WarcraftPets Forum

Hi all, would appreciate some advice in which breed is objectively better between H/H or H/P for the "Direhorn Runt" pet from Isle of Giants with a tanky playstyle in mind. I'm kinda leaning towards the H/H considering it to have slightly more stat points than H/P. Very interested to see the inputs of more experienced tamers (both PvE and PvP) in this. Also, which abilities would be preferred in that case?

I already ruled out the other breeds because other Direhorns have them with the same moveset as this one in question.

Thanks in advance!

I'll give you my thoughts, which are not quite in a straight line.

The first is: good for you for thinking about this! And you're right that H/P and H/H have to be, in general, the most valuable breeds.

Another is that in principle, there is not a best breed for a species. There is not even a best breed for a moveset choice. There is a best breed for a specific strategy for a specific battle. What you are doing when you choose a breed of pet is looking at how that pet might be used in all possible battles, and sorta-kinda guessing which covers more of the possibilities.

Another is that I did a survey of what I considered the top 27 pet battlers' collections, from PvE and PvP, to see what breeds they preferred. It's still on the forum here: https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t ... 2019/20349 and the selection of breeds for Direhorn Runt came out with H/P holding the lead:
Direhorn Runt 39 H/P(31%), H/H(26%), H/S(18%)

Another is that Xu-Fu's survey of strategies https://www.wow-petguide.com/Pet/70154/ ... Runt/Stats shows that H/P satisfies the requirements for more strats than H/H or P/B.

Another is that now the 2000-pet limit is gone, there is no reason not to have both!

So my recommendation, if you're gonna choose just one, is H/P, by a nose. But either one will almost certainly do for almost any battle you will ever meet.

@Gráinne, thank you kindly for your thorough response and sorry for taking so long to answer.

I have your survey post on Bnet bookmarked even before your response as I often use it to double check before taking breed decisions. Because of OCD issues, I end up taking only one pet of each to my collection. That's nice to see you are the creator of that very valuable post. Do you plan on making more surveys in the future?

Also, I didn't even know that Xu-Fu website existed, so thank you again for showing me.

I decided to follow your advice of the H/P one, since basically all his abilities scale well with P stat, even though with H/H we would get very slightly more stat points.

Thank you kindly.

OK, so Xu-Fu's is your main reference for strategies in battles, and it also provides a bunch of data about species, as that Direhorn Runt example shows. I also and especially recommend you look up your own collection there under the menu Tools / Xu-Fu's Pet Collection Viewer. You can download that, and extra data there isn't room for onscreen, into a spreadsheet. I found spreadsheets invaluable when I was building my collection.

I did make an updated breed survey at the end of 2021. I wasn't happy with it, though, for many reasons. Some of the Old Guard stalwarts I used in the survey have left. The breeds choices in recent expansions are less distinct - when you have a H/B vs a P/B of a pet you never actually expect to use in battle anyway, do you really care? With the lifting of the cap of number of pets, and now its complete removal, a lot of people, including me, are adding second breeds because why not? For example, DragonsAfterDark, a master strat creator, says she keeps different breeds so she can test strats. When people are holding three breeds where they used to keep just one, that survey method loses effectiveness.

Anyhow, do please keep asking about breeds - it's always nice to chat about them!