So here is my report on this nice guy
The black armored boar I tamed with my Orc.
The black armored boar can only be found in a dungeon: Razorfen Kraul. As a level 85 I had no problems goin in there solo, if you are lower level (like 40something) you might want to ask someone to help you. If you come from the northern Barrens flying south it's the dungeon to your right (I always get confused which dungeon is which). The tame itself was easy peasy, I camouflaged my way through the dungeon until I came to a bridge. Under the bridge I saw my new fellow patrolling, jumped down and tamed. Right there:
I named my piggy
Melisande, wanting a female companion for my Orc.
Appearance:
Melisande is basically a normal black boar with silverish armor and some nice turquoise spots. Her armor gives her a really battle-ready look and I personally think she looks great.
When I took the top shot of her, I noticed she and Morga had the same hairstyle
I always thought piggies need to be somewhat bulkier or bigger, but she looks really sporty and sleek. I wanted to feed her something to grow, but well, it doesn't work out as we all know from the northrend worgs.
Sounds and animations:
Melisande's sounds really prevented me from bonding too tight with her. She's constantly squeeking and grunting, even when returning from battle, she runs next to you "squeeeek". I normally love pets that talk to me, but it was just too much with her.
She has several idling animations. One is to sniff the ground and look from side to side.
The sniffing is often followed by the most cutest pet animation, the piggy-butt-wiggle.
This wiggle totally makes up for everything else. I love it. It gives her so much cute personality.
I took Melisande to do the Tol Barad dailies with Morga and went swimming with her. She does a dog-like paddle under water, but always seems to want to reach the surface. I don't think she is too fond of swimming.
Fighting:
Boars are tenacity pets and as such I specced Melisande towards lots of health and avoiding critical hits. So pretty much my personal tank.
Sadly I have to say she didn't do such a good job as I would have expected. We had to kill these ghosts on the part of Tol Barad you only get acces to, when your faction owns it. When she had more than two of those ghosts against her, her health began to drop quickly. I had to use mend pet on her regularely during the dailies, something I never noticed for my bear (he needs a mend pet once in a while, but not so often) and they are specced identically. Melisande did an excellent job against single targets like this one:
In this pic you can also see how big she gets under bestial wrath - quite a difference.
Then I decided to get to Problim (not sure if this is his name in English) solo.
Problim is the 85 Elite mob you have to kill and I have to admit, that Melisande lost less health while fighting him than while fighting three normal mobs. She stomped him right into the ground.
A word about her special ability:
The ability of boars is to increase the bleeding damage taken by the target to 30%. It is quite a nice number, BUT only if you play MM. I think it was the MM specc that makes one of your shots leave a bleeding damage on the target. So her ability is pretty useless for a BM or SV hunter playing mostly solo. And if you want to take a pet to a dungeon that increases bleeding damage, take a hyena - same ability but ferocity talent tree = more dps. So for me the boars ability was something like "nice to have, but useless".
Conclusion:
Melisande is a pretty pet, but I didn't click with her. Her appearance really fits my green Orc, she is pretty. But for Morga playing mostly Bm, her ability is useless for him and his bear makes a better solo-tank. I will release her back into the wild, perhaps in the Barrens, she apperently liked taking the screenshots there or in Durotar where she can start a family with the normal black boars.
Next roll please:
Name: Larkania (Tauren)
Level: 85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: no diseased pets please
Rares she has: Shadowclaw, Gondria, Arcturis, Ankha, Ban'thalos, Magria, Solix, Deht'tilac, Blue Madexx and Karkin (and quite a lot non-rare pets
)
I think I should make a list on what I already did a report on...
edit1: to put in Larkania's rares
eidt2: Pets I already did a review on:
with my Tauren Larkania: Dark Grey Gorilla, Red Nether Ray, Armored brown ghost boar, brown rhino, blue warpstalker, tan wolf, Aotona
with Nerdanel (Belf): green raptor, purple demon dog, purple parrot, blue raptor, blue vulture
Finduilas: yellow beetle, white chimera
with several others: brown scoprid, grey moth, diseased dark brown bear, armored black boar
