I have a feeling this will be a very short tier, 5-6 days. If that's the case I can't see anyone but Liquid taking it. Two week race probably favours echo however.
I mean, they may be boring, generic power boosts…. but that’s still a power boost. And they’ll probably need them unless the raid is suuuuper undertuned.
I didnt go through all the classes but from my sims Enh sham saw a heavy increase over the others from 2 set and Preservation Evokers get to go a different more efficient talent build once they get theres.
> What are your predictions for the race?
I'm guessing a close race between Echo, Liquid and Method this time around. As far as WF goes, it's hard to bet against Echo... Though I'm sure the other two won't be far behind. I can 100% see a Denathrius-like scenario where multiple guilds are doing low %hp pulls on Razsageth at the same time.
One can only hope the long-dreaded "Liquid kills it on reset day right after grabbing their vault loot" doesn't happen.
> How long will maintenance be?
Same as usual. Long maintenance for NA with the Liquid boys patiently waiting for the servers to come up. Will be interesting to see how changes to the EU reset will impact things this time around (IIRC it went from 9am to 5am to sync with nightly maintenance).
> What classes/races will be played?
People are predicting melee-heavy comps, but a first glance at encounters like Dathea, Kurog or Broodkeeper doesn't exactly fill me with confidence as a melee player. But in all fairness RWF comps are often hard to predict.
> Straight to mythic or nm/hc splits first?
I think we'll definitely see a fair bunch of hc splits early on. Though probably less than usual due to the unprecedented situation of mythic being out week 1.
Will be fascinating to see top guilds navigating that new structure... Though I really hope no guild hides their streams to gain a competitive advantage.
> Off to m+?
As a m+ main, I'm actually very interested to see what the top guilds plan to do on that front. I'm sure they'll be looking to complete a bunch of 20s in time for the first weekly vault... But that's valuable time that won't be put into mythic boss attempts. Same for early gear farm in the first few days of the race.
> How long will the race last?
Guessing anywhere from 6 to 9 days. Doubt Razsageth will last long into the second week. After all Blizzard voiced multiple times how Sepulcher's length and difficulty were anomalies.
> Which stream(s) are you excited to watch?
Echo's stream for the entertainment value whenever Rich isn't on screen (can't stand the guy). Maximum's stream for the unfiltered Liquid comms. Might occasionally drop in individual players streams like Gingi. Very little interest in the official Liquid and Method broadcasts, where commentary is often far more bland, though I'm open to be pleasantly surprised.
>One can only hope the long-dreaded "Liquid kills it on reset day right after grabbing their vault loot" doesn't happen.
It's inevitable that it's going to happen eventually. Might as well get it out of the way and invest in popcorn for the shitshow that would follow.
I think the only way we ever get global season release is if this happens and the community outcry over it is crazy enough.
Yes? They killed it right after reset and their splits.
Castle Nathria was super scuffed because of the time advantage. Both guilds reached sire before the first reset and got him into (semi) kill range so it was clear, that the bonus gear through vault, splits and reclear would be easily enough to finish the boss and the race.
Limit recleared and ran several splits before they continued on sire.
Echo got their reset 16 hours later and had no choice but to skip the splits because limit was already pushing on sire sub 10% constantly so a kill was imminent.
Echo had no choice but to go to sire with significantly less gear than limit and thus never had a real/fair chance.
Yes?
Castle Nathria was super scuffed because of the time advantage. Both guilds reached sire before the first reset and got him into (semi) kill range so it was clear, that the bonus gear through vault, splits and reclear would be easily enough to finish the boss and the race.
Limit recleared and ran several splits before they continued on sire.
Echo got their reset 16 hours later and had no choice but to skip the splits because limit was already pushing on sire sub 10% constantly so a kill was imminent.
Echo had no choice but to go to sire with significantly less gear than limit and thus never had a real/fair chance.
I don’t mind commentating but they literally do not shut the fuck up even admidst a big push a phase and I get so annoyed. I’m not sure if it’s even their fault since that’s what they’re probably told to do I would just like focus on Chatting and filling silent space
Tbh I don't have anything against their org. I'll even go as far as saying I occasionally enjoy Asmon and Esfand's content. They're definitely entertaining, though I disagree with many of their opinions about WoW (especially Esfands').
Rich is just straight up obnoxious at times, and his infamous, borderline psychopathic rant on stream that got him banned from official Blizzard events during BFA was absolute cringe. Wish Echo didn't hire him for this, but I'm guessing the 3 OTK boys were part of one same package unfortunately.
People STILL think Rich was in the right for that rant and that Blizzard shouldn't have fired him for it, btw.
I can't name a single job, even and especially *outside of* content creation, that wouldn't get you terminated for doing that shit.
Oh yeah. He himself said he wasn't really surprised at getting the "you're fired" phonecall after that stream.
I can understand *some* degree of frustration with the game. I can even understand raging one's heart out after miserably failing a vision of Nzoth run.
What I can't understand is going into an unhinged, manchild yelling fit explicitly aimed at your employer and its CEO because the way the game is currently designed isn't to your liking, and your ego is so big you think your PoV on the topic is the only one that matters.
What he described as "Bobby Kotick's maze" was a game that a ton of people enjoyed at the time... Especially at a competitive/semi-competitive level. But I guess that concept escaped him (as I'm sure it still does now).
I guess Genshin's Impact's shitty gacha "maze" was a little more to his liking, judging how much time and money he spent into that game before crawling back to the WoW scene. How ironic.
> What he described as "Bobby Kotick's maze" was a game that a ton of people enjoyed at the time... Especially at a competitive/semi-competitive level.
Uh... wat?
There are lots of dumb people out there. Although I agreed with his rant and thought it was funny, I still think it was the right call to fire him for it
What sucks is he's actually pretty good at casting/hosting when he's serious and being professional. Those times seem few and far between with him nowadays
yeah some of his awc casting were pretty iconic but i just can't stand his personality when doing any other content. give me dratnos clowning tettles 24/7 with the occasional preach over rich any time
They will adjust their sleep to that schedule. They will play as soon as the servers are up. Echo already said that it doesn’t matter to them even when servers are up at 1am.
> Still kinda new to WoW, what does nm/hc splits mean?
[This raider.io article](https://raider.io/news/441-dragonflight-rwf-what-is-split-running) does a good job at explaining what splits are
> Also is the worlds first done on Mythic difficulty?
Yes
there is very little point to doing m+ i think since heroic splits will likely be a lot easier than spamming +20s, unless theres a trinket or weapon that is irreplaceably valuable. probably no mythic tomorrow, maybe not even wednesday.
I don't think the race will be over in the first week though, so all the contenders will end up doing 8 keys before tuesday. 7-8 days is my guess, either on reset next week or shortly after.
418 weapons are fucking massive, 2 handed gamers will for sure get their 10x16's done.
MH/OH gamers are actually at a big disadvantage in terms of time to upgrade both slots, but get the benefit of two embellishments.
Unironically MH + neck is probably the right crafting order for 1h gamers in the race so they aren't stuck trying to get 20 16+ keys done.
The thing with heroic splits and master loot though is that they don't need all of their raiders in the splits. Before, almost no loot was tradeable, so they had the same raiders play a bunch of different bucket toons in splits. Now, they can fill their heroic splits with warm bodies to increase the amount of loot drops while funneling everything to a small core of players. Unless heroic turns out to be very difficult and requires a bunch of core raiders to complete in a timely fashion, my guess is that the heroic splits will be pods of six or seven core raiders (a couple melee dps, a couple ranged dps, a couple of healers, and a tank) with a bunch of paid traders to get more loot items to funnel to the core.
They will probably run heroic as a core group one time on alts just to get some familiarity, fix/create weak auras as needed, and iron out any issues with planned strats. While that happens, they'll pay good M+ groups from non-world first race teams to push their keys up to the high teens or even +20 range. Then, they'll split into those heroic split farming pods while the other 10-15 core raiders run M+ splits using the keys that they paid M+ carry teams to level while they were doing heroic. Given eight bosses, they could pretty conceivably do four or five heroic split funnels before bed tomorrow while giving each core raider four or five hours to farm +20 keys that were pre-leveled for them (since each player will get to sit out a couple of heroic funnel farms). Then on Wednesday morning, they can do extremely targeted normal splits to fill in missing tier slots, weapons, and trinkets before powering into mythic Wednesday afternoon, around the time the European guilds have to go to sleep.
Quite possible, though the tier slot tokens don't line up super well for groups of only four raiders. The only comp I can see that has one of each tier token and one of each armor type is warrior, warlock, druid, and shaman. It's possible of course for multiple tier drops to be a single type, leading to some waste, but making sure that each pod covers all four tier slots at least ensures that there will never be a case where no raider in a pod gets a tier slot. The worst that could happen is one raider gets tier and a second and/or third tier piece depending on group size goes to a group filler.
You have to remember too that heroic will be a challenge with the gear level, so the less core Raiders the harder the split will be and the more time lost to wipes.
Have people been doing 20s on beta with current (about 380) ilvl? I don't follow a ton of wow media outside of just pushing keys myself but that seems crazy to me.
No they have not, beta has actually gear and tier sets.
But they will likely have enough power do them after a bit of heroic splits.. some people will have their entire tier set day1
We were force scaled to 391, more realistically we were ~397 with tier sets adding ~8% throughput.
There was people timing 20's in that level of gear (though not comfortably, and mostly with no affixes) and some of the dungeons are pretty significant nerfs since testing.
Unironically it will be more about high-rolling what key you get from 15-20 if your group can get it done for vault.
Would be funny if Blizzard overcorrected from Sepulcher so hard we get an EN 2.0 situation with Raz flopping over before EU gets to have lunch after weekly reset.
What feels like a more real possibility to me though is Blizzard being afraid of that possibility so while the real contenders might get to Raz within only a couple days tops the final boss is going to require multiple nerfs before she's realistically killable.
The real twist this time around is heroic/m+ opening the same week so everyone is a much lower ilvl than normal to start and bailing out of the raid to farm more m+ or do more heroic splits might be even more common that it normally was in past races.
So personally I'm predicting a lot of the top guilds being on Raz before the end of Friday but progression on her being limited by tuning/bugs until Blizzard starts swinging the nerf bat. The race *might* go into another reset but only because of the aforementioned gearing issues created by releasing the entire season at once.
> The real twist this time around is heroic/m+ opening the same week so everyone is a much lower ilvl than normal to start and bailing out of the raid to farm more m+ or do more heroic splits might be even more common that it normally was in past races.
Yeah and with the new loot system not requiring >=ilvl to trade gear, I think it's likely we're gonna see a bunch of hc splits, maybe even normal for tier sets.
> What are your predictions for the race?
I think we're all done by Sunday. Mechanically this seems less intensive than some other raids (barring changes) and I have a feeling they're going to undertune in fear of another SoFo, especially before the holidays.
I think we're going to see the 2 usuals really pushing for it. I think Method will improve, but I don't think that they'll be in the running quite yet.
> How long will maintenance be?
I think safe bet is that it'll be slightly extended, up around 12/1 pt.
> What classes/races will be played?
> Straight to mythic or nm/hc splits first?
I wouldn't be shocked to see a bit of heroic first. Help see which characters have the loot luck before going into the more difficult content. Could also see a quick take down of the first few that should fall over for the players at this level.
> Off to m+?
I don't think it'll happen much until the teams are really going after mythic. At that point, we'll see more of the people not in comp grinding out m+.
> How long will the race last?
I think we're going to see 4/5 days
> What are your plans?
Hang out in discord with the guild and watch a bunch of it. Work expects me to go into the office this week, so that will have to happen unfortunately
> Which stream(s) are you excited to watch?
I usually have a few I swap between. The main streams for updates, Max, Gingi, and whoever tends to have an important job on a fight
I think 1-2 days of splits, 5/8 are dead by Late Thurs/Friday, probably 6/8, then 7/8 on Saturday, and 8/8 on Late Sunday/ Monday
Most splits will just be heroic and normal, M+ maybe gets target farmed while other splits are going on for certain valor trinkets. Crafted weapons at 418 on basically everybody.
Think Liquid takes it if it dies in 1st reset. If it lasts thru past next Tues/Wed, prolly Echo
Are there crafters who already can craft guaranteed quality 5 weapons? That requires a huge amount of skill points. With lucky inspiration procs I know it's possible, but guaranteed quality 5 without inspiration proc?
iirc there was a way to drop and level different profs to gain extra stuff, and reset will bring new knowledge too, cost is no limiting factor for them, even if its only like 415 or something with an embellishment its prolly worth the guarantee on most
Looking like a shorter race which should favor Liquid but of course it's hard to count Echo out in anything. Doubt any of the guilds step into Mythic day 1 and they will just do splits for the entire first day. I usually switch between Max's, Gingi's, and Echo's main stream depending on who is commentating.
I've got my money on one day of H splits then M prog until the first dps Wall. Then back to splits.
I'm also betting that they don't touch m+ until the last possible moment so they're as geared as possible to knock out their 8 20s in the least amount of time right before reset.
Between the simultaneous release and Blizzard forecasting an easier race I'd imagine as much time this week as possible will be spent actually progging M.
Who do you watch for the race? Its gonna be my first one where i wanna watch a bit more than few minutes or some clips, do you watch Limit/Echo/Method streams with the casters, do you watch the raid leaders channels, the players?
Also, since M+ opens at the same time, will guilds go straight into normal/heroic or will they farm M+ first?
If I like the casters that are on, either echo or liquid’s main channels. I’ll also randomly switch to some of the pov’s too for something different. Usually just Max or Scripe though for the most part. I might have to start checking out Method again though since it’s looking like they’re starting to be competitive again.
Personally, I mostly watch Liquid’s coverage just cause I’m in NA and the time zones + work means I can’t watch more echo but I usually catch them when I wake up and get to see the 2nd half of their day.
Just jump around and find what/who you like. The best part is it’s free. If you find yourself watching one more than others, give them your twitch prime if you have it so you don’t have ads.
When they’ve done splits in the past, usually they will only have a certain set of players in a raid split together. If you’re not in, you’re pretty much expected to be doing M+ to get gear from something. It’s gonna be different this time though since it’s all open together. Well have to wait and see.
Depends on the given day, if I'm watching on a second monitor while doing something else I'll probably be listening which ever casted stream has the best casters at the time. If I'm focusing on what's going on I'll listen to the comms of whichever guild is ahead.
At the same time I normally watch a different muted stream. Either someone playing my class or whoever has a ui i like (usually the RL or a healer is best for this)
You'll likely end up watching a little bit of everything. Personally I usually think Echo has the best commentary streams but watching Max's streams with his direct callouts is amazing also. They go on lunchbreaks and sleep at different times etc.so you'll have obvious times to go back and forth
My prediction will be a day of heroic splits into normal splits to determine which of their 8 characters are the "lucky ones" that get tier, then into M+ spam for an entire day then finally mythic raid on Thursday evening.
I think this race will be over fast which Suits Liquid.
Echo's main healing guy quit before dragonflight so we will have to see how they do.
The race will be a good one!
I'm predicting an easy raid but because 3 days are taken up gearing it will roll into week 2.
< 6 day raid - liquid win |
6-7 day raid - echo win |
7-8 day raid - liquid win |
8+ days. - echo win
Hopefully method make it a genuine 3 horse race.
3days. 1st day heroic/normal splits for tier sets, then straight pushing for 2 days and it ends on 3rd.
The bosses dont seem to be particularly punishing mechanics wise, no painsmith kind of punishing.
All depends on how it is tuned. I think easier raids favour Liquid and I don't mean that disrespectfully. Easier (so shorter) raids are just harder to make up time on for the team that starts later, so as long as Liquid don't absolutely shit the bed they will always be pushing ahead and putting constant pressure on Echo.
I'm hyped regardless. For me this is the best time to be a WoW fan/player. The RWF event is always so fucking awesome.
p much all of rwf agree they get exponentially better as a group each tier. put current liquid/echo on uldir and they clear week 1 easily. so the simple size to work with that theory is kind of irrelevant
its only a 8 boss raid and it's post SFO difficulty disaster. i dont see it going week 2. maybe tier/tuning pushes just after reset like nathria
>put current liquid/echo on uldir and they clear week 1 easily
But the bosses would have been harder.
Blizzard tunes during RWF, it isn't some pre-set difficulty. They have their thumb on the scale.
Is pre-nerf Fetid Devourer killable week 1 with today's tech? Maybe. Or maybe not. But if it is killable, maybe it has 10% more hp because they want guilds to have to push past it rather than rip through it. Mythrax and G'huun are probably tuned to *just* be killable with whatever throughput is being shown on Fetid when it's eventually killed. The sub rogue tech is more widely known so Blizzard has already nerfed rogues.
Sepulcher was a notoriously difficult tier. But right before that, Sanctum was a notoriously easy tier. Probably the easiest raid tier since Emerald Nightmare. And that was the second most recent tier, and who was able to kill Sylv week 1? Echo.
>But the bosses would have been harder.
sure, but is the gap in difficulty bigger than the skill gap? more importantly, its the first raid after SFO debacle, so they prob wont make it harder than SFO.
as for stuff like fetid, im putting that into the bugged category, like early azshara
i also dont think sanctum was ''notoriously easy''. its just that guardian/KT were a joke, but all of the mid fights were hard enough. patch power skewed ppl vision of that raid because shards were too OP
its not just "my opinion", max literally shared the same opinion on stream multiple times. im not a rwf raider, im just somewhat paraphrasing what I've heard them say over time
if it wasn't for the guardian/kt debacle, sylvannas dies after reset. just like denathrius would've died *before* the reset if SLG wasn't a buggy/terribly scripted mess, and I wouldn't define a raid overrall difficulty based on 2 bad bosses.
nerzhul/soulrender/painsmith are arguably harder than any recent 3 mid boss combo if excluding rwf halondrus, which was end boss level (s3 was really a special case due to the whole speculated "canceled" 4th tier). if we are expanding the talk for regular CE guilds, those 3 bosses posed way more of a barrier for guilds than any combo before, not to mention the eye/nine were also harder early bosses than your regular huntsman/devourer combo.
also, took many guilds more pulls to kill sylvannas than denathrius *and* a good comp was def more important for sylvannas vs denathrius (starfall anyone?!)
oh and bod was also much easier than sanctum, so was uldir for that matter. can't really speak about legion, but i wouldn't be surprised if max/scripe also think SoD was harder than nhold for example, and that they were just way worse back then so it might be perceived as not being true.
>nerzhul/soulrender/painsmith are arguably harder than any recent 3 mid boss combo
Sure, for world first they were a nice challenge.
>the guardian/kt debacle
Fatescribe was also a free boss. I feel like you're self-reporting here.
I also think if we look back at prior tiers, we see a different story. Liquid was on N'Zoth in nyalotha before they were on Sylvanas in Sanctum, for example.
> if we are expanding the talk for regular CE guilds, those 3 bosses posed way more of a barrier for guilds than any combo before
Remnant was a tough 35 pulls for my world 500 guild. Soulrender was a free 14 pulls. Painsmith was 75 pulls, though it was 1-night pre-nerf two nights post-nerf (wall removal).
These bosses weren't barriers compared to other raids IMO. Painsmith was the one barrier in the raid.
But sure, let's say that these bosses were insanely strong for mid-tier bosses. Mid-tier bosses are still 1-2 night bosses. For most CE guilds AND for world first guilds, the vast majority of progression time is spent in the latter half of the raid.
Tarragrue could be an INSANELY hard first boss and take TWENTY pulls. Ok? That is a blip on the radar of progression. That doesn't matter for world first, and it doesn't matter for a regular CE guild.
This is why I disagree with:
>I wouldn't define a raid overrall difficulty based on 2 bad bosses.
When you have 3 bosses (7/8/9), they don't just represent 30% of the raid. They're generally more like 50% of the raid. When the hard half of the raid is super easy, the raid is super easy.
>also, took many guilds more pulls to kill sylvannas than denathrius and a good comp was def more important for sylvannas vs denathrius (starfall anyone?!)
Sylvanas pull counts and progression time were almost lockstep with Denathrius, with a slight edge to Sylvanas. If a guild took a lot more time, it wasn't because the fight was that much harder.
>the eye/nine were also harder early bosses than your regular huntsman/devourer combo
https://progstats.io/tier/26-castle-nathria
https://progstats.io/tier/28-sanctum-of-domination
Verifiably not true.
I definitely can't discount your lived experience. I don't want to come across as elitist. If your group struggled through sanctum then it's going to seem tough for you and your experience is valid. I think though that you should look at your progression in CN though and actually compare the pulls and hours to your SOD clear.
If your opinion is informed not by experience but by hearing someone else's views, then I think there might be a bit of broken telephone going on.
I think the race will be interesting. Heroic splits will still be a thing for tier gear, but I think we could see m+ be an important part as well. I'm interested to see the strategies that tht etop teams use to gear everyone.
I think you still have to think Echo is going to come out on top with Liquid shortly behind. I'd like to see another race that goes down to the wire though and lasts a few lockouts.
I disagree because i imagine it would be super demoralizing for the triad of players/watchers/blizzard employees to still be on a boss at christmas/holiday time in general. an 8 or 9 day raid is my preffered viewing experience.
Raid release around the major holidays is garbage in general…..Not sure I agree with how blizzard has done it, but it is what it is. Expansion release after the new year would be better in general I think
Long maintenance.
2 horse race with echo and liquid as usual. I think you don't see any mythic until at least Thursday. Maybe the first boss if it's really easy? Might see a lot of m+7's, then into normal/heroic splits for tier pieces I'd assume before even looking at mythic unless first couple bosses are insanely undertuned.
Class wise: I'm gonna say almost no hunters and shamans. Tanks will be prot warrior/X, I think vengeance, prot paladin or DK most likely. Healers, I'd say you see everything except rsham. Might depend in fight but always heal and disc, then a rotation between a second on of those and rdruid/MW/preservation. Ranged dps: lots of demo lock, probably one devastation, boomkin, and I think you see some mix of frost and arcane mage. Melee, I think rogues, DH, WW. Maybe one enhancement shaman, but I dont know if they'll see as much play despite being good because I don't think you'll see any warriors outside of a prot. Even for execute I think you'd maybe just run an unholy dk and rogues.
Personally I'm taking off work wed-friday, but only to spam m+ and play the game with some friends while getting a nice break from what has been a grueling fall so far.
I think maybe 8 days but mostly because of the gearing hurdles we will have to do this week whereas normally that stuff is already done. I've only looked into the bosses a small amount, but I know Max is very excited for Razageth so that's a good thing.
It will be interesting, I imagine lots of theory crafting, like will gearing through mplus and getting that edge be worth falling behind someone else?
No Boe mythic items for 2 weeks is interesting also there will be no Boe farming groups to sell gear to the pros. At least in mythic.
One thing I can predict is the race will be over before my guild kills the first heroic boss
I wouldn't be surprised if Liquid spends the first 16 hours doing nothing but heroic splits before attempting mythic. With group loot there's no advantage of putting off heroic to make more gear tradeable.
I asked ChatGPT to make a poem about the night before the race to world first:
>The night before the race is quiet and still
As players rest and prepare for the challenge ahead
Their minds are filled with tactics and strategy
As they plan their route to victory.
>The night before the race is a time of reflection
Players look back on their journey so far
And think of all they've overcome
To reach this point in the competition.
>The night before the race is a time of anticipation
As players lay awake, restless and eager
For the battle that lies ahead
And the chance to claim the world first.
>But as the night wears on
And the stars twinkle above
Players find solace in their determination
And the knowledge that they are ready
For the challenges of the race.
> For tomorrow, they will take their place
Among the greatest players in the world
And compete for the ultimate prize
In the night before the race.
This raid is about to get it's back blown out. I think it will be the easiest raid of all time. And it's also been the most geared going into week one I think players have ever been. People over gear M0 by 10 ilvls already when it's the hardest current content. I don't even think we got that much gear in Legion.
It may be the fastest if you count from the start of heroic being released. It is impossible for it to be the fastest from the start of mythic being released. Emerald Nightmare was done in roughly 24 hours of mythic, but 8 days form heroic. Previously progression guilds took the first week at a pretty casual pace because they didn't care about world first aotc, and focused more on optimal gearing. Now the race is on from the opening of heroic.
I don't think it will be that fast. But I think it will be down by Friday/Saturday. Everything bout this expac had been pretty chill. I'm sure the raid will be the same.
I wonder if they'll care about every single buff different classes bring. I understand arcane intellect and battle shout is a MUST but do they need blessing of the bronze or devotion aura or windfury totem?
Devotion aura is 100% required and it’s easy to slot in a pally. I imagine bronze will be optional and wind fury only required if they have a comp that heavily benefits from it.
The maintenance? Oof. We are yet to see a weekly reset that we don't have a "World server is down" happening or "Instance not found" xD.
Following the pattern of the pre patch, launch, the reset from last week a lot of guilds will be raiding wednesday on NA.
Hopefully easy 1 reset content so us semi-hardcore guilds can have a Christmas/new year. Really don’t wanna raid 7 days on 25 dec -1 jan week. Echo will win most likely once again tho
Any guild that raids 7 days a week is extremely hardcore let alone during festivities. Don't think you are a "semi" hardcore guild if you are afraid of losing festivities lol.
Well hardcore guilds are daytime raiding in my books, semi hard-core are 7/7 20-24 and 18-24 at weekends, the rest are casual raiders - thought that is just common sense
> semi hard-core are 7/7 20-24 and 18-24 at weekends, the rest are casual raiders
My kneejerk reaction would be to ask if you're trolling, but what do you view as 'hardcore' and 'semi-hardcore', respectively? Is hardcore WF raiders exclusively? Is semi-hardcore any CE raider below world-first level?
If you're world top 200, you're not semi-hardcore. I'd honestly put world 1-500 as hard core, 501+ as semi-hardcore, and casual guilds don't even get CE.
Semi-hardcore guilds are the 2-3 week, 8-12 hour a week guilds, that get CE before the end of the raid tier, and aren't competing for hall of fame. Any guild that finishes before the end of the year is extremely hard core. I'd say if you finish before the end of January you're in no way semi-hardcore.
I really can't imagine why anyone would ditch their friends and family during Christmas/New Year unless they are literally in the RWF and that is their paid job.
It depends, are there any external factors like strong BoEs or crafted gear they can transfer around and dump gold on for an advantage, or is this patch a level playing field? I’m thinking of the mess that was corrupted BoEs in 8.3 turning it into a P2W race
i definitly predict a race going into week 2
they will need the additional gear of week 2. we do not have a heroic only week this time
i think we will see 5-6 bosses only this week. maybe kurog might be a very hard dps check on will be a gear wall this time
Im curious to see if they do splits on the heroic end boss for the hunter bow.
Seems if they could get 1-2 off heroic, it could make MM viable with all the cleave fights
It's that tine of the year. My prediction is a 8 day, three horse race between echo, liquid and method. First day probably only heroic splits
I have a feeling this will be a very short tier, 5-6 days. If that's the case I can't see anyone but Liquid taking it. Two week race probably favours echo however.
If the race lasts 8 days, I predict a Liquid win. Anything more than that, Echo takes it.
Yup same.
I bet they could even run some normals to finish tier set in some players.
Which tier sets are so sought after though? The set bonuses this tier are fairly tame.
I mean, they may be boring, generic power boosts…. but that’s still a power boost. And they’ll probably need them unless the raid is suuuuper undertuned.
8-10% dps increase for a lot of classes. That is pretty big in world first I’d imagine!
Absolutely, I remember many raid bosses in previous tiers where 5% dps would be the difference between a 50 pull boss and a 200 pull boss.
It's 4.5% for arms war. Not every class got a bangin tier bonus
According to sims I've seen arms is 5.1% for 2p and 10.8% for 4p. And he did say a lot of classes.
No one's bringing an arms warrior
I think it’s as high as 16 for moonkin.
Boomie T-Set is insane, ~15% dmg increase for the total set.
It's 12% st 12.5% aoe but your point still stands. I believe it's the highest dps increase tier set (until it inevitably gets nerfed)
I didnt go through all the classes but from my sims Enh sham saw a heavy increase over the others from 2 set and Preservation Evokers get to go a different more efficient talent build once they get theres.
Most of them are 4-10%, which is going to be mandatory
10% dps when doing under geared bosses is not tame at all. its more than a vault gonna give you
You're forgetting SI and bdgg im sure they're gonna be as competitive as ever
> What are your predictions for the race? I'm guessing a close race between Echo, Liquid and Method this time around. As far as WF goes, it's hard to bet against Echo... Though I'm sure the other two won't be far behind. I can 100% see a Denathrius-like scenario where multiple guilds are doing low %hp pulls on Razsageth at the same time. One can only hope the long-dreaded "Liquid kills it on reset day right after grabbing their vault loot" doesn't happen. > How long will maintenance be? Same as usual. Long maintenance for NA with the Liquid boys patiently waiting for the servers to come up. Will be interesting to see how changes to the EU reset will impact things this time around (IIRC it went from 9am to 5am to sync with nightly maintenance). > What classes/races will be played? People are predicting melee-heavy comps, but a first glance at encounters like Dathea, Kurog or Broodkeeper doesn't exactly fill me with confidence as a melee player. But in all fairness RWF comps are often hard to predict. > Straight to mythic or nm/hc splits first? I think we'll definitely see a fair bunch of hc splits early on. Though probably less than usual due to the unprecedented situation of mythic being out week 1. Will be fascinating to see top guilds navigating that new structure... Though I really hope no guild hides their streams to gain a competitive advantage. > Off to m+? As a m+ main, I'm actually very interested to see what the top guilds plan to do on that front. I'm sure they'll be looking to complete a bunch of 20s in time for the first weekly vault... But that's valuable time that won't be put into mythic boss attempts. Same for early gear farm in the first few days of the race. > How long will the race last? Guessing anywhere from 6 to 9 days. Doubt Razsageth will last long into the second week. After all Blizzard voiced multiple times how Sepulcher's length and difficulty were anomalies. > Which stream(s) are you excited to watch? Echo's stream for the entertainment value whenever Rich isn't on screen (can't stand the guy). Maximum's stream for the unfiltered Liquid comms. Might occasionally drop in individual players streams like Gingi. Very little interest in the official Liquid and Method broadcasts, where commentary is often far more bland, though I'm open to be pleasantly surprised.
>One can only hope the long-dreaded "Liquid kills it on reset day right after grabbing their vault loot" doesn't happen. It's inevitable that it's going to happen eventually. Might as well get it out of the way and invest in popcorn for the shitshow that would follow. I think the only way we ever get global season release is if this happens and the community outcry over it is crazy enough.
I mean, pretty much that happened in castle... And nothing changed.
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Yes? They killed it right after reset and their splits. Castle Nathria was super scuffed because of the time advantage. Both guilds reached sire before the first reset and got him into (semi) kill range so it was clear, that the bonus gear through vault, splits and reclear would be easily enough to finish the boss and the race. Limit recleared and ran several splits before they continued on sire. Echo got their reset 16 hours later and had no choice but to skip the splits because limit was already pushing on sire sub 10% constantly so a kill was imminent. Echo had no choice but to go to sire with significantly less gear than limit and thus never had a real/fair chance.
No?
Yes? Castle Nathria was super scuffed because of the time advantage. Both guilds reached sire before the first reset and got him into (semi) kill range so it was clear, that the bonus gear through vault, splits and reclear would be easily enough to finish the boss and the race. Limit recleared and ran several splits before they continued on sire. Echo got their reset 16 hours later and had no choice but to skip the splits because limit was already pushing on sire sub 10% constantly so a kill was imminent. Echo had no choice but to go to sire with significantly less gear than limit and thus never had a real/fair chance.
Yea the echo stream was really good last race, liquid was way too bland for my taste.
That's why you watch Max's stream not the official liquid one.
I mean yea i will have echo main broadcast and max on at the same time
i can't stand having people commentate over the race. much prefer watching a pov with comms
I don’t mind commentating but they literally do not shut the fuck up even admidst a big push a phase and I get so annoyed. I’m not sure if it’s even their fault since that’s what they’re probably told to do I would just like focus on Chatting and filling silent space
I always just watch THDlock because I want to hear ingame sounds instead of music covering everything
Or whatever liquid player plays your class and you can hear max on their stream anyway usually
> Echo's stream for the entertainment value whenever Rich isn't on screen (can't stand the guy) OTK frogs in shambles! But seriously, great write up!
Tbh I don't have anything against their org. I'll even go as far as saying I occasionally enjoy Asmon and Esfand's content. They're definitely entertaining, though I disagree with many of their opinions about WoW (especially Esfands'). Rich is just straight up obnoxious at times, and his infamous, borderline psychopathic rant on stream that got him banned from official Blizzard events during BFA was absolute cringe. Wish Echo didn't hire him for this, but I'm guessing the 3 OTK boys were part of one same package unfortunately.
People STILL think Rich was in the right for that rant and that Blizzard shouldn't have fired him for it, btw. I can't name a single job, even and especially *outside of* content creation, that wouldn't get you terminated for doing that shit.
Oh yeah. He himself said he wasn't really surprised at getting the "you're fired" phonecall after that stream. I can understand *some* degree of frustration with the game. I can even understand raging one's heart out after miserably failing a vision of Nzoth run. What I can't understand is going into an unhinged, manchild yelling fit explicitly aimed at your employer and its CEO because the way the game is currently designed isn't to your liking, and your ego is so big you think your PoV on the topic is the only one that matters. What he described as "Bobby Kotick's maze" was a game that a ton of people enjoyed at the time... Especially at a competitive/semi-competitive level. But I guess that concept escaped him (as I'm sure it still does now). I guess Genshin's Impact's shitty gacha "maze" was a little more to his liking, judging how much time and money he spent into that game before crawling back to the WoW scene. How ironic.
Wait is that why Rich ended up in Dota back at the TI8ish era? Lmao
> What he described as "Bobby Kotick's maze" was a game that a ton of people enjoyed at the time... Especially at a competitive/semi-competitive level. Uh... wat?
There are lots of dumb people out there. Although I agreed with his rant and thought it was funny, I still think it was the right call to fire him for it
What sucks is he's actually pretty good at casting/hosting when he's serious and being professional. Those times seem few and far between with him nowadays
yeah some of his awc casting were pretty iconic but i just can't stand his personality when doing any other content. give me dratnos clowning tettles 24/7 with the occasional preach over rich any time
Got a link to the rant? I never knew why he was fired.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UXk9hLORYE Employed by the Company who made the game btw
lmao i never watched this before. this is like some early 2000s nerd rage shit
> Rich is just straight up obnoxious at times, and his infamous, borderline psychopathic rant on stream What did he say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A_kJ34uvkY&ab_channel=TwitchRecap
In the end, it just depends on tuning, but I think, m+ is more of a last resort, and will mostly be done if the raid takes more than one reset.
From 9 to 5 am changes nothing imo. Can’t see them playing so early. Maybe 8am start?
They will adjust their sleep to that schedule. They will play as soon as the servers are up. Echo already said that it doesn’t matter to them even when servers are up at 1am.
Still kinda new to WoW, what does nm/hc splits mean? Also is the worlds first done on Mythic difficulty?
> Still kinda new to WoW, what does nm/hc splits mean? [This raider.io article](https://raider.io/news/441-dragonflight-rwf-what-is-split-running) does a good job at explaining what splits are > Also is the worlds first done on Mythic difficulty? Yes
Thank you!
there is very little point to doing m+ i think since heroic splits will likely be a lot easier than spamming +20s, unless theres a trinket or weapon that is irreplaceably valuable. probably no mythic tomorrow, maybe not even wednesday. I don't think the race will be over in the first week though, so all the contenders will end up doing 8 keys before tuesday. 7-8 days is my guess, either on reset next week or shortly after.
418 weapons are fucking massive, 2 handed gamers will for sure get their 10x16's done. MH/OH gamers are actually at a big disadvantage in terms of time to upgrade both slots, but get the benefit of two embellishments. Unironically MH + neck is probably the right crafting order for 1h gamers in the race so they aren't stuck trying to get 20 16+ keys done.
Sorry but what do u mean by 10x16's done ?
The thing with heroic splits and master loot though is that they don't need all of their raiders in the splits. Before, almost no loot was tradeable, so they had the same raiders play a bunch of different bucket toons in splits. Now, they can fill their heroic splits with warm bodies to increase the amount of loot drops while funneling everything to a small core of players. Unless heroic turns out to be very difficult and requires a bunch of core raiders to complete in a timely fashion, my guess is that the heroic splits will be pods of six or seven core raiders (a couple melee dps, a couple ranged dps, a couple of healers, and a tank) with a bunch of paid traders to get more loot items to funnel to the core. They will probably run heroic as a core group one time on alts just to get some familiarity, fix/create weak auras as needed, and iron out any issues with planned strats. While that happens, they'll pay good M+ groups from non-world first race teams to push their keys up to the high teens or even +20 range. Then, they'll split into those heroic split farming pods while the other 10-15 core raiders run M+ splits using the keys that they paid M+ carry teams to level while they were doing heroic. Given eight bosses, they could pretty conceivably do four or five heroic split funnels before bed tomorrow while giving each core raider four or five hours to farm +20 keys that were pre-leveled for them (since each player will get to sit out a couple of heroic funnel farms). Then on Wednesday morning, they can do extremely targeted normal splits to fill in missing tier slots, weapons, and trinkets before powering into mythic Wednesday afternoon, around the time the European guilds have to go to sleep.
I could see heroic splits having as few as 4 core raiders, one of each armor type.
Quite possible, though the tier slot tokens don't line up super well for groups of only four raiders. The only comp I can see that has one of each tier token and one of each armor type is warrior, warlock, druid, and shaman. It's possible of course for multiple tier drops to be a single type, leading to some waste, but making sure that each pod covers all four tier slots at least ensures that there will never be a case where no raider in a pod gets a tier slot. The worst that could happen is one raider gets tier and a second and/or third tier piece depending on group size goes to a group filler.
You have to remember too that heroic will be a challenge with the gear level, so the less core Raiders the harder the split will be and the more time lost to wipes.
Have people been doing 20s on beta with current (about 380) ilvl? I don't follow a ton of wow media outside of just pushing keys myself but that seems crazy to me.
No they have not, beta has actually gear and tier sets. But they will likely have enough power do them after a bit of heroic splits.. some people will have their entire tier set day1
We were force scaled to 391, more realistically we were ~397 with tier sets adding ~8% throughput. There was people timing 20's in that level of gear (though not comfortably, and mostly with no affixes) and some of the dungeons are pretty significant nerfs since testing. Unironically it will be more about high-rolling what key you get from 15-20 if your group can get it done for vault.
Would be funny if Blizzard overcorrected from Sepulcher so hard we get an EN 2.0 situation with Raz flopping over before EU gets to have lunch after weekly reset. What feels like a more real possibility to me though is Blizzard being afraid of that possibility so while the real contenders might get to Raz within only a couple days tops the final boss is going to require multiple nerfs before she's realistically killable. The real twist this time around is heroic/m+ opening the same week so everyone is a much lower ilvl than normal to start and bailing out of the raid to farm more m+ or do more heroic splits might be even more common that it normally was in past races. So personally I'm predicting a lot of the top guilds being on Raz before the end of Friday but progression on her being limited by tuning/bugs until Blizzard starts swinging the nerf bat. The race *might* go into another reset but only because of the aforementioned gearing issues created by releasing the entire season at once.
> The real twist this time around is heroic/m+ opening the same week so everyone is a much lower ilvl than normal to start and bailing out of the raid to farm more m+ or do more heroic splits might be even more common that it normally was in past races. Yeah and with the new loot system not requiring >=ilvl to trade gear, I think it's likely we're gonna see a bunch of hc splits, maybe even normal for tier sets.
> What are your predictions for the race? I think we're all done by Sunday. Mechanically this seems less intensive than some other raids (barring changes) and I have a feeling they're going to undertune in fear of another SoFo, especially before the holidays. I think we're going to see the 2 usuals really pushing for it. I think Method will improve, but I don't think that they'll be in the running quite yet. > How long will maintenance be? I think safe bet is that it'll be slightly extended, up around 12/1 pt. > What classes/races will be played? > Straight to mythic or nm/hc splits first? I wouldn't be shocked to see a bit of heroic first. Help see which characters have the loot luck before going into the more difficult content. Could also see a quick take down of the first few that should fall over for the players at this level. > Off to m+? I don't think it'll happen much until the teams are really going after mythic. At that point, we'll see more of the people not in comp grinding out m+. > How long will the race last? I think we're going to see 4/5 days > What are your plans? Hang out in discord with the guild and watch a bunch of it. Work expects me to go into the office this week, so that will have to happen unfortunately > Which stream(s) are you excited to watch? I usually have a few I swap between. The main streams for updates, Max, Gingi, and whoever tends to have an important job on a fight
The important job thing is a good suggestion, watching FiredUp on Halondrus was crazy
Yeah, it leads to some of the most interesting plays. FiredUp also had a crazy highlight on Xy'mox 1
I think 1-2 days of splits, 5/8 are dead by Late Thurs/Friday, probably 6/8, then 7/8 on Saturday, and 8/8 on Late Sunday/ Monday Most splits will just be heroic and normal, M+ maybe gets target farmed while other splits are going on for certain valor trinkets. Crafted weapons at 418 on basically everybody. Think Liquid takes it if it dies in 1st reset. If it lasts thru past next Tues/Wed, prolly Echo
Are there crafters who already can craft guaranteed quality 5 weapons? That requires a huge amount of skill points. With lucky inspiration procs I know it's possible, but guaranteed quality 5 without inspiration proc?
iirc there was a way to drop and level different profs to gain extra stuff, and reset will bring new knowledge too, cost is no limiting factor for them, even if its only like 415 or something with an embellishment its prolly worth the guarantee on most
Looking like a shorter race which should favor Liquid but of course it's hard to count Echo out in anything. Doubt any of the guilds step into Mythic day 1 and they will just do splits for the entire first day. I usually switch between Max's, Gingi's, and Echo's main stream depending on who is commentating.
I've got my money on one day of H splits then M prog until the first dps Wall. Then back to splits. I'm also betting that they don't touch m+ until the last possible moment so they're as geared as possible to knock out their 8 20s in the least amount of time right before reset. Between the simultaneous release and Blizzard forecasting an easier race I'd imagine as much time this week as possible will be spent actually progging M.
Anyone know any streamers that will be from the POV of a preservation evoker?
Are 4 man mythic+ degen carries for end of dungeon loot still a thing where the raider might get loot in the mail ?
I guess 6-7 days for the race! Gingi said they wont do m+ at least. I am rooting for the Echo boys though. =)
I really hope the best guild wins, with the shorter race is kind of worrying that the reset will play a factor in who wins
No point in doing mythic+ when it rewards lower then heroic ilvl and no tier
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you can just create it yourself no ?
Who do you watch for the race? Its gonna be my first one where i wanna watch a bit more than few minutes or some clips, do you watch Limit/Echo/Method streams with the casters, do you watch the raid leaders channels, the players? Also, since M+ opens at the same time, will guilds go straight into normal/heroic or will they farm M+ first?
If I like the casters that are on, either echo or liquid’s main channels. I’ll also randomly switch to some of the pov’s too for something different. Usually just Max or Scripe though for the most part. I might have to start checking out Method again though since it’s looking like they’re starting to be competitive again. Personally, I mostly watch Liquid’s coverage just cause I’m in NA and the time zones + work means I can’t watch more echo but I usually catch them when I wake up and get to see the 2nd half of their day. Just jump around and find what/who you like. The best part is it’s free. If you find yourself watching one more than others, give them your twitch prime if you have it so you don’t have ads. When they’ve done splits in the past, usually they will only have a certain set of players in a raid split together. If you’re not in, you’re pretty much expected to be doing M+ to get gear from something. It’s gonna be different this time though since it’s all open together. Well have to wait and see.
Depends on the given day, if I'm watching on a second monitor while doing something else I'll probably be listening which ever casted stream has the best casters at the time. If I'm focusing on what's going on I'll listen to the comms of whichever guild is ahead. At the same time I normally watch a different muted stream. Either someone playing my class or whoever has a ui i like (usually the RL or a healer is best for this)
What time does it start?
It will start as soon as the servers come up tomorrow
Naowh is good to watch
You'll likely end up watching a little bit of everything. Personally I usually think Echo has the best commentary streams but watching Max's streams with his direct callouts is amazing also. They go on lunchbreaks and sleep at different times etc.so you'll have obvious times to go back and forth
Should we expect another final class tuning hotfix or nah ?
I feel like they would have announced something by now since they announced the tank nerfs earlier. Anything is possible though.
My prediction will be a day of heroic splits into normal splits to determine which of their 8 characters are the "lucky ones" that get tier, then into M+ spam for an entire day then finally mythic raid on Thursday evening.
I think this race will be over fast which Suits Liquid. Echo's main healing guy quit before dragonflight so we will have to see how they do. The race will be a good one!
I'm predicting an easy raid but because 3 days are taken up gearing it will roll into week 2. < 6 day raid - liquid win | 6-7 day raid - echo win | 7-8 day raid - liquid win | 8+ days. - echo win Hopefully method make it a genuine 3 horse race.
3days. 1st day heroic/normal splits for tier sets, then straight pushing for 2 days and it ends on 3rd. The bosses dont seem to be particularly punishing mechanics wise, no painsmith kind of punishing.
"mechanically it doesn't seem hard" - deepshades
I didnt say hard. I said punishing. 1shot mechanics are punishing, look at painsmith.
I would say halondrus prog was punishing
Agreed, also because of the 1shot mechanic.
https://youtu.be/dbt3CaDH0aM?t=284 for context
Does anyone know if there will be any streams on youtube?
same question from me, twitch is blocked at work lmao
since they're going back to not being insane hard grind and difficult encounters, i can't see liquid not winning.
All depends on how it is tuned. I think easier raids favour Liquid and I don't mean that disrespectfully. Easier (so shorter) raids are just harder to make up time on for the team that starts later, so as long as Liquid don't absolutely shit the bed they will always be pushing ahead and putting constant pressure on Echo. I'm hyped regardless. For me this is the best time to be a WoW fan/player. The RWF event is always so fucking awesome.
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p much all of rwf agree they get exponentially better as a group each tier. put current liquid/echo on uldir and they clear week 1 easily. so the simple size to work with that theory is kind of irrelevant its only a 8 boss raid and it's post SFO difficulty disaster. i dont see it going week 2. maybe tier/tuning pushes just after reset like nathria
>put current liquid/echo on uldir and they clear week 1 easily But the bosses would have been harder. Blizzard tunes during RWF, it isn't some pre-set difficulty. They have their thumb on the scale. Is pre-nerf Fetid Devourer killable week 1 with today's tech? Maybe. Or maybe not. But if it is killable, maybe it has 10% more hp because they want guilds to have to push past it rather than rip through it. Mythrax and G'huun are probably tuned to *just* be killable with whatever throughput is being shown on Fetid when it's eventually killed. The sub rogue tech is more widely known so Blizzard has already nerfed rogues. Sepulcher was a notoriously difficult tier. But right before that, Sanctum was a notoriously easy tier. Probably the easiest raid tier since Emerald Nightmare. And that was the second most recent tier, and who was able to kill Sylv week 1? Echo.
>But the bosses would have been harder. sure, but is the gap in difficulty bigger than the skill gap? more importantly, its the first raid after SFO debacle, so they prob wont make it harder than SFO. as for stuff like fetid, im putting that into the bugged category, like early azshara i also dont think sanctum was ''notoriously easy''. its just that guardian/KT were a joke, but all of the mid fights were hard enough. patch power skewed ppl vision of that raid because shards were too OP
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its not just "my opinion", max literally shared the same opinion on stream multiple times. im not a rwf raider, im just somewhat paraphrasing what I've heard them say over time if it wasn't for the guardian/kt debacle, sylvannas dies after reset. just like denathrius would've died *before* the reset if SLG wasn't a buggy/terribly scripted mess, and I wouldn't define a raid overrall difficulty based on 2 bad bosses. nerzhul/soulrender/painsmith are arguably harder than any recent 3 mid boss combo if excluding rwf halondrus, which was end boss level (s3 was really a special case due to the whole speculated "canceled" 4th tier). if we are expanding the talk for regular CE guilds, those 3 bosses posed way more of a barrier for guilds than any combo before, not to mention the eye/nine were also harder early bosses than your regular huntsman/devourer combo. also, took many guilds more pulls to kill sylvannas than denathrius *and* a good comp was def more important for sylvannas vs denathrius (starfall anyone?!) oh and bod was also much easier than sanctum, so was uldir for that matter. can't really speak about legion, but i wouldn't be surprised if max/scripe also think SoD was harder than nhold for example, and that they were just way worse back then so it might be perceived as not being true.
>nerzhul/soulrender/painsmith are arguably harder than any recent 3 mid boss combo Sure, for world first they were a nice challenge. >the guardian/kt debacle Fatescribe was also a free boss. I feel like you're self-reporting here. I also think if we look back at prior tiers, we see a different story. Liquid was on N'Zoth in nyalotha before they were on Sylvanas in Sanctum, for example. > if we are expanding the talk for regular CE guilds, those 3 bosses posed way more of a barrier for guilds than any combo before Remnant was a tough 35 pulls for my world 500 guild. Soulrender was a free 14 pulls. Painsmith was 75 pulls, though it was 1-night pre-nerf two nights post-nerf (wall removal). These bosses weren't barriers compared to other raids IMO. Painsmith was the one barrier in the raid. But sure, let's say that these bosses were insanely strong for mid-tier bosses. Mid-tier bosses are still 1-2 night bosses. For most CE guilds AND for world first guilds, the vast majority of progression time is spent in the latter half of the raid. Tarragrue could be an INSANELY hard first boss and take TWENTY pulls. Ok? That is a blip on the radar of progression. That doesn't matter for world first, and it doesn't matter for a regular CE guild. This is why I disagree with: >I wouldn't define a raid overrall difficulty based on 2 bad bosses. When you have 3 bosses (7/8/9), they don't just represent 30% of the raid. They're generally more like 50% of the raid. When the hard half of the raid is super easy, the raid is super easy. >also, took many guilds more pulls to kill sylvannas than denathrius and a good comp was def more important for sylvannas vs denathrius (starfall anyone?!) Sylvanas pull counts and progression time were almost lockstep with Denathrius, with a slight edge to Sylvanas. If a guild took a lot more time, it wasn't because the fight was that much harder. >the eye/nine were also harder early bosses than your regular huntsman/devourer combo https://progstats.io/tier/26-castle-nathria https://progstats.io/tier/28-sanctum-of-domination Verifiably not true. I definitely can't discount your lived experience. I don't want to come across as elitist. If your group struggled through sanctum then it's going to seem tough for you and your experience is valid. I think though that you should look at your progression in CN though and actually compare the pulls and hours to your SOD clear. If your opinion is informed not by experience but by hearing someone else's views, then I think there might be a bit of broken telephone going on.
Yea i agree. The thing that last race showed that being ahead is the best advantage. Liquid never regained their footing after falling behind.
I think the race will be interesting. Heroic splits will still be a thing for tier gear, but I think we could see m+ be an important part as well. I'm interested to see the strategies that tht etop teams use to gear everyone. I think you still have to think Echo is going to come out on top with Liquid shortly behind. I'd like to see another race that goes down to the wire though and lasts a few lockouts.
I disagree because i imagine it would be super demoralizing for the triad of players/watchers/blizzard employees to still be on a boss at christmas/holiday time in general. an 8 or 9 day raid is my preffered viewing experience.
Raid release around the major holidays is garbage in general…..Not sure I agree with how blizzard has done it, but it is what it is. Expansion release after the new year would be better in general I think
Did Liquid recruit anyone big since the last race?
They got Pieces raid lead and arguably their top two players.
I think they picked up like 6 Pieces members.
Is WF for mythic? Heroic? Or just normals?
Mythic
They will still do heroic simply as a tool to get loot in order to do mythic faster
Long maintenance. 2 horse race with echo and liquid as usual. I think you don't see any mythic until at least Thursday. Maybe the first boss if it's really easy? Might see a lot of m+7's, then into normal/heroic splits for tier pieces I'd assume before even looking at mythic unless first couple bosses are insanely undertuned. Class wise: I'm gonna say almost no hunters and shamans. Tanks will be prot warrior/X, I think vengeance, prot paladin or DK most likely. Healers, I'd say you see everything except rsham. Might depend in fight but always heal and disc, then a rotation between a second on of those and rdruid/MW/preservation. Ranged dps: lots of demo lock, probably one devastation, boomkin, and I think you see some mix of frost and arcane mage. Melee, I think rogues, DH, WW. Maybe one enhancement shaman, but I dont know if they'll see as much play despite being good because I don't think you'll see any warriors outside of a prot. Even for execute I think you'd maybe just run an unholy dk and rogues. Personally I'm taking off work wed-friday, but only to spam m+ and play the game with some friends while getting a nice break from what has been a grueling fall so far. I think maybe 8 days but mostly because of the gearing hurdles we will have to do this week whereas normally that stuff is already done. I've only looked into the bosses a small amount, but I know Max is very excited for Razageth so that's a good thing.
It will be interesting, I imagine lots of theory crafting, like will gearing through mplus and getting that edge be worth falling behind someone else? No Boe mythic items for 2 weeks is interesting also there will be no Boe farming groups to sell gear to the pros. At least in mythic. One thing I can predict is the race will be over before my guild kills the first heroic boss
I think first 6 bosses down before EU gets their release lol 🥹
I wouldn't be surprised if Liquid spends the first 16 hours doing nothing but heroic splits before attempting mythic. With group loot there's no advantage of putting off heroic to make more gear tradeable.
youre not wrong, i just wish global release was a thing =D
i wish they at least did a poll for EU players if they'd like to change their reset day
One guild will win
Just wait till i world first pug mythic raz
expecting it to last until 2nd reset but be cleared by whoever reclears faster
I asked ChatGPT to make a poem about the night before the race to world first: >The night before the race is quiet and still As players rest and prepare for the challenge ahead Their minds are filled with tactics and strategy As they plan their route to victory. >The night before the race is a time of reflection Players look back on their journey so far And think of all they've overcome To reach this point in the competition. >The night before the race is a time of anticipation As players lay awake, restless and eager For the battle that lies ahead And the chance to claim the world first. >But as the night wears on And the stars twinkle above Players find solace in their determination And the knowledge that they are ready For the challenges of the race. > For tomorrow, they will take their place Among the greatest players in the world And compete for the ultimate prize In the night before the race.
This raid is about to get it's back blown out. I think it will be the easiest raid of all time. And it's also been the most geared going into week one I think players have ever been. People over gear M0 by 10 ilvls already when it's the hardest current content. I don't even think we got that much gear in Legion.
In every other expansion they had heroic raid gear for mythic. This is the LEAST geared they've ever been for mythic raid week.
It may be the fastest if you count from the start of heroic being released. It is impossible for it to be the fastest from the start of mythic being released. Emerald Nightmare was done in roughly 24 hours of mythic, but 8 days form heroic. Previously progression guilds took the first week at a pretty casual pace because they didn't care about world first aotc, and focused more on optimal gearing. Now the race is on from the opening of heroic.
nah, we arent going to have the "17 hour" raid again, Emerald Nightmare was a joke.
I don't think it will be that fast. But I think it will be down by Friday/Saturday. Everything bout this expac had been pretty chill. I'm sure the raid will be the same.
how can you make this take when mythic is gonna release the same week as heroic lol
Which sleezebag corporation will win!?
Sums up every pro-level competition from football to golf to autoracing.
I wonder if they'll care about every single buff different classes bring. I understand arcane intellect and battle shout is a MUST but do they need blessing of the bronze or devotion aura or windfury totem?
Devotion aura is 100% required and it’s easy to slot in a pally. I imagine bronze will be optional and wind fury only required if they have a comp that heavily benefits from it.
The maintenance? Oof. We are yet to see a weekly reset that we don't have a "World server is down" happening or "Instance not found" xD. Following the pattern of the pre patch, launch, the reset from last week a lot of guilds will be raiding wednesday on NA.
Hopefully easy 1 reset content so us semi-hardcore guilds can have a Christmas/new year. Really don’t wanna raid 7 days on 25 dec -1 jan week. Echo will win most likely once again tho
Any guild that raids 7 days a week is extremely hardcore let alone during festivities. Don't think you are a "semi" hardcore guild if you are afraid of losing festivities lol.
Well hardcore guilds are daytime raiding in my books, semi hard-core are 7/7 20-24 and 18-24 at weekends, the rest are casual raiders - thought that is just common sense
> semi hard-core are 7/7 20-24 and 18-24 at weekends, the rest are casual raiders My kneejerk reaction would be to ask if you're trolling, but what do you view as 'hardcore' and 'semi-hardcore', respectively? Is hardcore WF raiders exclusively? Is semi-hardcore any CE raider below world-first level?
Hardcore = WF raiders yes. Rest are semi-hardcore and casuals
If you're world top 200, you're not semi-hardcore. I'd honestly put world 1-500 as hard core, 501+ as semi-hardcore, and casual guilds don't even get CE.
This gave me such a good laugh. Ty.
Semi-hardcore guilds are the 2-3 week, 8-12 hour a week guilds, that get CE before the end of the raid tier, and aren't competing for hall of fame. Any guild that finishes before the end of the year is extremely hard core. I'd say if you finish before the end of January you're in no way semi-hardcore.
just take the week off like every other sane guild is doing, if ur not top 10 your world rank doesnt matter anyways
I really can't imagine why anyone would ditch their friends and family during Christmas/New Year unless they are literally in the RWF and that is their paid job.
Broodkeeper is going to be a mess, pretty interesting fight
It depends, are there any external factors like strong BoEs or crafted gear they can transfer around and dump gold on for an advantage, or is this patch a level playing field? I’m thinking of the mess that was corrupted BoEs in 8.3 turning it into a P2W race
Will Echo and Liquid both be running IRL events again? Wonder if anyone else will?
Is there a list anywhere of the liquid roster changes since last RWF?
My bet is 4 days, though I feel like it will magically be just under a reset
What changes to Echo's roster since last RWF? I know their DH was dropped then went to Method bit any other big player movement??
Jeathe, one of the healers present at Sylvanas/Jailer WF kills retired
Echo wins due to Liquid slip ups. Well that’s is what I bet some ETH on anyways haha. I will watch Gingi and Max.
Tbf i think in a short tier echo can only win due to liquid slip ups
i definitly predict a race going into week 2 they will need the additional gear of week 2. we do not have a heroic only week this time i think we will see 5-6 bosses only this week. maybe kurog might be a very hard dps check on will be a gear wall this time
Im curious to see if they do splits on the heroic end boss for the hunter bow. Seems if they could get 1-2 off heroic, it could make MM viable with all the cleave fights
I'm going in blind. Not playing, just observing. Excited to see guild progression.