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The Coiled Altar Guide: Kill, Loot and the Run to Ula'tek
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Heroic Coiled Altar drops gear at 315, which is Hero 4/6. Normal pays 302 at Champion 4/6 and LFR pays 289 at Veteran 4/6, while Mythic sits at 344. Two of the drops are flagged Very Rare: Aman'muso, Warlord's Vengeance as a one-hand axe and Maze-roa, Warlord's Fury as a two-hander. Both are cantrip weapons, carrying a unique effect that adds Venomfang damage on top of your normal output.
KingBoost’s Midnight Raids covers the Heroic kill and the loot rolls with it.
Where the Coiled Altar sits in the raid
The Coiled Altar is the seventh boss of The Venomous Abyss, which has eight. The only thing after it is Ula'tek.
Killing it puts Ula'tek next, and Ula'tek is what Ahead of the Curve requires. The achievement is removed when the tier rotates.
The fight, in the shape you need to plan around
Three stages with an intermission between the last two. It is a two-target fight and Bloodlust belongs in phase three.
Stage one: Serpent's Bargain. Zul'jan alone. Fangs of the Coiled Altar hits the whole raid and stacks Twinfang Toxin on his melee attacks while spawning Noxious Ground under the altar's mouths. Toxic Deluge fills the room with Coalesced Venom globules that need collecting and dropping at an assigned point. Sever is the tank frontal, aimed deliberately at those orbs to destroy them. Guillotine throws an axe that splits over 5.4 million physical damage among everyone within 9 yards, and if it fails to hit at least five players it converts into an Execution that hits the whole raid instead. Axegrinder leaves axes wandering the arena for three minutes.
Stage two: Usurper's Reprisal. Hex Lord Malacrass drops in. Dreadmarch mind-controls players and walks them off the platform edge, and breaking them out spawns Manifestations of Dread that fixate on someone. The manifestation freezes while its target looks at it and moves when they look away, which makes this the fight's most misplayed mechanic. Soul Sever is the tank frontal here and destroys Manifestations caught in it. It applies Gravebound, and anyone hit must collect all three Soul Fragments before the debuff expires or they die. Tanks taunt after every cast and pick their fragments up immediately. Eternal Nightfall is only interruptible after the raid breaks Veil of Twilight, a shield absorbing over 12 million damage while stacking healing absorbs on everybody. Gloombomb marks players who then explode on their neighbours.
Intermission: The Claimed Vessel. Malacrass starts Soulbinding and Zul'jan gains Ghastly Regeneration, healing 2% of his maximum health every second for 35 seconds while taking 100% increased damage. Fragments of Malacrass rush back toward him, and stepping on one erases it at the cost of raid damage that stacks a 20% vulnerability. Let a fragment through and it heals Zul'jan for 10% of his health.
Stage three: Coiled Union. Both bosses at once, with every mechanic from stages one and two running together. The bosses do not share health. Soulbound enrages the survivor with 500% increased attack speed and damage if one dies first, so keep both stacked and bring their health down evenly. Zul'jan's abilities upgrade too, with Grim Guillotine and Blighted Sever replacing their stage one versions and adding healing absorbs on top.
The two mechanics that cause most wipes
The intermission. Ghastly Regeneration returns 2% of Zul'jan's health per second for 35 seconds. He takes 100% increased damage for the same window, so use Bloodlust, damage cooldowns and potions here. Spread around him and intercept every Fragment of Malacrass before it reaches him, since each one that connects heals him for 10% of his health. Stagger the soaks rather than taking several at once, and skip a soak when the raid is too low to survive the raid-wide damage. Tanks should prioritise soaking so that damage dealers keep hitting the boss.
Blizzard hotfixed this phase on September 2, correcting an issue where both bosses regained more health than intended, so wipe logs from before that date overstate the healing.
Phase three balancing. Stages one and two are single-target. Stage three is not, and every mechanic from both runs at once. Stack the bosses for cleave and keep their health bars level so they die together. Killing one first enrages the other for 500%.
The fight also carries more assignments than most in the tier: orb collectors in phase one, two alternating Guillotine soak groups of at least five on Heroic, fixated players guiding their Manifestations to a stack point, tanks taunt swapping after every Sever and Soul Sever, plus interrupters on Wail of Terror.
If your roster is running out of raid nights before the tier runs out, our Venomous Abyss raid carry takes the Coiled Altar and the rest of the way to Ahead of the Curve: Ula'tek.
Every nerf so far, September 1 to 4
Blizzard has hotfixed this boss on four consecutive days, and the direction has been one way. If your guild wiped on it in August, the fight in front of you now is not the fight you wiped on.
Damage reductions. Coalesced Venom damage is down 15% on Mythic. Venom Rupture is down 10% on Mythic, and down by up to 15% on Heroic for smaller raid sizes. Volatile Venom is down by up to 15% for smaller raid sizes on Raid Finder, Normal and Heroic. Defilement of the Coiled Altar, the phase three healing absorb, was cut by 20% on Mythic.
Add tuning. Spiteful Soulcoiler health is down by up to 10% on Heroic for smaller raid sizes, which softens the Spiritcackle add pressure that turns up on that difficulty.
Bugs that were killing pulls. Bringing Zul'jan to 1 health at the end of the intermission used to make him unkillable in phase three, which is as bad as it sounds for a group that pushed too hard. The encounter could also end unexpectedly. Soul Sever was highlighting the wrong Manifestations of Dread as targets for destruction, so groups following the in-game indicator were being told the wrong thing. On Mythic, Coalesced Venom could spawn inside a Virulent Mutation rim. All four are fixed.
Smaller raid sizes received the largest reductions, so guilds running under a full roster benefit most from this run of hotfixes.
What each difficulty pays and what changes
- Raid Finder. Gear at 289, Veteran 4/6, and Veteran Mistcrest. Soulbound works differently here: instead of a berserk, damage taken by either boss is mirrored onto the other, so the phase three balancing problem does not exist
- Normal. Gear at 302, Champion 4/6, and Champion Mistcrest. The full Soulbound berserk applies from here up
- Heroic. Gear at 315, Hero 4/6, and Hero Mistcrest. Guillotine now needs two alternating soak groups rather than one raid stack. Coalesced Venom orbs add a stacking raid-wide damage over time when they explode. Spiritcackle summons Spiteful Soulcoilers that need focusing and interrupting, and they gain interrupt immunity once they reach 100 energy. Manifestations of Dread apply Dreadmarch the moment they reach their target rather than merely knocking you back
- Mythic. Gear at 344, Myth 9, and Myth Mistcrest. This is a different encounter. Manifestations of Dread become invisible to everyone except the player they are fixating, refixate every 15 seconds and detonate Malevolent Resonance when two collide. Interrupting a Soulcoiler's Wail of Terror is the only thing that briefly reveals them. Coalesced Venom mutates into Virulent Cysts and Virulent Mutations, the latter chain-detonating nearby globules into twenty Venom Ruptures at once. Guillotined becomes permanent instead of falling off. Soulcoilers gain a Spirit Shield reducing damage taken by 99%, stripped only by hitting them with Gloombomb
Full loot table
| Item | Slot |
| Grasps of the Eternal Shadow | Cloth Hands |
| Cackling Soultreads | Cloth Feet |
| Sash of the Forlorn Vessel | Leather Waist |
| Coiled Hex Legguards | Leather Legs |
| Soulslither Spaulders | Mail Shoulders |
| Cuisses of the Uncoiled Union | Mail Legs |
| Reckless Spirit Breastplate | Plate Chest |
| Girdle of Toxic Regret | Plate Waist |
| Baleful Hexblade | One-hand Sword |
| Aman'muso, Warlord's Vengeance | One-hand Axe, Very Rare |
| Maze-roa, Warlord's Fury | Two-hand Axe, Very Rare |
| Silken Voodoo Drape | Back |
| Hex Lord's Dooming Idol | Trinket |
| Zul'jin's Guillotine Technique | Trinket |
One reward bug is worth knowing about if you already have drops sitting in your bags. Raid armor from the Coiled Altar and Ula'tek could not be catalyzed when it came from the Great Vault or from Voidcore rolls. That was fixed on September 3 and existing items can now be catalyzed, so anything you shelved because it would not convert is worth another look.
Two trinkets off one boss is the reason this kill matters beyond its ilvl. Trinket slots are the hardest to fill from Mythic+ and the Coiled Altar is one of the few places in the tier offering two options from a single encounter.
Collectibles, transmog and achievements
![[9/9] The Venomous Abyss + Tidebound Grotto Bundle](/image/catalog/midnight_s2/the_venomous_abyss___tidebound_grotto_bundle.jpg)
The boss has a chance to drop the Pillar of the Coiled Isle player housing decor on any difficulty.
Two helm transmogs come as bonus loot. Hex Lord's Visage drops on any difficulty, which means Normal and Heroic runs are on the table for it. Hex Lord's Gaze drops on Mythic only, with no lower-difficulty route and no catch-up once the tier ends.
Two achievements attach to the fight: Mythic: The Coiled Altar and Watch Out Behind You. Watch Out Behind You is not difficulty-locked, so it is available on the runs most guilds are doing anyway.
The Visage, the Pillar decor and the achievement are all reachable at Heroic, which is where our Venomous Abyss raid carries put you.
Questions people ask about this boss
It is the seventh of eight, so you cannot reach Ula'tek without killing it, and there is no skip. Mythic requires the bosses before it on Mythic rather than a Heroic clear, which is the normal raid lockout structure.
The fight is called a two-target fight because of stage three, not because both bosses are up the whole time. Stages one and two are single-target, and a group that builds its cooldown plan around two targets from the pull wastes most of it.
Soulbound is the mechanic people search for after wiping. Killing one boss while the other lives gives the survivor 500% increased attack speed and damage, so the two health bars have to come down together. On Raid Finder this is replaced with mirrored damage, which is why the phase feels completely different there.
The two Very Rare axes are cantrip weapons rather than tier pieces, and they are the only items on the table with that flag.
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