wow Ny'alotha Race Day 8: 0.5% from the Final(?) Phase, Method at 66%

[Starym 3,800]

 

It seems Ny'alotha has an endless supply of eventful days, as the first day of the US reset almost got us to the next/possibly final stage of the N'Zoth fight. We also now have 5 guilds at the final boss, got news of potentially problematic Corruption tuning and have seen the power of a second week's worth of gear. As a sidenote, the hotfixes Blizzard made the day before to the adds casting while moving were reverted in the morning, so progress continued as it had before they were implemented. In the end the hotfixes didn't cost Limit much time as they had to finish up Heroics anyway.

Complexity Limit started sprinting right out of the gate, after doing their weekly chores, aka opening up all those chests etc, and hit the ground running as soon as they entered the raid. They had an extremely fast re-clear, with only 20 wipes and 4 hours needed to get back to N'Zoth, having gained 3-4 item levels raid-wide. We immediately got a new best only a few pulls after they arrived, with a 10% bump down to 40 with a whole lot of Anguish goop on the ground and nowhere left to go after the Chamber of Heart phase.

The next best pull was actually a higher percent one, with the 41% try actually being better due to excellent Anguish control and a whole lot of space left to maneuver in compared to previous tries. A couple of hours later, after dinner, they got their next crazy big jump ahead, and it's the biggest so far. Having executed everything almost perfectly, they managed to get the boss down to 25.5%, but had to allow themselves to get mind controlled to burst him down that low, which meant the boss immediately despawned when the whole raid was friendly to him, preventing them to even glimpse the phase transition.

So close to the presumably final phase of the encounter, which we still don't technically know anything about, but we do have some pretty solid assumptions. It seems a pretty safe bet there will be another Chamber of Heart phase, but this time changed in some way, possibly being more difficult than the first one. Datamining indicates that both Magni, MOTHER and some tentacles go into a berserk state, with the speculation being that Magni and MOTHER actually go hostile to players, although that one's a bit of a stretch. What we may end up seeing if the two of them helping out with the fight, and then finally firing that damn cannon we've been hearing so much about. What exactly that will do to N'Zoth remains to be seen, with options such as it straight up killing the boss and the encounter ending there (which means it's just 1 more Chamber phase and that's it), the players getting some buffs or at least sanity healing for the final time they exit through the gate and take down that final 25%.

The improvements to Limit's strategy today have been really impressive, with the boss consistently being under 50% before they go into the Chamber (with the best there being 47%), and their Anguish placement also shifting and adjusting for the better. The rest of their evening saw plenty of 30ish pulls, but none better than the above and, in the end, Limit saw that they weren't quite that close to a kill to warrant extending they raid day too extremely, and so they called it a day after 7 hours on N'Zoth and their 189th pull overall. To close on the Limit coverage, let's take a look at one of the later pulls, just to see how they further improved the crucial Anguish placement:

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Method was also getting some solid progress done on the boss as they finished the day on a 66% high, having cleared the Heart phase plenty of times. We also had 2 new additions to the struggle on the Old God, with Alpha claiming the World 4th and Aversion the 5th.

The other big news was the announced Corruption effect nerfs coming "within 24 hours", which will have a big impact on the race, as we discussed in this article, so today will see the EU guilds on pins and needles waiting for that nerf to drop. If we do see an optimal timing, aka after the full EU raid day has passed, Limit will then have to face some much more difficult pulls and maybe even more strat re-arrangements. There's also a much weirder and possibly worse scenario, in which Blizzard nerf both the Corruption effects AND all raid bosses, to compensate for the DPS loss, but considering the delicate nature of tuning, all those nerfs may go too far in either direction - making the the N'Zoth insanely harder, or even making him easier.

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.

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

[Starym 3,800]

Added this to the first paragraph as I totally forgot to mention it (I blame the lack of sleep):
As a sidenote, the hotfixes Blizzard made the day before to the adds casting while moving were reverted in the morning, so progress continued as it had before they were implemented.