wow Battle of Dazar'alor M Day 5: Elemental Down

[Starym 3,800]

 

It's day 5 and all the action is on Jaina now, and all the focus on Limit and Method. We actually got at least a little bit of news on Limit's progress and we saw Method push even further beyond the ice wall and get their best try yet by a significant amount. We also got two earlier World First kill videos from Limit, so let's get into it.

Historically at this point in any race there would be just a very long period of quiet, with rumors and "leaks" swirling around until that moment when the endboss dies and the nerdscreams sound off, almost out of nowhere and everyone losing their minds. Ever since Uldir, however, we have a whole lot of information on the race, not only by seeing Method progress live on the race, but also by having that impact guilds that don't stream into sharing a bit more info than usual.

And so today we got word from Limit that they had breached the ice wall and pushed through into the final phase of the encounter on Thursday (or perhaps even having downed the elemental(s) as well, since the "last phase" is a bit of a loose term at the moment), giving them a whole lot of time ahead of Method, who just got through that barrier relatively late Friday.

Quote

Little bit of a leak from our raid leader, Max...he let us know that we reached the final phase on Thursday, so it seems Jaina will fall very soon.  Good news for all NA fans!  Good night everyone and we will see you in the morning! - Azorea, Limit General Manager
Source.

Limit used some of that advantage to get another round or 6 of split runs in, while Method have been going non stop at Jaina, seeing as they are still making significant progress without additional gear. They recently changed up their strategy for getting past the ice wall and elemental to great effect, as you can see in the video below, which was also the best try, at least percentage-wise, ending at 23.1%.

We also have another great try here, complete with Cayna's commentary explaining the tactics a little, as it was a replay later in the day and we get to see the big Tide Elemental actually taken down and the two smaller elementals down around 15%. He also reminded us that the fight actually ends at 5%, not 0 (unless Mythic has some changes we haven't heard of yet).

Going completely by ear, it would seem that the two guilds basically progressed through the raid at a very similar pace, Method losing a lot of time on High Tinker, and Limit on Stormwall Blockade and Jaina (part of which was due to bugs and poor tuning they encountered which was later fixed), as well as the additional split runs. That puts Limit in a great position as Method haven't been able to catch up to that head start the US server have.

Now, we're relatively fast approaching reset time and that's where things get really complicated. Limit will have the reset first, which has in the past been both a good and bad thing. If the boss is incredibly close to death, the reset makes them spend time on re-clearing that the EU guild(s) can then use to get that World First while the US are either sleeping or re-clearing. On the other hand, if the boss is that close to death, an entirely new reset of gear (not to mention even a small number of splits) will almost certainly get the boss down. We had this exact situation in Uldir, where Limit faced the same dilemma and unfortunately went with the wrong decision. They extended their lockout and had a ridiculous amount of low percentage tries on G'huun, while Method re-cleared the raid and just took the boss down with the extra gear.

Limit's low percentage tries on G'huun

Now, it seems pretty obvious that if they face the same situation now, Limit will go for the reset and extra gear, and with the raid minus Jaina being pretty easy for them, they'll be back at her in no time, basically getting the World First again before EU servers reset and the guilds get a chance to get better gear.

The safest bet to avoid the fan drama (which may be inevitable anyway, with accusations already flying all over the place) is if a kill would arrive around Thursday or the weekend of the second reset, as the US advantage is less and less the deeper we get into progression, unless it happens exactly around reset day for either side. This is all just focusing on the US/EU, of course, but with the performance Alpha have been putting in, the 2 day disadvantage Asia guilds get is also very much worth mentioning, with their reset happening very early in the morning on Thursday.

In any case, both guilds are still progressing really far into the encounter and a kill this reset is just as likely as in the next, so there's everything left to play for in these next couple of days. Limit seem to have both the time and gear advantage over Method, but Method have come out of tighter spots in the past, so the race is definitely not decided just yet. Who knows, we may even get a complete upset and see one of the other 16 guilds that are currently progressing on Jaina pop up out of nowhere and take it all!

[Starym 3,800]

Edited the Method video descriptions a bit, I got them a little confused/didn't correctly calculate the hp% on the first one, which turns out is the best try so far.

[Badadada 184]

Did Method think about getting rid of some of the commentators? I mean the afternoon shift was cool as breeze - no complaints about them, but the presence of people running and shouting across the raid room must be annoying. Having watched the late hours in the last few days it didn't look like a professional world first progression environment at all.

[Dejo93 1,023]

So wait, if they don't kill Jaina this week are they going to extend the lockout to the next week, or kill all the other bosses again for some more loot?

[Guest]

Hoping limit wins, method has been top for a while now, we need new blood for top. I also miss dream paragon ?

[jinsu2301 273]

3 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

So wait, if they don't kill Jaina this week are they going to extend the lockout to the next week, or kill all the other bosses again for some more loot?

Right now Method are still tuning and working on strats. They haven't even done their heroic raids for this week, so it seems they aren't sure yet if gear is gonna be an issue. Once they know their final comp and strat, they'll probably do split runs and M+ for a few iLVLs.

I would be very surprised if Limit didn't reset on Tuesday, that's what likely cost them the race last tier.

Edited February 3, 2019 by jinsu2301

[Aegrotat 80]

6 hours ago, Badadada said:

Did Method think about getting rid of some of the commentators? I mean the afternoon shift was cool as breeze - no complaints about them, but the presence of people running and shouting across the raid room must be annoying. Having watched the late hours in the last few days it didn't look like a professional world first progression environment at all.

while I can't say anything for the running around, I IMAGINE they have noise canceling headphones so that they don't hear the shouting. same as with most esports events

[Starym 3,800]

7 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

So wait, if they don't kill Jaina this week are they going to extend the lockout to the next week, or kill all the other bosses again for some more loot?

They'll almost certainly reset. Honestly the fact Limit extended last raid was very weird, as it's basically not something that's done. The extra gear is always worth it and the reclear times aren't that long (although it has happened that a guild would get stuck on a boss at reclear and lose tons of time (I seem to remember Siegecrafter Blackfuse being one such instance).