The Nighthold

The top 20 for Nighthold:

And the top 20 is done! Pieces and Easy are the final two, with their EU 12th and US/OC third finishes! Congrats to all the guilds that finished Nighthold in the top 20!

We're getting closer to that top 20, and no. 17 is a big one as it's also the US/OC silver! OC guild Entropy go 10/10 and finish off Gul'dan, joining Limit at the top.

More Asia action as we have both the regional 5th, World 14th with A Stars and the AFK R Asia first kill video!

And here's the top 10:

And we have a top 10! We also have a top 12, but that's not really a thing. Three Asia guilds have downed Gul'dan today with AFK R claiming the Asia gold, closely followed by Right and then Alpha. Congratulations to all three guilds on the World 10th, 11th and 12th spots in Nighthold!

The top 10 is close! Danish Terrace finish up in 9th place as they down Gul'dan and also get the EU 8th in the process. 10/10 and GZ! It's also nice to hear them say they'll be going even harder in Tomb of Sargeras, considering the recent bad news with guilds goind casual.

Well, today seems like Gul'dan's worst day since that Exorsus first kill as three guilds downed him! ScrubBusters and FatSharkYes got to 10/10 and finished Nighthold within 8 minutes of each other, with SB taking the World 7th, EU 6th and FSY the World 8th, EU 7th! Congrats!

We have a 6th kill on Gul'dan and, somewhat unsurprisingly, it's Prestige Gaming. 10/10, EU 5th and Nighthold done.

And the Exorsus video is back up!

Well, just as I woke up and was happy to finally see the Exorsus video they went ahead and took it down due to complaints about some effects i it:

Meanwhile, Serenity and Method also went ahead and released their video, with Method's sporting 11 (!) PoVs:

Here's the final Nigthtold World First Progress race top 5:

The top 5 is here! Not only that, we also got the US first, with Limit downing Gul'dan today, as they predicted! Congratulations on the 10/10!
This also means we should get to see Exorsus WF kill video this evening, as per their tweet.

And here's Limit's wipe count:

World 5th, US/OC first Gul'dan Mythic by Limit

Well, the bad news just keeps stacking up after a very successful progress raid: two more guilds have announced they will be quitting hardcore raiding, both from the US as SNF and long time members of the top raiding scene, Midwinter, call it quits.

In yet more unfortunate news, there was also a leaked Gul'dan video by From Scratch that I won't share here, so bad news all around.

It looks like Nighthold was a bit too much for World 4th From Scratch, as they've decided to go casual for Tomb of Sargeras:

Our big Exorsus interview is up and ready: they talk about the possibility of stopping hardcore raiding, Gul'dan progress, their Tichondrius problem, class balance and much more: http://bit.ly/NH-Exorsus-Interview

Well, it seems the drama isn't quite done with Nighthold yet, unfortunately. It seems there's been some shady stuff going on over at Prestige Gaming. We got the news that they quite literally "bought" one of Exorsus' players out from under them, a player who's been with the guild since the start of Tier 19 (to clarify: the player was paid, not Exorsus). Now, you might be wondering why this should be shady, as big name sports teams do it all the time? Well, you see the timing of it is very specific, as that player just happens to come packaged with Exorsus' Gul'dan strategy. As the video hasn't been released yet this is incredibly valuable information and gives them quite the advantage over the other 9/10ers.

Now, there are always rumors swirling about things like this, people from (relatively) lower ranked guilds account sharing with upper ranked guilds and getting strats in return, but this particular one has been confirmed by Exorsus.

And the World 4th is here! As expected it's From Scratch that get Gul'dan down next and clear the Nighthold! 10/10. It seems their wipe count was actually lower than Serenity's, at 315 (with 347 for Serenity, 270 for Method and 248 for Exorsus), but it took them longer in terms of RL hours. Here's the rest of the raid's wipe count for the guild where you can see that they, like Method, had a lot of trouble with Star Augur (and to a lesser extent, Elisande) when compared to the rest:

World 4th Gul'dan Mythic by From Scratch

It would appear we have another 9/10 and Gul'dan candiate with AFK R having downed Elisande Asia first a while ago. Their armory is still bugged it seems so we're going off of one of our commenter's info, Szylak, so thanks for the update!

Elisande dies again! This time it's a US first and it's none other than Limit, getting her the first day after the reset. On to Gul'dan! We now have three guilds just one step away from the finish line, with From Scratch standing in a massive lead, since Limit and FatShakYes only got to Gul'dan today.

So, now that all players' armories have properly updated, let's take a look and compare the raid compositions on Gul'dan for the top 3:

Exorsus	Serenity	Method

We have a World 5th on Elisande! FatSharkYes break through the formerly 13 strong 8/10 pack and grab their ticket to the Gul'dan show. Congratulations! And I get the pleasure of writing such a distinguished guild name into the boss tables and killfeed, so everyone wins.

We just added the earlier boss wipecount for Exorsus below in the tables and it has a very interesting piece of info: it took them 71 wipes to get Tichondrius down, compared to Serenity's 8 and Method's 6. So each guild had a very specific weakness in this raid, with Serenity having a standard progression, being the best on or very close to the other two on all bosses except the the final two, and especially Gul'dan, where they had 77 more wipes than Method and 99 more than Exorsus. As we talked about before Method's Achilles heel was Star Augur, where they spent more than twice the amount of pulls than the other two (151 more than both guilds, who somehow have the exact same wipecount at 130), and now it seems Exorsus' big problem in Nighthold was Tichondrius (63 more than Serenity, 65 than Method).

Since everyone always talks about how the only issue in a raid is the very last boss, this is very encouraging to hear - Nighthold as a whole was a challenge for these three guilds, specific bosses testing their strengths and weaknesses individually, and each guild had their own stumbling block, with Exorsus coming out victorious in the end. A pretty great race so far, and one of the rare ones that actually lived up to all the hype (I'm looking at you Emerald Nightmare...)

And here are the wipe counts for Nighthold for the top 3 guilds (we'll add the earlier bosses for Exorsus a little later). You can really tell how much Star Augur messed Method's race up from the stats, as well some weird stuff, like Exorsus and Serenity have the exact same number of wipes on him.

And Method is done with Nightold! World 3rd and 10/10, Gul'dan down! Apparently there was even a 0.1% wipe previously:

Gul'dan Mythic World third by Method

One thing is for sure though, Method certainly win the No.1 spot for Killshots!

And here's the Elisande kill video! We get both the Serenity World First and Method's World third!

And we have the Serenity wipecount, courtesy of Viklund, 347 for Gul'dan! He also shared the full wipecount for the Nighthold:

And it's Serenity taking the World second on Gul'dan! 10/10 and Nighthold clear! Congratulations!

Gul'dan Mythic World Second by Serenity

Star Augur seems to have a bad time, as he went and died once again, but this time to Right, giving them an Asian 1st, and world 11th kill on him!

Update 2: And here's actual proof that he was, in fact, wearing the trinket on the kill. http://i.imgur.com/fqdV8U5.png
Update 1: Added Lore tweet at the bottom.

So, apparently some people didn't get enough drama in this race so they're trying to dig up some more. Recently there's been some accusations of trinket exploits on the part of Exorsus over at r/wow and the MMOC forums, but it's all very thin. The fuss is over a stream seen after the kill where the Darkmoon Faire trinket buff stayed up after the trinket itself was allegedly switched out. However, the actual, physical trinket itself (Darkmoon Deck: Promises) WAS used on the kill (as confirmed by Exorsus and this Warcraftlogs image), and apparently it bugged out and stayed on after it, so regardless of whether it's just a graphical bug or if the effect itself stayed on (which, apparently is a exploit that's been around for a while) it had nothing to do with the kill.

If you want further proof, the official Warcraft twitter account recently congratulated Exorsus on their win, and considering the untested Mythic-only phase on Gul'dan, it seems like a safe bet that the devs were watching the guilds progress on it and wouldn't congratulate them if there was any doubt of the kill's legitimacy.

Edit: Apparently it was 3 Assassination rogues, as the armory has bee updated (thanks to @cramerr1 for spotting Нешипе).
Edit: Updated wipe count to 247.
So, now that I'm back and missed the WF, let's take a look at the kill a bit better, with some stats and raid composition.

247 wipes/ 248 pulls for Exorsus on Gul'dan, two Fury Warriors in the top of the DPS, followed by a DK (which was found out by a non-intended-for-public screenshot) and the raid also included 3 Shadow Priests and 3 Assassination Rogues (who benefited from yesterday's 4% buff to all abilities). They actually entered the Mythic-only secret phase only 3 days ago and apparently it was somewhat buggy, as you'd expect from a non-PTR tested mechanic, making the kill all that more impressive.

Exorsus has released their nerdscream for Gul'dan, enjoy!

Gul'dan is no more! Exorsus has taken a huge step up, surpassing Serenity's earlier lead and managed to get him down World First! 10/10! Huge congratulations are in order. With Exorsus now having secured their spot as the #1 guild in the world, we'll have to wait and see how the rest of the race ends up! 

Gul'dan Mythic World First by Exorsus

Action! We now have four guilds on Gul'dan as From Scratch down Elisande World 4th and hop to 9/10! It seems the extra reset was all they needed, and now we're that much closer to seeing the Grand Magistrix kill video! This leaves Limit alone in the 8/10 bracket, with the ravenous multitudes behind them at 7/10 screaming at Star Augur.

Finally some news! Limit have broken through that Star Augur barrier and gotten the World 5th, US 1st on him. 8/10 and on to Elisande, joining From Scratch in their attempts to reach Gul'dan.

Exorsus are now on Gul'dan as well, so we have the top three guilds, not only of this raid, but of the expansion, all on the final boss on day 1 of their reset. Good luck Gul'dan, hopefully that rumored Illidan possessed by Sargeras will be enough to get you through the week!

Serenity have just released their World First Star Augur Etraeus kill video! We'd already seen some of the fight from that Fusion video, but the key part, how to deal with the P3 add wasn't exactly covered there so let's take a look:

Well, what an exciting day it's been... But things are about to pick up as Method are back on Gul'dan, with Serenity on Elisande, but they just got back from a little break so they should be up there shortly. From Scratch are also back to their maximum, on Elisande and 8/10 while Exorsus headed to do some split after getting back to 7/10. It's time to start the (most probably) final week of Nighthold progress proper!

And here it is, almost right on schedule, Method's Elisande kill! 9/10 and just two and a half hours to see what Gul'dan is made of! World third.

For comparison, Method's Elisande kill took 2 days, 5 hours and 7 minutes, with Serenity taking 2 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes and Exorsus 2 days, 3 hours, 38 minutes. This puts all three guilds extremely close to eachother (if the overall time spent is a good indicator of how much time they actually spent raiding in those 2 days), so the longer the race lasts, the smaller Serenity and then Exorsus' leads will become. Or one of the guilds will simply have a brilliant and unique Gul'dan strategy and take win regardless of current standings and time spent and all that!

From Scratch get the World 4th on Star Augur and join Method on 8/10! Let's see if it takes them two days for Elisande as it did Serenity and Exorsus.

The 7/10 group didn't get any new additions, standing at 23 guilds (don't forget set sail for fail and Chao Jie) trying to accomplish what From Scratch just did and get a look at Elisande.

A pretty fascinating note on Serenity and Exorsus' Elisande kills, both guilds killed her in almost exactly the same amount of time after Star Augur, with Serenity taking 2 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes and Exorsus 2 days, 3 hours, 38 minutes! 

We want to remind you race fans that we are running a great Nighthold Giveaway. You could win a DXRacer Chair, and items from J!NX Clothing, plus more.

Exorsus are the next in line to kill Grand Magistrix Elisande, World Second! We now have two guilds progressing on Gul'dan, Serenity and Exorsus. Let's see if they will be the only ones to practice on him before the reset (or kills him), or if other guilds will join up at 9/10. 

Grand Magistrix Elisande Mythic World Second by Exorsus

Grand Magistrix Elisande down!! Serenity continue to dominate as they go to 9/10! World First! Only Gul'dan and his secret Mythic-only phase is left and Serenity are the only guild on him. It seems this race may be another 1-reseter unless the big guy is significantly more difficult than the rest, or he may just go down immediately after the reset after another round of loot. Whichever the case may be, Serenity are in a prime position to take this one home, making it three different guilds on top in 3 different raids in Tier 19!

Grand Magistrix Elisande Mythic World First by Serenity

It seems it wasn't the hearthstone bug after all, but an entirely different one, which accomplished the same thing, apparently involving a Monk. Here's the video of the kill and it seems the ban is 8 days, as per the comments below. The key point in the video is when that lovely music starts playing in phase 3:

Well, it seems I spoke too soon with my Fusion congratulations, as they've been banned for abusing hearthstoning out of the encounter to gain an advantage (I won't go into too much detail). So it seems it's the usual suspects at the top, with Serenity leading by a fairly solid margin and previous raid winners Exorsus and Method on their tail.

Well this is a weird one, after almost a whole day of only two 8/10s, we get two more in the span of 15 minutes. Fusion grabbed the World third on Star Augur very closely followed by Method just now for the 4th!

Fusion's kill is particularly impressive, since they previously got World 14th and 19th on Helya and Xavius, respectively, so congratulations and we hope to see even more new faces in the top 5 in this race!

Exorsus are next in line, getting World 2nd Star Augur Etraeus! We now have 2 guilds at 8/10 down. Let's see how many more will join the two guilds, or if they'll manage to pull ahead even further!

Over on the Asian scene we've got a Asian Third Spellblade Aluriel by Chao Jie, leaving them at 4/10.

And here are the Serenity nerdscreams from the Star augur WF!

More and more 7/10s as set sail for fail and Danish Terrace join the 2nd group and down Botanist! As you'll recall, set sail for fail are having some tricky armory issues which means they don't show up on Wowprog.

Serenity got it! 8/10 and Star Augur Etraeus World First! It seems Etraeus wasn't that big of a gatekeeper after all, but at least he gave us over one more day if progress, so hats off to the stargazer!

Star Augur Etraeus Mythic World First by Serenity

Well, it seems we're getting some non-WF videos before the WF for High Botanist Tel'arn as Limit (W2nd) and From Scratch (W5th) have just uploaded their kill vids:

More Asia action as the East catches up to the West rather rapidly! It's none other than AFK R getting the Asia first, World 9th on High Botanist Tel'arn! If you'll remember, Midwinter skipped Tichondrius to down the gardener World 8th.

AFK R are going strong, downing Tichondrius World 8th, Asia First, leaving them at rank 9 overall!

Another Krosus kill and another 5/10. SNF take the US/OC 6th, increasing the 5/10 gang to 8. We also got some videos of their early World Firsts, Skorpyron and Chronomatic Anomaly to be exact:

And here we have the Tichondrius World First kill video by Limit!

And another joins the 7/10 club, with Pieces showing some real skill and securing their spot as one of the very top guilds in Nighthold! High Botanist Tel'arn down, World 6th, EU 5th. Again, if youre confused about their Wowprog rankings, they had a little issue with krosus not giving them their achievement due to this.

From Scratch join the top group on 7/10 and get the High Botanist World 5th, Eu 4th!

More news from Asia servers as it seems AFK R take the regional 1st on Krosus and move to the lead and 5/10!

So, remember when I said there wasn't much drama this raid yet? Well here we go.
The Method Serenity rivalry/feud/blood vendetta has been going on a while, and while it's mostly been sly jabs and memes so far, today it became a bit more, as a (now former) Method member went rogue. Apparently someone was preventing Serenity from entering their ID for around 2 hours - without Method's blessing or intention - and thought they were doing the right thing / helping "their team". Here are Sco's comments on the matter:

 Now, if Nighthold turns out to be a proper raid and we see at least a second reset these 2 hours won't matter much, but if it's closer to EN and ToV, this small setback might actually be significant. In any case this ridiculous "win at all costs" attitude that also saw 3 guilds banned in the last raid is becoming problematic, as players are more and more willing to do whatever it takes. So to everyone screaming at Method or Serenity because you decided one of them is terrible and worth hating and the other is the best ever, can you please calm down? No? Ok, meme away then.

Style Wars has broken down the first wall of the raid, downing Spellblade Aluriel Asian second!

In Europe we have two more Spellblade kills as well, namely by Fusion and Openness, getting Eu 8th and EU 9th respectively. 

Method has caught up with the top, slaying High-Botanist Tel'arn World 4th, EU 3rd.

Over on the Asian side of things, we've got an Asian First on Spellblade Aluriel by AFK R.

It appears as if Serenity has had severe issues with their instance today, with them being unable to enter Nighthold at all for several hours at the very least. Let's all hope that this issue gets fixed as fast as possible!

Other guilds are still going strong though, with Danish Terrace killing Krosus, World 10th, EU 5th, leaving them on rank #9 overall. 

And we have a special morning treat as Limit have released two of their World First videos, namely Spellblade Aluriel and Krosus! They also uploaded their first three boss kills which you can check out here.

The Asia servers have gone up and we have our first update thanks to AndyIce as usual! It seems the break the guilds mentioned due to the Chinese New Year celebrations will be coming in a day or two, so we have all the top Asia guilds participating for now.

Korean guild AFK R have swept the first three bosses, getting the first kills on Skorpyron, CA and Trilliax, with the usual suspects not far behind, aka Chinese guilds Alpha, KeaHoarl and Style War. The new addition is 超界 (Chao Jie), who got 2nd place on all three first bosses. You can check out the exact standings in the tables.

Exorsus make it 3 past High Botanist Tel'arn, grabbing the EU 2nd and World 3rd. 7/10 and on to Star Augur.

Limit catch up with Serenity as they down High Botanist Tel'arn World 2nd, US 1st and move tp 7/10. Only two guilds so far that made it to the final 3 bosses, with Limit just starting their second day and Serenity just having ended their first, Star Augur is our next best hope of making Nighthold last a bit longer.

There's no stopping Serenity, killing High Botanist Tel'arn World First! 7/10. Taking the lead over Exorsus and Limit, and pulling even further away from From Scratch and Method, it seems Serenity are in a really good position to get to Elisande and Gul'dan first, as those will be the two big challenges of the raid. Now it remains to be seen if Star Augur Etraeus can put up enough of a fight to survive today. Also, it seems Serenity have also been having lag issues, so most top guilds have been affected, unfortunately.

Exorsus are the next to get to that 6/10 ceiling, downing Tichondrius World 3rd, Eu 2nd. They also had some lag issues in the last 3 hours, so let's hope the servers even out soon. High Botanist seems like the likely next target, and it's encouraging to see he hasn't gone down yet (although Serenity did have a dinner break after Ticho), so maybe there's hope for a double or, dare i even say it, triple reset race?

Serenity pulls on ahead, killing Tichondrius World Second, EU First! Method, not to be left to far behind, went and killed Krosus World 5th, EU 4th.

Serenity downed Krosus, World third, EU second, catching up to Exorsus in the process.

This far it seems to have paid off quite well for Serenity to do their Heroic Split clears first, as they've killed the bosses at a lot quick rate than the competition. Let's see if this stays true for the next coming bosses. Exorsus, From Scratch and Method all went Mythic instantly, and have yet to do their Heroic Splits this week. 

From Scratch downed Spellblade Aluriel World 4th, EU second, Method, being 3 minutes slower got her down World 5th, EU third, and not to be outdone by the others, Serenity also decided to kill her a whooping 6 minutes after Method, getting World 6th, EU 4th. 

This race just get very hot all of a sudden!

Exorsus just downed Krosus, EU first, World Second! 

The gap between the guilds are widening. Can any of the guilds catch up with Exorsus, or will they widen the lead even further?

Serenity just downed Trilliax, EU 11, putting them at the same standing as all of the other EU competition, outside of Exorsus, who still hold their 1 boss lead, even though it was well over an hour ago they got their Spellblade kill.

Let's see if any of them can catch up to Exorsus soon, or if they can pull further ahead!

Exorsus are the first out of EU to break the wall and killing Spellblade Aluriel! 

Took them about 3 hours to kill her. Let's see if they'll be able to build on this lead, or if the rest of the pack can get past Aluriel quickly as well!

Exorsus keeps the ball rolling with another few fast kills of Chronomatic Anomaly and Trilliax, with From Scratch being close behind with kills on the both as well. 

Let's see if they'll do like the US guilds and start their split clears once they're at 3/10, or if they'll start on Spellblade progress instead!

And it's ON! The EU reset is upon us and From Scratch along with Exorsus and Euphoria are already past Skorpyron. We'll wait a bit 'til the rankings settle down and we can get some more accurate results before adding them to the tables.
Time to sleep and I'll be leaving you in the capable hands of Warriorsarri.

Midwinter have finally broken through that Spellblade wall and gotten to 4/10, getting the World second on Aluriel in the process.

More World Firsts it is! Tichondrius has been downed by Limit, bringing them to 6/10 and their total of World Firsts to 3! Only 4 bosses left for the other regions to catch up on, and Limit may not be done just yet, either!

Mythic Tichondrius World First by Limit:

As expected, the next World First wasn't far away, as Limit grab another and deepen their lead, getting the No.1 kill on Krosus and heading to 5/10! There's still some time left in this day's progress, so it's going to be interesting to see just how far the US guilds get before day two and the EU guilds have at it.

World First Krosus Mythic by Limit:

And it's Limit pushing through, as expected, getting the World First on Spellblade Aluriel! 4/10. They're in quite the lead at the moment, and as the next four bosses are expected to be of at least comparable difficulty to Aluriel, we may be seeing more World Firsts soon!

There has also been some action on the first two bosses, with WHATEVER WERE AWESOME, Regen and Fused rounding out the top 10 on Skorpyron, and Fused taking the No.6 spot on Chronomatic Anomaly.

World First Spellblade Aluriel Mythic by Limit:

Alacrity got to the top as well, downing Trilliax 5th and getting to that 3/10 ceiling. While Limit are the first guild to finish up their Heroic splits since they flipped the script and went to farm some gear before heading to Mythic, while the other 3 guilds did the opposite, but they should be done pretty soon as well. That leaves all 5 of them on the first even theoretically challenging boss of Nighthold: Spellblade Aliuriel. She is the first boss that starts dropping ilevel 905+ loot and is significantly more difficult than the first three bosses, acting as a gatekeeper for the next 4, which can be tackled in any order.

Limit have caught up with the top group, sitting at 3/10, getting the World 4th on CA and Trilliax.
Alacrity has gone up to 2/10, World 5th on Chronomatic Anomaly.

And we have 3 on 3/10! Midwinter caught up fast and grabbed the World third on Trilliax just now and they are going to be joining SNF and Limit on Heroic splits.

Midwinter continue their catch-up tour and race past Chronomatic Anomaly for that World third and 2/10!

It's all happening! Easy have caught up with leaders SNF and downed Trilliax to go 3/10!

Midwinter join the fray as they are the third to down Skorpyron, getting started at 1/10. In previous races they tended to start a little slower but catch up fast and then take a couple of World Firsts for themselves later on.

Another World First for SNF! Trilliax down and 3/10! They really are going for it, and it seems the early bosses may be even easier than those in EN and ToV. Since there's still no killshots, we'll just use the boss banners to liven up the place.

Easy continue on SNF's heels and down Chronomatic Anomaly as well. I'd just like to also apologize for the late start as I for some reason thought the raid reset was an hour later than it was so I just woke up around 5 mins after the first two kills.

And we're off! Two bosses down already as SNF get Skorpyron and Chronomatic Anomaly World First! 2/10! Easy got Skorpyron down as well. No killshots for the first two bosses, unfortunately, as SNF were in too much of a hurry, Paragon style.

It's finally here, the end of Tier 19 and the ultimate test of Legion so far. Emerald Nightmare was very short and the guilds didn't really take Trial of Valor all that seriously (at first anyway) so it's down to Nighthold to determine the very top. So far the No.1 spot has fluctuated between Exorsus and Method, with Serenity, From Scratch and Danish Terrace never far behind and the huge effort needed for individual raiders to keep all their characters at the top has been even more grueling this expansion, with Artifact Power and the endless Legendary grind ever present. These guys will surely have some serious PTSD whenever they're on a boat, facing some weird sea-weed and or/tentacles for a long time to come.

While you wait for the US servers to come up/the raids to reset you can check out our interview with the No.1 Asia guild A Stars, check out some videos from Emerald Nightmare / Trial of Valor, or you can let us know your pick for the World First Gul'dan Mythic kill in the comments below!

Here's a quick reminder of the standings for EN and ToV: