Race to World First: Battle of Dazar'alor

The Battle of Dazar'alor is upon us and Heroic week opens today! The raid itself has some very specific and new mechanics, with its 9 bosses that are actually 12 (or 10, it all depends on how you look at it). So how does it all work? Well, the first three bosses are different for each faction, although they're different in name only, as all the mechanics are the same. The first boss is just a rename/reskin and then the 2nd and 3rd are just swapped over in their order. Then it's on to 6 story/flashback encounters, where the fights are faction-specific, and the other faction experiences the same fight through the eyes of the other. So it starts of with Alliance encounters where Horde players get race changed and fight Opulence, the Conclave of the Chosen and King Rastakhan, after which it's the Horde encounters where the Alliance become Horde and fight Mekkatoque, Stormwall Blockade and Jaina.

This will actually be a pretty interesting experience, as players have to adjust to the new racials, but in the end it's Jaina everyone will be aiming at and she'll be serving as the endboss for both factions. As usual Heroic week will see the top guilds farm their hearts out with many, many groups over the week, trying to not only get those perfect drops, but also stack up on Titan Residuum as much as possible on key characters.

In terms of actual Heroic first kills, we'll be popping in and out of the coverage right here on this page, but as these go pretty fast (day 1 endboss kills usually), we'll only be doing a couple of updates in total.

Here we go with some big Mythic progress news as well, as both Method and Exorsus have announced they'll be streaming their Battle of Dazar'alor progress!

It is time: Announcing the Battle Of Dazar'alor Mythic Progress Live Race

And Wildcard Gaming seem to have finished up Heroic nice and quick, getting Jaina down and crossing the finish like on 9/9!

Limit are already at 1/9 with Champion of the Light down!

Midwinter join the 1/9 crowd and are the fourth guild to get the first boss down!

Wildcard Gaming seem to be the first on 2/9!

Big Dumb Guild have caught up and are now at 2/9 as well!

Limit join the 2/9 group making it three heading to the third boss.

It seems raid preparations are heading to a whole new level as Limit have apparently faction transferred over to Alliance to get two item level 400 quest rewards before the race starts! Due to the overall faction imbalance, the Alliance got a new reward for the Against Overwhelming Odds quest this week, with item level 400 gear as a reward and the quest will also reset next week. Limit didn't actually pay any real money, according to their GM and raid leader @maximumwow, and it was 51 characters transferred according to some other sources, but you can read up on more theories and discussion over on the reddit thread.

lot of misinformation spreading around. We spent 0 $. Spent around 10-15 mil gold. takes 1-2 8/8M uldir clears(2 hours of work) to pay for this. However the meme is great, so if you see anyone saying we spent $5k def spread that and i'll retweet it3

— max (@maximumwow) January 23, 2019

We already know Limit are going all in on this race, taking more time off than usual for progress, so this is definitely going to be one of the closer races than we've had in a long time.

Here comes another first, as Glory of the Dazar'alor Raider has been completed! It wasn't any specific guild, but rather various members of the achievements discord that went ahead and grabbed their Dazar'alor Windreaver after completing the 9 challenges on the raid bosses. Check out Wowhead for more details.

It seems the preparations for Battle for Dazar'alor have been a "little" more intense than usual, with the split raids going "slightly" insane, as Method have done up to 27 split raids in a week!

Hello everyone : ))

Method are running NINE (9) Mythic split runs next week. We need many people on EU - H to help us with this. josh#7485 on discord if you want to come. Be 7/8m and have full 385 azerite : )

Also doing EIGHTTEEN (18) heroic runs lmao pls join thanks nice game

— Josh (@Atacamitee) January 15, 2019

A lot of the players have recently voiced their annoyance with the Titan Residuum system which is causing much of the issues, including some from each of the top three guilds:

Ok, probably old splitraids were not THAT bad after all...

The race starts today over on the NA side of things, with Limit, Big Dumb Guild and Wildcard Gaming getting ready to take down the first handful of bosses. With the insanity over split raids and residuum still raging, we will probably see at least a part of today's time spent on Heroics and possibly even Normals, as gear will most likely play a bigger factor than getting those early Mythic kills down quickly.

Take your guesses as to how many bosses go down on day 1! Could we see King Rastakhan meet his doom already or is that a little too much?

Big Dumb Guild get the World First on Jadefire Masters  and are on 3/9!

And Limit join BDG on 3/9!

Wildcard Gaming down Jadefire Masters as well, making it three guilds on 3/9.

Vision take the World 4th on Grong and are now on 2/9.

Another Grong kill has arrived as Blood Legion move on up to 2/9 and face the Jadefire Masters.

It's time for some kill videos, or rather Twitch stream vids for all three World Firsts!

First up we have the Big Dumb Guild World First on Jadefire Masters:

Then it's on to Grong and Wildcard Gaming's World First:

And finally, the very first World First of the raid, the Champion of Light kill by Big Dumb Guild:

Vision have now also cleared the Jadefire Masters roadblock and are on to Opulence! World and US/OC 5th.

Here's Limit with the Opulence World First and 4/9! Their first WF of the raid, they move on to Conclave of the Chosen. They took under 2 hours to take the fourth boss down, so let's see how long it takes for the fifth.

Wildcard Gaming got the pile of gold to fall, downing Opulence World Second!

Limit is keeping their lead, proving that the Conclave of the Chosen may not be the best choice after all! 5/9 and we only have 4 bosses left in the raid. Will King Rastakhan make it to tomorrow?

Wildcard Gaming catch up once again as they reach Limit on 5/9 and grab that World 2nd kill on Conclave of the Chosen! They took around an hour longer to get to King Rastakhan than Limit, but if the boss proves to be at least a little tougher than the rest so far, we may actually see some competition for the first/US first kill.

Big Dumb Guild have broken away from the 3/9 pack and moved up one, as they claim the World 3rd on Opulence!

Here we go with the 6/9! King Rastakhan has fallen at the hands of Limit! It seems this raid is a faster clear than the standard, or Limit are just really going after it and are giving it 110%!

Big Dumb Guild are back in the second group as they down Conclave of the Chosen and join Wildcard on 5/9, lagging 1 boss behind Limit.

7/9! Limit down High Tinker Mekkatorque World First! So we now have only two bosses left alive before EU servers even came up, and Limit aren't even done with their raid night yet. It took them about 3 hours and 45 minutes to tinker with the second to last boss in the raid, and now we're left to wonder if the Stormwall Blockade will live up to its name.

Wildcard Gaming have taken offense at my earlier comment and pushed straight through King Rastakhan to claim the World second on him and head on up just a little closer to Limit on 6/9!

As if to nullify my little roundup below, Blood Legion went ahead and moved up, downing Opulence World 4th and heading to 4/9, making my entire list utterly pointless. I'm crying now.

And here comes the killshot (what a shocking thing to exist these days!) for Limit's World First Mythic High Tinker Mekkatorque, well, defeat:

More opulence kills and mockery of my little list, as Vision move on to the Conclave of the chosen and grab the 5th kill on the treasure elemental and are now on 4/9.

We're moving on from Opulence to the Conclave of the Chosen and it's Vision who grab the World 4th on he boss and move on up to 5/9, passing Blood Legion along the way.

Midwinter down Conclave of the Chosen World 5th and leapfrog Blood Legion as the two venerable guilds duke it out for a top 5 spot.

We have another kingslayer! Big Dumb Guild have taken down Rastakhan and claimed the World third kill. They join Wildcard Gaming on 6/9 and are on to the only other boss to have been kill in the raid so far, High Tinker Makkatorque.

It's raid time EU and we already have two kills as Method and Exorsus both got past the Champion of the Light!

Pieces have joined the race in a real way, getting down Champion and Grong EU First!

Method have gone ahead and slapped down Grong putting them at 2/9, and most likely EU #2.
As always, it's real hard to tell the order of kills this early in a race, so we'll give final rankings for the early bosses later on when things have settled down.

Method have gone ahead and oneshot the Jadefire Masters, putting them at 3/9 as EU First!

Pieces have done what Method just did, and seen to it that the Jadefire Masters have taken a permanent nap, meaning they now sit at 3/9, EU Second!

Exorsus have caught up with the leading pack, getting the Jadefire Masters down EU Third, and now sit at 3/9.

Method has gone and collected the pile of gold, named Opulence, putting them at 4/9 and EU First!

The lead have been extended now to two bosses, with Method taking down Conclave of the Chosen as EU First, World 6th!

Pieces trying to catch up to Method, having taking down Opulence EU Second, World 9th.

Pieces keeps their second place in EU, getting down Conclave of the Chosen EU Second, World #7.

King Rastakhan is no more, getting killed by Method World 4th, EU first!

We've got ourselves a race on our hands!
Pieces have slain King Rastakhan and now sit at 6/9, World #5, EU #2!

Stormwall Blockade is down! Limit take another World First and are on to the final boss!

And so we're left with only Jaina alive in the raid as Limit move 2 bosses ahead of everyone else and getting to see the final boss first. And here's their kill announcement tweet:

LET’S GOOOOOOO!!!!

8/9M pic.twitter.com/O0fIun2FO7

— LIMIT (@LimitGuild) January 30, 2019

And here's a little sort-of-killshot as well:

And here's the official killshot!

Stormwall Blockade Mythic World First by Limit

Here we go with some more videos from previous boss kills, featuring Wildcard Gaming, starting with their King Rastakhan World 2nd:

And then their Conclave of the Chosen World 2nd:

We have a World 2nd and EU first! Pieces have downed Mekkatorque and moved up to 7/9! If Jaina manages to live long enough, it's going to a hell of a race once everyone catches up, not to mention the Asia guilds that will be starting their race soon as well.

Here comes Method to the Tinker party, claiming the World 3rd, Eu 2nd! And we get another Sco graphic to go with it:

7/9 - i was resting :) pic.twitter.com/1NUBVYaK2G

— Scott McMillan (@Methodsco) January 30, 2019

As Method have gone to sleep to be ready for tomorrow's big push, let's take a look at the timings of the kills. Since the race is going somewhat quickly, some people might want to dismiss Limit's kills, but if we take a look at the actual times it took the various guilds to down the bosses, we may get a better picture. Of course there's no telling when which guild took a break, so the individual timings between bosses might not be indicative, so we'll also take a look at the time it took from their very first kill (since the first boss took around 10 minutes for the guilds, it's as good a point as any to start from).

	From 1st                 From previous	From 1st                 From previous	From 1st                 From previous
Limit	6H 46Min                 2H 34Min	10H 30Min                3H 44Min	28H 33Min                 18H 03Min
Pieces	7H 42Min                 2H 14Min	14H                     6H 18Min	/
Method	5H 34Min                 1H 56Min	14H 23Min                8H 49Min	/

So, while it's no surprise the latter bosses took more time, it seems Method was going at a very fast pace until they reached High Tinker Mekkatorque where they lost around 2 and a half hours compared to Pieces and a whopping 5 hours compared to Limit. Pieces also took considerably more time than Limit on the tech gnome, so there's definitely something Limit are doing very right on that particular fight. Considering the complexity and specific requirement of these bosses it could just be a matter of the correct classes and specs not being well geared enough and Stormwall will turn out to be different, but these are some interesting stats nonetheless.

It seems the Chinese guilds have really gone for it, as Jitianhong and Alpha are already on 6/9, having downed King Rastakhan a couple of hours ago, with Skyline behind them on 5/9!

The Stormwall Blockade have been breached! Method have gone gone ahead and grabbed the World Second 8/9, and now they can go ahead and kill Jaina!

Exorsus have slain the pesky gnome mechanic, making High Tinker Mekkatorque a thing of the past. They now sit at 7/9, World #4!

It seems it was just the High Tinker that was the issue for Method, as their Stormwall Blockade was some 3 hours faster than Limits compared to the previous boss, however with the sleep break and entire day between their and Limit's last two kills that number isn't entirely indicative, but it does show that Method are certainly not as far behind as they were on Mekkatorque.

While we don't yet know how far along Limit are, Method's best try so far has been 60.3% and they've also reached phase 2 of the fight.

Here's one of Method's best tries on the boss, finishing up at 60.4% and showcasing Phase 2 and the maze + the mirror images!

It seems Alpha got High Tinker Mekkatorque just before Exorsus did, so they claim the World 4th and Asia first, which is damn impressive!

A lot of action as we have a World 3rd on Stormwall Blockade! Pieces stayed up a little longer and got the boss down, joining Limit and Method on 8/9 and heading to Jaina!

Limit have shared some info on their experiences on the earlier bosses as well as their wipe counts, and it seems it wasn't all smooth sailing:

Some people asked for these

Blockade was unkillably bugged for about 30 of these pulls and double sea swell bug existed for the entirety(All fixed after our kill)

Pull Counter
Champions: 1
Grong: 8
Masters: 3
Opulence: 14
Conclave: 7
Rastakhan: 15
Robot: 23
Blockade: 83

— max (@maximumwow) February 1, 2019

Here are two more videos, one of Method's Stormwall Blockade World 2nd and the other of the latest lowest percentage Jaina try (46.7%):

An eventful morning as we have another High Tinker kill, this time from the Asia servers with Jitianhong getting the kill a while ago, before vodkaz adn Instant Dollars in fact, claiming the region 2nd and World 8th spot!

Exorsus have finally caught up with the leading pack. Stormwall Blockade have falled once more, putting them up at 8/9, World #4!

We now have 5 guilds competing for for gold, as Alpha have killed Stormwall Blockade! As always with Chinese guilds it's hard to know exactly when the kill came, but it was at just about the same time as Exorsus, but I'll put them down as World #5, Asia #1.

We have another milestone in Method's Jaina fight progress as they've reached the ice wall! On their latest best try, where they got her down to 30.4% they have literally hit a wall, and with its 7.2 million HP + only 20 seconds to down it, we'll see how they manage to resolve that particular problem. It seems possible that this is also where Limit is at, if the wall isn't actually doable with this level of gear, but we can't be sure as Limit had "our best pull by a lot before dinner break" yesterday, so it seems they are having progress, but it might just be getting the wall to a lower number of HP.

Here's the clip of Method's latest lowest try, starring the wall:

We also have another guild getting access to Jaina, as Jitianhong have defeated the Stormwall Blockade as Asia 3rd, World 7th, and are now at 8/9!

We now have 8 guilds on Jaina, as Memento have just taken down Stormwall Blockade! Eu 4th and World 8th 8/9, jumping 5 spaces from their previous 13th.

We finally got some info from Limit as @Holyzorea shared their GM's words on the final phase of Jaina:

Ending the raid night tonight with some leather splits so we can get up in the morning and be ready to rock.  Little bit of a leak from our raid leader, Max...he let us know that we reached the final phase on Thursday, so it seems Jaina will fall very soon.  Good news for all NA fans!  Good night everyone and we will see you in the morning!

Now, obviously that could mean anything as the final phase is 30% and Method have managed to get to 28.7, but they're having decent progress so it's possible Limit are significantly deeper into the fight. It seems somewhat unlikely there will be even more Mythic-only surprises after this point, but it's still all up in the air. Hopefully Jaina makes it through the weekend, although a Tuesday post-reset kill would be somewhat anti-climactic, so I'm not sure what to root for.

Here comes Limit's World First High Tinker Mekkatorque video!

Some big news as Jaina is being changed repeatedly. Recently the Tide Elemental had been made much more deadly. Blizzard hotfixed it so that its frost nova was not interruptable, which was a major part of the recent strategy. This was the way the fight was originally supposed to go, apparently, so it was a fix, but since it was broken for the whole week, it seems Blizzard have rethought it. And so it seems the hotfix has now been reverted, as Blizzard didn't want to affect the race this much, although we can't be sure of anything right now. So as it stands now, the encounter is not changed, after a brief period of it being hotfixed.

Wowhead has the full details on the actual things that were changed and then un-changed.

Apparently the hotfix was reverted because it had unintended consequences on Stormwall Blockade, so it might just come back later or on the reset without that problem. Here's a clip from when the hotfix was first implemented as well:

The 296th try was a big one, as Method have broken the 10% barrier, just barely. 9.9% is the current best try and we'll get that clip in as soon as possible. Potentially only 4.9% to go.

And here's that 9.9% clip:

Jaina has survived the first US reset, but now that the servers are back up the US guilds are hard at it to reclear the raid, so that they can get back to her with some brand new gear!

Over on the EU side Method have gotten her down to 6.9%, meaning that if she functions like on the lower difficulties, they are only 1.9% off of a kill. 

Will some EU guild manage to slay Jaina before the the reset, will the US guilds get her down before the servers are back up in EU? The race is truly on it's last leg right now!

And here's the raid composition:

The kill video from the stream:

Method have done it! World First Lady Jaina Proudmoore and 9/9 goes to the reigning champions and they keep their title and claim yet another win! This is Method's 11th raid endboss WF. Congratulations!

After spending the entire raid behind Limit and pushing incredibly hard to get her down before the reset, it must be a great relief to finally make Jaina run. It's been another great raid for streaming as well and definitely head on over to the main stream to join in the celebrations!

346 pulls is what it took for Method to down Jaina, just barely ahead of Limit and their strategy paid off. There were plenty of sub 8% tries during the day but it came down to the line as Limit were already re-clearing and their kill was almost imminent as well.

LETS GOOOOOOOOO!
OMG SO HAPPY <33333333333 pic.twitter.com/dO1oGEd4yL

— Scott McMillan (@Methodsco) February 5, 2019

Here comes the official congratulations from Blizzard themselves:

Congratulations @Methodgg on world first completion of Mythic Battle of Dazar'alor. pic.twitter.com/WUDayPSXXd

— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) February 5, 2019

And in case you just want that sweet kill moment, here's a shorter clip for you to enjoy:

We don't have the classic nerdscreams (although you could hear some in the background on the main stream coverage) and these are technically silent screams, but we did get some more clips, this time from Josh and Sco's streams:

And here's the whole guild's comms reaction, the real nerdscreams!

And here comes the actual World 2nd guild! Limit have done it and defeated Lady Jaina Proudmoore to claim that US 1st!

Happy to report that we are now 9/9M! pic.twitter.com/SbC67Tsi6Y

— LIMIT (@LimitGuild) February 6, 2019

After all the Jaina commotion, here's a step back as we get Limit's World First Stormwall Blockade video!

We have some more info on the race overall from both Limit and Method!

Limit's GM took to his stream to discuss their strategy and show off a bunch of pulls while also going over the race in general:

And then we have a whole lot of Method as they had both a huge 7-person interview session with Red Bull over at the studio, and an individual interview with Sco over on their site as well.

We have some further details on Limit's journey through the raid in their latest blog over at HeroesHearth, going over the raid day by day and filling us in on what happened. It's a relatively short read and well worth it, so head on over there for all the details! Here's a small excerpt:

This was our last hurrah, but because of the troll racial discovery we were actually very confident that we could land a kill.  Our entire raid aside from paladins and demon hunters race changed troll, and we entered the raid with a strategy that we were sure would work if executed correctly.  At this time we started raid as far as I remember Method had a 10% pull with their burn, and it looked like they had plenty of room to improve on that. We still thought that it wouldn’t be enough for them however…  By the end of the day I think they improved to 8%.

When we got into phase 3, it was clear that Bliz had changed Jaina again and made it so she didn’t skip Orb of Frost in her Ice Block anymore (all of her abilities now delayed instead of some being skipped).  This hurt our strategy, but it would still be possible. We had numerous pulls that got as low as 10% (and in these pulls we definitely had the damage and healer cooldowns to kill the boss in time, but in each pull we wiped to a mechanic in phase 3).  It was apparent at this time that Method had definitely passed us in progression as their phase 3’s were much more clean than ours, although we had had more phase 3 reps. This fact is what hurt us most; we did not work on the mechanics in phase 3 to make it consistent due to continuously flip flopping strategies earlier on. - Tagzz

Oh, and Limit's kill video is also out! World 2nd (guild) Mythic Lady Jaina Proudmoore:

Method's World First Jaina video is coming in a little under 3 hours, so get ready!

⏰ Set your alarm for 8pm GMT https://t.co/zl7YSbkD44

Premiere of Method VS Jaina Proudmoore WORLD FIRST #RaceToWF #MethodWay pic.twitter.com/eESuh8BLY3

— Method (@Methodgg) February 8, 2019

Here come some more big news! Alpha has claimed the World 3rd on Jaina! They also get the Asia first and it's been a while since we've seen a guild from the Asia servers get a podium finish. The last time was AFK R back in Tomb of Sargeras, who also got 3rd, so it wasn't actually that long ago after all.

Pieces have gone ahead and grabbed themselves the World #4 kill on Jaina Proudmore!

Today does not seem like a good day for Jaina, as she once again fall. This time it's FatSharkYes who downs her, putting them as World #5, EU #3!

AFK R continue to carry the banner of the Korean WoW players, getting World #7, Asia #2 on Jaina!

The top 10 has been completed today, with Jitianhong claiming the final spot among the very top of the top guilds! That makes four Asia server guilds in the top 10 for this raid, just one fewer than the EU, with Limit being the only US/OC representative this time around. Aversion just barely missed out and set them selves up in 11th place, but they clearly have their eye on those top spots for the next raid.

We also have Alpha's World 3rd and Pieces' World 4th kill videos, featuring some damn impressive nerdscreams:

And here comes our top 10 graphic as well. Congratulations to all the guilds that made it!

Something weird happened in the last half hour as we have three new Jaina kills, which brings us to that magical top 20! Impact, Hope n Despair and Sloth have made it among the top and claimed the EU 11th-13th spots as well.

That's going to round up our coverage of the Battle of Dazar'alor race. A big congratulations to all the guilds that have made it across the finish line so far and a big dose of encouragement for those still going at it from us at the race progress coverage team. We'll see you in the next one!

We'll also be adding various updates on the upcoming race here before it actually starts, so check back every once in a while as well.