Race to World First Day 12: Queen Ansurek dies!

The Race to World First for Nerub’ar Palace has come to a close: Team Liquid killed Queen Ansurek after 404 pulls. The kill happened just after midnight, at the end of Liquid’s raid night. They spent 12 days clearing Mythic Nerub’ar Palace, maintaining the lead for most of the race and picking up six world first kills along the way.

The kill came after a full day of pulls that looked a little messier than the day before. When Liquid first saw Ansurek’s enrage, she was still at 15% health — so yesterday was about finding every place to eke out a little more damage. Sometimes that meant taking more risks, like standing still just that fraction of a second longer to get off another spell cast or melee swing instead of dodging immediately to stay safe. Sometimes that meant changing the raid’s positioning so players had to move less to get better uptime on the boss. The team had to play aggressively, hyper-optimizing cooldowns and positioning to push down more of Ansurek’s health in phase 1 and then burn her down in phase 3.

In the kill, Liquid got Ansurek down to 60.70% before phase 2 when she’s immune to all damage, then 54.5% during a brief window at the start of phase 3 before she starts attacking again. The team was well ahead of previous damage numbers throughout, closing in on the kill. There was almost a last second disaster when one of the final round of orbs — which need to be carried through a portal to prevent a an explosion from wiping the raid — was well away from the group. THD hit Soulburn to instant-cast a perfectly positioned Demonic Gateway, grabbing the orb and bringing it back to the portal in time to keep this pull from turning into another wipe. These kills are a team effort, but it was an impressive save.

At 404 pulls, Queen Ansurek is one of the toughest bosses in modern WoW. The last end boss that took this much work was Uu’nat in Crucible of Storms during Battle for Azeroth at 731 pulls, though many of the top guilds didn’t take this two-boss raid very seriously (Liquid, for example, isn’t in the top 20 kills). Before that, it was Kil’jaeden in Legion at 655 pulls (and Fallen Avatar, just before Kil’jaeden, took 454 pulls). Even Halondrus, much bemoaned as a raid block in Sepulcher of the First Ones, only took 361 pulls.

What about the rest of the race?

With Liquid claiming first place, the race is on for second place and beyond. Echo continues to fight for its own kill, with 423 pulls and a low under 1%. The team has already stayed up a couple of hours past its usual stop time to try to get that kill, and they’re getting the boss under 60% in phase 1 which means there’s less health to burn through in phase 3. But it takes a perfect pull to kill Ansurek, and the guild continues to make phase 3 mistakes that quickly compound into wipes. Will they claim the kill before exhaustion claims them, or will they call it a night and come back well rested tomorrow? Even though I think they’re safe from the rest of the guilds in the competition, it might be a morale hit to head to bed.

Both Method and Huoguo have been making good progress, but I think it’s unlikely either of them will close the gap. Method has steadily chipped down Ansurek’s health — and has actually gotten the boss lower in fewer pulls than Liquid or Echo — but the team has still only gotten her to 17.6% and hasn’t seen the enrage. Huoguo has put in an impressive performance this tier as Chinese guilds come out of the mothballs after an entire expansion where the game wasn’t available in the region. The guild has gotten Ansurek down to 31.26%, well ahead of the fifth place guilds.

While the top three or four guilds are unlikely to switch up in this last stretch of the race, competition for World Fifth remains fierce. Currently FatSharkYes, 佶天鸿 (Jitianhong), and ZboX are all working on Ansurek, with less than 1% health separating FatSharkYes and Jitianhong. ZboX is only another 2% behind. Any of these guilds could pull ahead at any time, but the rest of the top 10 is still struggling with Silken Court or even Ky’veza.

So who will take world second? Third? Fourth? Fifth? Let’s take a look at the current rankings in the Race to World First for Nerub-ar Palace.

The state of the race

Current Nerub-ar Palace rankings

1. Team Liquid (8/8) wins World First after 404 pulls!
2. Echo (7/8) with 0.98% on Ansurek after 423 pulls
3. Method (7/8) with 17.60% on Ansurek after 346 pulls
4. 火鍋英雄 (Huoguo Hero) (7/8) with 31.26% on Ansurek after 358 pulls
5. FatSharkYes (7/8) with 64.54% on Ansurek after 25 pulls

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

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, day 10, and day 11.