New hunter pet families in Warlords of Draenor

Warlords of Draenor is introducing five new hunter pet families, bringing the grand total to 48 different families. It’s kind of disturbing to think that we barely have enough stable slots to house one pet from each family. Many families will remain unrepresented in my stables unfortunately (WTB more stable slots), but these five new families will not be among the excluded.

One of the new families (Clefthooves) is a rename of an existing one to incorporate some new beasts, but the other four are brand new.

• Hydras
• Clefthooves (Exotic) — formerly known as Rhino
• Riverbeasts
• Stags
• Rylaks (Exotic)

First things first, you can check out the below video I made previewing the new families.  I picked a handful of pets from each family to show off. It is by no means an exhaustive list, if it was I would have never finished the video.  I recommend fullscreen 1080p for this one. Lots of cool scenery! Enjoy.

Hope you enjoyed that. It took quite a while to make! If you’re wondering, the music is from the Warlords soundtrack (Khadgar’s Plan).

Now for those who don’t want to watch, or want some more detail, below is a breakdown of the new pet families.

Hydras

There are 3 types of Hydras, and one unique model (Chimaeron). Hydras are fairly noisy pets, so they won’t be for everyone. They can be found all over Azeroth, Outland, and Draenor. Petopia already has a listing of most of them. Including the Draenor ones, there’s approximately 18 different hydra looks available for taming.

Hydra Abilities:

• Keen Senses: Increases mastery by 550 (at level 100)

Clefthooves (Exotic)

The Rhino family (previously introduced in Wrath) has been renamed to Clefthooves. Rhinos remain in this family, but have been joined by the clefthooves of both Outland and Draenor. It was smart to merge these two together since rhino’s only have 4 looks available, and all are very similar. For the new clefthooves, there are a handful of color variants in both Outland and Draenor. There are also some special ones like Giantbane, a mount version. He is currently tameable in the beta, let’s hope it remains that way.

Clefthoof Abilities:

• Wild Strength: 5% multistrike and 3% versatility buffs
• Thick Hide: When falling below 40% health, the Clefthoof’s skin will thicken, granting 50% reduced incoming damage for 12 sec. This effect can only occur once every 120 sec.

Riverbeasts

WoW’s hippopotamus analog is the newly introduced Riverbeast. These guys are only found in Draenor and come in 5 colors (that have been datamined so far). These are really cool pets with some great attack animations. My only problem with them is their chosen ability, the Mortal Wounds debuff. It’s not a pet I would use very often in a practical sense. I would have preferred if they came with an actual raid buff.

Riverbeast Abilities:

• Mortal Wounds: Target takes reduced healing (actual ability isn’t in the build yet, I’m just going by what the patch notes say)

Stags

Stags have been a long time coming. Hunters have been begging to tame these since the earliest days of vanilla. The Stag family includes all of the stag variants from Azeroth and Pandaria along with the talbuks of both Outland and Draenor. You can even tame those little level 3 Gazelle’s from Barrens and Mulgore. The Pandaria stags and Draenor talbuks are my favorite by far. I’m hoping we get some unique looking rare stags to tame at some point.

Stag Abilities:

• Grace: Increases versatility by 3%

Rylaks (Exotic)

Rylaks are essentially Draenor’s version of a Chimaera. You may be wondering why are they not lumped into the Chimaera family? Unlike Chimaeras, Rylaks do not fly once tamed, they spend all their time on the ground. Secondly, they don’t seem suited to elemental damage like a regular Chimaera. That being said, I don’t think it would be a big deal to just merge the two. The only thing I wouldn’t want to lose is their slow fall ability! As of this writing, they’re still classified as Chimaera’s on the beta, but according to the patch notes this will change by launch.

I regret to say that one of the Rylaks featured in the video (Twinbreath Skystalker) has already been changed to untameable. The video was already rendered and uploaded, and I didn’t think it was worth it since we’ll probably see a similar looking one (minus the riding saddle) anyway. The saddle is likely what got it removed from tameable status, but that’s just speculation. There are very few pets with saddles.

Rylak Abilities:

• Savage Vigor: 5% haste and 10% stamina buffs
• Updraft: The rylak beats its powerful wings, slowing the fall speed of both itself and the hunter for 30 sec

And that’s not all…

On top of this are all of the other new pets being added to existing families. There’s way too many to cover in this post, but you can see some of them by following the Pet of the Week feature.

Also, please keep in mind any of this could still change before launch. Now watch Muffinus throw in yet another pet family a few days after I post this… 😉