What this page is
The Wowutils plan for Nek'zali the Soulcoiler: Guide for how to approach Cooldown Planning, and the jobs covered in the assignment planner. It is assumed that you already know the basics of the fight. For full boss guides, see the links in Full mechanics.
It covers
- CD Planning and Personal Defensives
- The Wowutils Assignments
- Raid-night quick reference
It skips
- Basic boss strategy
- Tank/Dps stuff
- The stuff other guides already cover
Nek'zali runs three stages: Stage One, the Ritual of Awakening, and Stage Two to the kill. Constant rot from dead adds carries most of the fight's damage, with Possession Barrage and the Ritual's Hungering Pyres as the raidwide hits you plan cooldowns for.
Dead adds pulse constant rot damage through most of the fight. It is the majority of the total damage and can spike quite high, so steady throughput matters more here than on most bosses.
Possession Barrage in the boss stages and Hungering Pyre during the Ritual are the high raidwide hits. Raid cooldowns go to these.
The Ritual of Awakening forces near constant movement. Cooldowns spent there need to work while moving, channelled or stand still cooldowns are a bad fit.
Ability timeline
Your Cooldown Plan
Hits the whole raid hard in both boss stages.
The raidwide hit of the Ritual of Awakening. The phase itself is rot damage and avoidable ground damage under heavy forced movement, and Pyre is the spike on top of it.
Favor cooldowns that are instant or usable while moving, channelled or stand still cooldowns are a bad fit here.
Mythic: part of the raid takes the lower realm during the Ritual. If it is tuned hard, set aside one healing cooldown for that group. It has to be strong for a group of around 10 players and usable under forced movement.
Recurring raidwide damage with a lingering DOT through both boss stages.
Other boss mechanics
Essence RendDebuffs, MovementPlayer debuffs with forced movement. Healing follows the debuffed players, nothing to plan.
Corpse BlightRaid DOT, Raid DamageDead adds pulse constant rot damage through most of the fight. It is the majority of the fight's total damage and can spike quite high, so being topped before the planned hits matters. Leftover cooldowns are well spent into it.
UncoilingRaid DOT, Ramping RotStage Two's rot, ramping up toward the end of the phase.
The jobs we settle on for Nek'zali the Soulcoiler, and the reasoning behind each. Slot players on the planner; this page is the why.
Two groups take turns diving into the Soulcoil Well and clearing the realm below. Coming back up leaves 60 seconds of Soul Exhaustion, so the same two groups alternate all fight. Reminders fire when it is your group's turn to dive.
The third well of the intermission is left uncovered on purpose: whoever took it would still be locked out when Stage Two opens.
We deliberately don't re-teach the pull here. For first-timers, exact add pathing, and the complete ability list, these cover it better than we would.
A mechanics video for this boss is coming soon.
Hand-picked sources for this boss are coming soon.