I was very excited when I heard the announcement that Hunters would now be able to tame Devilsaurs. In TBC, far too few pets were used in practice. All of the hunters in my 25-man raid group (SGA Fubar), used windserpents. Although it was kind of cool to have a whole fleet of flappy serpents, it is more fun to have a variety of viable pets. Also, devilsaurs are cool. With this goal in mind, I set out for Un’goro Crater. I first headed to Menethil with hopes of catching a boat to Theramore, but it never arrived. Instead, we flew to Booty Bay, hopped the boat to rachet, and then flew down.
Upon arrival in Un’goro, I wandered around a bit using track beasts to find a devilsaur. There are three skins for the devilsaurs available: a greenish black one, a brown one, and a white one. The first one I came across was an
Ironhide Devilsaur, which uses the greenish black skin. This guy was no problem at all to tame; he didn’t hit very hard. I decided that the white skin (with pink eyes!) would fit in better in Northrend. The problem is that the white devilsaurs have a knockback, which they use fairly frequently. Also, the brown devilsaurs have a fear. Both of these mechanics interrupt the (relatively long) channeling of tame beast, making taming these beasts problematic.
It turns out that both of these are tameable. To deal with the fear, I decided to use The Beast Within to become unfearable. Unfortunately, this requires having a pet, but you can’t have a pet while taming. However, the buff persists even after abandoning the pet, so you can pop the ability, abandon the pet, and then begin taming while you are still immune to fear. I also used drums of battle and Chao’s Heroism to speed up the cast time (this strategy will be familiar to those of you who tamed ghost wolves). The white devilsaur was tameable by waiting until it used it's knockback, popping heroism + drums of battle, and taming before it used the ability again.
I love the devilsaur. It has a family specific ability called Monstrous Bite, which increases it’s attack power and causes it to grow in size. It stacks up to three times, which makes for a pretty big beast. Pop Bestial Wrath, and you have a pretty large dino.
One drawback from this pet family is how noisy it is. I don’t mean during combat, but the footstep animation. As Kuruyami of Northrend so aptly put it: “dam thats one loud step”. Although the noise was annoying at first, I have gotten used to it.
Since devilsaurs are pretty new, I get a lot of comments on it while walking around. I'm sure people will get used to seeing hunters wandering around with giant dinosaurs, mauling their enemies...
Also, it seems that there are still some bugs to work out. The pet frame display is a bit strange, and there isn't a swim animation yet.
Here is a gallery of relevant screenshots. See you next time!
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