Patchwerk Strategy Guide - Naxxramas (25) - WotLK Classic

Author: Passion
Date: August 26, 2022
Updated: September 19, 2022
Expansion: WotLK Classic

Patchwerk is the first boss in the Construct Quarter of Naxxramas. A Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster style construct sewn together from the flesh and organs of who knows what.

“Behold, Patchwerk. When word of his existence first reached the ears of the Brotherhood, none believed the tales of an abomination with such immense speed and strength. Fewer still believed it when he fell the first time…” –Commander Eligor Dawnbringer

You might have heard the phrase “Patchwerk Style Fight” before, and this is why. Patchwerk requires very little movement or adjustment during the fight and for most is seen as a DPS or gear check to prepare you for the rest of Naxxramas. This doesn’t mean that Patchwerk is easy for everyone, as your tanks and healers will have their work cut out for them dealing with Patchwerks now commonplace “Hateful Strike” mechanic.

This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to deal with Patchwerks’ few but powerful mechanics and strikes.

Everyone should have potions, elixirs, flasks, and profession consumables like Grenades appropriate for their role
Keep your eyes on the threat meters! Even if threat is much less of a problem in WotLK, an unlucky tank getting overaggro’d could cost you the entire fight!
Clear the room thoroughly before engaging, fight away from the green river and slimes
If you aren’t a tank, make sure you are not in front of the boss!
Save your cooldowns to make sure they’re up for Frenzy.

Make sure to pre-pop a potion, you need to squeeze every bit of damage out of this fight!
Keep your eye on threat, you never want to be in the top 3
If you are getting high on the threat meter, try to make sure your health is decently low, avoid Healthstones and self heals
Make sure your DPS cooldowns are active for Frenzy, you want this ability to last as little time as possible

Make sure to pre-pop a potion, you need to squeeze every bit of damage out of this fight!
This fight is all about doing as much damage as you possibly can — you only have to worry about your damage and threat here
Make sure your DPS cooldowns are active for Frenzy, you want this ability to last as little time as possible

Be proactive with healing, every swing will take a big chunk out of your tanks.
Time and communicate your targetable defensive cooldowns to not waste any, you want every one of them to count!
If it doesn’t look like your raid needs the extra healing, you can help by dealing a bit of damage — every bit helps

Make sure to pre-pop a potion, you need every edge you can get for this fight!
Keep your eye on threat, you need to be in the top 3
Make sure your health is always high, use Healthstones and self heals if necessary — a tank death likely means a wipe
Use defensive cooldowns to deal with Hateful Strikes
Frenzy is the most important time for defensives. You’ll want to use your biggest defensive cooldowns when Patchwerk enrages!
If you reach the Berserk phase, use defensives and keep your health high, this is now a dire situation and Patchwerk can no longer be taunted

Abilities

The fight consists of a stationary battle, with your main tank in front of Patchwerk and everyone else behind, preferably in a ranged stack and a melee stack. The #1 concern is threat, making sure your tanks are in the top 3 spots and your melee DPS aren’t. This fight is a race to beat a 6-minute Berserk timer while also correctly managing threat and defensives. At 5% health Patchwerk enters Frenzy and will need to be burned down fast.

Patchwerk

Every 1 second, Patchwerk will use Hateful Strike on one person, dealing 27750 to 32250 damage to them, increased by Frenzy and Berserk.

The target of this is decided based on three factors:

The target must be in melee range
The target must be second or third on threat
The target must have the highest health in that selection

This means that ranged DPSers won’t get hit, but melee DPS that aren’t careful with their threat will be. Most of the time the target should be one of your off-tanks, and they should always be second and third on threat. Which one gets hit is decided on their current health, meaning if they just got hit and aren’t yet healed to full, they will likely not get a second Hateful Strike immediately after.

At 5% health Patchwerk enters Frenzy, increasing their attack speed by 40% and their physical damage dealt by 25%. This should be a fairly short buff, but you will likely need to use defensives wisely. The rest of the fight remains the same, just with a significant bump in damage.

After 6-minutes Patchwerk will go Berserk, increasing their attack speed and movement speed by 150% and all of their damage by 500% as well as becoming immune to taunts. This is the DPS check. You have 6-minutes to beat Patchwerk or you have lost. If Patchwerk is very close to death, you can still kill them, but every hit will kill someone and things will spiral very rapidly into an angry, untauntable abomination running around the raid ruining your day.

Slime Bolt is only used during Berserk. Patchwerk immediately shoots a Slime Bolt at the raid, dealing 8325 to 9675 damage on impact and 5700 to 6300 damage every 3-seconds after that. This is Patchwerks insurance that if you somehow could survive hits while they are Berserk, you will still lose.

Raid Composition & Preparation

This fight has no specific class or spec requirements, and as long as your group can deal enough DPS and manage the Hateful Strikes you will be able to beat it.

Even though not required, you do want to cover a lot of the WotLK raid buffs and debuffs, as well as making sure you have Bloodlust/Heroism to maximize damage.

Defensive cooldowns and utility can also be very useful, things like Divine Sacrifice and Hymn of Hope can be the difference between a kill or not, even if they aren’t required.

You will want between 5-7 Healers for this fight, but it is important to remember that this fight is a DPS check with a 6-minute timer, so if you bring more healers, that means you are bringing fewer DPS.

Holy Paladins are vital here because of their burst healing and ability to effectively heal two targets. Placing Beacon of Light on an off-tank and healing them constantly through the fight will go a long way toward topping off that off-tank between Hateful Strikes. Unfortunately, you do need 3 tanks, so one of them will be left out doing this.

Discipline Priests are also invaluable due to their preventative healing style, allowing you to maintain Power Word: Shield on all 3 tanks regularly and giving access to Pain Suppression as an invaluable defensive layer, especially during Frenzy. Because only 3 targets will be taking regular damage for most of the fight, having 2 Discipline Priests is largely wasted with each fighting over Weakened Soul.

For the other healer spots, grab what you have available, this is doable with any combination, especially if you already have a Discipline Priest and at least 1 Holy Paladin.

There are no strict requirements for DPS classes or specs here, you simply want a combination of good raid buffs and debuffs, as well as the best players you can muster.

You will need 3 tanks for this fight: 1 main-tank that will be tanking Patchwerk for the entire fight, and 2 off-tanks that will be there to soak Hateful Strikes. The main-tank is typically the least geared tank, as they will be taking significantly less damage than the off-tanks, only being hit by Patchwerks melee swings.

The main-tanks job is to stay #1 on threat at all times. The off-tanks will need to always be 2nd and 3rd on threat in order to make sure they are the targets of Hateful Strike. Your off-tanks can either stand in front of Patchwerk, meaning they can be parried, or behind Patchwerk, meaning they cannot be parried but that Patchwerk will turn around in order to Hateful Strike them, giving a very tiny window in which the entire raid can be parried.

Tank class shouldn’t matter a ton here, with every tank having defensive cooldowns and similar mitigation at this point.

The Pull

The way you pull Patchwerk is important, as they do not wait before the Hateful Strikes begin to rain down. Because of this, you want to make sure your tanks are all clumped together on the pull, and that your healers are constantly in range and have a heal about to hit right as Hateful Strike hits.

Because of how important it is for your tanks and healers to move together, it is very recommended that you use a pull timer. This should also guarantee that your raid has a good opportunity to pre-pot before the pull, increasing their damage potential by a decent amount. Ideally, Patchwerk should be pulled at range, with something like Heroic Throw or Hand of Reckoning, to make sure that your tanks do not need to cross the river of slime, but you also want to maximize uptime on the boss for everyone, so be ready right at the edge of the slime to meet him, start generating threat and begin repositioning.

Your casters can pre-cast as long as their spells don’t hit before the boss reaches the tank. Pulling aggro early as a ranged DPS will quickly lead to chaos and confusion while all 3 tanks try to correct.

The Fight

Your raid will want to be in 3 groups, 1 melee stack, 1 ranged stack, and your main-tank alone in front of the boss. You can optionally stack all 3 tanks together or place them in a Y formation. Either of these position alternatives should guarantee that your melee DPS cannot ever be parried, but it will mean your off-tanks can always be parried. Your melee should always be at Patchwerks back to maximize damage.

Patchwerk will hit the second or third place on threat with Hateful Strike, putting them at very low health. One second later, Patchwerk will hit the highest health player out of the two players at second and third on threat. This will be repeated constantly throughout the fight. With 3 tanks, this gives your healers 2 seconds to heal a target hit by Hateful Strike to full, otherwise, someone will likely die to the next one. If you only bring one off-tank, your healers will need to heal them high enough to survive a Hateful Strike every second. This is possible, but very difficult.

At 5%, Patchwerk will enter Frenzy, giving him a significant bump in damage. You want to make sure your tanks and healers have defensive cooldowns ready, and your DPS have their damage cooldowns active to burn through the last bit of Patchwerks health as fast as you possibly can. If you can blast through this, you’re in the clear.

Here are some of the main things that can typically go wrong in this fight:

A melee DPS accidentally overtakes one of the 3 tanks in threat, causing them to be hit by Hateful Strike.
A DPS starts too soon on the pull, causing chaos on the threat meters.
A tank, often an off-tank dies, causing Hateful Strike to start going on DPS.
Defensives aren’t communicated and are accidentally stacked poorly, wasting cooldowns.
Too many defensives are on cooldown to deal with Phase 2.
Your DPS is too low and you simply do not pass the enrage timer.
Healers run OOM because of the duration of the fight.

Congratulations on defeating Patchwerk, proving that your raid should have the DPS to beat all other bosses. Weave through the slime maze, laughing at whoever gets one shot, and move into Grobbulus room!

About the Author

Passion

I love MMOs of all shades, especially the nitty gritty numbers parts of them. You might recognize me from the Shadow Priest discord, otherwise I play a little bit of everything, especially games with support roles available.