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Patchwerk 10-Man Boss Strategy
November 24, 2008 by Zuggy
Make sure to check out the complete Naxxramas 10-Man Instance and Boss Strategy Guide.
Patchwerk is the first boss of the Abomination Wing, also known as the Construct Wing, and is one of the most challenging bosses to initially learn in Naxxramas.
Patchwerk Stats and Mechanics
- Health: 4,300,000
- Melee hits: Aprx: 4-5k
- Mechanics: This is a non-aggro fight, once the initial tank and off tank have aggro the DPS are free to put as much DPS out as Patchwerk will continue his hateful strike rotation until he’s dead or a dies. If a tank dies he will then hateful strike the next highest HP target within melee range (not the main tank though)
Patchwerk Abilities
- Hateful Strike – Patchwerk will use this ability every 2.8 seconds on the melee target with the most health. It does 19975-27025 physical damage and can be mitigated or avoided.
- Frenzy – At 5% HP Patchwerk goes into frenzy, doing 25% more damage and attacking 40% faster.
- Berserk – After 5 minutes Patchwerk goes into Berserk mode, increasing his damage output by 1000%.
In reality, this is a very simple fight…at least mechanics wise. There are two difficult aspects of this fight. Number one, learning how to properly time and space your healers in such a way that your tanks are always going to be topped off before the next hateful strike lands. And secondly, doing enough damage that you kill him before the 5 minute berserk.
Ideal Group Setup:
For new players I highly recommend a group setup that includes 3 healers. With gear and experience you could certainly 2 healer Naxxramas, but while learning I believe it’s necessary to go with 3. Additionally, you’re going to need 2 tanks. What you choose to tank with is up to you, there really is no huge advantage in the class you choose for your 2 tanks.
My guild has cleared Patchwerk using death knight / warrior and warrior / paladin thus far. In my opinion the paladin tank was a bit easier simply because Blessing of Kings added a nice chunk of heal to both players. Now, if you have another paladin in the raid with kings this would not be a factor.
Maximizing Your DPS
Your DPS absolutely has to be on their A game here. Unlike most fights, additional aggro is dumped onto both tanks upon engaging, so once you have a rotation of tank and off tank receiving damage and hateful strikes you should not have to hold back at all.
Start fast with a blood lust / heroism if you have a shaman and immediately start pouring on the DPS. All DPS should use a potion to further increase their DPS (mana pot if you’re running low on mana for casters). Ideally, you’d want to have the entire raid flasked up. Granted, this may be unnecessary, but some guilds that just need that extra bump will find this appropriate.
A good benchmark for DPS in a early level 80 gear should be around 2000 DPS, while many classes should exceed this number.
Healing Rotations
There’s no right or wrong way to effectively heal on Patchwerk, but here’s how we did it and the method I suggest you try. First, we use a tri-healer setup of double restoration shaman and restoration druid.
- One shaman watches the main tank
- Second shaman watches the off tank
- Druid keeps both tank and off tank hotted with an extra careful eye on the off tank, who is taking hateful strikes
Generally, the tank who is receiving hateful strikes takes more damage. For this reason the hateful strike tank healer may be running out of mana. This happened with my group initially and as a result we conducted a mid-fight healing switch. For this switch each of the shamans simply traded healing targets, so the shaman who had been healing the hateful strike tank could get a break on mana.
Since the damage is very periodic (…very small periods though), you can really time your heals for maximium effectiveness. I constantly started and stopped my healing waves throughout the fight waiting for my tank to drop to around 20,000 health (of his 27,500) before letting a healing wave go off. Using this method my mana held up throughout the fight and we were able to successfully make it through after a few practice attempts.
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Great guide, really like it.. This will help my guild alot!
Should make guides for other bosses aswell :)
Other boss strategies are on the way, I’m going to try and get the rest of the naxx boss guides out within the next 2-3 days, with videos for all bosses to follow.
thanks for the comment. =D
Super guide…. we are going thuesday for the first time. This helps a lot.
Quick question!! Does the OT have to be the best tank then??
Your OT should be the tank with the most raw HP / armor as they are going to simply be tanking the hateful strikes, which deal a static damage amount, where as the MT will be taking just very hard auto attacks.
I am understanding that once his agro is locked on someone then its a done deal and threat doesnt matter at all. So if i am passing the tank on threat i will not pull as long as the tank stays alive? I am ranged dps or does that matter?
That’s correct, Ttrust.
Havent tried patchwerk yet but downed 4 bosses in Naxx so far, and would like to say will be using your guide on Patch to down him to ;) Nice guide Zuggy keep up the good work.
Havent tried patchwerk yet but downed 4 bosses in Naxx so far(with the help of your guide)*
glad my guide has been helpful! =D
I’m going to try to get the last few encounters finished up in the next few days here.
We are looking to finally get into Naxx, and foresee Patchwerk in the future. I have been in there with my former guild, and we did this fight blind (no guides, barely any clue what we were doing lol). I do have a question though, it seemed like both our tanks were still up but outta nowhere both myself (enh. shammy) and our rogue got one shotted mid fight? We were standing behind Patchwerk..any ideas on what happened? We were the first 2 casualties of the fight, it definately gimped our dps. Does the OT’s health have to stay above any melee dps’ that may be in the group? Is this a fight best done without melee dps?
this is what happens when patchwork gets off his hateful strike rotation, which happens for a few reasons…
1. the health values of those who die exceed the health values of your hateful strike tanks
2. healers are not healing your hateful strike tanks up fast enough
3. melee dps engaged too quickly and did not give enough time for a complete hateful strike rotation to complete…IE, they are seen as the hateful tank
I’ll explain a bit more about this later this evening…but right now I’m about to go have have Christmas with the Zug family. =D
…so until later tonight, Merry Christmas!
i dont agree with the non-agro thing my tank grabed him and me (being a fire mage) let into him with the living bomb>scorchx2>fireball>pyroblast(when its up)
and i tore patchwork off our tank this could be because of 2 reasons, im to uber for my own good, or our tank has serious threat issues whats yalls opinion?
was it a bug? or was it just that when the tank has him its hard to rip off him if the tank has halfway decent agro?
You can agree or disagree, but it won’t change the fight’s mechanic. Patchwerk will not go after a ranged player so long as their a target within melee range and on his aggro list.
So basically when he is saying is, Patchwerk is engaged. The tank immediately starts building up threat. If at any time someone puts out 110% of the MT’s threat they will not take aggro but simply be next on the “Kill” list. So if the tank dies you will then have aggro. But only if you out threat your Hateful tank. Hateful strikes are dealt to the raid member with the highest health second to the MT. Its smart to use a pally/warrior tank as MT and druid as OT. 3/3 SoTF makes druids uncrittalbe by 6% so they have stam/agi/exp stacked through the roof.
If you took a hateful strike your healers arent keeping the hateful tank topped off. Try dipping into the slime on either side of the path if you know a stike is coming and you are the highest in health.
what stylethis is saying is correct, do note that you will never “out threat” a hateful tank as hidden threat is awarded to the players getting struck by the hateful strike. The only reason patchwerk would switch targets would be due to a hateful tank not being healed fast enough.
man this guidies are the shit! Great work!
This will help my guild alot !
Thanks
Maybe I am just a noob, but I thought patchwerk had poison clouds and you have to tank him around the room so not to take extra damage… or is that for 25 man?
You’re thinking of Grobbulus.