🧬 Who is Stitches?
Stitches, the grotesque abomination stitched together from various corpses, brings his massive bulk and terrifying hook to the Nexus. As one of the most distinctive tanks in the game, Stitches excels at creating pick opportunities through his iconic Hook ability while soaking tremendous amounts of damage. If you love grabbing unsuspecting enemies, dragging them into certain doom, and laughing as they desperately try to escape your putrid presence, Stitches is your rotting buddy for the job.
Main Roles:
🛡️ Main Tank | 🪝 Pick Initiator | 🧪 Area Control | 🧟
Sustain Monster
🛠️ Abilities (Quick Look)
- Trait – Vile Cleaver (D): Basic attacks splash and apply a healing reduction.
- Hook (Q): Throw a hook that pulls the first enemy hit to you.
- Slam (W): Damage and slow enemies in a frontal cone.
- Devour (E): Bite an enemy, dealing damage and healing yourself.
- Putrid Bile (R1): Emit bile that slows enemies and increases movement speed.
- Gorge (R2): Swallow an enemy hero whole, disabling them for a short time.
🎮 Gameplay Guide
Stitches dominates the battlefield through pick potential, massive sustain, and area control that can completely change the flow of fights.
✅ Early Game
- Practice Hook angles from bushes for surprise ganks.
- Use Slam for efficient waveclear.
- Conserve Devour for healing during trades.
✅ Teamfights
- Position for high-value Hooks on healers or damage dealers.
- Apply Slam slow to peel for allies.
- Use Devour on high-health enemies for maximum healing.
- Putrid Bile for team engages or disengages.
✅ Objective Control
- Hook enemies away from objectives.
- Block chokepoints with your massive body.
- Use Putrid Bile to zone enemies during objective captures.
🛡️ Builds & Gameplay Focus
⚔️ The Hook Master Build
Level 1: Hungry for More
Level 4:
Playtime
Level 7: Tenderizer
Level 10:
Gorge
Level 13: Digestive Juices
Level 16:
Fishing Hook
Level 20: Cannibalize
Focus: Pick Creation, Displacement Value, Delete Priority Targets
The Lowdown:
This build transforms Stitches into the ultimate fishing
champion — a hook-slinging horror whose entire game revolves around finding and deleting
key enemy heroes. Your primary goal isn’t to tank damage or peel (though you can
do both) — it’s to create a constant fear in enemy squishies who know that one
wrong step means they’ll be yanked into your team and deleted. With Gorge as your
heroic, you can completely remove threats from fights and reposition them into certain
death.
The build focuses on maximizing your Hook’s range, cooldown, and follow-up potential. By level 16, with Fishing Hook, your grab range becomes truly terrifying, allowing you to snatch enemies from distances they thought were safe. Playtime ensures you can throw out Hooks more frequently, while Tenderizer lets you stick to enemies unfortunate enough to be within melee range. The end result is a tank that doesn’t just soak damage — it actively hunts down and eliminates priority targets.
When mastered, this build can single-handedly win games through well-timed picks before objectives or key fights.
The Core Loop & Synergy:
- Hungry for More (1) increases max health with globe collection for massive HP pool.
- Playtime (4) reduces Hook cooldown for more frequent pick attempts.
- Tenderizer (7) applies slow with basic attacks to keep hooked targets in range.
- Gorge (10) removes key targets from fights temporarily.
- Digestive Juices (13) increases Devour damage and healing.
- Fishing Hook (16) dramatically increases Hook range.
- Cannibalize (20) enhances Gorge with healing and cooldown reduction.
Key Tactics & Pro Tips:
- Hook → Gorge → Walk behind your team/gates → Regurgitate for guaranteed kills.
- Use bushes and fog of war to hide your Hook angle.
- Look for opportunities to Hook enemies over terrain.
- Track enemy mobility abilities before attempting hooks on priority targets.
In short: You’re the fisherman. You wait patiently, you aim carefully, and when the moment is right, you reel in your prey and watch them squirm as your team feasts.
⚔️ Unstoppable Slam Tank Build
Level 1: Patchwork
Level 4: Chop
Chop
Level 7: Lacerate
Level 10: Putrid
Bile
Level 13: Pulverize
Level 16: Meat
Hook
Level 20: Potent Bile
Focus: Area Control, Sustained Tanking, Team Fight Presence
The Lowdown:
This build transforms Stitches from a pick-oriented tank
into an unstoppable juggernaut of area control and sustained damage. Rather than betting
everything on landing the perfect Hook, you become a constant threat in teamfights
through frequent Slams, massive health pool, and the game-changing Putrid Bile. Perfect
for maps with clustered objectives or against dive-heavy compositions, this build
ensures you’re always relevant even if Hook opportunities are limited.
Putrid Bile becomes your signature ability — a tide-turning ultimate that can either initiate fights by charging in and slowing the enemy team or provide crucial disengage potential when your team needs to reset. The build focuses on maximizing your Slam’s impact through reduced cooldown and increased slow, turning a basic ability into a constant area denial tool. By level 13, with Pulverize, your Slam becomes even more impactful with increased slow.
Where the Hook build makes you feared for your pick potential, this build makes you an immovable, unstoppable force that enemies must deal with or suffer the consequences.
The Core Loop & Synergy:
- Patchwork (1) increases passive regeneration and activatable armor.
- Chop Chop (4) reduces Slam cooldown for area control.
- Lacerate (7) increases Slam damage to enemies already slowed.
- Putrid Bile (10) provides excellent mobility and team fight control.
- Pulverize (13) increases Slam’s slow amount for better control.
- Meat Hook (16) adds Hook targets’ max health as damage.
- Potent Bile (20) makes Putrid Bile even more impactful with damage.
Key Tactics & Pro Tips:
- Use Putrid Bile to initiate then chain Slam slows to keep enemies trapped.
- Save Patchwork’s active component for when you’re focused.
- Position centrally in teamfights to maximize Slam’s cone effect.
- Hook still matters — use it to peel for allies or grab key targets.
In short: You’re the immovable object. You control space, you deal consistent damage, and you create win conditions through area denial and sustained presence.
📊 Final Thoughts
Stitches rewards patience, positioning, and precision like few other tanks. Whether you’re landing game-changing Hooks or controlling entire fights with your area denial, your success comes from understanding positioning and timing. Master his unique kit, and you’ll become the stuff of nightmares for enemy squishies throughout the Nexus.
Grab your hook, pat your bloated belly, and show everyone why they should fear what lurks in the fog of war! 🪝🧟