Day 2 was, similarly to day 1, a bit of both: great and slightly slow. We saw many guilds catch up to the very top, and we saw… no new World Firsts. Let’s dig in.
The EU Start
Day 2 is actually EU day 1, so most of the day was spent in infinite splits, Mythic+ and so on. Eventually, both Echo and Method headed into Mythic, and by the EU evening were both past the free bosses, aka 1-4. Echo cleared them first, and actually needed a whole TWO pulls for the big bat Dawnbreaker-hunting 4th boss. Method got there a little later but did quad 1-shot to 4/8.
They both took some swings at both Broodtwister Ovi’nax and Nexus-Princess Ky’vesa, getting them both to around 80%. After those scouting pulls they went back to gathering more gear before eventually going to sleep around midnight. Many more EU guilds dove into Mythic, but only one managed to catch up to the top 3 and grab that 4/8, and before any other NA guilds too! Newcomer Reversion snagged the big bat aka Rasha’nan World 4th and EU 3rd, being the only new face in the top 4! There were 4 more guilds that gave it a great shot, coming to 3/8, as Honolulu, Advance, Рак Гейминг and Vex Thal only managed to down Sikran.
A Very Wormy Day for Liquid
With the first four bosses being such extreme non-entities, a difficulty spike was inevitable. But, when you escalate from 1-pull kills, you don’t expect a veritable monster ahead of you. While all three top guilds tried both bosses available after the 4th, a clear “winner” emerged. Liquid chose to go all-in on Broodtwister Ovi’nax and spent the whole day with him. They did do some additional Mythic+ runs and similar, but right after their lunch break (around 11 PM CET) it was all totally-not-G’huun all the time.
One of the earliest pulls was already an interesting one, as a disconnected Hunter caused a fairly long loop of everyone being dead and the egg-encased DCed Hunter unable to die.
Progress continued with the 3-tank composition, as the insane number of ads spawned, and healing debuff from the big spiders very much required the extra beefy ones. Evokers were also very flexible, as Preservation and Devastation eventually gave way to Augmentation!
The Big Pull
There was very good progress being made, but by the end of the day, the boss wasn’t looking very killable (not yet at least). It took Liquid only two hours to get the boss under 50%, but the next 7 weren’t quite as productive. So, you may be asking, what WAS the pull-count leap from 4 bosses with 1 to the 5th? Well, obviously we don’t know yet because he isn’t dead, but so far Liquid are at 75! Here’s the best pull so far, and the full fight, coming in at 29.4%:
UPDATE: Well, Liquid decided to add MORE clips to the post, with another best after the article was posted! Here’s their new top pull, coming in at an impressive 23%!
Plenty more guilds caught up to the magic 4/8 marker, and we now have 14 with four bosses down! xD grabbed the World 5th on Rasha’nan the bat, followed closely by Strawberry Puppy Kisses, Vesper and Vulgar. The currently best Asian guild, End Myth, just ran into Mythic immediately once their weekly reset happened, and steamrolled everything up to 4/8, managing to grab the World 10th on the bat.
The Beginnings of Day 3
We usually sort the days by the EU reset, so technically we’re already in day 3! Echo poked at the big worm for a few pulls and then decided it was better to do some more Mythic+. Method came in a little later and headed directly into splits.
And so day 2 was uneventful, but still pretty exciting, as the difficulty very rapidly ramped and then some. After an insanely fast start, the Nerub-ar Palace RWF has slowed down to a normal pace. Now we just have to see whether it’s just slowed or actually full-stopped and might require a direct Blizzard intervention to continue, which has been the case in a fair amount of recent bosses.
As always, if you want to follow the race more frequently than our daily summaries and highlight news posts, head on over to Raider.IO for live coverage, clips, analysis and more.
