Patchwerk (original)

Patchwerk is a titanic abomination found in Naxxramas (original) and is known as Kel'thuzad's "Avatar of War".

Abilities

 * Hateful Strike - Base damage is 22100-29900 physical damage, thankfully this is mitigated through high AC. The average hit is ~8000 damage on a fully buffed BWL/AQ40 geared Warrior in defensive stance. This ability will hit the main tank if the HS tanks are not properly healed; the ability will hit the character with the highest health in melee range. Highest HP and threat factors into this, but the pattern is typically A B A B C A B A B C in a typical fight.


 * Normal hit with melee is 1800-2700 (depends on gear)


 * Berserk - 7 minute timer ("Patchwerk goes into a berserker rage!"). This will make short work of the raid, his damage is increased by about 5x and his hateful strike will hit the HS tanks for 100k+.


 * Berserk - 7:30 timer, Patchwerk will AOE shoot Slime Bolts to the whole the raid for ~25000 nature damage. (Most likely the fix for kiting exploit, implemented in Patch 1.12.1)


 * Enrage - Enrages at 5% ("Patchwerk becomes enraged!"). Just have your MT and OTs save Shield Wall for it. It is easy to heal through.

Strategies
Patchwerk is not an aggro-sensitive fight, and under most circumstances, with normal threat reduction talents and effects, it is nearly impossible to pull aggro from the MT. It is however possible in some cases as shown in this video, and is probably just due to the extremely high generation of Rage on tanks due to the massive amount of damage taken. Regardless of the reason, the difficulty of pulling aggro makes it possible for the raid to all-out DPS. This is important, as Patchwerk has about 3,850,000 HP and a 7 minute enrage time limit (your raid needs ~9500 dps minimum to kill him in time).

The main part of the fight is to heal through his Hateful Strike ability; It works like this:
 * Hateful Strike hits the person in range with the most hitpoints primed by aggro. (It will hit a rogue if your tanks aren't healed up fast enough).
 * Hateful Strike hits for between 22100 and 29900 damage before mitigation (= avg 26000 non-mitigated damage). This means it is roughly 7500 average damage after mitigation on tier-2 warriors. The maximum hit will deal 29900*(damage modifier by armor); this means that, with 70% damage reduction, for example, a tank needs 29900*30%=8970 HP at all times.
 * Hateful Strike can never crit or be a crushing blow.
 * Hateful Strike hits roughly every 1.2 seconds
 * Hateful Strike does NOT try to reapply upon a dodge/parry/miss. This is a common misconception (if the person with the highest health dodges/etc. and nobody else has been healed to higher health, then the same person will also take the next HS, which leads to this misconception). This means that dodge/parry is extremely important because it gives healers 1.2 more seconds to top off tanks.

This fight will generally require your Hateful Strike tanks to be buffed using Flasks of the Titans and Stoneshield Potions and possibly to be specced in Protection.

Several guilds have successfully utilised feral druids as Hateful Strike tanks as they are able to attain very high damage mitigation and hitpoints, and are often able to survive Hateful Strikes without the use of Flasks and Stoneshield Potions. A druid's normal weakness, his lack of Defense to reduce crits and crushing blows, does not apply in this fight. The downside is, they are less able to avoid the Hateful Strikes due to their lack of the Parry ability. If a druid must be used for Hateful Strikes, they should have close to 75% damage mitigation or more, plenty of stamina gear, and an appropriate spec.

Use the Hateful Strike Damage Calculator to determine if your tanks are geared with sufficient armor and hit points to survive Hateful Strikes.

As noted above, the belief that aggro remains locked to the main tank is questionable, since off tanks (and insanely over-dpsing mages Mage Pulls Aggro with Insane Ignites) can become the main tank if they create too much threat. It is viable to either use one, or numerous offtanks in the fight. The best seems to be 3, it allows you plenty of time to heal up the OTs without spreading out healing too much. There is no gimmick otherwise, it's all about survival and DPS.

Note: If off tanks use Last Stand or they might kick someone out of rotation, however the Main Tank can use it without any risk.

Existing OT/OT healing allocations
Proactive Healing / Pre-Heal / Cast-Interrupt
 * 1) Single OT: The OT is topped up at full HP all the time, so every 1.2 sec when Hateful Strike comes, this OT is at full HP and will get HS instead of a melee dps. Requires extreme healing coordination.
 * 2) Main OT and sponge OT: Additional OT to act as a buffer between primary OT and melee dps.
 * 3) 2 Primary OTs and 1 sponge OT: Allows 2.4 sec to top a primary OT up, less coordination required compared to 1&2.

3 OTs with even priority. Healers start casting only after their respective OT takes a Hateful Strike. Minimum 3.6 sec interval between Hateful Strikes assuming an OT is topped up every 3.6 sec. Due to interface lag/latency/human reaction time, it works well with low latency only. Use of addons can greatly improve the success rate of reactive healing.
 * Reactive Healing

Patchwerk at Level 70

 * All the trash is linked to Patchwerk, and must be cleared before you pull the boss.
 * Karazhan/Gruul geared MT will be hit for 2k to 3k per attack
 * Hateful Strikes will hit a Karazhan/Gruul geared OT in Defensive Stance for about 6k
 * A full raid of Level 70s can kill Patchwerk well in advance of the Enrage timer
 * High DPS'ers and high threat classes (Fury Warriors) will have to still watch their threat.

Quotes

 * Aggro
 * yell
 * yell


 * Killing A Player
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell

Loot
Reputation: +100 Argent Dawn Reputation