wow The Jailer's Secret Mythic Phase Revealed

[Starym 3,784]

 

Update 2: We've also added an explanation of what's expected to happen in the phase based on the datamined spells, considering we have confirmation of at least one of the spells being in the fight.
Update: Echo have called it a night after their insane pull, not wanting to give any more info to the competition and being convinced the boss lives through the night. Liquid are at a 15% best at the moment, with 6-7 more hours left in their raid day.

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We finally saw the final boss of the Sepulcher get brought down below 10%, as Echo got him to 9.99% (repeating, of course), when the new Mythic-only phase triggered! It was only a few seconds as they did it during the Jailer's Eternity's End cast when he destroys Azeroth, so we'll update this post with better attempts (if they come, that is). Let's take a look:

Player perspective + comms:

So the datamined shield does indeed happen, as we see the Diverted Life Shield spell that was nerfed just today. Here's the visual for the spell, courtesy of LeystTV, which is exactly what we saw on the Jailer now.

Here's how the phase is expected to go, now that we know that at least one of the datamined spells is indeed in, as explained by Seliathan over on the Raider.IO live coverage:

With the information we currently have, let's take a look at one possible scenario on how a secret phase might play out. All of this is speculative, of course. Thanks to Wowhead for providing the datamined information in their post!   We really only know about 3 possible Secret Phase mechanics, but with what has happened in the encounter so far, that gives us a decent idea of what might happen. Once the boss hits the magical percentage number (some expect a 10% threshold, others like Echos Rogerbrown are thinking 5.5%) he might transition into the secret phase. The boss will most likely drain Azeroth of its remaining health and cast Diverted Life Shield. This will heal the boss for 24% of its health, and apply a big absorption shield for another ~5.5% of his health. The last phase will then be on a timer, as the boss will start applying a single Death Sentence to a player. Once this debuff is removed, either through death or being dispelled, 2 zones will spawn that need to be soaked, and the soaking players will also gain the Death Sentence debuff. The raid will have to delay dispelling as much as possible (without it expiring), and missing a soak will immediately apply the debuff to the entire raid. This means that the raid will have to continue soaking and spreading this debuff, and it will ramp up over the course of the fight. While the first debuff will only spawn 2 zones to be soaked, this will repeat and the next time it will be 4 zones, then 8, then 16. A mass dispell will surely be needed for the last set, and missing even a single soak will immediately wipe the raid at this point. While this is happening, the raid will also have to deal with another tank-soak mechanic, Meteor Cleave. Due to the way Death Sentence triggers on dispell or death, no one can die to this or the raid will not have enough time to kill the Jailer before the amount of Death Sentences applied are too high. The way Death Sentence spreads through the raid creates a hard enrage timer, as eventually there will be too many zones to be soaked. After 2 minutes, 16 people within the raid will have the debuff, and their deaths after 30 more seconds will trigger a cascade of Death Sentences and wipe the raid. This leaves the raid with 2 minutes and 30 seconds to nuke the Jailer after he heals back up. Depending on how low the boss is when he actually triggers the phase, this will leave the Jailer with anywhere between 30 and 40% HP remaining, which have to be nuked without Bloodlust (as it is currently being used in P3 already) with only 150 seconds to do so. If he starts this phase with 40% HP, this will require ~17k DPS from every single player in the raid (including Healers and Tanks, meaning the requirement is quite a bit higher than that for actual DPS). If he can be brought down to 30% before healing and shielding himself, the requirement goes down to 12.8k DPS per player (again, including Tanks and Healers). This certainly seems doable, and if he can already be damaged during the heal, or if there is another yet unknown mechanic to break the shield, this seems like a tight race against time, but one that should be manageable with the gear the players have acquired by now.

And here's the longer version of the pull, so you can see the craziness of the skill on display here:

The big question now is just how hard that phase it, as there's a real possibility that it's actually easier than getting to it, so the guilds just need to get to it a few more times and the kill might be at hand. On the OTHER hand it may be as tightly tuned as Halondrus and the race continues for another week! Personally I think it'll be on the easier side, as Blizzard don't want the race to go on much longer either, so maybe 10 pulls in it will be enough to get it down.

And finally, here's Gingi with some thoughts on Blizzard's tuning of the raid: