A boss in World of Warcraft is a tough test of patience. Hundreds of guilds fail against him – he is the hardest fourth boss in a raid in a long time.
It is known that the raids in World of Warcraft on mythical difficulty are among the hardest in the MMORPG genre. This is also repeatedly reflected in the interest of the “World First Race” on Twitch. However, in the current raid “Liberation of Lorenhall”, one of the first bosses of the raid is so incredibly tough that he represents an insurmountable wall for many guilds: Stix Kojenschrotter.
We take a look at what makes him so difficult and why many guilds are currently struggling.
What is the current state? As of now (March 14, 2025, 11:30 AM), only 10 mythical raid groups have defeated the 4th boss of the Liberation of Lorenhall. Other guilds are also very close to the kill (some with 0.05% remaining boss HP), yet over 150 guilds simply cannot get past him (via raider.io).
Many mechanics make Stix a test of patience
What is the problem with the boss? Stix Kojenschrotter is actually a funny boss fight, whose core mechanic is the same across all difficulties:
He summons several bombs and heaps of scrap before transforming several players into balls. As a ball, you must first roll over scrap heaps to grow larger and then guide the large ball into a bomb to defuse it. Remaining balls are guided directly into the boss, causing extremely high damage there – up to 2% of the boss’s health points. If you fail to execute the mechanic because a bomb is not defused, it is a guaranteed wipe, as the explosion kills everyone except for the tanks.
From “heroic” onwards, a new mechanic is added. On some scrap heaps, large crabs with bombs on their backs appear. These crabs must be specifically defeated – partly so they climb down from the scrap heaps, allowing the ball characters to collect them, and partly because the crabs explode after a while, causing a nasty damage-over-time effect on all characters.
If a ball character rolls into a crab, it explodes immediately – destroying the ball and applying the damage effect to all characters as well. Therefore, ball characters need to avoid the crabs.
This new mechanic already brings several problems. Because the crabs spawn far apart, only ranged characters with “Ranged Cleave” can really deal damage to all crabs. Therefore, many raids rely on balance druids and shadow priests.
At the same time, once the crabs climb down from their scrap pile, they become another obstacle. As they walk towards the tanks (if everything goes according to plan), the crabs are in direct proximity to the boss. During this time, ball characters can hardly steer their ball into the boss – as they risk hitting a crab, which causes high damage to the raid and simultaneously results in less damage to the boss.
How chaotic the boss already is on normal and heroic is shown by a raid guide from Hazelnuttygames:
In “Mythic”, another mechanic is added. Because the small additional enemies in the fight apply an ability that inevitably kills a player character after 10 seconds. Only Ice Block or Divine Shield can provide protection here for some classes. The only legitimate way to stop this ability is for these enemies to be rolled over by a ball character. Then, the adds are temporarily “absorbed” into the ball and are no longer a threat.
Additionally, planning important cooldowns, such as those of the healers, is almost impossible. Because designated characters can suddenly be transformed into a ball and must then perform this role. Therefore, a fixed rotation of tasks is not possible.
While playing all these mechanics, you also have to deal a lot of damage to the boss.
The combination of all these circumstances ensures that the fight hardly forgives any mistakes. A single personal error can (and will) wipe the raid group. A few examples:
- A ball character rolls over a bomb: Wipe.
- A crab is not killed in time: Wipe.
- A ball does not hit the boss, resulting in missing damage: Enrage and Wipe.
- Two ball characters collide, causing one to be shoved into a crab: Wipe.
- One fails to collect enough scrap with the ball, meaning it is not large enough before it disappears: Likely Wipe.
- An add is not absorbed by a ball and kills a character. Now damage is missing: Wipe.
And these are just the core mechanics of the fight. There are of course plenty of additional effects that can deal a lot of damage or knock characters out of action quite spontaneously.
Nerfs in rapid succession – but he remains tough
How does Blizzard respond? The developers apparently realize the situation and have already pushed through several hotfixes to tone down Stix Kojenschrotter. His maximum health points have been primarily reduced, making the enrage timer a bit easier. However, individual mistakes can still quickly lead to the fight needing to be abandoned and restarted.
How were other bosses? Colleagues from wowhead looked at how other “fourth bosses” in a raid performed after 9 days of the world-first race. In contrast to the only 10 kills that have occurred with Stix so far, the situation in previous raids at the same time was quite different:
- Rashan’an (Palace of Nerub’ar): 473 kills
- Council of Dreams (Amirdrassil): 238 kills
- Forgotten Experiments (Aberrus): 271 kills
- Sennarth (Vault of the Incarnations): 29 kills
- Xy’mox (Mausoleum of the First): 92 kills
- Ner’Zhul (Sanctum of Dominion): 131 kills
The list can go on for a while. It is clear that other raids were significantly more forgiving, and the difficulty only ramped up with the later bosses. This also leads to some frustration, as if the fourth boss already poses such a large hurdle, professional guilds can collect very little loot from the raid, as they obtain loot from fewer defeated bosses.
Although the Liberation of Lorenhall is regarded as one of the most enjoyable and innovative raids in the recent history of World of Warcraft, the mythical mode this time is extremely difficult and forgives hardly any mistakes early on. This dampens the mood among mythical raiders – and will almost certainly be addressed soon with another round of nerfs.
One raid group has no problem with any bosses at all, as they simply skip all bosses and killed the final boss Gallywix – before everyone else. A clear exploit. But to humiliate Blizzard, this raid group repeated the trick again.
