Mythic Venomous Abyss After the Race to World First

Every raid tier has two lives. The first belongs to a handful of professional guilds who clear the hardest difficulty in a matter of days, streaming every pull to large audiences. The second belongs to everyone else: the thousands of guilds that work through Mythic over the following months, one boss at a time, often with tuning that looks quite different from what the world-first teams faced.

Venomous Abyss, the eight-boss raid that arrived with patch 12.1 The Curse of Ula’tek, has followed that pattern closely. Its Mythic difficulty is the main source of the highest item level in Midnight Season 2, which is why interest in a venomous abyss mythic carry tends to stay high long after the race itself has ended, as players look at the loot table and compare it with their own guild’s progress.

This piece looks back at how the race played out, what usually happens to a tier once the headline kills are done, and why the final two bosses matter more than the rest of the instance.

How the race unfolded

Season 2 began on 18 August in North America and 19 August in Europe. Mythic Venomous Abyss became the focus of the top guilds, and the final encounter, Ula’tek, turned into a long progression fight.

Placement	Guild	Mythic Ula’tek kill	Notes
1st	Liquid	3 September 2026	Roughly 311 pulls on the final boss
2nd	Echo	3 September 2026	About 25 minutes after Liquid
3rd	Method	4 September 2026	The following day

With only about 25 minutes between first and second place, Liquid and Echo were effectively racing on the same mechanics at the same time.

Ula’tek is also the Hall of Fame boss for patch 12.1. That means the guilds that defeat him on Mythic before the Hall of Fame fills earn a permanent place in the in-game record, which gives the encounter a second, smaller race behind the world-first one.

The phase 2 hotfix

During the race, Blizzard applied a hotfix nerf to Ula’tek’s second phase. Mid-race tuning is not unusual: Blizzard watches progression data closely, and when one part of an encounter is clearly out of line with the rest, it adjusts. Top guilds generally accept this as part of the competition, since every team is playing the same version of the fight at any given moment.

For later guilds, the practical effect is simple. The phase that stalled the best players in the world has already been softened, so the Ula’tek most guilds meet is not the same encounter that took around 311 pulls.

What usually happens to a tier after the race

Once the world-first teams have finished, a tier tends to settle into a familiar rhythm. None of the following is a promise for Venomous Abyss specifically, but it describes the general shape of a Mythic tier in its later weeks:

• Targeted nerfs.Blizzard often lowers health or damage on bosses that act as hard walls for the wider playerbase, especially early in the instance.
• Gear inflation.Players accumulate upgrades from the raid, Mythic+ and the Great Vault, so the same encounter becomes easier simply because everyone is better equipped.
• Strategy spread.Guide sites, streams and logs turn the world-first teams’ approaches into standard plans that average guilds can copy.
• Roster churn.Mid-tier guilds frequently stall on one boss for weeks, lose players, and either merge or recruit to replace them.
• Late-tier power boosts.System changes, such as new upgrade materials, can lift player power further without touching the raid directly.

The result is that the “real” difficulty of Mythic Venomous Abyss for a typical guild moves steadily downward through the season. A boss that looks impossible in late August can look reasonable by October.

The Mythic loot table

Venomous Abyss has an overall loot range of 279 to 344 across all difficulties. On Mythic, though, the loot is not uniform, and this is the most important detail for anyone planning their season.

Mythic boss group	Track	Item level
Bosses 1-6	Myth track	318-324
The Coiled Altar	“Myth 9/6”	344
Ula’tek	“Myth 9/6”	344

The first six bosses drop Myth-track gear at 318 to 324, which is the same range players see from high Mythic+ and the Great Vault. The last two encounters, The Coiled Altar and Ula’tek, are different: they drop items at 344, well above the normal Myth-track ceiling of 334. That is why players sometimes describe it as “Myth 9/6”, a tongue-in-cheek label for gear that sits beyond the usual six upgrade steps.

In practice, this means a guild that is 6/8 Mythic has collected good gear, but a guild that reaches 8/8 has access to a tier of items nobody else in the game can obtain.

Venomstones and the late-season boost

Patch 12.1.5 The Promise of Tomorrow reached North America on 13 October 2026 and Europe on 14 October. It does not start a new season; it extends Season 2 with new content and a schedule of upgrades.

The most relevant for Mythic raiders are Ascendant Venomstones, which unlock in the week of 20 October alongside the removal of the crest cap. Venomstones drop from Heroic and Mythic raid bosses, Mythic+ keys at +10 and higher, Tier 11 Bountiful Delves and Prey Champion chests. Ten stones upgrade a fully upgraded Hero or Myth weapon, trinket or necklace, or a max-quality crafted item.

Source	Venomstones?
Heroic raid bosses	Yes
Mythic raid bosses	Yes
Mythic+ +10 and higher	Yes
Tier 11 Bountiful Delves	Yes
Prey Champion chests	Yes

Blizzard did not publish an exact item level for the upgrade. Method has reported a bump from Myth 334 to 340 and from Hero 321 to 328, which should be treated as an early community figure rather than an official number.

For Mythic raiders, the takeaway is that every boss kill in Venomous Abyss now feeds a second progression system. Weekly Mythic clears become a steady Venomstone income on top of their normal loot.

Where Mythic Venomous Abyss fits in the season

With 12.1.5 adding a one-boss raid, The Unbinding of Kith’ix, some players wonder whether Venomous Abyss loses its place. On loot alone, it does not. Kith’ix on Mythic drops Myth 3/6 gear at 324, upgradable to 334, while the final two Venomous Abyss bosses still drop 344.

A few practical points follow from that:

1. Venomous Abyss Mythic remains the highest item-level source in Season 2.
2. The Hall of Fame race on Ula’tek is a separate goal from simply killing him.
3. The phase 2 hotfix means the encounter most guilds see is easier than the race version.
4. Venomstones reward continued weekly clears, even for guilds that are not progressing.

Final thoughts

The race to world first is the loudest moment in a raid tier, but it is also the shortest. Liquid’s kill on 3 September, Echo’s close second and Method’s third place the next day are now part of the record. For most players, the story of Mythic Venomous Abyss is what comes after: steadier tuning, better gear, a growing pool of shared strategies, and two bosses whose 344 loot keeps the instance relevant until the season ends.