Echo took the world-first Mythic kill on the Twin Fangs, moving to the front of World of Warcraft's Venomous Abyss Race to World First, Wowhead reported on August 26.
The Twin Fangs is a two-target cleave encounter, but Wowhead describes the number of interrupts Mythic difficulty demands as the harder constraint. Echo answered it with a 20-player roster built around two Protection Paladins on tanking duty, a four-healer core of a Preservation Evoker, a Holy Paladin, a Holy Priest and a Mistweaver Monk, six melee — four Arms Warriors, an Assassination Rogue and a Havoc Demon Hunter — and eight ranged, among them two Devastation Evokers and two Marksmanship Hunters.
Protection Paladin mattered for more than the interrupts. Guilds had worked out that players who reach nine stacks of Eternal Venom only die once Blessing of Spellwarding expires, which lets an assigned soaker take on more than nine stacks of orbs before going down. Because a death on Mythic summons only three orbs, that trade deletes six or more stacks from the encounter, and a Shaman can repeat it for free using Reincarnation.
Liquid clear the Tidebound Grotto lair
Team Liquid, meanwhile, cleared Nymrissa Wavecaller on Mythic in the Tidebound Grotto lair hours later the same day. The lair sits outside the formal Race to World First, but Wowhead notes it still matters to the race: it is an additional source of Myth-track loot and of a very strong trinket, which can carry an advantage into the last bosses of the Venomous Abyss.
Group size was the complication. The lair boss supports raids of up to 30 players and scales with the number brought, so a larger group is not automatically a stronger one. Liquid experimented with different sizes and compositions before settling on 25 players and three tanks.
- 3 tanks: two Blood Death Knights and a Vengeance Demon Hunter
- 5 healers: two Preservation Evokers, two Discipline Priests and a Restoration Shaman
- 5 melee: a Windwalker Monk, a Retribution Paladin, a Subtlety Rogue and two Arms Warriors
- 12 ranged: two Devourer Demon Hunters, two Marksmanship Hunters, two Arcane Mages, a Balance Druid, a Devastation Evoker, a Shadow Priest, an Elemental Shaman, an Affliction Warlock and a Demonology Warlock