Welcome to our fifth daily recap of the RWF 9.1!
What a WILD day 5. Let’s take a look. Be sure to check out the current rankings and the video’s transcript below!
Disclaimer: This video was recorded at 8:00pm EDT on 7/18/21. Rankings and information may have changed.
Hello and Welcome to Day Five of Warcraft Radio’s Coverage of the Race to World First: Sanctum of Domination! My name is MrMiles from It’s Always Sunny in Stormwind, and I’m here to talk about the exciting highlights of Day Five of the Race to World First – Sanctum of Domination!
What a whirlwind of a day it has been! This has been one of the closest and most intense races in the history of the Race to World First, where no lead has been secure or long held. At any time you can fall in ranking and lose your lead, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, jump up from last place to the top with just one boss kill.
Tonight, we are in the midst of a battle between one guild from North America and one guild from the EU, to see who will be the first to take down the Dark Lady herself, Sylvanas Windrunner. The race is tight and full of nail biting tension between Echo and Complexity Limit. The rest of the race consists of guilds with a large range of boss kills. Let’s take a look at the leaderboard to see where we stand as of 8pm EDT and 2am CEST.
The current standings are as follows:
Current Rankings

THE TERRAGRUE
SONIQS IMPERATIVE


EYE OF THE JAILER
SONIQS IMPERATIVE


THE NINE
SONIQS IMPERATIVE


REMNANT OF NER'ZHUL
COMPLEXITY-LIMIT


DORMAZAIN
COMPLEXITY-LIMIT


PAINSMITH RAZNEL
ECHO


GUARDIAN
ECHO


FATESCRIBE ROH-KALO
COMPLEXITY-LIMIT


KEL'THUZAD
ECHO


SYLVANAS
ECHO









Yesterday’s coverage primarily consisted of guilds running Heroic splits or in a siege against the wall of pain to advance to the next tier. Today, however, has been filled with moments of sporadic bursts of speed. The top guilds in the leaderboard have concentrated on taking down Fatescribe Roh-Kalo and moving onto Kel’Thuzad.
Let’s start by catching up on raid progress after yesterday’s recap was posted. Overnight, BDGG snagged World Fourth Guardian of the First Ones after 33 pulls before quitting for the day. They started their day with intent on taking on the Fatescribe with hopes of advancing on the leaderboard.
On the European side of things, the day started slow with guilds gearing up to also take on the Fatescribe as North America went to bed. When progression resumed, however, Method and Echo found themselves starting their first pulls on the Fatescribe at the same time. After about an hour of attempts and 11 pulls later, Echo managed to snag World 2nd for Fatescribe Roh- Kalo before taking on Kel’Thuzad.
Method, however, finally conquered the Fatescribe hours later with a World 3rd kill. Their attempts against Kel’Thuzad have many wondering who has more lives: the lich or Mr. Bigglesworth. Due to the multiple phylactery phases, the few guilds who have reached the ninth boss had to reevaluate different strategies in order to finally grant the seemingly immortal lich a — hopefully — now permanent death.
As of this recording, Method is at 39 pulls and a 2.2% best percentage. Method is currently in 3rd Place according to our leaderboard and trying to catch up to Echo and Complexity-Limit.
The top two guilds have defeated the penultimate boss and now the Banshee Queen is all that is stopping either team from claiming the crown of World First. As of this moment, Echo and Limit seem to be even in their chances for claiming that ultimate victory. Who will claim the World First kill? Echo ended their day at 52 pulls with a best attempt of 81.97% of actual health against the last Warchief, while Limit continues the battle and at the time of this recording has a best pull of 77.8% and nearly 60 pulls. With this they reached Phase 3 before taking a break to plan their next steps. The Sylvanas encounter ends at 50% on all other difficulty levels, and as far as we know Mythic is no different. So, an 81.97% best pull means she actually only has 63.94% remaining on her known heath pool.
While the last encounter has been solved by the use of a “magic bullet” to delete a mechanic, the Sylvanas fight continues to force a slow pace of progression for these top teams. In phase 1, Domination Arrows and the ensuing Domination Chains are causing massive damage. During the intermission nearly every member of the raid is hit by the arrows as well as all other players within 30 yards. After several dozen pulls, both teams have begun to cleanly push Sylvanas to 84%, the health required to push Sylvanas into phase 2. There is a race to reach phase 2 before the Veil of Darkness mechanic and a stacking healing absorb becomes untenable for the healers. Still, we’ve seen some standout moments as late as phase 2, such as this clip of Echo’s Fragnance double jumping off the Chain to avoid clipping a teammate with an AOE mechanic. Unlike in Normal and Heroic, Phase 2 involves splitting up the raid to deal with two different sets of adds. Jaina and Thrall both create bridges of Ice and Earth to cross on each set of adds, and we believe Echo has progressed to halfway through this second Phase.
There is an open question as to whether Sylvanas will go down with current gear in this reset week. Echo saved their splits until late in the week and brought their teams average item level up from 235.375 on the kill of Guardian to 238.347 when they killed Fatescribe. However, switching up their composition, brought their item level to 237.6 when defeating Kel’Thuzad. With the current composition being run by Echo and Limit, thanks to publicly available data we know that Echo stands at an item level of 239.8, while Limit stands at 238.1. The delayed and extended splits run by Echo have resulted in an item level difference of almost 2 points. Still, this race is now down to execution alone.
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