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.