WarcraftPets Forum

While I understand the damage reduction and 1 round cooldown being added to direhorns, I don't get how it's that big a nerf.
Won't they still be able to rotate between their 1 and 2 moves just fine?

Yup. I really don't even consider this a nerf. -__-

I ran into some cases where it would be a nerf. In particular if your direhorn is vs a bird as each of your last pets. You have no hope of being faster than the bird as long as it is above 50% health and the racial is active so Horn Attack won't ever proc. Charge did do more damage and the always going first also decreased the damage the because the bird was relying on Alpha strike and doesn't get the goes first bonus when you charge. Obviously, you'd want to try to avoid this situation in the first place but things don't always go as planned.

Another scenario is when your opponent has multiple nearly dead pets. Charging 2 or 3 times in a row can mean killing each one of them off with out them getting a chance to do anything while having to rotate between charge and Horn attack might allow them to get in attacks.

It's not a huge or obvious nerf but it is still a nerf.

Its a nerf in that you cant spam the charge ability and always hitting first.

As I've mentioned before, there's also a 'stealth' nerf that affects direhorns, Horn Attack and other 'interrupt' abilities like Kick, Backflip ect will proc Resilient in 5.4

So, Primal Cry>Horn Attack (proc)> Charge> Horn Attack (Resilient buff immunity to proc). The charge cd means you would have to use Horn Attack on that 4th round since everything else is on cd, the stun can't proc and Horn Attack would now be on it's cd

Okay now that stealth nerf IS a nerf, and probably the one people were hoping for as that stun is pretty killer. And, after playing a bit with my direhorns yesterday, I think I'm going to miss the cooldown-less charge. Oh well!

It is only a nerf against people who played direhorns in a brain-dead way. If you used decent tactics, direhorns are still going to be very OP. It is much the same way regarding the nerf to switch pets. Only the people who didn´t use their switch pets correctly are going to feel the nerf.. the more powerful uses of switch pets are not affected that much.

Thing is Azrile, the brain-dead way is what they'll be restricted to now if they take the usual abilities. Charge, Horn Attack and Primal Cry all have CD's, so there's really going to be nothing in the way of tactics using one, you'll often only have 1 ability off cd to use. And taking the other abilities really won't help, I've got no problem with anyone spamming trample, stampede is lol and the shield will prevent them using horn attack vs faster pets, with the charge cd that neuters the shield playstyle effectively.

What is actually happening to the shield? Will it still absorb that ridiculous amount of damage?

I don't think the nerf will affect those that have a specific play style and system in place. Last night, I had a battle w/ runt direhorn, lil rag and gnome, my team was DM tonk, gnome, and regular direhorm and he shoulda beat me but he forfeited when he got close to losing. I also switched out direhorn for broom and battle w/ same guy who forfeited again he saw my team...but I got credit so that was all that mattered to me. I actually don't use my direhorn that much.

Casca wrote:What is actually happening to the shield? Will it still absorb that ridiculous amount of damage?

Tri-Horn Shield is quite good, but it means giving up taking Primal Cry to slow enemy pets. The shield is on cd unlike other shield spell. Just like there is burst damage, think of it as burst defense. Theres nothing wrong with it as it cant be spammed.

So it is supposed to absorb that much damage? Because it's definitely more than what the tooltip says.

The tooltip is bugged, it is supposed to absorb much more damage, given the cooldown. It has the same numbers as normal, non cd shields.

Direhorns got a solid nerf. The Horn Attack proc now triggers the immunity debuff, so you can't be trampled twice in 3 turns.

Having the charge on a 1 turn CD is a heavy nerf, ive been in many situations where spamming charge, or atleast using it 2 turns in a row, was the best to do, it was just insane how good that ability was before. It seems that direhorns will still be fairly strong, but not as much as they were before, and nothing is wrong with some pets being better than most pets, its far from the only one in this catagory :)