The Midnight Season 1 Race to World First was heading to a photo finish L’ura kill, and then the secret phase started

We’re heading into the third week of the Midnight Season 1 Race to World First, and things have gotten spicy. This is an unusual raid tier split across three raids: Dreamrift, Voidspire, and March on Quel’danas. Dreamrift was a one-boss raid with minimal trash, and we never expected it to be a big roadblock this tier. But we expected the Mythic Voidspire raid would be more of a struggle, being a six-boss raid culminating in a fight with a void-consumed Alleria. However, Team Liquid rushed through Mythic Voidspire in just a couple of days, leading to days of downtime while waiting for March on Quel’danas to open.

And Mythic March on Quel’danas has proven to be a significant struggle. It’s only a two boss raid, with the phoenix Belo’ren and the corrupted Naaru L’ura, but both pack a serious punch. Liquid defeated Belo’ren after 196 pulls — Alleria only took 35 pulls — for the world first kill, followed by Echo and Method within a day. Belo’ren has been a roadblock for most guilds, and so far the only other guild to down the phoenix is Huoguo Hero, a Chinese guild that continues to make a strong push to break into the top three.

A very brief look at the L’ura encounter

But killing Belo’ren only got guilds to L’ura, which is proving to be one of the most complicated encounters we’ve ever seen in Warcraft. It’s an unforgiving fight that requires much more than eking out as much damage as possible. The first phase includes a memory game in which players must quickly position themselves in the correct order as well as adds that must be interrupted a total of 15 times — and in a 20-player Mythic group, you’re probably only going to have 16 interrupts to use. There are also crystals that must be healed up and then carried by select players, because they’ll be used in phase 3 to save the raid from L’ura’s Dark Archangel cast… and if you get hit by damage while holding the crystal, the crystal is damaged, so players are constantly dropping them and picking them up again (because if left unattended for too long, they’ll start doing damage to the raid). And you’re doing all of this while dodging flying void glaives bouncing around the room, which were so difficult to see that Blizzard actually hotfixed them to have a slight white glow so they were visible in a sea of void-colored abilities. Even this description is an oversimplification, and Liquid guildleader Maximum has said it’s the hardest phase 1 in the game.

L’ura’s phase 2 is largely a dance, and we’ve seen many guilds handle it more consistently than phase 1. Players are transported into the Darkwell, where they must destroy rotating void orbs around the edges of the room when they’re targeted by beams. There’s also a soak that requires exactly 18 players, so losing players early makes this impossible. If guilds make it through phase 1, precise positioning will likely carry them through phase 2. Learning that coordination takes many pulls of practice, but after that guilds seem fairly consistent. It’s phase 1 and phase 3 these guilds are most likely to wipe to.

Then there’s phase 3, which requires players to stick close to the torchbearers holding those crystals — hopefully they’ve been keeping them safe from damage all this time — and brings back the memory game, plus constellations of void energy that run through the raid. At this point it’s all about the burn, while continuing to execute mechanics. The enrage timer is tight, and even great execution can fall to an enrage. The Liquid casters do a good job explaining this one.

Tldr: this raid encounter is a lot.

L’ura continues to kill raiders

On Sunday, both Liquid and Echo were closing in on a kill, with both guilds doing pulls on L’ura at the same time. Echo had the best pull at 0.45% while Liquid’s best pull was 1.98%. It seemed like any pull the boss would fall to one of these guilds… and then Liquid came through with a perfect pull where everything came together. Even with some phase 3 deaths, the remaining raiders took L’ura down to 0% health.

But instead of dying, L’ura cast Reintegration and pulled herself back together with 100% health.

This wasn’t exactly the win the raiders were hoping for, but a secret Mythic-only phase is plenty exciting on its own. In this phase, L’ura casts Heaven & Hell, which targets a player and follows them around the room with a massive void-tornado, and spawns constant waves of shadowy sha adds that players need to dodge. (And when I say constant, I mean constant.) Select players have an extra action button allowing them to cast The Last Light, a frontal cone of light that destroys the sha in its radius. Raiders do bonus damage during this phase, which helps burn L’ura down quickly… but even so, burning the boss from full health again isn’t easy.

And even getting to the secret phase isn’t simple, as Liquid has only seen it twice, and no other guilds have reached it at all (both Echo and Method were at the end of their raid days when Liquid first got to the secret phase). Liquid’s best pull has been 94.7% in phase 4, when presumably the boss dies when reaching 0% for a second time.

Executing the first three phases perfectly to get reps on this final phase has proven to be a big road block. Liquid has been improving consistency in the earlier phases, and we’ve seen them hit each phase with better damage on the boss, but after 418 pulls it’s still hard to say whether they’re close to a kill.

Liquid seems likely to extend its raid day later to try and secure a kill in the next few hours, but European guilds Echo and Method will be getting up to start their raid day in a few hours, too. It’s anyone’s guess who wins the race.

That’s the state of the Race to World First right now, but I’ll keep you up to date as guilds keep progressing on this final fight… and perhaps we get to see more of the secret phase 4. 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.