Liberation of Undermine Race to World First, day 6: Stopped by Stix Bunkjunker

The weekend in the Race to World First for Liberation of Undermine has seen quite a few more guilds jump into the Mythic race… and quickly hit a roadblock. After Rik Reverb, guilds have been moving on to Stix Bunkjunker which has proven a real challenge. Over the weekend, Instant Dollars, Liquid, Echo, Method, and 火鍋英雄 (Huoguo Hero) all got through the first three bosses without too much struggle — Rik has taken everyone a few pulls, but didn’t stop anyone — but now everyone has been stopped by Stix.

That’s understandable, because it’s a complicated fight (even on normal difficulty, where I’ve done it). The fight revolves around Rolling Rubbish, in which players are selected to roll around the arena on a ball of trash. You hit trash the ground to make your ball bigger, hit adds to interrupt their casts, and when your ball gets large enough roll into Discarded Doomsplosives to destroy them before they can explode and destroy the raid — or send your trash ball into Stix for big damage.

But of course things are more complicated than that. If a player not in a trash ball gets hit by a trash ball they’re stunned. If a trash ball hits another trash ball, they’re both knocked back. On Mythic, certain adds can only be interrupted by hitting them with a trash ball, so that has to be taken care of before going after the bombs (which spawn in increasing numbers throughout the fight). It’s a lot of coordination, and it has to be done on the fly (and with the help of increasingly sophisticated WeakAuras), because players selected are chosen randomly (aside from the tank, who is always chosen). Piles of garbage can catch fire if players are out of position (and even if they aren’t) and leave a pool of burning garbage on the ground. The boss’ Overdrive intermission phase leaves the boss taking 99% less damage while the whole raid avoids Stix’s attacks… and then he comes back with even more Discarded Doomsplosives and a power boost. And in Mythic, Prototype Powercoils spawn that channel increasing damage on to a specific player.

It’s a fight that requires high damage, a lot of coordination, and tons of healing. And making it harder, most guilds are running three healers on the fight, which lets them get out the damage needed to take out Stix… but makes it harder to keep everyone alive (particularly if anything goes wrong).

Stix Bunkjunker doesn’t have any margin for error, and all of the top three guilds have spent the majority of the weekend working on it. Currently Liquid has the best pull at 11% after 69 pulls, followed by Echo at 17% after 61 pulls, putting them very close — though at this point both guilds are in Mythic+ to try to pick up some key pieces of gear. These players also have room to craft more gear, but will want to hold off on crafting as late as possible to see what drops are available before filling slots with crafted pieces. Upgrades are the same: the top guilds are likely holding crests until they know exactly which pieces to use them on.

Next on the list is Method at 37% after 74 pulls, Instant Dollars at 55% after 38 pulls, FatSharkYes at 67% after 15 pulls, and Huoguo Hero at 75% after 6 pulls. FatSharkYes and Huoguo Hero just jumped into the Mythic race over the weekend, and both of them have made good progress, though neither have had the time to get in as many pulls, putting them behind the rest of the pack. Instant Dollars was actually the first guild to kill Rik Reverb, but they fell behind when the top three guilds jumped in — still, the guild has put in a solid performance and has held its own.

Echo, Instant Dollars, FatSharkYes, and Huoguo Hero have all done some pulls on Sproketmonger Lockenstock — remember, after Vexie the next four bosses can be done in any order — and every guild came back to Stix Junkbunker as presumably the easier boss. But easier doesn’t mean easy, as all of these guilds have proven.

The race continues into its second week, with weekly reset fast approaching. Look for another report tomorrow to see how the race is going (and whether anyone manages to take down Stix).