WoWJul 20, 2021 6:00 am CT

Echo wins The Sanctum of Domination Race to World First!

By Cory Taylor

The Race to World First Sanctum of Domination has finished! Echo has pulled off an incredible win, defeating Sylvanas before any other guild in the world on their seventh day of raiding in Sanctum of Domination! This is Echo’s first World First victory, and the first time in two raid tiers that Complexity-Limit didn’t win. They put on an amazing showing and clearly had what it takes to win.

Leading up to the raid opening, we saw the different guilds Complexity-Limit, Big Dumb Golden Guardians, Echo, Method, and Team Aster run their butts off through the Sanctum of Domination on Normal and Heroic. They were trying to get as many Shards of Domination, pieces of gear with sockets for those shards, and the fancy weapons like the Sylvanas bow as humanly possible. Blizzard intentionally has limited the number of Bind on Equip pieces of gear from Sanctum to make it harder for these guilds to outfit all of their raiders with four pieces of Mythic gear as soon as possible, but these guilds have still invested piles upon piles of gold to try and get the best gear possible.

Chinese guild Team Aster is a relatively newer guild, formed from the best players of Alpha, Skyline, and JTH to compete in the Mythic Race to World First this time around. They’re also the guild who got the world’s first Heroic Sylvanas Windrunner kill, beating out Echo by just 73 minutes! Sylvanas has proven to be a more complicated and tougher fight than Sire Denathrius was, managing to survive even longer on NA servers than he did, but part of Tuesday’s maintenance did include some tuning changes to that fight.

I’d like to extend a big congratulations to Echo for their impressive showing all the way through the race! As well as a hearty round of applause to all guilds who took part in the race.

If you want a summary of the race as it happened, read on!

Mythic Sanctum of Domination day 1

We had an early morning start as the scheduled maintenance ended sooner than anticipated. Soniqs Imperative bolted into the raid as quickly as they could and picked up the first kills on the Tarragrue, Eye of the Jailer, and The Nine while other guilds like Complexity-Limit and BDGG were still taking care of their reset chores. Those chores included running around in Korthia and completing the story quest that unlocked this week in order to get some extra renown and unlock the new Covenant-specific legendaries. Once they had those under their belts, it was off to the races.

While Soniqs Imperative had gotten to the Remnant of Ner’zhul first, it was actually Complexity-Limit who got the first kill after only 16 pulls. While Complexity-Limit was working on Ner’zhul, BDGG had chosen instead to pull Soulrender Dormazain thinking him to be the easier encounter. It turns out that Soulrender Dormazain was adept at more than just tormenting Garrosh, as BDGG was unable to finish him off, and went to try Ner’zhul instead. Both BDGG and Soniqs Imperative would spend the rest of their days working on Ner’zhul — neither guild was able to finish him off. Soniqs Imperative actually wound up pulling it almost 100 times by the end of the day.

Complexity-Limit would be the only guild on the North American servers to get the Soulrender kill putting them at 5/10 bosses complete. However, they only managed it after a round of nerfs to the encounter by Blizzard. The damage that he was putting out was tuned a little too tightly for his position in the raid, Complexity-Limit had been trying to six heal it at one point, and still coming up short. With those nerfs in place it only wound up taking Complexity-Limit 26 pulls to end Dormazains tormenting of Garrosh. Complexity-Limit ends their first day being the only guild in the world with more than three kills in Sanctum of Domination.

After a long 15 hour day of raiding, it was time for a well-earned rest and the North American guilds have all turned in for the night. The European servers are coming online soon, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing a flurry of quick kills coming from Method, Pieces, and Echo before the night is through.

Mythic Sanctum of Domination Day 2

The European servers were the big draw for the overnight crowd. Echo had a strong start, quickly catching up to Complexity-Limit with only 16 wipes on the Remnant of Ner’zhul, and 30 on Soulrender Dormazain to join them at the Painsmith. Meanwhile, Method and Pieces crisscrossed to get to 4/10 with Method killing the Ner’zhul and Pieces killing Soulrender Dormazain, nabbing the third-place kill on both of those bosses respectively. They still weren’t able to catch full up to Echo and Complexity-Limit but they’re ahead of the rest of the pack.

Complexity-Limit spent almost the entirety of their day working on Painsmith Raznal. They’ve racked up 123 attempts on him so far, with the closest being 19%. The additional spikes and rolling balls in the intermission phases have been extremely tough to deal with, and the additional enemies that spawn just as the Painsmith returns to the platform have proven to be a formidable batch of baddies. Complexity-Limit has been looking for any possible advantage to get the first kill here, even going so far as to race-change a bunch of their raiders to Goblins. They want to take advantage of the Goblin Rocket Jump racial ability to get around the unbroken line of spikes in the intermission phase. Players leap off the side of the platform and use the Rocket Jump to boost themselves back on to safety. BDGG spent their day catching up to Complexity-Limit as well, with BDGG being the third guild in the world to hit 5/10 bosses defeated.

The European guilds are waking up and getting ready to start their second day. Method is planning on doing some Heroic Splits out of the way before returning to Soulrender and I’m sure Echo is itching to take a crack at Painsmith and possibly secure the lead in the race.

Mythic Sanctum of Domination Day 3

What a day! We finally saw the terror of Painsmith Raznal put to rest as Echo finally was able to defeat him in 107 pulls. Not to just rest on their laurels of defeating the first big wall boss of the raid tier, they even pushed further into the Sanctum of Domination and felled the Guardian of the First Ones! It only took them 24 pulls to dismantle that construct and take the lead from Complexity-Limit. The fight that had been billed as Sludgefist 2.0 (since it had a very tight enrage timer due to a high health pool and only three pylons that were integral to the fight) wound up not causing them anywhere near as much of a headache as Sludgefist did in Castle Nathria.

Complexity-Limit spent a large portion of their evening finishing up their Heroic splits for the week, and then it was right back onto the Painsmith train. They eventually finished him off after 160 pulls in the late evening and quickly raced to the Guardian of the First Ones. Who they managed to defeat in just 16 pulls! They’ve caught up to Echo at the end of the third day for the North American Servers, but Echo is just starting their third day and will be pushing hard to be the first ones to fight fate and defeat Fatescribe Roh-Kalo.

The rest of the top eight guilds spent their day working on Painsmith Raznal. He’s still only been defeated by Complexity-Limit and Echo, so third place is wide open for the taking.

Mythic Sanctum of Domination Day 4

Complexity-Limit has taken the lead again!

While Echo spent their third day running their Heroic Splits for the week, Complexity-Limit went and fought fate. Fatescriber Roh-Kalo went down surprisingly fast, as Complexity-Limit managed to secure their kill of him with only 54 pulls. After the celebration for taking back the lead in the race was over, they moved on to the penultimate boss in the Sanctum — Kel’Thuzad.

So far he’s proven to be more than a match for them. After 64 pulls they’ve just barely gotten him past the halfway point. They’ve been hard at work figuring out their strategy, but it looks like he’ll be the next boss to take them more than 100 pulls to get. So far Kel’Thuzad while strong, hasn’t seemed like as hard of a fight as Stone Legion Generals, — but we still haven’t seen how tough his final burn phase will be.

Meanwhile, Method and BDGG both managed to catch up to Echo at 7/10 bosses dead after downing Painsmith and the Guardian of the First Ones. BDGG even had a 0.10% wipe on Guardian of the First Ones before killing it just after dinner. Having been on the receiving end of more than a few 0.10% wipes I know how heartbreaking those can be.

Now as Echo and Method start their fourth day, they’ll have to make real progress on Fatescribe and Kel’Thuzad if they want to beat Complexity-Limit to Sylvanas.

Mythic Sanctum of Domination Day 5

Kel’Thuzad has died again — hopefully, for the last time!

Echo managed to catch up to and surpass Complexity-Limit by defeating the Fatescribe and Kel’Thuzad in their raid day. Kel’Thuzad only took them 22 pulls! It turns out that they were more than a match for the Master of the Cold Dark and put the final nail in his coffin with barely a sweat. Not to be outdone, Complexity-Limit got their own Kel’Thuzad kill just an hour and a half after them. It was finally time to see what Mythic Sylvanas was capable of.

She’s capable of a lot it turns out, her massive health pool and high damage have been holding them up pretty well. Echos raid day was over after 41 pulls and they consistently making it into her second phase. Unlike Echo, Complexity-Limit managed to kill Kel’Thuzad near the start of their raid day so they have plenty of time to get a feel for Sylvanas. After pulling her 92 times their best pull has gotten her health down to 70%. On Heroic the Sylvanas fight ends when she reaches 50%, so if the Mythic version of the fight ends at the same point they’ve got her a little over halfway there. But even still being most of the way there still means that they only have the four platforms around the Arbiter to deal the roughly 39 million damage to finish her off after the second phase.

While Echo and Complexity-Limit were both firmly focused on Sylvanas — BDGG managed to sneak ahead of Method by killing Kel’Thuzad as well. They finished ninth overall in Castle Nathria, so it looks like they could massively jump up in the standings this time.

It’s almost time for Echo’s next raid day to start, will they pull off another speedy kill to lock this whole race up in only five days? Or will Sylvanas hold them at bay long enough for another guild to steal the victory.

Mythic Sanctum of Domination Day 6

After a hundred pulls, and four pulls in a row where Echo had gotten Sylvanas to 51% Echo finally pushed her to the assumed fight end of 50% — and then the fight kept going. On Normal and Heroic difficulty the Sylvanas fight ends at 50%. However, this is Mythic and while there isn’t a secret Mythic-only phase like the end of Gul’dan in Nighthold or N’zoth in Nya’lotha — Sylvanas didn’t die at 50%.

The players and casters were shocked.

Nobody knew for sure that the Sylvanas fight would end at 50% like the other difficulties, and there was a rumor (and datamining) to suggest that she wouldn’t end there it was still surprising to see that first hand. The new assumed end for the Sylvanas fight is 45%. Meaning Echo had played almost perfectly and they’d still come up 5% short with no more room to fight her. With 109 pulls total, they decided to end the raid a little early to go and see about getting some additional gear out of Mythic Keystones.

Meanwhile, Complexity-Limit was about ten pulls ahead and 10% behind Echo’s best. Over the rest of their raid day, they’d wind up pulling her a total of 135 times with their best pull of 50.64%. Complexity-Limit has one more day to work on Sylvanas before the North American weekly reset, so for Echo to have their best chance of finishing her they’ll need to finish the fight in the next 36 hours.

Mythic Sanctum of Domination Day 7

Sylvanas has fallen.

The Banshee Queen had so far resisted the best efforts of Echo and Complexity-Limit to kill her. Echo had pull after pull of amazingly close attempts, as they pulled late into their evening, ending their night with their best attempt sitting at 46.35% after 155 pulls. We were still working under the assumption that the fight ended when Sylvanas reached 45% so they were only slightly more than 1% away from victory. They chose to go to bed rather than stay up super late to continue to pull her.

As their night ended, Complexity-Limit was well into their seventh day, rocketing their pull count up but still not quite reaching the 46.35% that Echo had managed. Until finally in the mid-afternoon by their 165th pull they broke the 50% mark. Complexity-Limit attacked Sylvanas with renewed vigor, and over the course of the next ten hours proceeded to make pull after pull to try and snatch the victory before the weekly reset.

They came close. They came heartbreakingly, agonizingly close with a 45.44% pull in the late evening. But even playing as hard as they could they still couldn’t manage to push her over that final percent. She would always cast Raze and destroy their hopes along with any safe ground to stand on.

After staying up until almost four in the morning and putting a total of 216 pulls into Sylvanas, it was clear that they just couldn’t do it anymore. Where earlier in the night they were able to make four or five attempts in a row that all nearly got the kill in the third phase, they started to make lots of mistakes in the first and second phases. Interrupts were missed, people fell off of the chains leading to Oribos, so it was clear that they needed to get some rest. After nearly a full day of raiding, Complexity-Limit went to bed.

As Echo’s stream started again for their final day of raiding before the European servers reset, they knew that they only have a few hours before the North American servers reset and Complexity-Limit has access to a new weekly lockout worth of bosses and their gear.

It wasn’t even close.

Echo only took 14 more pulls to get their victory. After a couple of quick warm-up pulls they managed to quickly get back into the swing of things and start really showing what they were made of in the final phase. They had a couple of really close calls, where Sylvanas would’ve died if they hadn’t made tiny mistakes when finally it happened — they had a pull where everything went right.

They reached the final platform with everyone alive, with every battle resurrection spell available to them, having done inhuman amounts of damage to Sylvanas during the chains and the first three platforms, and no mistakes. Sylvanas’s health dropped lower and lower. They still had seven seconds before Sylvanas cast her final Raze which put them easily ten seconds ahead of their best attempts up until then.

She was defeated.

Mythic Sanctum of Domination wrap up

Echo had won the whole event, but we still wanted to know who would take the other top spots. Unsurprisingly, Complexity-Limit took the second place victory. With the additional gear from the weekly reset they only took five more pulls to finish off Sylvanas to take second place overall.

Coming in third place was Pieces guild. They reached Sylvanas after both BDGG and Method, but made quick progress on her and were able to clinch that bronze medal. BDGG wound up taking fourth and Method came in fifth. Both BDGG and Method made huge improvements over their last tier to place so highly. BDGG has been a guild on the rise ever since coming in 31st during the Eternal Palace race. They’ve consistently shown great improvement and I’m very excited to see what they can accomplish in the next tier.

Warcraftlogs has an amazing breakdown of how many pulls each boss took for the top five guilds. It’s really cool to see how close each guild was to each other on these bosses. It really could’ve been anyone winning the whole thing!