wow Ny'alotha Race Day 7: Half Way Done - Hotfixes, Bugs, Big Progress

[Starym 3,800]

 

N'Zoth got a lot of attention today, both from the two top guilds and from Blizzard, as Complexity Limit pushed the boss under half health after a new and improved strategy, Method saw the secret phase, and Blizzard... well they hotfixed the fight late in the day making Limit have to give up on their strategy, and it's unclear if the change was intended or not.

Day 7 started off very slow, with Limit doing a splits and a lot of theorycrafting, as Method continued their catching up. Not content to just talk in their special classroom, Limit took to the boss room to practice and discuss their new positioning and movement strategies:

This definitely bore fruit, as a coupe of hours later, after they got used to the new way of doing things, the quality pulls started pouring in, and eventually lead to a very big dip in boss health from the previous best of 57%, as we saw the boss go down to under half HP for the first time:

With the pull having lasted only 11:30, and the enrage coming at 13:00, Limit speculated with even better execution they might be able to get the boss down to 40, maybe even 30% this reset. They also saw that nothing new happened under 50%, and we now had more questions about the fight. Is there any threshold where something new happens other than the 25% one we saw in the bugged try? Even if the guilds have to get the boss down to 25% without anything new happening and with the sanity they have, will the fight simply end right then? Or will we see an entirely new phase open up at 40, 30 or 25% with some of the datamined stuff related to the Chamber of Heart (titan beams clearing sanity damage, Magni and Mother possibly being hostile)?

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any better attempts than he above today, partly due to some more Blizzard meddling/tuning/making the fight work as intended. Some 3-4 hours ago, the fight suddenly changed once more. Apparently there was a problem with the Thought Harvesters (the big adds that do a lot of sanity damage) spawning on objects instead of players (Warlock gates, corpses, totems etc.) and then standing in the Anguish zones while casting their Harvest Thoughts, preventing the players from getting to them which severely messes up their strategy. To address this issue Blizzard suggested simply making the Harvest Thoughts spell castable as the mobs move, and despite Limit telling them that would be a bad solution for both guilds progressing on the fight, Blizz seemingly did it anyway, as Max explains:

After this change Limit decided to stop progressing on the boss, 143 pulls in, as their strategy wasn't going to work anymore, and went to finish up their Heroic splits before the reset. It's still unclear if the casting while moving issue was a mistake, oversight or it's the way Blizzard want the encounter to be handled from now on, but it will definitely affect both Limit and Method's strategies. As a side note, on the very last split of the day, the adds did NOT cast while moving, so the hotfix may have been reverted, or it just applied to Mythic.

Speaking of Method, their day saw a 73% best try, but more importantly also got them into the secret Mythic phase:

The other big news of the day is that we now have three guilds progressing on N'Zoth, as Pieces managed to push through Carapace to claim their World 3rd, EU 2nd. There were also many more boss kills, as guilds kept climbing, and we'll soon have many more on N'Zoth. Il'gynoth had his worst day ever as Alpha, Aversion, FatSharkYes and Exorsus all moved past him today and are now on Carapace, with the obese affirmative amphibians downing him in an incredible 37 pulls, compared to Limit's 101 and Method's 76, as they employed a very risky strategy of not dispelling the curse at all.

With N'Zoth going from probably impossible to pretty possible and back to impossible in the span of 24 hours, we'll have to see what crazyness happens today. And day 8 brings us the US reset, which was supposed to simply push Complexity Limit to an even lower percentage on the boss, but with these late hotfixes we can't be sure of what's going to happen. What we can be sure of is that we'll be seeing a lot more guilds on N'Zoth today, with Alpha at the forefront, clearing the raid very quickly - on-pace with Limit themselves in fact (as they have a 30+ hour deficit due to the Asia server reset times).

World First race related articles

• N'Zoth Bug Sees Entire Region's Bosses Despawn, 25% for Limit

• Mythic Ny'alotha Raid Progress Race Hub

• The Raid History World First Timeline

• Method Down Queen Azshara Mythic World First + Video, Raid Comp

• Ragnaros Classic Down World First by APES

• Limit Faction Transfer to Alliance for Ilevel 400 Gear (Bfa, Dazar'alor)

• Method to Livestream Uldir Mythic Progress for First Time in History

• Guild Banned Over Star Augur Exploit: Video Added (Legion, Nighthold)

• Three Top Guilds Suspended For Helya Exploit (Legion, Trial of Valor)

• Banned Guilds Talk about Their Helya Exploit and HC Raiding (Legion, Trial of Valor

• Old Watcher Blog on Encounter Tuning and Exploits

[Yridaa 490]

If I had to describe Blizzard's work, playtesting and live support (or meddling) and sum it up in one sentence it'd be: "What a mess."

 

Edit: Wanted to specify that I meant for this raid (Or year?), not their work/support in general.

Edited February 4, 2020 by Yridaa

[Harvey 60]

I can't be only one who noticed the unfairness?

8 hours ago, Starym said:

N'Zoth got a lot of attention today, both from the two top guilds and from Blizzard, as Complexity Limit pushed the boss under half health after a new and improved strategy, Method saw the secret phase, and Blizzard... well they hotfixed the fight late in the day making Limit have to give up on their strategy, and it's unclear if the change was intended or not.

Doesn't sound like a fair competition if you hotfixed the fight after the first guild had already spent considerable time. What's the point of rushing ahead when Blizzard seemingly favors Method with their hotfixes? If memory serves, this is not the first time when some guild rushed first into some bugged fight and spent considerable time on attempts just to see Blizzard nonchalantly hotfixed the bug the next day and "some other guild" caught up. 

P.S.: Not favoring any guild, just that the idea of an unfair race leaves a bad aftertaste. ?

Edit: Did some digging, the "same" thing happened in eternal palace when Blizzard nerfed Azshara "AFTER" Limit had spent time on almost beating the enrage timer and thus negating their advantage. 

 

Edited February 4, 2020 by idiotix
Searching for proof

[LeGoret 6]

1 hour ago, idiotix said:

I can't be only one who noticed the unfairness?

Doesn't sound like a fair competition if you hotfixed the fight after the first guild had already spent considerable time. What's the point of rushing ahead when Blizzard seemingly favors Method with their hotfixes? If memory serves, this is not the first time when some guild rushed first into some bugged fight and spent considerable time on attempts just to see Blizzard nonchalantly hotfixed the bug the next day and "some other guild" caught up. 

 

Well, what is unfairness when some guilds can start the race one day (or two) before others?

If Limit and Method would have start the same day, who would have been "punished" by the hotfixe?

World First Race is unfair.

PS : I don't realy care about "who will get the world first", i'm not favouring Method over Limit, they both do a great job.

Edited February 4, 2020 by LeGoret

[Starym 3,800]

10 hours ago, idiotix said:

I can't be only one who noticed the unfairness?

Doesn't sound like a fair competition if you hotfixed the fight after the first guild had already spent considerable time. What's the point of rushing ahead when Blizzard seemingly favors Method with their hotfixes? If memory serves, this is not the first time when some guild rushed first into some bugged fight and spent considerable time on attempts just to see Blizzard nonchalantly hotfixed the bug the next day and "some other guild" caught up. 

P.S.: Not favoring any guild, just that the idea of an unfair race leaves a bad aftertaste. ?

Edit: Did some digging, the "same" thing happened in eternal palace when Blizzard nerfed Azshara "AFTER" Limit had spent time on almost beating the enrage timer and thus negating their advantage. 

 

The thing there is that that happens to EVERY guild that is in the lead. It's happened since Vanilla (I've been on pulls where hotfixes made the fight much harder after a lot of pulls having to change strategy) and it's affected literally every guild that's ever been in the lead, including Method (especially on Kil'jaeden).

Anyway the hotfix was reverted pretty quickly, and due to Heroic splits etc Limit didn't really lose any time on the boss because of it.

[Harvey 60]

Well, as I said, I don't really favor one guild over the other, they are all good players, much much better than me anyways~ ?
But Blizzard should really stop fixing the fights mid-competition. It shows a lack of respect for customers when they produce "defective" products.