Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is currently in the second week of their first season for Mythic+ content, bringing some of the highest endgame content available. As one would expect, this content is resoundingly difficult.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped most from diving in. Instead, people are finding new ways to beat the content, with this week’s Mythic+ Affixes being incredibly difficult for most ungeared parties.
Two of the returning affixes – Bolstering and Tyrannical – are active this week. Tyrannical gives bosses more health and damage, while Bolstering causes trash mobs to buff each other on death with a stacking health/damage increase.
Because of this, packs of trash mobs can be a massive problem if pulled incorrectly, often requiring smaller pulls. For example, the plagues before the first Plaguefall boss will bolster each other, so pulling them by the dozen will end up creating a few barely-killable super-slimes.
At times, though, it seems this can be used to a player’s advantage. Some groups have been doing exactly that in the Necrotic Wake dungeon, using Bolstering to buff a specific mob before using it to kill other enemies, even one-shotting the Stitchflesh boss.
If you’ve run Necrotic Wake, you’re likely aware that its trash is extremely difficult, with some of the most formidable being in the necropolis before you fight the third boss, Stitchflesh. One of these enemies, the Flesh Crafter, uses a Throw Cleaver attack, which can be intercepted.
This attack can be interrupted by positioning other enemies in front of it, though, causing them to take the damage instead. The damage done is considerable, and increased significantly by bolstering.
Because of this, players have been saving these mobs and bolstering them as high as they can before making them use Throw Cleaver and hit Stitchflesh. This damage can stack high enough to one-shot the boss, ending the encounter as fast as possible.
The strategy is dangerous and requires a lot of crowd-control abilities, as the cleaver always hits some target. If it hits a player, it will unavoidably one-shot them as well, so it can just as quickly cause a wipe.
So take this strategy with a bit of risk and reward! If you’re able to pull it off properly, Stitchflesh will prove to be no challenge whatsoever, being yanked by hooks and struck by one-shot cleavers. If you mess up, though, you’ll very likely wipe, and could risk failing to time your keystone.
