I need to rant about Stitches

General Discussion
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I loved playing stitches because he felt unique as a tank but still strong enough despite his weaknesses. This rework feels bad to me. I really think people are too focused on the fact he gets fishing hook at 13 and saying the rework is good.

A major problem with the rework is the new trait. The passive, vile gas, is significantly weaker. Before, vile gas did 45 damage over 3 seconds but could be stacked to 10s. It was also applied in an AoE baseline.

Now the gas does only 27 damage over 3s and the timer does not stack. Hitting the same target twice only resets the 3s timer. The damage is supposedly increased by 150% against minions, mercenaries and monsters, but I have not seen this to be true. It could be a bug.

Another problem is the active for the trait. The new activate spreads gas to nearby enemies every second and prevents Stitches move speed from being reduced below 110%. It lasts for 5s and has a 60 cooldown.

This is just bad. We traded baseline AoE gas on AA for a 60s CD trait that is far weaker in comparison. You can get AoE gas on attacks but you have to take the weakest talent on tier 4 just to have a weaker version of Stitches old trait.

We also need to talk about all the forced trait synergy. On tier 1 you can see this with two talents:

  • Patchwork Creation gives 3 armor for each enemy afflicted with gas and doubled while shambling horror is active. It can be stacked up to 8 times. Because the gas timer lasts only 3s and Stitches can only spread gas as far as enemies with the inner slam range, this talent is just bad. At most you will get a few seconds of minor armor unless you burn the active shambling horror to double it.

  • Savor the Flavor is still a quest for health regen but now instead of restoring additional health and mana when hitting a hero it increase gas damage by 2%… No joke that’s the new effect. It stacks up to 100 times.

While the new Patchwork creation seems to be an improvement the trait changes drag it down a lot. Losing the ability to stack and spread gas with the whole slam range (formerly a level 16 talent) means you wont get much armor uptime or value in a fight if shambling horror is on CD. Remember it’s a 60s CD with no way to lower that CD apart from a level 20 talent.

Level 4 is even more frustrating for Stitches. All level 4 talents are AA based which would be fine if Chop Chop was the same but we’ll get to that.

  • Playtime! got a new function that basic attacks reduce the CD of slam by .75s (an increase) and restore 5 mana. Hitting heroes with the inner slam area also lowers slam’s CD by 1s. Not a bad talent.

  • Tenderizer Cannibalize got merged with talent to make a really powerful new talent. Hitting heroes with AAs slow by 25% for 2.5s and heal Stitches for 2% of his max health. Another great talent.

  • Vile Cleaver increases basic attack damage to targets with gas by 35% and makes gas spread to nearby enemies. This is the black sheep talent. It’s damage increase is awful and you only take this talent to make sure your trait can get better value since it’s baked into many abilities/talents going forward. This talent might be decent if it wasn’t on the same tier as his other two AA empowering talents but anti synergy seems to be the goal with this rework.

At level 7 things are okay except for Putrefaction which now makes shambling horror reduce healing by 30% for enemies with gas and passively heals Stitches for 60% of the damage gas deals. It’s terrible on it’s own and would need you to take Vile Cleaver and potentially Patchwork Creation/Savor the Flavor to see much value. It’s also not great considering it’s fairly weak in terms of healing compared to Second Helping on the same tier.

Jumping to level 13 is where I start to pull my hair out with regard to poor synergy. While Stitches does get fishing hook at this level he gets two of the most poorly designed talents in his tree:

  • Under Pressure increases slams damage by 25. Every 6 times gas deals damage to a hero permanently increase the damage of slam by 1 to a max of 75. Why is this quest tied to gas? It makes no sense that a slam talent be tied to inflicting gas to heroes. Since you can’t get any means to spread gas beyond melee range or increase the gas duration this quest is tedious to complete at level 13.

  • Chop Chop now requires you to hit a hero with hook or activate shambling horror to grant 50% attack speed. Why? The old chop chop was tied to just hitting a hero with slam. Hell, in the old version hitting a hero with the outer slam area still gave 25% attack speed while the inner area gave the 50%. Why is this tied to the hook? It literally makes all his level 7 talents worse because you need the hook or shambling horror to utilize it.

My last talent complaint is for Pulverize. I like that they merged two good complementary talents like this even though they moved the big slow to 16. This is fine since they buffed the slow duration on slam baseline. My main issue is they removed the outer slam area spreading gas. Why? All the trait talent synergy being forced across his talents and abilities and they removed this one? That old effect would at least make the trait workable and it’s at level 16.

My problem is all these trait effects being forced in all over the place but they gutted the trait for the rework. The 60s CD is too long for shambling horror and needs to come down. Vile Cleaver and Putrefaction could easily be made one talent and add back AoE basic attacks baseline. I would personally move this merged talent to 7 so Vile Cleaver could have some Synergy with either of the level 4 AA talents. I would also look at adding a hook talent at 4 like pull two targets to make hook builds even more rewarding at the cost of empowered AAs. Even with all that the trait needs some kind of baseline means to reduce the CD.

TL;DR They need to fix the talent synergy. Hook is fine where it is. Slam stuff should spread gas and combo more with basic attacks. Devour should return some mana again. Trait talents need to be condensed and some effects made baseline (AoE AA and timer stacking are the big ones). Trait active needs a CDR effect before level 20 and possibly baseline.

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I’m bumping this post as it shouldn’t be overlooked. You’ve pretty much covered most of my concerns after playing Stitches the past couple of days, so it’s hard to add much!

Adding Shambler (a level 20 talent I often used) as such a powerful tool as baseline to his trait, I kinda understand why it needs to be 60’s. As you pointed out though, his vile gas is a much weaker version of his old trait and to talent into it, you have to pass up on other valuable talents. I think they made the trait too weak to compensate for the active addition of the Shambler talent.

His trait could do with a shorter CD, or if they feel they can’t balance it, just add Shambler somewhere as a talent. Right now I really dislike Chop Chop as a talent, it feels quite counterintuitive for something that boosts your AA speed. This is the same with many of the talents you highlighted, there is often this lack of synergy with talents like Under Pressure, I too don’t understand why it’s tied to his trait.

Also, don’t get me started on Savor the Flavor not adding health and mana return. I’d much rather that than the increased damage to vile gas.

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Thanks for commenting! I really do like Stitches and these changes have me frustrated. I hope more players take a closer look at him so the devs might be able to adjust him in a future patch.

I think this is possible. The problem is 60s is a long time and they removed a ton of stuff from the baseline trait like timer stacking and AoE spread. I do think that Shambling horror is fairly strong as is but I really think it needs some form of cooldown reduction. Blaze has a similar trait but he gets CDR from landing flame stream. I would like to see something like when heroes are damaged by gas reduce the CD by .2/.5 seconds with more for hooks or inner slam hits to heroes. I would also like to have gas spread on the full slam area too.

The changes to Chop Chop are head scratching for me. There wasn’t anything wrong with the talent before and missing that synergy hurts Stitches in a really unnecessary way. I wouldn’t have an Issue with Under Pressure if the old trait things were still around. Being able to spread gas with AoE basic attacks, getting multiple stacks and talenting into slam spreading gas over the whole ability range would go a long way towards making the talent feel better.

Once again the mana and bonus healing was way better than bonus gas damage. I guess gas damage wouldn’t be that bad if you could still stack it. At the bare minimum I would want some kind of mana return for this again.

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Yeah, I think tying a lot of his talents into the active part of his trait is a mistake. It’s like encouraging spamming it on one hand just to get mediocre value off your talents, but on the other hand you need to conserve your Shambling Horror too. Feels like the reverse of his Fishing Hook rework

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There’s a couple issues going on with shambling horror: One, it’s not that powerful without two mediocre talents and a level 20. Two, it lacks any cooldown reduction. Another example of a similar trait done right is Blaze. It helps mitigate damage and combos with his oil fire to help his self healing. To top things off Blaze also gets CDR for his trait by landing flame stream. I think adding some kind of cooldown reduction baseline would go a long way for it.

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I’m not too happy with the activated trait and its associated talents; it’s rather confusing and frustrating to play, while not feeling very impactful.

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Reworks are almost always nerfs in disguise!

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This broke this rework for me. I don’t play Stitches much in normal games, but I regularly pick him in ARAM matches and Cannibalize+Chop Chop was a ton of fun. This new version of Chop Chop is just bad, and I won’t be willing to fast-pick Stitches in ARAM anymore.

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It’s not very clear what it does until you’ve used it a few times. My problem is the trait is just weaker than what it was before. The two talents on tier 4/7 are just not great either. Bonus attack damage to enemies afflicted with gas is just okay but you take that talent for the AoE gas he had baseline before. The other talent gives you anti heal which is okay but the other effect heals from gas which you would only take if you took the first trait talent to actually spread gas so you can get healing value from gas.

I enjoyed the old Chop Chop AA build Stitches had. It wasn’t great but it was good enough and fun. Seems like Stitches will be off the table for me until the next patch. I really hope the can fix this mess.

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I had fun playing with Stitches! His shambles is a clutch/soft cleanse for me. It was really fun ^^

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Everytime i see Sitches on either my team or enemy he is just plain bad. Always feeding his mind off.

I dont even see him in qm anymore since yesterday like people already found out how bad he is. Out of all reworks done his failed the hardest.

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Totally agree…
stitches has been at the bottom of the roaster since years ans years.
He still lacking a real utility in team fight.

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As someone who played Stitches a lot before this rework all I can see is a worse version on him. It’s sad because I had high hopes for this rework. All the other heroes got significant improvements in my opinion. Stitches got worse.

I think everyone was really focused on the other reworks. All of them seem pretty good across the board except for him. All people seemed to notice with Stitches was that he gets fishing hook at 13 for free. When you really look deeper at the changes it’s just worse than what he was before.

This could have been a really good rework. It’s like they intentionally weakened the trait and his talent synergy. Perhaps they were scared of fishing hook being free at 13?

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