So I've spent a good 10 hour or so wiping on Patchwerks in the last couple of days, trying all manner of tanking and healing strats. In this time I've seen direct evidence that Hateful Strike (HS) targets are indeed primed and locked in place (and not purely based off of current HP values).

My assumptions on his HS: Up to 3 HS targets are primed when Patchwerks is engaged and the player with the highest current HP out of the players on his HS list will be the recipient.

So here's the behavior I can't explain:
Patchwerks engaged, 1 tank clearly MTing not taking any HS, 3 OTs taking HS. Then a minute or so into the fight one of the tanks stop being a valid HS target and is ignored, 2 remaining OTs get double HSed and die. OT (who took a few initial HS) still at full HP beign ignored by Patchwerks.

In a couple of our attempts the MT has somehow lost agro to a rogue (who was sustaining 900dps).

MT getting HSed before any OTs dead.

Possible explanations: MT gets a huge bonus to agro generation but doesn't have "infinite" agro on patchwerks.

If a player on the HS list isn't the recipient of a HS for a period of time (by dodging/parrying and fast healign on the other 2 OTs) he is removed from the HS list.

Is there's something I'm missing, or have other guilds working on this encoutner seen similar behavior (I'm yet to see anything like this happen in the kill video's I've seen).

900 dps huh?

My own personal opinion is that who Patchwerk Hs's on the list is based on who has the highest health, but who is on that very list is dictated by threat. Hs gives a threat bonus, and when hit by it a number of times it is almost impossible to surpass that tank in threat, but when a number of parry's occur, or the first two tanks get healed so mutch that Hs's bounce back and forth between them, it is possible to pass that tank in hate. A number of our dps have eaten it when this (this is all speculation mind you :P) has happned.

In our healing strat we were attempting to keep the 3rd HS target as an emergency sponge with only 1 or 2 dedicated healers so that we could focus more heals on the other 2 OTs. He definitely recieved a few HS in the early stage of the fight and apparantly he DIDN'T move at all during the fight. He life busted life giving and last stand and still got ignored so he was clearly off the list. Only explanation we can come up with is that you need to have HS reapplied to stay on the list.

Long wind fury chain apparantly he was double anyone else on damage meter.

We also had one of the HS sponges hit PW with melee after the MT bow pulled, but before he could get a white swing on, which casued said HS spongue to become the MT.

So perhaps HS targets are #2,3,4 on the total threat list. MT gains a monsterous amount of bonus threat from white damage recieced allowing him to stay on top of the list. HS targets recieve agro dumps, but should be less than the agro the MT has. HS attempts to target the player with highest current HP of the players that are #2,3,4 on the threat list.

This would explain the observation's I've seen quiet well. If the HS is ping ponging between 2 OTs and the 3rd OT only recieve a few early HS, at some point in the fight he would get over taken on the threat meter by a rogue. That rogue with a relatively small HP was a legit HS target, but never had more HP than the 2 OTs recieving HSs.

I believe I also witnessed a HS target become the MT on a few encounters. Perhaps if healing was too focused on that OT he was beign healed to full within 1.2s of the previous HS (which I believe was the case) and taking a majority of the HS, which lead to him surpassing the MT on the threat list and becoming the MT.

Try having the tank who's getting the most HSs(according to your theory the #2 on threat most likely) step out of melee range and back in. If it was threat-based, he'd still be on the HS list.

There is probably a mechanic that clears threat if you are not in melle range to eat the hs. I still think my theory holds true, as each time a dps has eaten a hs with all three tanks up its been our number one melle dps. :?

I've seen the MT drop and he charge off to kill a mage that was top of DM.

Unfortunately I can't test anything till Monday when we'll next be in Naxx.

We've had OT's take double HS's for no reason and its quite frustrating.

We had 1/2 solid attempts and then this kept happening.
Can't until he dies so i can spit on him good.

The threat model for HS targets definitely explains this. If 2 rogues/dps warriors surpassed 2 of the HS spongues on the threat list and you had been turbo healing 1 HS spongue back to full for the majority of the HSs, then a heal could easily take him to say 6k hp (more than the 2 unintended sponges) and he'll get double HSed.

The other 2 OT's were at full HP yet he still got 2 HS's in a row :S