] decent amount of time progressing
[163:27] Saladar. They ended up ending their
[163:29] first reset with their best pull of 62%
[163:31] in phase three. Echo, they continue to
[163:33] kind of pull the boss on their reset
[163:36] one. And Echo goes to bed with Saladar
[163:38] at 30% into phase three. So Echo, you
[163:41] know, they're taking that advantage that
[163:42] they have from Practolus, and they're
[163:44] really starting to put their foot on the
[163:45] gas and trying to choke out Liquid from
[163:47] a world first Saladar kill even. So the
[163:49] reset hits, and Liquid's farm actually
[163:52] goes pretty well, all things considered.
[163:54] They end up not taking too much time.
[163:56] There are still some chores that are
[163:57] left to be done. There are some crests
[163:59] that are yet to be gained.
[164:01] Uh there's some, you know, crafting
[164:02] profession gear that needs to be spent
[164:04] occasionally. And for Liquid, after all
[164:06] of these re-clearing after this influx
[164:08] in gear, it's kind of crazy. They end up
[164:10] finishing off Nexus King Saladar in 20
[164:13] pulls, ending their pull count at 108 in
[164:15] total. They actually had a really clean
[164:17] strategy for how to deal with the Star
[164:19] Killer swings and where to place their
[164:21] orbiting planets around the room. This
[164:24] was one that Echo ended up copying.
[164:26] Initially, Echo was doing some really
[164:27] weird strategy with all of their orb
[164:28] placements, but the the Liquid strategy
[164:30] seemed like it was going to be a little
[164:31] bit superior. And so basically all the
[164:33] other guilds were going to be going on
[164:34] to copy that.
[164:36] So Saladar's dead for Liquid, and for
[164:37] the next few days, they're going to be
[164:38] banging down the door of Demensius to
[164:40] see if they can finish off this race and
[164:42] go where we've never seen them go before
[164:44] with an expansion sweep. And Echo, they
[164:45] would basically not be any less on their
[164:47] reset. Uh they start off their day with
[164:49] splits. They smash the re-clear, and
[164:51] they're back in front of Nexus King
[164:52] Saladar at 3:00 p.m. local time, 10
[164:54] hours after the start of their day. They
[164:56] get him killed off rather quickly and
[164:58] with Liquid and Echo both of starting to
[165:00] raid at the exact same time, they're on
[165:02] Demensius at the exact same time. Echo
[165:04] is able to down Nexus King Saladar world
[165:06] second rather quickly and we both guilds
[165:07] trying to figure out phase one of
[165:09] Demensius at the same time.
[165:12] Just talk about Demensius for a little
[165:13] bit. Even from day one of the raid
[165:14] releasing and seeing Demensius on many
[165:16] difficulties, you could actually tell
[165:17] that this is one of the most visually
[165:19] stunning bosses of all time. People
[165:20] compared it to a Final Fantasy boss. Uh
[165:22] you end up being allowed to fly through
[165:24] space and you dodge comets that are near
[165:26] that flying at you in phase two. You end
[165:28] up having a phase three where you have
[165:29] to coordinate soaks and drop debuffs as
[165:31] the room gets smaller and smaller.
[165:33] And this race, it was actually shaping
[165:35] up to be an all-timer if the tuning on
[165:36] Demensius was right. And for the first
[165:38] real day of Demensius, Echo had reached
[165:40] the start of the second phase after
[165:42] getting their gear from their re-clear.
[165:44] Liquid on the other hand, they ended up
[165:45] having a full day on Demensius himself.
[165:47] They ended up managed to reach the
[165:48] second part of P2, uh one of the
[165:51] intermission platforms.
[165:52] Next day, you know, it's more of the
[165:54] same. Echo gets a couple of good pulls
[165:56] in phase two. Then they push into phase
[165:58] three even on some of their attempts
[166:00] with not all the players alive.
[166:01] Obviously, it's not going to be a kill,
[166:03] but everybody's, you know, seeing
[166:05] through the fight at least. You're
[166:07] seeing through all of the phases. Um
[166:09] Echo ends up swapping some of their
[166:10] comps. They end up playing like feral
[166:12] druid at the beginning, but they end up
[166:13] swapping basically to the same
[166:14] composition that Liquid was running.
[166:16] Double DK and double Evoker were notably
[166:18] actually required for this encounter.
[166:19] Double Evoker for rescues on your
[166:21] healers to be able to meet the heal
[166:22] checks in phase one. Double Death Knight
[166:24] for the phase two add grips that were
[166:26] absolutely required. So both of these uh
[166:29] comps, it was basically just like, how
[166:30] are we fitting in Death Knights? How are
[166:32] we fitting in Evokers? Um then where are
[166:34] we getting our raid buffs from? So
[166:36] everybody's basically seeing through the
[166:38] entirety of the fight. Um not seeing to
[166:40] the enrage yet, but we're getting kind
[166:42] of close there. Up until this point,
[166:43] guilds fighting Demensius, they were
[166:44] basically using Bloodlust on pull.
[166:47] Um it was kind of used to push through
[166:49] phase one and see further into the
[166:50] fight. Phase one had an overlap at the
[166:53] very end of P1 that if you didn't beat,
[166:55] you were likely to have people die. Uh
[166:58] it was possible to beat it and it was
[167:00] possible to outplay it, yet at the same
[167:01] time the safe thing to do is to just
[167:03] lust phase one. Maybe the Bloodlust is
[167:06] going to have to be moved. And so then
[167:07] the guild starts to look at the tuning
[167:09] of phase three, the HP on the boss.
[167:12] And it's unfortunate, but the Bloodlust
[167:14] actually needed to get moved um to the
[167:16] start of phase three where the boss
[167:18] takes 100% increased damage. And this
[167:19] basically meant that every guild had to
[167:20] re-progress the early parts of the fight
[167:22] without the safety of the Bloodlust for
[167:24] those adds that we were talking about
[167:26] earlier. And this is where things start
[167:29] to hit the fan where basically guilds
[167:31] are just chain wiping in phase one where
[167:34] you're just praying that phase two is
[167:36] consistent. Phase one Phase two was
[167:37] never really that consistent, but you're
[167:39] just praying that you can get through
[167:40] phase two on the one in 10 attempts that
[167:42] you make it through phase one without
[167:43] the Bloodlust. And so yeah, Echo and
[167:45] Liquid have basically seen to the end of
[167:46] the fight. They needed the Bloodlust.
[167:48] The The help on the boss was going to be
[167:50] too much. And so basically we're in a
[167:52] situation where the first guild that can
[167:53] turn their one out of 10 attempts coming
[167:55] out of phase one into one out of five
[167:57] attempts coming out of phase one and
[167:58] continue to see to the end of the fight,
[168:00] they are likely to be your race world
[168:01] first champions for Manaforge Omega. And
[168:04] because of the intense difficulty in
[168:05] phase three, the guilds would also
[168:06] choose to use what is called a healer
[168:08] lust where basically people would stand
[168:10] on the platform, get themselves
[168:12] pre-sated, lust for themselves at the
[168:14] start of phase one to make sure that
[168:15] they can get Bloodlust back again for
[168:17] the end of the fight uh where the
[168:19] basically the healers didn't need the
[168:20] Bloodlust during the 100% damage amp.
[168:22] Instead, they wanted it later on
[168:23] Dimensius.
[168:25] This is something that takes a lot of
[168:26] time and is really really stupid, so
[168:27] guilds try to avoid doing this basically
[168:30] you until you're ready to kill the boss.
[168:32] That way you don't waste too much time.
[168:33] And so you're pulling out all the stops.
[168:35] Day 12 of the race comes. Echo is eager
[168:37] to retake their title as the best guild
[168:39] in the world. And for Liquid, they're
[168:40] trying to complete the trifecta and
[168:41] sweep all three raids in the war within
[168:43] expansion. Echo having seen the pulls
[168:45] that Liquid had on the enraged late into
[168:47] P3, they were charging forwards. And
[168:49] Echo, they were steadily getting lower
[168:51] and lower pulls going down percent by
[168:53] percent every single pull. And Echo,
[168:55] they were playing really well now. And
[168:57] if Liquid wanted to stand a chance, they
[168:59] had to wake up and be locked in from the
[169:00] start. Liquid had gone to bed the day
[169:03] before with a 17% best pull and 30
[169:05] minutes before they woke up, Echo had
[169:07] just wiped at 12%. But Echo, they mean
[169:09] business now. And with the raid going
[169:11] longer and longer and they're going
[169:13] later and later, we're in a familiar
[169:15] waters pulling late into the night. This
[169:18] is very Firelands-esque where basically
[169:20] both of the guilds were pulling at the
[169:21] exact same time where, you know, we were
[169:23] in single digit HP territory. And at the
[169:26] start of the raid,
[169:28] Liquid is unfortunately going to have
[169:29] issues pushing through to phase three,
[169:32] uh wipe wiping a bunch of times in phase
[169:33] one just proving how inconsistent it it
[169:35] can be.
[169:36] And meanwhile on the other monitor, you
[169:37] can actually see Echo getting lower and
[169:39] lower pulls. Echo has a 5% wipe. Then
[169:41] Echo has a 4% wipe a couple pulls later.
[169:44] Liquid kind of get their [ __ ] into gear.
[169:45] They end up having a 13% wipe.
[169:48] But Echo, 3%? Oh, oh, hold on. Then
[169:51] Liquid procs another late wipe getting
[169:52] the boss down to 3%. And then,
[169:55] Echo
[169:57] wipes at 0.3%.
[170:00] And then they wipe again
[170:01] at 0.5%.
[170:04] And so these pulls are so close that
[170:06] basically it could be anybody's game.
[170:09] Um
[170:10] no matter who wins and as a viewer
[170:11] experience, this was probably the
[170:13] greatest race world first yet. So then
[170:15] with Echo pulling the boss past 1:00
[170:17] a.m. local time and after consecutive
[170:19] grueling wipes where there were only
[170:21] margins away from killing the boss,
[170:25] we would see Liquid
[170:26] finish Dimensius on a really god-tier
[170:29] pull and complete their expansion sweep.
[170:33] Leave me, leave me, leave me. Leave
[170:33] Timber dead. Leave Timber dead.
[170:35] Let's [ __ ] go! We did
[170:36] >> Let's go! Come on!
[170:38] Come on!
[170:39] Look at my health!
[170:43] >> [screaming]
[170:53] [screaming]
[171:16] >> And even after losing Echo continued to
[171:17] raid for a couple of hours to try to
[171:19] secure world's second and they I think
[171:20] they stopped playing like 4:00 a.m. or
[171:21] something.
[171:23] And then after 4:00 a.m. they went to
[171:25] bed.
[171:26] They woke back up. They killed the boss
[171:28] pretty early in the morning for the
[171:29] world's second, but basically anything
[171:30] other than world's first is unacceptable
[171:32] for these race world's first kills. So,
[171:34] very, very saddening situation for the
[171:37] boys from Europe. But, congratulations
[171:38] to Liquid in that regard. I mean, it's
[171:40] huge it's a huge deal to be able to do
[171:41] the sweep an expansion.
[171:44] All right. Well, if you made it this
[171:45] far, you're legally required to like and
[171:48] subscribe.
[171:49] Thank you guys so much for watching the
[171:50] video. Basically, here's what's going
[171:52] on. If you enjoyed this kind of content,
[171:53] I got great news. On March 24th, the
[171:56] opening of Void Spire in the Dream Rift
[171:58] are is going to be happening on Mythic.
[172:00] On March 31st, the opening of the March
[172:03] of Kil'jaeden is going to be opening on
[172:04] Mythic. So, make sure to check out both
[172:06] twitch.tv/teamliquid
[172:08] and twitch.tv/echo_esports
[172:10] for more race world's first action and
[172:12] I'm going to see you guys there.
[172:14] Goodbye.