World of Warcraft reveals secret phase of new raid boss to give us the best moment in Race to World First

Another new World of Warcraft raid, another exciting Race to World First competition. For anyone out of the loop, the exciting streamathon sees the MMORPG's biggest guilds go head to head to try to beat the new raid quickest, on the hardest difficulty. However, this race has been fraught with unexpected hurdles, from an inconsistent Phase 1, to Blizzard revealing a secret phase that stopped Team Liquid's premature celebrations short.

World of Warcraft's newest raid, which is a part of Midnight Falls, sees players attempt to take down L'ura, a formidable boss who is proving nigh on impossible to take down, even for the very best guilds in the world. Her baleful essence is so powerful that Blizzard has even toned down one of her abilities to give players a better chance of defeating her.

Due to this, it seems that Blizzard has nerfed L'ura's Phase 1 attacks. Her Heaven's Glaives ability can instantly wipe a raid if they hit a crystal, meaning that teams couldn't consistently get past the very first portion of the boss. While no hotfix has been officially announced by Blizzard, Wowhead believes that the ability has been nerfed. The shuriken-like attacks now move 20% slower, and are easier to see thanks to a new animation.

This change isn't the only thing up Blizzard's sleeve. As players on Team Liquid defeated L'ura's third phase, they began to celebrate, thinking they'd won the unofficial Race to World First competition. However, the achievement for defeating her didn't pop up, and the fight carried on. It turns out that Blizzard had hidden a secret fourth phase into the boss fight, something that teams were completely unprepared for. Team Liquid's celebrations were short-lived, and their time in the raid didn't last much longer.

Some players were out of their seats or had discarded their headsets in order to celebrate, only to realize that they needed to get back in the game. The incident is already being discussed across the world, as nobody had realized that Blizzard had hidden the boss' fourth phase in the game up until that point. One commenter on social media even suggested that this reveal was "the best WoW moment that's happened in literally years."

It's rare for developers to hide anything in this day and age. With dataminers digging around in game files and hardcore players discovering every new addition within hours of an update going live, it's more difficult to pull off genuine surprises. You have to hand it to Blizzard for secreting this hidden phase deep within a boss fight, only for it to be unveiled at a crucial moment.

Despite challenging L'ura 450 times, Team Liquid has still only managed to get the boss' fourth phase down to 44% health. Its closest challenger, Echo, hasn't broken the halfway point on Phase 4, though, with its best showing leaving the boss above 65% health. Liquid has led the race since defeating Chimaerus the Undreamt God in just three pulls, and will be the favorite to take home the World First title. But there's always the chance that Blizzard has another trick up its sleeve as players venture into Quel'Danas. Surely there can't be a Phase 5, but you never know what else could be in store.