It has been more than two weeks since the release of the final Shadowlands raid, Sepulcher of the First Ones. While many thought that the race to world first would be long over, it seems to be far from it. Many guilds tried to compete for the world’s first kill on The Jailer, but instead, the Sepulcher managed to defeat most of them before they even reached him within the raid.
It has been a few days since Echo and Liquid took down Rygelon, and seeing how it took them over 200 pulls to kill him, everyone knew that defeating the final boss after him would be no easy task. During the few days the raid reset occurred, people got access to double legendaries due to the campaign progress, and they could just get even more gear to face The Jailer.
But is it enough?
We currently have five guilds progressing the final boss and he is sitting at 21%.
Zovaal – the Jailer, the Banished One, the Plight of mediocre Guilds
First 50 pulls and breaking the 50% mark
When it comes to Liquid, the first 50 pulls did not get them too far. In fact, they did not even get a quarter of The Jailer’s health as the furthest they got him down to was 75.7%. Echo was in a similar scenario, as they progressed slightly less and got him to 76.6%.
The first time Liquid managed to get the boss under 50% was at their 109th pull, where they managed to bring him down to 47.4%, and Echo was quick to follow, as they got him to 48.9% on their 114th. Over the next day both guilds made incremental progress as they refined their tactics and approach, with Echo doing the bulk of their progress in a steady sub 35% series of pulls.
The Jailer is more challenging than most expected
It is not a surprise that The Jailer is difficult, but the difficulty is not purely from inflated numbers on his mechanics but also the mechanics themselves. Both guilds are struggling with the chaotic situation of managing Surging Azerite and Defile casts within the fight. Of course, while players might manage to survive the damage, the trick to this fight is to keep Azeroth healthy, which often causes wipes to both guilds.
Blizzard adressed some issues with a hot fix last night:
Sepulcher of the First Ones
- Fixed an issue with Desolation’s spell description in the Dungeon Journal on Mythic difficulty that caused it to display an incorrect amount of damage inflicted to Azeroth by unblocked missiles.
- Reduced the number of missiles fired by Desolation in Mythic difficulty from 20 to 17.
- Fixed an issue that would occasionally cause Chains of Anguish to pull players who had already broken their chains.
Jailer Secret Phase?
While Blizzard pushed the previous update, they also adjusted a spell called Diverted Life Shield. As WoWhead noted, the spell is yet to be seen in the game, hinting a potential mythic secret phase of the fight at the end. Blizzard has yet to confirm the existence of the phase, so it’s down to the guilds to reach it.
All we got from Blizzard was this tweet from Zorbix, telling people to stay hydrated and not push too hard:
Predictions
Echo and Liquid are doing great in these fights, as Liquid got the boss down to 19% with 246 pulls (at the time of writing) while Echo is a marginally behind on the health percentage with 22.1%. Method, SK Pieces and Skyline are only now properly starting to progress. These three guilds do have over 300 pulls worth of VODs to review and learn from, so expect their progress to go way faster.
Keep note, the key to the fight is to manage phase transitions as best as possible, and as more pulls are happening. Both leading guilds are trying different setups by swapping classes in and out to find the optimal strategy. In our opinion, the Jailor is going to fall in 48-72 hours maximum if no secret phase exists.
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