Christmas is here and the pros in World of Warcraft are still not done. The final boss Raszageth causes problems in “World First”.
Blizzard actually wanted to accommodate the professional guilds by opening all raid difficulty levels in the “vault of incarnations” at the same time. But the first raid in WoW: Dragonflight turned out to be tougher than intended on mythic difficulty. The last boss, Raszageth the Storm Eater, has still not fallen – and the Christmas holidays are just around the corner.
This is how the World First Race stands: We are now in the second week of the mythical Raszageth’s “Race for the World First Kill”. Four professional guilds have now arrived at the final boss, these are:
After all, two of the big guilds (Liquid and Echo) have now reached the final phase. But it is doubtful that it will be managed so quickly.
While Team Liquid managed to beat Raszageth to 14.20% health already, Echo’s best attempt is currently at 19.60% health. The other guilds are much further behind and have not even reached the final phase. BDGG is at 64.72% and Method at 67.68% (as of 12/23/2022, 11:00 am).
Everything is heading towards a decision, but the last phase in particular is likely to pose a huge problem.
Here’s one of Echo’s best attempts so far:
What’s so bad about the last phase? As things stand, the last phase of Raszageth seems mechanically pretty simple. There are hardly any changes compared to the normal and heroic modes. Only the “Storm Eater” ability is new, with every mistake almost guaranteed to lead to defeat.
Raszageth summons small hurricanes that slowly fly towards them. Should a hurricane reach her, not only does she deal 20% more damage for the rest of the fight, but she also heals for 5% of her maximum health – tantamount to an instant defeat.
In fact, this mechanic doesn’t seem to be that difficult. The small vortices are quite slow and can be easily caught.
The real difficulty is racing against time. Because the last phase of Raszageth is extremely tight in terms of time. Because with every passing second, the area on which the players can move becomes smaller. Ultimately, the whole area is wrapped in lightning effects, so that in the end all players are forced to die from the damage.
Although some guilds have managed to get to this stage with all players alive, Raszageth ends up with around 20% of their health remaining. That’s so much that even “small optimizations” probably can’t tip the scales.
It currently looks like the raid for the pros will be extended over the Christmas period. Blizzard actually wanted to avoid that – but the vault of the incarnations was much crisper than expected.