Direhorns, their second combo

[Luciandk]

With the upcomming nerf to the primary combo of Direhorns in 5.4. I am wondering if people have looked at their other ability set?

Trample, Stampede and Trihorn Shield. Trihorn Shield is perfect for protecting you while stampeding as it absorbs a LOT more damage than the tooltip states. Only last 3 turns and having a mighty 5 turn cd. Its speculated that Blizzard erroneously copied and pasted the tooltip from similar shield spells when Trihorn Shield is magnitudes stronger than any other.

Effectively serving as a safe vessel to deliver the double damage debuff, followed by using Trample x 2 while buffed by Stampede, before Trihorn Shield is available again. From my observations, only the base damage of Trample is doubled by stampede. But Trample scales extremely well against high hp pets and is much less frustrating to use than Trihorn Charge thanks to the 100% hit chance.

Though until 5.4 goes live, you can effectively use Trihorn Charge in place of Trample. But I think its worth trying out this second combo to not depend on Trihorn charge as a 'crutch'. I stopped used Fluxfire Feline's hard hitting combo as well when the nerf was announced.


My Stunted Direhorn tore through the whole of Farmer Nishi's team with this setup. Was nearly dead when I downed the maggot. Trihorn Shield is extremely powerful! And it scales quite well with the high attack of the P/P direhorn.

[Nivrax]

The shield might be problematic, already saw few people using it instead of Cry. And it's already hard to play any sort of dot team, mega-shield, Elemental buff (I predict more Sandstorms than ever), Aquatic buffs... It's reverse of Black Claw, except other is used on ~1200hp pet and you can swap pets out to not get trashed, while swapping enemy pet is much harder.

That aside, I don't think you will take Stampede. It deals 0 damage under Sandstorm/Shields, and it's not unusal to just swap pet after third use of it. 252 speed is still enough to take care of many pets, Anub idol included, against rest you could spam Trample, though Trihorn charge imo is still better.

[Wolfson]

Honestly I don't see the Direhorn nerfs having any significant effect on how people use them because they're not nerfing the right thing. Trihorn Charge hurts, but it's not the key to those pets being so strong. The key is Horn Attack, which is so disruptive to any offensive or defensive battleplan because you simply can't rely on being able to use anything more than half the time. Imo they should leave Trihorn Charge alone, or just nerf the damage, but make Horn Attack a 2-round cd rather than 1. Then Direhorns would still be powerful, and they'd still be disruptive, but they wouldn't be able to completely shut down opponents.

[Teacake]

I've used him with the shield and Stampede even before they announced the nerf. It's not a bad setup at all. That shield absorbs an insane amount of damage.

Stampede type moves have limited use, and I wouldn't take them as a regular thing, primarily because multi-round moves are not my favorite for PVP (not to mention useless versus shields/sandstorm, and with the guardling here, I suspect this week will see a lot of sandstorm teams being tried out). But they're fun once in a while and in certain situations. They have the advantage of being unexpected, and they're very nice for spreading around damage debuffs. If they swap their pet out as soon as they get the debuff, you've disrupted their battle plan, and you get to put the debuff on even more pets, further limiting their choices and making them waste a lot of turns on swaps. If they don't swap the pet, you'll have it out of the game very quickly. I like it best with high-health pets who are very likely to survive all the rounds; it's not about the damage, it's about hitting everything in their path with that debuff.

[3wd]

If your combo is : Trample, Stampede and Trihorn Shield.

why don't you just use a Stunted Shardhorn ?

The shield on paper looks attractive and can dodge lots of dots, but with such a long 3 round attack of stampede, you are basically opened for a world of hurt. Trample basically just doesn't do enough dmg.

By using a stunted shardhorn, you can have much more HP and probably have higher chance to finish 2 full cycle of stampede, assume your opponent will switch.

Trihorn charge is the bread and butter of this pet, his best use is to utilize the current OP design on late game for closing out. Cry's usage is not only for the reducing of speed, it is also a great use to keep the pets in the back with low HP or a tool to counter undead ect.

Shield is intended for tanks to use, if you play direhorn as your tank and your first pet (given this is the only direhorn in your team), you are not playing to his strength.

[Poofah]

Stampede does 9 base damage; 18 when the debuff is up. So you're locked into 3 turns of 9+18+18 = 45 base damage. If you just Punch/Bite for 3 turns, you get 60 base damage. If you spam Trihorn Charge in 5.3, you get 26*3*0.85 = 66.3 (and in 5.4, Trihorn Charge+Horn Attack+Trihorn Charge will be 60 base damage).

Trihorn Shield is really excellent, but I wouldn't try to shoehorn Stampede into this guy's moveset just because you gave up the speed debuff. Trihorn Charge/Horn Attack are simply more damage, except for the very situational uses where the opponent lets you hit their Stampede-debuffed pet after Stampede finishes. Incidentally, the shield also benefits from speed, since you get one extra round of protection. A speedier Direhorn (ie Pygmy) could be very good with Trihorn Charge/Horn Attack/Trihorn Shield.

[Teacake]

If your combo is : Trample, Stampede and Trihorn Shield.

I'd never use Trample on this pet.