wow Ny'alotha Mythic Race Day 2: EU Catches Up, Limit Pulls Ahead

[Starym 3,800]

 

Day 2 was quite a bit more exciting than day 1, as usual, since we had a whole lot more guilds participating. Pieces and Method caught up to Complexity Limit's 7/12 quickly, but the top US guild pulled ahead, taking down another 2 bosses to take a big lead at 9/12. We also had some pretty major stealth fixes, which really spoke to the relative nature of the 1-day US advantage, Asia servers came up, Limit used some DH shenanigans, and a whole lot more happened, so let's get to it.

The morning passed with the usual EU catch-up, with Pieces taking the lead with some very fast clears, needing 2 hours 45 minutes to climb to 5/12, and 6 hours to catch up to Limit at 7/12 (who needed 10 hours for that). Method was a little slower, especially with Vexiona, the seventh boss, needing around 10 hours for the same clear, after a 0,8% wipe a little earlier on the purple dragon:

And so Pieces took all the EU first kills, as well as a World 3rd on Dark Inquisitor and World 2nd on Vexiona, and it was looking bad for the Americans with such a fast catch-up. So what were Limit doing while all this was going on? Well, most of the time they were sleeping, but the rest of it they were running head-first into stealth hotfixes.

The incredibly fast pace of the EU catching up was certainly impressive, but also emphasized that the vaunted 1-day advantage the US has (or rather 13 hours this time around) isn't all black and white. Despite the fact that these early bosses weren't that difficult, the EU did have the benefit of not only checking out Limit and other US guilds' strats, but also of knowing which bosses were easiest to kill in which order. However, that isn't the only drawback of going in first, as Limit soon (again) found out on Ra-den. In yesterday's summary I forgot to mention that Ra-den was already stealth buffed during Limit's attempts on day 1, having his health increased by 20% mid-pull, but that wasn't enough of a tweak. Limit's best try on Ra-den was at 15% when Blizzard decided to once again mess with the encounter without telling anyone, without announcing it in a whisper or anything similar. Apparently Limit had been using an unintended tactic on the fight, which they had no way of knowing, as they were using immunity abilities to stop Unstable Nightmare from going off. They had built their boss strategy around this and progressed on him for a long time both on day 1 and 2, only to see it instantly fixed and the immunity no longer working.

Now, there have been various uses of "creative game mechanics" in the past, but this one isn't even close and there was really no way to know that this wasn't intended, since it was such an obvious thing to try - you're immune, so the bad thing won't affect you. In any case, the fight completely changed after the fix, potentially costing Limit a whole lot of progress. This, along with the boss layout and strat borrowing mentioned above, makes the 13ish hour head-start US guilds get less impactful, which isn't to say it's still an ok thing to have, but it certainly isn't all upsides. I'd also like to say that these stealth hotfixes really make me angry personally. They've been happening forever, with fights like Kil'jaeden being littered with them and the general public never finding out about them. Sometimes they at least get communicated to the guilds progressing on the boss, either by them being told "you shouldn't do this, we'll fix it soon" or getting a similar heads up. We had hotfix notes today, which even mentioned Ra-den, but not the major changes since early yesterday, aka the 20% hp buff and the immunity being disabled for the Nightmare ability.

Now that that's out of the way, let's continue with the day's events. Luckily for Limit, the hotfix didn't set them back that much this time, as they adjusted to it, made and executed a new strategy, and got Ra-den down around an hour and a half after the fix was implemented, getting another World First and moving to 8/12.

 Another interesting thing to note, Limit were using an old trick with Demon Hunters, popping Metamorphosis , pulling and then disengaging the boss, since Ra-den has a particularly fast reset time. This meant that their Metamorphosis cooldowns would reset, as it's a new try, but the Demon Hunters would still be in the middle of the previous Meta pop as they quickly pulled the boss again, meaning they were getting an extra 20ish seconds on their duration, further enhanced by the Eye Beam 's extension of the Meta duration, meaning their DHs were in demon form a long time. It seems it's a pretty big DPS gain all in all, as Method also started using this strategy on their Ra-den pulls. Here's a stream snippet explaining the whole thing:

With Ra-den down, Complexity Limit went back to a boss they tried a little on day 1 and decided to skip, but he was the only one left to kill, so Drest'agath, the tentacle spammy boss, was next. It seems Limit had vastly overestimated his difficulty on day 1, however, as it only took them around 2 hours and 15 minutes to get the boss down, earning them yet another WF, their 6th for the raid, as well as a trip to 9/12 and Il'gynoth.

Pieces and Method couldn't get past Ra-den on their first day and called it a night, Method pushing their raid time a little, to 1:20 AM CET. As Pieces aren't streaming, we don't know exactly when they stopped. Maybe they're still raiding now! (They're not.) There were a whole lot more lower ranked kills during the day as you'd expect, with Aversion and Exorsus eventually joining the top two EU guilds on 7/12 with their Vexiona kills, and Big Dumb Guild joining them a bit later with the US 2nd. We also  had 3 guilds (Pracice, Imperative and Midwinter) on 6/12 and saw the Asia servers come up and the guilds jump to 2/12 very quickly, with Chao Jie and KeaHoarl leading the pack.

Here are the wipe counts for the three top guilds so far, with Dark Inquisitor Xanesh apparently really costing Method:

Boss	Limit	Pieces	Method
Wrathion	1	0	1
Maut	2	0	4
Prophet Skitra	1	0	0
Shad'har	6	4	10
The Hivemind	5	4	7
Dark Inquisitor	23	20	38
Vexiona	12	11	12
Ra-den	76	-	-
Drest'agath	15	-	-

In the end and luckily for the race, Il'gynoth didn't turn out to be a complete pushover like his predecessor, and so the day finished with only 2 more bosses down, and 3 to go in the raid. To say how far Limit have gotten on the boss requires a bit of explanation on the fight: basically you have to fight Il'gynoth 4 separate times from full health to 0, while also defeating 3 of his organs in the intermission phases. Limit has gotten the third Il'gynoth to 62% and gotten 2 organs down on their best try. (The video below is of a 75% try, but it's close enough.)

Another very interesting thing about Complexity Limit's strategies is that their GM and raid leader Max is actually sitting out almost all of the bosses, choosing instead to be the 21st member of the raid, acting as a coach and raid leading while watching someone else's stream. We've seen this used in Eternal Palace as well, but only for a few bosses, whereas this time around it's basically all of them, the only exception being Drest'agath. The reason he actually played there was because he couldn't see well enough while watching another tank stream, due to the many tentacles and a lot of visual confusion, so he had to step in himself to get a better look. This coaching method has been working really well and is a very interesting next step in the race (and other guilds have also used it in the past, just not to this extent as far as I know), even though I'm a little conflicted on it myself.

The race has already been extremely interesting, even only 2 days in, although the big 12 boss number didn't really make much of a difference in the end, as we're basically in the same spot we were at this point in other races. If Il'gynoth can prove to be a worthy opponent and keep the guilds at bay that might change, however.

As always, head on over to Method's site progress coverage for live updates, or just follow Complexity Limit or Method's 24/7 streaming events on their twitch channels.

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