Stitchflesh is Disproportionately Harder than All of Necrotic Wake

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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Hello, I’m Catffeine. As of this post, I’m a 2572 M+ Score Feral Druid, my score made up of two 11s, four 10s, a doubled 9, and a 9. In timing these, I have ran quite a few Necrotic Wakes, and the failure point is always the same: Stitchflesh. And it’s not even close.

Before Stitchflesh, there is not a single point where experienced players will fail. In fact, the entire dungeon is breezed through up to that point, and if you manage to kill Stitchflesh, you know that the key is timed. You can get to Stitchflesh’s room with 18 minutes left on the timer, and Stitchflesh with 12 or more minutes left on the timer. However, if you wipe to Stitchflesh once and use up all of your spears and lust, the key is just dead. There’s no getting past him if you don’t use all three spears and lust, and the higher the key the worse this gets.

The design is set up in such a way that you can’t even complete the dungeon, and everyone just calls “gg” after that. This is obviously bad for players who just want to do their weekly 10s and land on Necrotic Wake. Gear will resolve this issue, but as key levels get higher this issue will continue to be a problem.

The worst part about this is that Stitchflesh himself isn’t that difficult or complex a boss. This isn’t saying Stitchflesh is hard, or that Necrotic Wake itself is difficult. It is an easy key to double upgrade if the group gets through Stitchflesh. It is specifically that he is the only point of adversity in the entire dungeon, nor is it his mechanics that cause the issue. You hold all three spears for him instead of spacing them out across the dungeon, despite the spears being spaced out through the dungeon, his constructs spawn too fast to kill the second one before the third comes out, especially when you’ve used all of your cooldowns on Stitchflesh during the first cycle, and if two are ever out at once there simply aren’t enough defensives to survive long enough to finish off the second construct on higher key levels. Your only choice is to one cycle him, kill the first construct, and kill Stitchflesh before the third construct spawns.

My recommendations to solve this are either:

  • Lower Stitchflesh’s hp (doesn’t solve the problem at higher key levels)
  • Lower the constructs’ hp (allows them to be killed before another is out for too long, but causes the first construct to die to natural cleave before the second hook can come out)
  • Increase the time between spawns after the second construct (seems like the best solution)

Thank you for reading. I’d give you all a potato if I could.

16 Likes
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Just had a +10 group disband because we wiped at stitchflesh with 12 min left. Its so frustrating how much harder he is compared to the rest of the dungeon. We didnt miss a single hook, hooked him down, hooked his Fixation repeat, and yet we are still punished by another add coming in.

My idea is to just make it so a maximum of 1 add can be out at a time, if one dies while he is down you have to wait until he goes back up to summon another. I feel like the group should be rewarded positively for hitting every hook, and if you mess up, at worst you would have an add with like 20% hp and a full hp one.

4 Likes
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That sounds like a completely fair and reasonable request.
While wer’e at it though, can we stop the hooks from getting caught on orbs, totems, pets and the tank?
That would be lovely too.

5 Likes
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Agree with what you said.

For me and my friend we are now resolved to kill the abomination after the second hook on Stitchflesh (so each time he fixated). It lengths the encounter some, but if your DPS can’t kill Stitchflesh before two abominations come out it just isn’t worth the risk. The AoE damage even after the nerf is still insane even on fortified, and most healers I’ve seen just can’t keep up when 2 Aboms are out for more than like 10 seconds.

Until it gets nerfed further (or just stays this way) I would heavily suggest groups ensure only one abomination is alive at all for the healers sake.

1 Like
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I feel like he’s designed to use the 3 spears on and burned down, if you wipe after using the spears, the key is prob bricked

They should nerf the spears by a lot, like 70% and then nerf him by a lot, so he’s not so dependent on having the spears

3 Likes
6

I think the extra equipment like the spears and orbs are cool and all, but it shouldn’t determine if you kill the boss or not. In my eyes the hook mechanic is the most important piece of the encounter and they should revolve the fight around the hooks being placed properly.

3 Likes
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Managed to time a 10 tonight, did 1.5m HPS on this boss, kinda crazy requirement for a 5m boss. He could use another nerf.

1 Like
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They should just remove them, its extra garbage steps in this dungeon and completely bricks a run if you cant use them.

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With the other adjustments that have happened so far for the entire dungeon pool, I think Stitchflesh remains the largest outlier of any boss in the season right now. Numbers tuning isn’t going to change a whole lot except push the problem up to higher key levels (as mentioned previously). A design changed was needed in beta, but I doubt we’re getting it now that it’s live.

They’ll probably do some kind of numbers changes and call it a day.

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i mean at this point, thats fine

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Easiest change would just be to cap the stacks at which the abomination DoT occurs at, to about 3x stacks.

It would make healing it easier on Tyrannical and not be a death sentence when two inevitably are alive at the same time.

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The primary reason I see groups fall behind the aboms is because they use the first one’s third hook to pull the boss immediately back down after his retreat. This seems like the go-to with high DPS, as you kill the boss faster, but it also forces him to summon the third abom about 30 seconds sooner than he would have otherwise if it was just a repeat of the cycle from pull.

So, if a group will struggle with two up at once, then they should play it slow and never pull the boss back down right after he retreats. This is how we got past an 8 we had bricked a few weeks ago after our spears were exhausted.

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Imo do this but also remove the spears and orbs. A fight should depend on them.

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I kinda like this idea, it could definitely help. Yesterday in a 9 we were doing the take-it-slow strat (much to our pug’s chagrin) but we lost a DPS on the second construct because I inexplicably got hooked instead of the boss despite the fact the boss was between us, so the fixate caught everyone off-guard and healer mana was drained before we could finish.

Honestly it would be helpful if there was an actual enforced cooldown on the construct summon as well, instead of Stitchflesh always summoning a new one after he retreats. Sending the first construct’s third hook back up to the stage to instantly pull him down is a common strat (with the construct low enough to instantly die to cleave right after), but it forces the third construct to spawn an entire 30 seconds earlier. The warlock pug I mentioned previously refused to understand that we wouldn’t keep up due to that and bailed after that one wipe, even though it was largely a fluke. I never saw the construct hook targets act like this in Shadowlands so something feels off with that mechanic as well.

It’d have been nice if they gave it dedicated focus during beta instead of assuming that it is still all fine because it was so relatively recent. There’s a CC thread about the 15sec affix with a reply that is saying the overall challenge level in 9 and up is fine, but they seem to just be completely forgetting about this outlier, IMO. If they fixed this boss, I’d be fine with the rest of the season (barring Siege just always feeling terrible, but that’s a dungeon design thing).

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That’s just the thing, they already did nerf the spears. The spears were way stronger in shadowlands. They need to just buff the spears and make rot do a little less.

1 Like
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Remove all the SL tools from those dungeons and just tweak it to not be garbage without them.

3 Likes
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Nah, I’d rather the spears get removed altogether. This way you aren’t totally discouraged to even try doing Stitchflesh again because you’ve already used everything on him before.

2 Likes
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Agreed! This should be the play.