Race to World First Day 3: Broodtwister Ovi’nax down… and now the race gets really difficult

Team Liquid claimed another world first by taking down Ovi’nax after 119 pulls — and as of this writing, the rest of the Nerub-ar Palace Race to World First is still progressing on this worm. The fight is all about controlling eggs and adds, and keeping those ads from overwhelming a group has required a lot of damage.

So much damage, in fact, that guilds have been doing this fight with only three healers and using two Blood Death Knight tanks for the self-healing to keep themselves up. Liquid also experimented with a triple-tank comp to control those adds, but damage won the day. In addition to the two Blood DKs, the group had two Frost DKs and three Fury Warriors to burn those adds down — that’s about as much as you can possibly stack a Mythic raid while also maintaining raid buffs.

It’s a fight that requires a lot of coordination and a lot of DPS, and it’s easy to see why so many guilds are stuck on Ovi’nax. But after this the fight gets harder: the next hurdle is Nexus-Princess Ky’veza, who does some truly ridiculous damage. We saw a few guilds yesterday attempting Ky’veza instead of Ovi’nax — you can go to either boss at this point in the raid— but most came to the conclusion that Ovi’nax was more killable.

Let’s take a look at the highlights from Mythic Nerub-ar Palace Day 3.

Team Liquid moves on to Ky’veza. Ovi’nax died just after dinner time for Liquid, and they just did a few pulls on Ky’veza before calling it a night. That means they’ve probably spent the rest of the evening (and the morning) to work on strategies to put into play when they come in for the next day of raiding.

Echo is on track to take down Ovi’nax and move to Ky’veza, hot on Liquid’s heels. With Echo starting raiding at about the time Liquid goes to bed, I fully expect the team to catch up. Soon we’ll see how both of these guilds approach Ky’veza.

Method is fighting Covid as well as Ovi’nax. The team is currently in third place, but three raiders have tested positive for Covid, and Raider.io reports five are sick. Since the guild is playing together in a venue this could be devastating, even if they’re mild cases. Best luck on a speedy recovery, everybody.

Chinese guilds are keeping up. While End Myth, which raced through the ranks yesterday, has fallen a bit behind as the guild has transitioned to gearing up, it’s still in fourth place — and after making so much progress before doing any other gearing for the week, it’s well positioned to jump back in. End Myth is fighting against its delayed start by doing a whole lot of pulls in a short amount of time: the team is already up to a staggering 166 pulls on Ovi’nax. Chinese guilds Huoguo Hero and ZboX have also jumped into the top 10, sitting at sixth and seventh places, respectively.

Oceanic guild Honestly has switched gears, giving up on Ky’veza (for now) to progress on Ovi’nax. The team is somewhat behind the rest of the pack there, but has gotten the worm to 60% after 51 pulls. That’s good progress, and their experience on Ky’veza may help them when they go back to the fight with a little more gear.

The state of the race

Current Nerub-ar Palace rankings

1. Team Liquid (5/8), with 63% on Ky’veza after 21 pulls
2. Echo (4/8), with 4% on Ovi’nax after 78 pulls
3. Method (4/8) with 18% on Ovi’nax after 80 pulls
4. End Myth (4/8) with 35% on Ovi’nax after 166 pulls
5. Instant Dollars (4/8) with 39% on Ovi’nax after 46 pulls

Bosses killed: Ulgrax, Bloodbound Horror, Sikran, Rasha’nan, Ovi’nax

Ovi’nax proved to be a significant block for guilds, and though I expect a few more guilds to bring this boss down today, many will keep struggling. And with Ky’veza’s high damage output, I expect her to take well more than a hundred pulls to kill, unless Blizzard jumps in with a nerf, which I wouldn’t expect to happen this early. Either way, it will be interesting to see where things go from here as guilds start on Ky’veza in earnest.

Want to watch along with us? Here are the streams to follow to watch the Race to World First live. You can also go back for our coverage of day 1 or day 2.