1. Introduction
2. Pros and Cons
3. Ability Overview
4. Talent Overview

IMPORTANT: Guide is under construction! I am updating it daily and hope to have it finished by the end of the week!


Hello all! I'm Jenova and today we're going to learn how (and how not) to play Stiches! This walking ball of fun is an iconic and PTSD inducing hero for many WoW players. He also happens to be certified in play-making and being outright gross. Jokes aside, Stiches is easily my favorite and most played hero. He's a great tank, has decent sustained damage in fights, and has the ability to make some of the biggest plays in the game. Learning to use him to his full potential will allow you to single handily turn games around.

Pros:

• Has easily one of the best abilities in the game in Hook
• Decent sustained damage and crowd control in team fights from Slam and Gorge
• High health and not easily brought down due to healing from Devour
• Very effective at roaming and ganking

Cons:

• One of the least mobile heroes in the game
• If your team doesn't follow up on Hook, it's effectiveness is greatly reduced
• Your effectiveness is greatly reliant on prediction skills

Trait

Vile Gas is your trait. When you take damage, you drop a small cloud of gas that will deal damage of time to enemies who stand in it. While not a huge damage source, it does provide near constant sustained damage in team fights. It also helps you push lanes in combination with Slam, something Stitches would struggle with otherwise. Tip: When trying to push lanes, move ahead of your minions to allow enemy minions to attack you first. This will ensure that you drop a cloud of gas near the wave.

Normal Abilities

Hook - Q - This is your defining ability, and makes Stitches the play-maker that he is. Knowing how to use this ability is absolutely critical to your gameplay, and is the main thing that separates an average Stitches from an exceptional one. This ability allows you to grab and pull enemies to you from an absurd range (which can be upgraded even further with Fishing Hook), allowing you to easily pick off enemy carries or low health enemies fleeing from a team fight. This ability has an extremely low cooldown considering how strong it is, and can be used multiple times in the same fight. Hook is very easily better than some heroic abilities. I will cover this ability in it's own section later in this guide.

Slam is your main source of damage (and potentially CC) throughout the game. Stitches smacks the ground in front of him with his cleaver, dealing damage in a cone. This, coupled with Vile Gas, will make up most of your damage in team fights. This is also your main tool for clearing minion waves and jungle camps. When upgraded with Heavy Slam and Pulverize, the damage from this ramps up significantly and is a real threat to enemy squishies. Pulverize also adds a .5 second stun which, when used correctly, can stun an entire enemy team. Use this to interrupt dangerous abilities such as Ravenous Spirit, All Shall Burn, Storm, Earth, Fire, Lightning Breath, Mosh Pit, Maelstrom, Jug of 1,000 Cups, Triple Tap, Sanctification, and Strafe. Knowing when to use this ability can be crucial to the outcome of fights, especially if your team lacks other reliable CC.

Devour is a single target damaging ability that deals extra damage to minions and heals Stitches for 20% of his maximum health. This can be useful for staying in lane longer when your Healing Well is on cooldown. It is also key to staying alive longer in team fights. Since the cooldown is very long, knowing when to use it in fights is important, and using it properly can bait enemies into thinking they can kill you. Try to save it for when you're at half health or less. The bonus damage to minions is also useful when laning against particular heroes such as Azmodan or Zagara, allowing you to effectively nullify their summons.

Heroic Abilities

Putrid Bile causes Stitches to gain 20% increased movement speed and lay a trail of toxic bile where he walks. The bile slows and deals damage to enemies who stand in it. While it has uses for point defense and in smaller areas, Gorge is, in my opinion, the superior ability in almost all cases. Putrid Bile may be useful against a team that is nearly all melee, but even still I prefer Gorge.

Gorge is a fantastic heroic ability that allows you to ingest an enemy hero for 3.5 seconds, dealing damage afterwards. Your movement speed is also reduced for the duration. The target cannot move, use abilities, or take damage during this time. You are effectively removing them from the game for a short period, which, when used at the right time on the right target, can win team fights. Note: The target will always leave Gorge in the direction Stitches is facing. This ability can either be used to target a dangerous assassin or a pesky, disruptive warrior. When targeting an assassin, you should eat them and quickly move them back into or behind your team, leaving them separated and vulnerable. This will most often result in a quick kill, making the fight a 4v5 and leaving the enemy team down a large source of damage. However, sometimes their DPS will be hard to reach or have escapes that will allow them to get away after Gorge ends. In this case, it may be better to target a disruptive tank, such as Arthas or Muradin, or a healer like Uther or Li Li. This will allow your team time to position and catch enemy DPS while their CC and protection are disabled. Also, eating a healer at the correct time (e.g. catching Li Li at the beginning of Jug of 1,000 Cups) will allow you do burn down important targets before they can be healed. The target of this ability will be different every game and maybe every fight. Knowing who to target in each situation is very important to being a great Stitches. Tip: When used with Hook, you can grab enemies from near your towers, Gorge them, and run them back into your protected Fort/Keep. If the wall is still up, they will be trapped (unless they have an escape like Dwarf Toss or Dive), resulting in an easy kill.

Talent choices can change every game. Thus, don't take the build up top as the only build you'll ever use, rather as a common set of talents that can function well in any game. Below, I'll detail each talent and when they may be situationally better or more useful. Again, each game is different, as are the needs of your team. It will be up to you to decide which is better in the current game.

Level 1

There are really only two good choices in this tier. Heavy Slam is what you'll be taking most often. It provides a significant damage boost on a low cooldown ability. Unless your team is in desperate need of a pure tank, you should be taking this talent.

If you are your team's only tank and the enemy team has two or more auto attack based heroes (e.g. Illidan or Raynor), Block is a good option to provide some extra longevity in lane and in team fights. I will take Block in maybe 1 of 10 games. Heavy Slam is just a better option 90% of the time.

Level 4

Putrid Ground is the only solid option in this tier. It applies Vile Gas to all targets hit by your Slam. When you compare this to Vile Cleaver, it's clear to see why the latter isn't even a choice to be considered. Stitches is not an auto-attack hero, thus, Putrid Ground will allow you to spread your trait much more effectively.

Level 7

I heavily lean (puns intended) toward the Tenderizer for the extra bit of crowd control. This allows you to keep an enemy hero near constantly slowed, helping to chase fleeing enemies and peel for your allies. It's not an astonishing talent, but I believe it outshines the others in the tier.

Toxic Gas can be taken if your team lacks damage and doesn't need the extra CC. It provides a 40% damage increase to your trait, meaning at level 20 it will deal 250 damage instead of 150. However, the increase in damage isn't major, and I would almost always take Tenderizer instead.

Last Bite and Savor the Flavor can be considered if going for the Amplified Healing build (see Level 4 talents).

Level 10

See Heroic Abilities for a detailed breakdown of this tier.

Level 13

Relentless is almost always going to be your choice in this tier. Halving the duration of most crowd controls is just too valuable in nearly every circumstance.

Mega Smash is a dead talent in my option, as you should be able to hit any target you need without it.

As of the posting of this guide I have not tested Indigestion yet. Quick calculations for level 20 give it 105 damage, or about %65 of your basic attack damage (I'm not sure about the rate of attack. This could make it better or worse than the %65 figure), and 1300 health. Most likely, it will live long enough to get off some decent damage since it probably will not be a single target focus. I do not know the behavior of this ability (does it attack the target of Devour or the nearest target?), so I can't speak for it's usefulness yet. I will test soon, but first impressions are it could be taken for a slight damage boost if your team is in need of that.

Helping Hand is a very odd talent, in that it can be extremely useful or extremely detrimental. First of all, I would say never take this in solo queue. Your allies will probably mess up your grabs more often than not, and likely won't know how to move and behave in order to be saved by this. This could be a choice in an organized team game where you can communicate to your teammates to either get out of the way or stand still so you can save them, but you likely will need to take Relentless anyways. I would suggest trying Helping Hand. If you like it, go ahead and use it if you don't need the CC reduction. If not, skip it.

Level 16

Pulverize is definitely the stand-out talent in this tier, giving you a reliable CC and interrupt on an 8 second cooldown. It also increases the damage of Slam by a further 50%, bringing it to 700 damage at level 20 when combined with Heavy Slam. Although the stun is only .5 seconds, it does effect all targets hit and it will be enough to interrupt dangerous channeled abilities like Ravenous Spirit and Jug of 1,000 Cups (see Ability Overview for a list of dangerous abilities you should try to interrupt).

Fishing Hook is the other great talent choice in this tier, allowing for some insanely long range Hook pulls and inciting awe in teammates and fear in enemies. I find myself taking this fairly often in solo queue simply to generate kills and make plays for my team. The range becomes long enough to grab targets from out of the fog of war, meaning you can literally pull kills out of thin air. As far as when to take this, I generally recommend taking this over Pulverize if you are behind. This allows you to hopefully make some easy pick offs at key moments and get your team back in the game. However, in a close game, Pulverize can be the difference in winning and losing fights.

Level 20

Regenerative Bile will most likely be your pick if you opted for it's heroic ability counterpart. The extension talent bumps its duration up to 10 seconds, and also causes it to heal you for half the damage dealt. Without Amplified Healing, you will be healed for 40 health per second for each enemy standing in the bile, and 52 with the bonus healing talent. When three or four enemies are standing in the slime, this can result in pretty substantial healing when paired with Devour. If you are using the healing build (see Level 4 talents), I would pick this up, as it will synchronize very well with the other talents. If you are going for a more traditional Slam build, I would skip this in favor of Bolt of the Storm.

Hungry Hungry Stitches is an interesting talent. It increases the duration of Gorge to 4.5, allowing you to remove a target from the fight for longer. It also allows you to repeatedly cast it until the first target is expelled, meaning you can continuously eat targets for up to 4.5 seconds. Each target will be disabled for the full duration. You could eat an enemy tank, freeing up a path to get to their carry, then bring them both back with you to your team. It's important to remember that you can recast this until the 4.5 seconds is up, meaning you could eat one enemy, advance to another, wait until the duration is nearly expired, and eat your prime target, giving you nearly 9 seconds of disable split between two targets. It is actually possible to eat all five members of the enemy team with this, assuming they're all on top of each other and you cast this immediately upon global cooldown reset. Thus, it's very good disruption and can interrupt multiple dangerous abilities and remove multiple threats in the same fight. It is a very solid talent choice and should be heavily considered if the enemy team has multiple threats that need to be addressed.

Bolt of the Storm is the final talent for Stitches and it works very well with his kit. A short range blink, this will let you quickly adjust your position or hop right into the midst of a fight. Using this in combination with Gorge will guarantee that you get the target you want, usually allowing for a quick kill. You can also Hook your target, Gorge and blink immediately back to your team, completely isolating the target. If you are in trouble, don't hesitate to use this to immediately get to safety. All-in-all this is a safe pick that has no real downsides. Take it if you're unsure.