Liquid look for late WoW Race to World First momentum surge with strategy change following weekly reset

The World of Warcraft Dragonflight raid Race to World First is heating up as Team Liquid and Echo fight to down the final boss of Vault of the Incarnates following a weekly reset.

In most RWF situations, a weekly reset is a boon for the top guilds in the world. The massive gearing boost teams get from reclears, weekly rewards, and split raids can sometimes make all the difference headed into progression.

This time around, Liquid used the opportunity to not only gear up characters that were already established as part of the raid composition, but they’ve used the weekly reset to make a couple of key changes.

Following Liquid’s Mythic reclear yesterday, the Raszageth raid group was a whopping five item levels higher than they were on Monday, Dec. 19. The group that pulled the instance’s final boss last night had an average item level of 408.5, up from 403.8 the day prior.

But perhaps the biggest change that the group made was to its raid composition. While the guild maintained the dual-Warrior tank composition, it was able to add a second Preservation Evoker into the healing lineup, getting rid of a Priest in the process.

Evoker is especially notable not only because of its powerful healing throughput, but it also has an ability that allows it to save teammates during an especially challenging knockback mechanic that Raszageth does. The mechanic has given both Liquid and Echo fits and, to an extent, restricted the classes that the groups feel they can bring to the fight.

Related: Dragonflight Vault of the Incarnates Race to World First live tracker

Outside of adding an Evoker healer, the group brought in a third Arcane Mage and dropped down from three Balance Druids to just two. Despite nerfs to Rogue, the guild is still taking two Rogues to the fight.

The decision to bring Rogue comes as the guild’s highly geared Rogue players continued to perform well on damage meters during the reclear. Meanwhile, JPC, the guild’s foremost Rogue player, is among the best-geared players and most consistent top performers.

Liquid’s biggest competition, reigning RWF champion Echo, is on European servers, meaning that their weekly reset came well after the North American weekly reset early on Tuesday, Dec. 20. Echo is about halfway through their Mythic reclear efforts and will likely have a similar, or even higher, average raid item level as they head into Raszageth progression.