A pro WoW player risks everything by using a glitch to increase damage in the world first race by 4% before being caught on stream

A World of Warcraft gamer racing to be the first to clear the MMO’s latest raid used a bug in order to do a little bit more damage to the Nexus Princess Ky'veza boss. It was only a 4% increase in damage, but that could have been enough to end a fight that his guild had been trying for days.

The bug, depending on who you talk to, could be called an "exploit" because it requires a very deliberate way to use it. Imfiredup, a Team Liquid raider, used a spell named Splinterstorm which is supposed to automatically fire towards your current target. The spell would not work properly if you didn't have an enemy target. It would continue to build up the debuff unless you had a valid target.

Imfiredup was able to build up 200 stacks of debuffs by targeting his character and using WoW’s alternative ‘focus’ targeting system (using macros) on the boss. Splinterstorm would not automatically seek it out. He only had to click on the boss once to unleash a massive damage explosion.

Imfiredup was trying to hide the bug on the Liquid stream. It would have been one thing if the bug was used by everyone, but Imfiredup seemed to be hiding it. Imfiredup, instead of having his target health bar on his custom UI, like most players, put the focus targets there. Many think that this was to hide the fact that he was targeting himself for most of the fight to get the bug to work.
Luckyone, a WoW mod developer, posted a screenshot explaining what's happening. You can barely see the blue circle under Imfiredup, which indicates that he is targeting himself. This is despite the fact that the boss health bar would normally be where your main target should be. You wouldn't know this was happening unless you were looking for it.

But eventually, people did. Imfiredup was called out by Echo raider Gingi on X. "Bro Liquid sits there openly exploiting stacks of spellslingers on a mystic boss." If this isn't a ban worthy event, what is LOL? Crazy."

Blizzard had temporarily banned Gingi and several other world first raiders for using an exploit that allowed them to max out their faction reputation earlier than they were supposed to. "They were quick to call out Method and me for doing the Severed Threads (exploit) and then they pull that?" Gingi asked about Imfiredup in the post.

Gingi's posting sparked a discussion about whether the bug should be permitted, and this led to people spamming Liquid’s Twitch chat by sending messages asking for Imfiredup's ban. Imfiredup switched to a new mage specialization before Blizzard released a hotfix to fix the bug. Then, a few hours after that, Liquid was the first guild to kill Mythic Nexus Princess Ky'veza.

Imfiredup is still streaming his attempts to defeat the next boss of the raid, even though Blizzard quickly fixed the bug. It's possible that the tiny damage increase was low enough to let him off. There are still some people who believe that using something like this, no matter how small, should be punished.

It really depends on how serious the bug is. In the past, there have been exploits that completely nullified entire boss mechanics. It's true that a 4% increase in damage could be significant in a race with some of the world's best players, but in this case I think it was important to fix it ASAP so that other players wouldn't feel the need to do it.