Midnight Season 1 Race to World First recap, day 3: The Lightblinded Vanguard goes down in another world first for Liquid

It’s the third day of the Midnight Season 1 Race to World First and the rush through the Voidspire raid has slowed down, but it hasn’t come to a halt. We ended yesterday with Liquid (NA) working on the Lightblinded Vanguard, while their primary competition — guilds Echo (EU) and Method (EU) — had only done splits without stepping into Mythic. Today, Echo and Method caught up for world second and world third kills of the dragon duo Vaelgor & Ezzorak, followed by Incentive (EU), FatSharkYes (EU), Poptart Corndog (NA), Instant Dollars (NA), Consequence (NA), and Incarnate (NA). Incentive is not a name we’ve seen at the top of the list before: the guild was world 31st in Manaforge Omega and world 28th in Liberation of Undermine. They’re putting in a strong performance this tier to be in fourth place.

One thing we haven’t seen today is any progress from the Chinese guilds. Yesterday we saw Huoguo Hero (CN) and Jitianhong (CN) take down Chimaerus for world second and world third kills, respectively. There was good reason for these early kills: Netease, which operates World of Warcraft in China, was offering a cash bounty for Chinese guilds with a top three finish, and getting that kill in Dreamrift allowed them to do this. But they committed crafts and upgrades early in order to maximize item level and DPS for this kill, while other guilds usually hold off and see what their loot options are, and what characters they’re likely to take into the final fight. The result was a strong early start, but now these guilds have backed off on Voidspire to focus on gearing.

But the fight isn’t going to end this week, and Chinese guilds have time to burn through Voidspire bosses once they’ve gotten all the gear they can. Here’s the current state of the Midnight Season 1 Race to World First in Voidspire.

World First! Liquid downs Lightblinded Vanguard

This paladin trio was the first fight of the race that really slowed Liquid down, taking a total of 52 pulls. The healing requirements on this boss are intense, and guilds have been changing their comps to five or even six healers for this fight. But worse than the healing requirements are the dispel requirements, as Avenger’s Shield targets all players and leaves a damaging debuff. A Priest is also a must to Mass Dispel Divine Shield off these bosses so players can keep burning them down.

And while these bosses are dishing out brutal damage, Tyr’s Wrath puts a stacking healing absorb on players that’s very significant — and in early pulls of this fight a bug caused each application of Tyr’s Wrath to reset its absorb value to maximum. (This bug has since been fixed.) Tyr’s Wrath casts line up with heavy damage casts from these bosses, so heal absorbs can be deadly. Liquid carefully planned out every player’s defensive cooldowns in order to beat this damage.

Liquid ran three Mistweaver Monks for Revival and even had their Warlocks dispelling debuffs with their imps. For overall healing, Liquid ran five healers for this fight, stacking Mistweavers for raid-wide dispels. Echo is doing pulls with six healers and only one Mistweaver, aiming for raw HPS. Method has been splitting the difference, running five healers with two Mistweavers. We’ll have to wait and see what the most successful comps on these fights are.

No other guilds have currently killed the Lightblinded Vanguard, though Echo, Method, Incentive, FatSharkYes, and Poptart Corndog have cleared the raid up to Vanguard.

What’s next for the race? Crown of the Cosmos

The final encounter in Voidspire is against a void-corrupted Alleria, and the fight was not tested on the PTR and does not have a dungeon journal entry. As you might expect, mechanics are amped up, but movement requirements are also much harder (though Liquid has managed to adapt). The platform you fight on splits into three pieces, and feathers spawn on the platforms that players can run over in order to leap to the next platform — but in Mythic these feathers are consumed on use, and it’s impossible to get a full raid from platform to platform without movement abilities to help you clear the gap. (Plus the gap is wider than its visual suggests, so you have to be careful making the leap.)

Liquid has seen the mechanics in all three phases of the fight — unless there’s a secret Mythic-only phase — and is currently optimizing to get enough damage on the boss to secure a kill. They’ve gotten Alleria down to 17% in phase 3 after 33 pulls and continue to make progress.

How long will Alleria survive? It’s up to question, but it doesn’t seem likely that she’ll still be alive by reset time on Tuesday. That will leave Liquid — and any other guilds who have killed her — with nothing to do but wait for March on Quel’Danas to launch on Tuesday.

Who am I kidding? They’ll definitely be hitting up any other possible pieces of gear, and potentially gearing more alts in order to have more characters to help help with splits or to swap in for mains if they get lucky with gear.

Overnight, we’re likely to see Echo and Method catch up again, and we may have a real race on our hands soon.

But that’s all for day 3 of the Race to World First. I’ll be back tomorrow with another recap, but in the meanwhile you can find up to the minute updates on Raider.io or watch the Race to World First guilds playing live to see the action as it happens.