WoW: Sept 1 Hotfix Nerfs Heroic Coiled Altar, Fixes Health Bug

Blizzard trimmed Heroic Coiled Altar again in the September 1 hotfixes, cutting boss health, a defensive shield and a healing bug all at once. The changes, published on Blizzard’s official hotfix tracker, hit the penultimate boss of The Venomous Abyss raid on both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

Blizzard resolved an issue causing Hex Lord Malacrass and Zul’jan to regain too much health during their intermission, a bug that had been artificially padding out the fight’s toughest stretch. On top of that fix, Malacrass’s phase 3 health was reduced by 10% on Normal and Heroic difficulties.

Raiders are comparing this week’s pull counts to last week’s now that the fight runs shorter:

Veil of Twilight Absorb Cut 15%, Wail of Terror Slowed on Heroic

Malacrass’s defensive shield took a hit too. The absorb value of Veil of Twilight was reduced by 15% on Normal and Heroic difficulties, meaning raid groups need less burst to strip it before his lethal cast goes off.

Zul’jan wasn’t spared either. Icy Veins reported that Zul’jan’s health was reduced by up to 10% on smaller group sizes on Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties, while Wail of Terror’s cast time was increased by up to 20% on smaller group sizes on Heroic difficulty, giving under-sized groups more room to interrupt or avoid it.

Guillotine Soak Threshold Lowered Across Three Difficulties

MMO-Champion’s mirror of the patch notes also flagged a change to the fight’s axe-throw mechanic. Blizzard reduced the minimum players needed to be hit by Guillotine and Grim Guillotine to avoid failure damage to 3 players on Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties, easing a mechanic that had punished smaller or under-geared groups disproportionately.

Mythic difficulty got its own separate treatment in the same patch. Defilement of the Coiled Altar’s healing absorb was reduced by 20% in Mythic difficulty, a targeted change that left the fight’s core mechanics untouched while shaving down one specific damage-over-time effect.

Third Nerf Pass Since The Venomous Abyss Opened

This is not Coiled Altar’s first trip to the tuning bench. Guild-focused outlet 1vX.gg detailed an earlier round of hotfixes that reduced two hidden health modifiers, both named Increase Max Health, by close to 100 percentage points at every difficulty level after the boss’s Intermission health bonus proved wildly out of line with the rest of the tier.

Icy Veins covered the fallout in real time during the Season 2 race to world first, noting that Blizzard had already put in hotfixes to lower the difficulty of the Coiled Altar after top guilds ran into it far earlier than expected. A follow-up hotfix later in August also patched a bug that could leave Zul’jan stuck at the end of his intermission, unable to be finished off in phase 3.

Read also: WoW: Blizzard Reverts Second Mythic Coiled Altar Nerf After Lockout Issues

Frost Death Knight Also Gets a Bump in the Same Patch

The September 1 notes weren’t limited to raid tuning. Blizzard’s developer commentary on the same page flagged Frost Death Knight as underperforming since the season began, stating the spec has performed under expectations at the beginning of Curse of Ula’tek, especially in the Venomous Abyss raid, and had all ability damage and melee damage increased by 6%. Obliterate damage rose a further 15% on top of that blanket buff.

The Twin Fangs, the encounter preceding Coiled Altar in the raid’s running order, picked up its own fix in the same batch: a targeting bug tied to Ula’tek’s Venomous Heart was corrected so area attacks land more reliably. Raid groups working through Heroic Coiled Altar this reset are running the fight under all four of these changes at once, on the same lockout that began September 1.

Reported from

• Blizzard Entertainment
• Icy Veins
• MMO-Champion
• 1vX.gg