And there it is. The first race of the War Within has concluded. Well, the top 3 at least! We have our winners, and while there’s still plenty of guilds trying to get the queen down before the inevitable major nerfs, the streaming events are over. So let’s take a look at the last couple of days, with some more coverage for the World First, the 2nd and 3rd kills, and more.
Long Lived the Queen
Queen Ansurek was defeated on day 12 of the Nerub-ar Palace race. It took Liquid 404 pulls and 1 day, 3 hours and 57 minutes spent in combat with the boss. In terms of pull count (and generally time spent as well, as her encounter was 10 minutes long, which is very comparable to most other endbosses) Ansurek is only beaten by three bosses, and one of them sort of doesn’t count. Interestingly, it’s the two leaders of the Burning Legion (yes, yes, Sargeras exists too) that hold the top honors in terms of pulls, and probably time spent progressing as well. At least in terms of encounters we have specific data for. Ragnaros will always be the longest-lasting boss, but he’s an extreme exception. Speaking of exceptions, that third boss I mentioned is also a very specific case.
Uu’nat, Harbinger of the Void (Wait, Really? I Thought That Was Xal’atath?)
Technically Crucible of Storms, a 2-boss raid, hosts the biggest endboss pull count in modern Race to World First history. Why the “technically” part? Well, the top guilds at the time did not actually participate in that particular race. Since it was just a small “throwaway” raid, there wasn’t a RWF for it, and so Method and Exorsus skipped it and only progressed the fight casually. That left Pieces to actually get the World First, after a staggering 731 pulls! Whether you want to count that or not is up to you, but it’s an important distinction.
Back to the Palace
And so that leaves Queen Ansurek as the third most-pulled/probably time spent on boss since Warlords of Draenor! In terms of the actual race duration, Nerub-ar Palace outlasted all of Dragonflight, and then we get to the Sepulcher of it all. The Jailer’s home had a crazy 13 bosses and lasted the longest in streamed race history, coming in at 15 days. Before that it was Tomb of Sargeras with the longest streak, 19 days, and a whole lot of impossible Kil’Jaeden attempts.
The Actual Kill
Not much more to say here, but we can take a look at the official kill video and Liquid guild master/raid leader Max’s video on the matter, with some post-win commentary on top.
The post-kill commentary starts at 11:30 below.
A truly impressive win from Liquid, as they kept their lead all the way through the race. In the great Echo vs. Liquid showdown, the EU guild is still in the lead, as they have four wins to Liquid’s now three. However, it’s actually 4 to 4 if you count total endbodd World Firsts, as Liquid got Ny’alotha, back before Echo had even formed (but a lot of its players were playing for Method).
The Top 3 Completed
Echo didn’t quite manage to bring the queen down the day after the World First, as they raided deep into the EU night. Extending their raid by a LOT, they stopped at 3:30 AM local time, having raided over 19 hours by that point. They came incredibly close, with this 0.98% wipe a few hours before they called it:
But at least they had a lot of fun during that night, when one of them even revealed their true reason for wanting that kill so badly:
Extending their wake up time by a lot as well the next day, Echo got going around noon and took around one and a half hours to finally get that kill. They ended their queen progress with 449 pulls!
Echo were running a Protection Paladin instead of Liquid’s Guardian Druid tank. You can check out their full kill comp here.
A Very Impressive World 3rd
The race for World 2nd was actually much closer than you might imagine. At the time Echo grabbed their kill, Method had the boss down to a 5% best. They even got to the traditional 1% wipe about an hour after Echo’s kill. In the end it took Method about 2 extra hours to get the queen down, totaling 425 pulls. But they managed to get the World 3rd, as we still have 6 guilds pushing for that 4th right now!
Here’s a look at time spent in combat with the boss for all three top guilds, as we see Echo actually stayed the longest with the queen.
The Race Is Still Going
Of course, this is just the event part of the race that’s over. The top 3 is secured, but the top 10 will take quite a while longer. With a boss this hard, it’s going to take probably a whole other reset and then some to get it done. The question now becomes who will be able to kill the boss in this original state before the various nerfs come in. We’ve seen Broodtwister already get 2 nerfs and Ky’veza one, with Silken Court also starting to buckle.
We have Huoguo Hero in the lead for World 4th at the moment, having the queen down to 15%. They are followed by JiTianHong at a not-phase-3-yet 64%, ZboX at 65, FatSharkYes at 66, End Myth 63 and Instant Dollars at 66 (the percentages don’t really show real phase 2 progression so the order looks a little strange).
A Fantastically Tuned Boss
And so huge congratulations to everyone that’s finished and everyone still going at Queen Ansurek. She truly is one of WoW’s hardest and possibly best bosses. Designing a fight this hard and still having it possible to defeat is incredibly hard (just ask Kil’Jaeden). So GIANT congratulations to the fight designers over at Blizzard as well on this truly impressive achievement. Although maybe shift the difficulty sliiightly to the first four bosses!
And as always, thanks to Raider.IO for the live coverage of it all!
