The Binding Coil of Bahamut

Introduction to Coil

The Binding Coil of Bahamut is the first end-game raid in FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. You gain access to this upon completion of a short quest after defeating Titan hard mode. The Coil consists of 5 mini dungeons; each of which you can only complete once per week. This resets every Monday along with any progress.

When you progress in Coil this is saved and when you re-enter you will start from this point again. However it is the party leader who determines where you begin and the party leader must be the person with the furthest progress. Unfortunately this means you can miss out on turns, for example if you join a party where the leader has progressed to turn 5 and you have done no Coil that week you will be unable to go back and do turns 1-4.

The reason this is like that is because Square Enix want to control the amount of loot that enters the game and they feel the best way to do that is to limit how often you can enter the Binding Coil of Bahamut. Unfortunately it comes with the downside that you may end up missing out on turns if you are not running with a static group.


Turn 1 Begins and ADS

Turn 1 is quite easy compared to the others however if you do not know the mechanics of each boss then you will not win.

Immediately upon entering the area you are met with a boss; ADS. There are two main strategies for this boss. You can either kill the adds that spawn or you can just burn down the boss. The latter is only best if your DPS is high. Whichever strategy you choose there are some key points to be aware of.

When the adds spawn the second tank should pick them up and tank them far away from the boss. This is to prevent the nodes from linking up with ADS and boosting its attack or defense (depending on the node). If you are killing them then the next one will spawn shortly after the first one dies so the damage dealers assigned to these should just stay where they are.

Throughout the fight ADS will use two main attacks. The first is a laser that targets a single player. You must dodge this or take a high damage hit. The second is called High Voltage and you must silence this attack. If you do not then the whole party takes a paralyze status for 30 seconds. You should set up a silence rotation between your BRDs and PLDs in order to prevent this.

After defeating ADS you will fight your way through trash monsters towards Caduceus; the main boss of turn 1. There is nothing complex on the way there and no chests worth going for. The chests are full of medicine only.


Caduceus

The main thing to be aware of with Caduceus is Steelscales. This will increase his attack power. This will stack over time and eventually reach the point where it will kill you, unless you do something about it. While you can not prevent Caduceus from using this ability you can take stacks off him.

Throughout the fight the floor will light up, and whoever is standing on a lit up floor tile will spawn a Dark Matter Slime. By feeding this slime to Caduceus you will remove a stack. It's not that simple however. You should only have one player feeding slimes, with a backup in case he dies. The slimes will also heal Caduceus based on the amount of HP the slime has left, so you should take them down to around 10-20% before feeding. This ensures the heal is very small. Be careful when feeding slimes because Caduceus will use a highly damaging attack if you stand behind him. He will not spam it so it is worth triggering this, running out of range and then back in with your slime. Or you could have another player do this for you.

At around 2/3 health Caduceus will split into 2, with each part being an identical twin. The mechanics haven't changed, there are just two of them. What you don't want to do is tank them together because they will merge and go into rage mode. At this point it is over. So your second tank should pick up the split and take it to the other side of the room. One healer and two DPS players should go with him.

If you were feeding slimes correctly the split should happen at 0 stacks of Steelscales. If this is the case then you can stop worrying about feeding slimes, but if it is not the case then you will need your slime feeder and backup feeder to take one slime each to the Caduceus parts.

The reason for splitting your DPS is because both Caduceus parts need to die at roughly the same time, so if the DPS is split this works out nicely. The first one should die with the second being under 5%, at this point you should use a single target limit break to finish off the other.

Turn 2 is where the difficult steps up quite a bit. It requires all 8 party members to be playing their best game and one slip up will cause a wipe. There is some leniency on the way to the main boss however you should try to avoid mistakes as the main boss will not be so forgiving. Although the time limit for this turn is 90 minutes you are on a 12 minute timer as soon as you engage the first boss, and once this time runs out you will wipe.

Turn 2 sees a return of ADS, the first boss from turn 1. Only this time he is stronger and has more attacks. The turn has no trash monsters, only 7 mini bosses and ADS. You do not have to kill all 7 mini bosses but there is a minimum of 3 and most groups will only kill 3 of them. The way the turn works is that each mini boss (node) you kill will remove an attack from ADS; this being the attack that the mini boss has. So to begin with ADS has all 7 attacks. On the downside it will also add a negative effect to the boss. Some you should avoid.

So the general idea is that you should get to ADS via the best possible route. There are two that work well and they both avoid Sector VII on the map. Do not kill this node. While it removes the annoying Allagan Rot from ADS (more on this later) it will give him a haste that makes the fight next to impossible. Allagan Rot is easy to deal with so it's not worth going down this path.




Preparations




You should use the standard party setup of 2 tanks, 2 healers and 4 DPS for this turn. Ideally one DPS should be a Bard because like with turn 1 you will need a silence rotation for High Voltage. The mechanic is the same and all nodes as well as ADS will use it. Missing this silence can cause a wipe due to the paralyze. You need at least two people on this because the nodes will use High Voltage again before the BRD can use Blunt Arrow again. PLDs can be part of the rotation with Spirits Within.

A tank rotation system is necessary throughout this turn because each node and ADS will add a stack to whoever is tanking, and this increases the damage they take. When the tank is ar around 5 stacks they should stop tanking and give control to the other tank. This is a repeating process for the remainder of the turn.

Give 5 of your players (not tanks) a number marking 1-5, this is important for the Allagan Rot rotation later on.

Making your way to ADS should not be challenging, the nodes along the way are fairly easy to kill providing you follow the above preparations correctly.


ADS

ADS has a lot more HP than the nodes, as you would expect. He comes with the same High Voltage and laser attacks as ADS from turn 1. You should know how to avoid these by now. He will also have some new attacks dependant on which nodes you did and did not kill. Most of them are quite simple; in fact Allagan Rot is the only one you should worry too much about.

The way Allagan Rot works is that around 75% HP he will cast it on a random party member. This gives that player a 15 second countdown and once it hits 0 it will explode and wipe the entire party. You cannot survive that, so how to get rid of it? Simply touch another player and pass it on to them. Who you give it to should be based on the numbering you set up earlier.

Upon passing it you will gain a 45 second resistance to it so you can not get it back until then. What this means is that you should not be passing it too fast. You should wait until around 5 seconds left on the countdown and then pass it on. Repeat this until the end of the fight, or if everyone stacks together after the first round of passing then the resistances should make it so that the correct player receives Allagan Rot at the right time anyway. This is easier for Allagan Rot but makes the laser attack from ADS more risky.

This is pretty much the whole fight, if you get Allagan Rot correct, avoid the lasers and avoid High Voltage then you are on your way to winning.

Turn 3 is the easiest of the 5 turns and does not require any written strategy. There are no bosses and it is simply a case of making your way down the map while killing any trash monsters that get in your way. There are boosting points scattered throughout the area that make your character jump across the map. You should be heading down towards the bottom. If you go up then you're going the wrong way.

Turn 4 takes place in a lift that is descending. Waves of monsters will spawn and you have exactly one minute to take them out before the next wave spawns. The whole turn is basically a DPS check. Plan your colldowns and strategy well before going in.