Team Liquid is one step closer to starting its World of Warcraft Race to World First efforts after becoming the first guild in the world to kill the final boss of Vault of the Incarnates on its Heroic difficulty.
Last night, the guild downed Raszageth offstream, and they repeatedly downed the boss more than a handful of times as a part of their split raids meant to optimize gearing prior to stepping into the instance on its Mythic difficulty, which is where the true Race to World First takes place. The kill took about a dozen attempts and a couple of hours, according to Raider.io.
While the top North American guild and its biggest competitor, reigning RWF champion Echo, have yet to step into the Mythic raid, a few guilds have sneakily downed a couple of bosses to claim early World First kills.
Related: WoW Dragonflight Vault of the Incarnates Race to World First live tracker: Vesper strike first blow
The NA guild Vesper hasn’t completed Vault of the Incarnates on Heroic, but the group managed to get a pair of World First Mythic boss kills by taking down Eranog and Primal Council.
Since then, Imperative has also killed the two bosses, taking out Eranog in one attempt and Primal Council in just six pulls. Considering how quickly the world second effort by Imperative went, it stands to reason that once Echo and Liquid finally head into the Mythic raid, they will fly through the first bosses because of the incredibly high item levels they should have.
Liquid currently has the highest average item level of any guild in the world, according to the official Team Liquid stream. They are sitting at 393.76 but some other competitors, like Echo, may not have handed out some of the gear they’ve gotten from split raids. For comparison, Vesper and Imperative have an average 20-man ilvl of about 390.
The slow start to RWF is a notable strategy shift by top guilds. Echo and Liquid focused slightly more on gearing through split raids at the beginning of the last Race to World First. But this time, the two guilds have gone multiple days without even stepping foot into the Mythic raid.
This adjustment comes after Blizzard tweaked the way it released Vault of the Incarnates to make Normal, Heroic, and Mythic release at the same time. In previous raiding tiers, Blizzard would unlock Normal and Heroic a week prior to letting players step into the Mythic difficulty raid, giving top guilds a full week to prepare and gear characters. Those guilds had no such prep time for this RWF.
