Direhorn Runt

[Arthureld]

Had a few runins with a dirhorn named "i'll get nerfed" i think he's right! I need one now.

[Shakesbeard]

Random Observation: This might just be a graphical error on my side, but whenever it used Horn Attack, it would do this odd pathing and walk backwards very slowly a few times before charging forward lol.

wolpertinger has an ability with a similar animation, i like it

no direhorn yet for me, but i do want to try it... and then put it away like i did my fluxfire

[Luciandk]

Ive aquired the Stunted Direhorn, it is -QUITE- powerful and an annoying beast to fight against. As others have said, it simply destroys many speed strategies due to the aoe slow debuff.

Infact you need no speed variant of any direhorn in order to abuse many fast pets. With the speed debuff you can knock down pets up to 333 speed to be slower than you! And the Stunted Direhorn is the P/P breed and able to achieve maximum impact on its trihorn charge, with 448 damage a hit and always going first with a 85% chance to hit. And then weave in Horn attack and their response will be severely stymied, doing both damage and applying CC.

I had a direhorn solo Anubisath Idol with sandstorm up. Being naturally speeder than him, my Trihorn Charge trumped Deflection, and he spent a lot of time knocked down due to the stun.

I'd daresay that this pet will become a new pvp staple once people bang out the wins needed for the ach. But having used it in pve too, Im loving it So very powerful! Though I do wonder if Blizzard is going to nerf it as its easy to imagine lots of people going gaga with this as the new FOTM pet.

[Yellowlab]

You mention the Direhorn being able to take out an Anubisath Idol by himself. I can vouch for this. My Direhorn Runt ran into a team of 3 Anubisath Idols. He took out 2 of them before finally going down to the 3rd. I think it's safe to say that my opponent was furious

[Luciandk]

Fliers seems to be one of the better counters to direhorns as long they can stay above 50% health to keep speed superiority. Well helped by the fact that beasts do low damage to fliers.

[Poofah]

Fliers seems to be one of the better counters to direhorns as long they can stay above 50% health to keep speed superiority. Well helped by the fact that beasts do low damage to fliers.

This is true to an extent, but when in doubt, spam Trihorn Charge. It still goes first versus flyers, and hits them for 300. Once they're close to half, then you can start with the Primal Cry/Horn Charge. Meanwhile there aren't many flyers that can really punish you for letting them live so long: Dragon Kite has one big nuke but after that its damage is very weak (and I hardly see these anyhow); Crow has Nocturnal Strike, but Call Darkness is humanoid and hence is nerfed versus Beasts, and then Alpha Strike will never go first versus Trihorn Charge, so you lose the bonus damage on that.

I tried a Direhorn Runt briefly last night: I got abused by a 2-mech team of Darkmoon Zeppelin, Clockwork Rocket Bot, and something else. Direhorn took a chunk of damage on the bench from Zeppelin's AoE, and then died instantly to Minefield when he was forced into the fight. Otherwise, the Direhorn plowed through almost everything, including a couple of flyers (a moth and a crow, I believe).

If you're going to kill the Direhorn, you want to do it on the bench or very quickly: this is one of the few beasts where the Beast passive is truly effective, because he can string together a lot of low-health attacks. If your opponent has a Runt with 1 hp, and you have 3 pets with 800 health each, it is very possible to still lose.

[Darkke]

As a potential counter for this guy, what do you folks think about the Pandarian Dragon/Serpent Hatchlings? [url=http://www.wowhead.com/npc=65313]Thundering[/url], [url=http://www.wowhead.com/npc=65324]Golden[/url] and [url=http://www.wowhead.com/npc=65323]Jade[/url] in particular, due to their knowing [url=http://www.wowhead.com/petability=204]Call Lightning[/url].

If the Direhorn uses primal cry, Tail Swipe gets boosted. The bigger question would be whether to use Cyclone or Lift-Off in the third slot. Cyclone has good synergy with the lighting, but lift-off will give you a nice big chunk of damage to minimize the up-time for the Direhorn's beast racial.

The other question would be which one to use. Each of the three serpents comes in one breed: p/p, h/p or p/s. My gut feeling would be to go with the p/s as the other two are slightly slower than the Direhorn.

[Luciandk]

Ok.. I finished making a team of 3x Direhorns, one in each color.

Minihorn
(P/S) Pygmy Direhorn - Blue

Smallhorn
(H/P) Direhorn Runt - Purple

Tinyhorn
(P/P) Stunted Direhorn - Green


I made a couple matches and won all except one where RNG wasn't in my favor and Trihorn Charge kept missing. In particular I took on a team with 2x mechanicals and won. Despite them inluding a very nasty Sunreaver Micro Sentry.

So I can definitely see they becomming a FOTM pet and perhaps a nerf is justified after all.

Edit: Ive observed Direhorns are great at handling Mechs and Undead. If you can kill them with Horn Attack, then you have a good chance to waste their extra turn with the stun.

Edit 2: Yet more wins..

Edit 3: Destroyed the team of the Darkmoon Faire grand master in second attempt with a 3 direhorn team.

Edit 4: I agree they need a nerf, its too easy to steamroll many random teams just by having 3 direhorns. One suggestion could be to increase the damage of Trihorn Charge. BUT! To lower its accuracy to 80%, making it a risky affair to rely on so many of them. And making them more vulnerable to accuracy debuffs.

[Luciandk]

Yet many more 3x Direhorn wins today. Only lost a few number of times due to bad rng hosing me.


Observation: Son of Animus with Metal Fist, Siphon Anima and Extra Plating is a powerful Direhorn counter. Very high defense and survival with damage to beasts.

[Khayah]

Combine two runts with a fiendish imp - that has passive selfheal, strong attacks against mech and flying and a pet swap. In theory a fitting addition as 3rd pet to cover both weaknesses of the runts or, if you want to be mean, a warpstalker hatchling due to blinkstrike^^

[Deepfriedegg]

Bought mu H/P Direhorn Runt on AH for 10K couple days ago, leveled it in half an hour and been using it in various PVP teams.

Nuke-oriented team with Zandalari Kneebiter S/S and Lil Ragnaros had only roughly 50% ratio.
Kneebiter replaced with Mech. Pandaren Dragonling 1/2/1 proved to be more viable with MPD´s Decoy. results were better, I had 4 wins out of six matches.
Now im rocking with Phoenix Hatchling and Teldrasil Wisp. So far thrilling 6/7 record - EDIT: 9/11. Not even having the best wisp breed.

[Khayah]

i played several, up to 20 matches with stunted direhorn, pygmy one and imp ... i got a stomach ulcer and grey hair due to awful miss streaks, i won the most but i hate being defeated not because i faced a better team or strategy but just misses. It's absolutely sickening! despite of winning, it's no fun to spam charge but it was worth trying, i switched back to my other line ups

[Poofah]

I agree that direhorns aren't exactly subtle or thought-provoking. Bear in mind though that the 85% accuracy on Trihorn Charge is very generous: it does the same damage as the other 85% accuracy moves (26 base damage), but it also goes first. The other 'go-first' moves like Surge suffer a 25% penalty on their damage. The misses can be frustrating, but in return you get higher-than-normal overall damage for a slot 1 attack.

[Luciandk]

Say, how would you rate the different Direhorn types?

[Cpudude30k]

hopefully they nerf them at least a little

[Poofah]

I've been using H/P because my Stunted isn't 25 yet. I actually like the extra health though, because he gets to spend longer with the beast passive activated, which helps make up for the lower power. Direhorns can really milk their last few hitpoints when they get lucky with Horn Attack, and extra health is the best way to give yourself more opportunities to get lucky. 252 speed is more than enough, so I'd consider any of the P/P, H/P, H/H (if there is one): more power is better for stomping tank-type pets, while more health gives you more opportunities to disrupt the opponent.

[Khayah]

As poofah mentioned and i agree, you should just use a direhorn runt in H/P or pygmy direhorn in p/s (there is only one breed). And the stunted one of course.

In the beginning i played with a runt in H/S and the difference in damage was remarkable even bigger considering the beast racial. the extra speed of pygmy direhorn isn't wasted as you cover a wider range of fast animals (with a p/s pygmy direhorn you also outspeed fast rabbits affected by primal cry). But if you just spam charge, H/P is fine and you will win though.

[Luciandk]

Im reading that Direhorns is getting an 1turn cd on Trihorn Charge in 5.4, which should put them into line with other pets. Forcing you to either alternate Trihorn charge and Horn attack, with Primal Cry being your forced opener if your natural speed is too low to use horn attack without.

Might also encourage use of Trample instead of Trihorn Charge. So Im thinking we might see more of an emphasis on faster direhorns in order to get primal cry off first vs faster targets.

[Teacake]

Am I the only whiner who gets annoyed when they announce these changes but they don't take effect for so long? Why not just change it now if they know that's what they want to do? I don't cry when I see a direhorn, but I'll welcome the change.

Sometimes I use my Stunted with Shield and Stampede instead, just for something different. I've had pretty good results this way, in part because people don't expect it and tend to DoT him up, or better yet they put up Sandstorm to reduce Trihorn Charge's accuracy, which combined with the Shield is a pretty big boon. Stampede's damage debuff is also very nice when Trihorn Charge does hit.


Edit: the whine only applied to announced nerfs to things that need it; I'd love to see that kind of thing thrown in at maintenance rather than waiting months for it. Although I will also be happy to whine that I want all the 5.4 changes now, because they all look SO COOL.

[Nivrax]

Trihorn Charge vs Chomp
Horn Attack vs Metal Fist
Primal Cry vs Whirlwind

Direhorns are broken, and it's not exaggeration. Every single of their moves is as strong as other similar counter skill except they all have free extra perks of always-first, 50% interrupt and 25% mass slow (this one is 10% weaker, for such debuff, yeah...). 1 turn cd on Charge will change nothing, as you can just alternate it with Horn Attack each time. They either need massive nerfs to damage or CDs on all of his abilities that force you to swap it out after using them (like they did with Raptorjesus).

Primal Cry and Trihorn charge are both 5.2/5.3 abilities and from start they are out of the line, and Horn Attack previously never was on pet that had speed or debuffs to use it on your own (required swapping to actually make it decent), but this pet have absolutely perfect moveset for it.