wow Amirdrassil RWF Day 9: Going Dark and the Dramatic Road to World 2nd

[Starym 3,800]

 

Another very eventful day has gone by in the RWF and we have quite a lot to talk about. A midnight World 2nd, a lot of Fyrakk pulls, even a phase 2, and then Liquid's going dark that slowed things down quite a bit.

Let's start with a bit of Tidral trivia (Tindrivia?), as the boss allegedly has a soft-ish enrage, where he starts casting supernova for 20 seconds and then just wipes everyone at the end. No guild has run into it so far, so it may have been removed, but we could see it with some of the later comers to the fight (well, before it gets infinity-nerfed anyway).

Then on to day 9. Echo actually had a bit of trouble with their re-clear. Well, only one boss really and it's not the one you think. Nymue wiped the guild 4 times before they managed to get past her, while Smolderon didn't pose any greater threat than he did to Liquid. Weird. Echo got back to Tindral after their splits and chores and the reclear around 4 PM CET, and that's where they'd stay for quite a long time. They actually had some amazing progress in the first hour, already getting the boss down to 5%, but they'd be stuck at that particular percentage until basically the end of their day. It took Echo another 5 hours to get back to another 5% pull, with several around 8 in-between. Their exhaustion was pretty evident at this point, as they had been up for 17 hours by then, and the next few hours were spent not getting any progress done. And then came the decision that they would be calling it at midnight CET. That left them with 30 minutes to get something done. And get something done they did! A 3.7% wipe, that is. At least it was a pretty dramatic one at that!

So, one more pull left in their allotted time, surely this one? Nope, 16% wipe. We're at almost exactly midnight and the guild decides to have ONE more try before heading to bed, pull 399. This was hour 19 of their raid day, probably longer in terms of when they woke up. And would you look at that...

The World 2nd was there and 2 quick pulls on Fyrakk later Echo went to sleep.

So why go that in-depth on Echo's journey? Well, the rest of the day was preeetty uneventful as it turned out. Liquid did get quite a few Fyrakk pulls done, around 50, in fact. They pushed through phase 1, and the intermission gave them quite some issues for most of the evening. We also learned that Fyrakk had been stealth buffed by 5% HP before Liquid even got to him, so that 1.5 Billion number will be what we'll be seeing for the rest of the race (nerfs notwithstanding). And then, also around midnight and Echo's kill, one pull came where they managed to solidly get past the intermission and into phase 2. Let's take a look at the entire try:

Whatever Liquid saw in that pull, whatever strategies they cooked up during the hour or so they went back to farming Mythic+ after it, really made them not want to share any more info with Echo. The decision came in pretty abruptly, after a long period of Max being muted, then came the below clip, and then he ended the stream.

That's right, Liquid decided to not stream their Fyrakk progress overnight. Max stated they'd "do some practice stuff" and "do a few more pulls today". At that point there was still 7-8 hours in their raid day (depending on which previous day you want to compare to). We don't know how long they pulled, how many times, how low they got the boss, or when they went to sleep. We'll find out in the evening today when they come back and show us what they've learned!

This obviously isn't the first time a guild has gone dark. In fact, Liquid did the same thing in Aberrus, albeit for a much shorter time. Echo did it for about as long if I remember correctly, back in Castle Nathria. This seems to be a standard tool in the RWF guild toolbox, and although it's not one they take out often, it is an important one. Considering I come from the days when the only way to get progress updates was for me to poke guilds directly on Skype and beg for info, this isn't exactly an issue for me. Guilds coming up with their own strats without any info outside their own is how the race was for a LONG time. But it has also changed a lot since then, so whether this sort of thing is "ok" or not is entirely up to personal preference.

Here's an extended interview with Liquid's Tagzz where he goes quite a bit more in-depth on the going dark, which came a few hours after the original announcement.

 

And that was day 9. A long road to a Tindral kill and a very short one to no Fyrakk pulls for the day. Echo are starting late today, around 10 AM CET, to recover from their insanity of a day, so they should be in Amirdrassil in a bit.