I love the white fox; so pretty.
So I roll for myself the same way I do for everyone else and I chuckled to myself as the RNG of the /roll system rolled me not just a direhorn, but the brown colored one because, funnily enough, I have that one!
To get a direhorn one must be level 90 and go out to the Isle of Giants or the Isle of Thunder (I don't remember seeing them on the IoT but it's been 7 months since I played). Also, to be able to tame direhorns you need to loot the
Ancient Tome of Dinomancy from Zandalari Dinomancers on the Isle of Giants. It is an RNG based drop so you may or may not get it on your first kill.
Now that that's out of the way, my fiance and I went out together shortly after they first came out with the direhorns to go farm our books and run around this totally awesome island of giant dinosaurs. I think I tamed one of each color before getting stuck between the brown and the red ones. The red blended a little more with Kat's Gronnstalker mog, but the brown one was the one that kept calling me. He exuded this presence and personality that reminded me very much of a friend's hunter that she RPs with and instantly he had a name and I knew he would be the one to keep.
This is Kat and Varethyn.

Once I had a name, there was resemblance right down to the green eyes.
I *love* direhorns. I love that they're large, I love that they're bulky, and I love that they're one of my favorite herbivore dinosaurs brought to life and tamable. T-Rex and Triceratops; I'm a very happy girl.

Not to mention, being a newer skin the markings and quality of these models really stands out.

You can only imagine these guys making awesome tanks with all of those spikes and armor. And certainly don't underestimate that club of a tail.
Despite their fierce appearance, direhorns have a gentleness and a bit of a playfulness to them. They have a couple of idle animations, one of which is to bend their head down as if to eat some grass and then lift it up as they chew a bit. The other is that they look to the left, first just a little bit and then a near full turn of their head. In the pic I captured of the full turn to me it looks like Vare is being a bit silly, though I imagine he's probably more on the lookout (or wondering what Mom's doing over analyzing him and cooing excessively over him).
Direhorn animations appear to be pretty smooth. They have a lumbering run that doesn't feel too clunky and a dino paddle swim. They're pretty basic so not much to comment on there.
Fighting is where things get interesting. The direhorn special ability is called Reflective Armor Plating which deflects spells cast in front of the direhorn for 6 seconds. (I forgot to take a pic of this ability active and the game is currently down for maintenance. =/) While a unique ability, to me it feels a bit lackluster because of the requirement for spells to be cast in front of your direhorn. This requires near perfect setup on the player's behalf as well as for you to be standing behind your pet to be protected. To me, this ability certainly has more use in PvE against caster mobs (which aren't always super common or necessarily troublesome thanks to Counter Shot) because PvP is too unpredictable to get the best use out of this special. So for now, direhorns are just really fun and cool looking pets to have around that I bring out to use because I'm attached to him and not because I feel like I benefit from his special ability.
Take my words with a grain of salt though.

I'm only an average player, at best, and, at the time I originally tamed this guy and did the majority of my playing with him, I was running a resto shaman main so I didn't spend a lot of time testing this ability. And I forgot to test it again when doing this report. I'm sure there are plenty of players who do get use out of this special and they're definitely the people to get a second opinion from. I just think it's too clunky and not worth the hassle. Major kudos to those who manage to use it without a problem.
Now, onto other combat related things. Direhorns start out as tenacity, but of course you can swap them to any other spec so long as you're out of combat. I accidentally treated Vare as if he were a tank for the purpose of this challenge without realizing I had him specced in ferocity. xD Thank goodness I didn't find any rares that day!

Anyway, I pitted him against a mogu mob to get a look at how direhorns fight. They have a couple of neat animations, one where they stab their enemies with those brutal horns on their head and the other swinging that club like tail at them.
Overall I really love direhorns, lackluster pet special or not. The model just seems really well done and I love really large pets. They're fierce, they're goofy, they're a lot of fun to have by your side. And, as a bonus, there's an entire island full of nothing but awesome dinosaurs where they live at. xD I definitely think that every hunter I level will have a direhorn (if I level more than 1 or 2

).