Race to World First Day 11: How will guilds beat Queen Ansurek’s enrage?

Though the Mythic Queen Ansurek encounter got some nerfs yesterday, guilds in the Race to World First still have a long way to go. The sticking point in the Ansurek fight has been phase 3, where increasing waves of acolytes spawn and quickly become unmanageable as the raid deals with the debuff players get from picking up the orbs they drop on top of other overlapping abilities. Eventually the damage becomes unsurvivable, even though healers are doing more than a billion healing over the course of the encounter.

The nerfs are relatively small tweaks, targeting the damage on specific abilities in phase 3 that make the later waves of adds more difficult. The damage of Acolyte’s Essence, the debuff players get from picking up the orbs Acolytes drop, has been reduced by 12.5%. That will make it little easier to keep players up, particularly if anyone has to pick up a second orb (the Essence Scarred debuff, which players get after Acolyte’s Essence expires, increases damage from Acolyte’s Essence by 500%). Ansurek’s Royal Condemnation, which does significant raid-wide damage (reduced by distance, so you’ll see raiders running it out of the group), has been cut by 8%. Because of the way abilities overlap in this final phase, these tweaks to the encounter will make it more manageable. Still, no one is close to killing the boss.

Team Liquid is holding on to the lead, and finally reached Ansurek’s enrage after 10 minutes, with 15% health remaining. In their best pull, once the final wave of five adds has been dealt with, most of the platform was covered in an expanding pool of void while Ansurek started chain-casting her nova ability. She had far too much health remaining to for the raid to survive the damage long enough to kill her. Now Liquid is faced with a significant challenge: when, where, and how can they do that much extra damage before the enrage?

Liquid, Echo, and Method are all getting into phase 3 of the fight regularly, and Huoguo Hero has seen the third phase as well. Everyone else in the top 10 remains on Silken Court or Ky’veza, though Jitianhong has had a 2% pull on Silken Court and may get the kill soon to join the others on Ansurek.

Max from Liquid says Queen Ansurek will die today, but we’ll see if the guild can find a way to whittle down that 15% over the course of the day. Echo and Method have been making good progress on the boss, but both remain behind at 26% and 39%, respectively.

But for now, let’s take a look at the rankings in the Race to World First for Nerub’ar Palace,

The state of the race

Current Nerub-ar Palace rankings

1. Team Liquid (7/8) with 15.27% on Ansurek after 309 pulls
2. Echo (7/8) with 26.23% on Ansurek after 289 pulls
3. Method (7/8) with 39.55% on Ansurek after 222 pulls
4. 火鍋英雄 (Huoguo Hero) (7/8) with 56.53% on Ansurek after 238 pulls
5. 佶天鸿 (Jitianhong) (6/8) with 2% on Silken Court after 194 pulls

Bosses killed: Ulgrax, Bloodbound Horror, Sikran, Rasha’nan, Ovi’nax, Ky’veza, Silken Court

Want to watch along with us? Here are the streams to follow to watch the Race to World First live. Or check our written coverage of day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, day 7, day 8, day 9, and day 10, or jump ahead to day 12 and day 13