Deth’tilac provides a pretty suspenseful hunter pet taming challenge if performed solo. I definitely had some fun trying to tame this guy.
Truth be told, Deth’tilac was the first of the rare taming challenge pets that I’d come across after entering the Molten Front for the first time. My initial patrol past his spawn area and BAM… There he was. However, fortune wasn’t smiling upon me that evening.
My first attempt ended with Deth’tilac resetting after I neglected to maintain DPS on him. You must continually do damage to him, otherwise he will gain a speed buff, or possibly reset. You can stay busy keeping him slowed with traps, web, Concussive Shot, etc… but if you don’t at least maintain some sort of damage to him, Deth’tilac can either start gaining on you or become bored and reset the tame.
My second attempt ended with him bugging out. I kited him along the edge of the Forlorn Spire, almost to the Widow’s Clutch, when he just disappeared. I immediately mounted up and rode back to his spawn location where I found him sitting there waiting for me to begin my 3rd attempt.
The 3rd attempt started out great. I managed to get him to within taming range when another hunter shows up out of the blue and starts taming him. Needless to say, I was a bit annoyed with this development, especially after having done all of the work.
I managed to break his tame, then started to try and tame Deth’tilac myself. For some reason my Tame Beast wasn’t working, when at once I quickly realized I couldn’t tame him because my existing pet was dead!
Things got real interesting at this point because I had to: resurrect my pet, dismiss him, keep Deth’tilac at bay and prevent him from one-shotting me, all the while still competing with this opportunistic saboteur of a hunter. Not to mention, I had painted myself into a corner at this point — trying to do all of this from the back corner of the Forlorn Spire, right near the spot where Deth’tilac spawns.
Needless to say, I managed to get my pet up just in time, but Deth’tilac was closing fast. In my flummoxed state I carelessly let my pet get within Deth Strike range, only to watch Deth’tilac commit suicide. I was irritated and embarrassed, so I logged off in frustration, hoping to get another uninterrupted chance at him later in the week.
This morning I decided to park at his spawn area with WoW in windowed mode while I was hard at work in another window. 😉 I had the volume up so that I’d hear NPCScan sound in the event Deth’tilac spawned. Within about 20 minutes or so, that familiar NPCScan alarm went off. Normally this usually means it’s detected a hunter’s pet, but not this time… I brought up my WoW window and there he was.
This attempt marked my fourth try at taming Deth’tilac. All was going well when I mistakenly got a little sloppy towards the end. I carelessly got within melee range of him, not realizing that I was the one with the aggro… not my pet. He one-shotted me. 🙁
I booked it back and immediately started the taming process again. I didn’t bother healing back up because if he hits you – you die. As long as you avoid aggroing the other mobs in the area, it doesn’t matter if you have 1.4k health or 140k health — you just need to avoid his melee attack.
This tame went flawlessly and took me all of about three minutes.
The following is a list of taming advice that I can offer up based upon my successful solo-taming of Deth’tilac…
Garwulf’s Tips for Solo-Taming Deth’tilac
- Have a spider at the ready when you start the tame. There are tons of them in the area, so just grab one of the yellow lava spiders nearby if you don’t have one already. The reason you want a spider is for its 5 second root. You need to keep Deth’tilac snared for the bulk of the taming in order to keep him at bay while you’re pausing to resurrect your fallen pet. Not to mention, he’ll one-shot you if he gets within striking range.
- I highly recommend 2/2 Entrapment for this tame. The 4 second snare for both Ice and Snake Trap are invaluable.
- Lay down an Explosive Trap in his path once its cooldown is available. It’s very important that you maintain damage on him at all times, as not only can he eventually reset, but he gains the Deth Metal buff — making it a lot more difficult to maintain distance from him. Explosive Trap and Snake Trap are both great for keeping DoTs on him during the tame.
- For the same reasons, try to keep Serpent Sting on him at all times. I’d usually hit him with it first thing after I res’d my pet each time.
- Kite him in a linear pattern in the small area along the wall, near his spawn point. This will prevent you from aggroing the nearby mobs on the other side of the wall, plus it lessens the chance that others will interfere with your tame. Also note that you can move past Deth’tilac as long as your pet has aggro. A good technique is to reverse direction and Disengage past him while he’s murdering your pet. Deth Strike has a 2 second cast, so as soon as you see him start to lower his pimp hand on your pet, you can safely sneak by him.
Other than that, just watch for when the Molten Will buff falls off of him. At that point, he’s ready for taming!
The final seconds before you cast Tame Beast are definitely the most tense. It’s likely you’ll need to res your pet, which means you’ll have to immediately dismiss it before the tame. As long as you have Deth’tilac at a good range, with either a Snake or Ice Trap coolwdown available, then he’s as good as yours. 🙂
Provided you have Entrapment, I don’t think any one spec will offer any distinct advantages over another. I tamed him as BM, but MM or SV would work just as well if not better. With MM you have access to Concussive Barrage, which will provide additional ranged slows — and with SV, Resourcefulness can definitely make things a bit smoother due to the shorter trap cooldowns.
Well I hope my tips are of some help to those of you hoping to solo tame this awesome purple lava spider. 🙂
On a side note, during a previous stakeout of Deth’tilac’s spawn point, I tabbed out of WoW for a sec only to find another hunter beginning the tame once I brought up the game a minute or two later. A Blood Elf Hunter with a Tauren DK in tow, proceeded to kite Deth’tilac out from behind the Forlorn Spire, down through to Ragnaros’ Reach. There they attempted to chip away at Deth’tilac’s health little by little. Deth’tilac has over 77 million HPs, which means you’d better pack a lunch if you’re thinking of trying to damage him into taming range.
This was a really lame strategy, not to mention a real hunter should be taming these beasties solo, without the aid of NPCs.
Freakin’ Blood Elves…
After about 20mins of this, they got wise and managed to let the big tree guy in Ragnaros’ Reach draw aggro and soak up the Deth Strike. I thought about helping them, but I was a bit miffed about losing out on Deth considering I’d been the one camping him.
Anyway… after another 10 minutes or so I split and went looking for some of the other rares. After my patrol I headed back to see how the hunter and DK were doing on their mission to tame Deth’tilac. I’m guessing they either died or reset him in Ragnaros’ Reach, because they were back at it near the Forlorn Spire, with Deth back to near full-health.
I decided to help them out this time and demonstrate a bit of the hunter fellowship I so promote around here. I put aside the fact that the SOB stole him out from under my nose, and I sent my pet in repeatedly to eat his Deth Strike.
Within about 2 minutes the Blood Elf hunter had a shiny new purple spider for a pet, and I had one less hunter to compete with. 🙂
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I know this thread is old but it came up on google. I had almost the exact same experience, error for error and idiot for idiot. I am currently waiting on my third attempt. Unfortunately, snake trap does nothing but maintain aggro now. Cheetah aspect saved my hide on a number of occasions and constant concussion shot is a must if you want to live. The dead pet at end game is what screwed me up last time. Got so flustered trying to figure out what was wrong i revived pet only to have it attack again before i could dismiss and it brought deth’tilac down another 10. I lost my cool and accidentally auto-shot (crit) killed him while kiting, waiting to revive my pet so I could dismiss and tame. I felt so humiliated. Third attempt today. Need to figure out how to completely disable autoshot (if you toggle it off it comes right back on when you use an attack)
As a bm hunter i kited him around to the Guardians of Hyjal that were right there by where he spawned, you can make a loop and keep him in that area( found it was easier here if you were soloing, because the druids here drop the vines that confine him for a bit so it’s easier to raise your pet), keep up concussive shot and serpent sting, and drop snake trap and immolation trap, tame at around 10 mill health i think, almost got one shotted at the end of tame, i suggest that you wait till one of the druids drop there vines to give you a bit more time for tame.
You’re honestly better off holding aggro yourself, and kiting him with aspect of the fox on, trapping him often as possible, CS’ing and keeping serpent sting up.
Really easy, no pet ressing, this one just takes some time, took me close to 50 minutes,
I simply chain rezzed my pet and let Deth use his one-shot, since it drains him about 8mil, and as SV, kiting him around his spawn point was fun. Good luck on your tames.
I just kited him the Cernarion guys at the entrance portal. they helped target him. when he was tamable, I just dropped a frost trap and disengaged, then started the tame. pretty easy.
I kited to the sanctuary but every time I tried taming the channeling broke out for no reason.. Now i got the Gem thing.. Crystalline tear of loyalty… I WANT THIS SPIDER!!!!
i know ur pain i had him low enough to tame then this lock stole my aggro got close and killed him self and my spider:/ i got him later that week tho some people are fuck-heads dude if i could delete the toons of ppl that do this to us on this(its alot of work) i would
i had to use a frost DK and prot. Paly today to get my deth. not because i couldnt do it, but because the server restart was in 5 minutes, pretty much the prot paly killed himself and got brezzed, then my pet died and i rezzed him with heart of the pheonix, then for the last 30% i needed by that time, i let the paly die again, now why didnt the DK die? because in addition to my trap and slow shots, his frost abilities helped freeze the spider in place, helping me to rez my pet, so when the time came, i abandoned a pet (STV king kitty) and tamed him while he was frozen in place for a nice tidy tame, afterwards the DK asked if it was special, and i said…well yeah, its blue XD happy day for a tame.
almost got Death today although took a few atempts to get it right. and even then he bugged out so i couldnt tame him. 🙁
Thank you so much for sharing this info. My girlfriend was able to use your tactics along with my help as a rogue to slow him down and got him on 1st attempt.
I loved this article but thought to myself how can I make this easier on myself… I simply kited him over to the quest givers and let them take out his 77 million HP pool. Then a simple tame at max range while the npcs keep him from getting his speed buff.
Grats on the tame, he certainly is a fine looking beastie!
I tamed him together with another hunter – yes I know, the easy way – but we had a lot of fun doing it and since we both didn’t know the tacts back then so it still was a bit of a challenge. Well done on soloing it though!
Mind you, Deth and PSD drake make a great duo 🙂
Thanks for the rare posts Gar and grats on your spider. I especially like the fact that you ended up helping the bloodelf in the end. There’s so much griefing going on with these new rares, and ninjataming/stealing etc, that doing something positive is the right thing to do.
Congrats!
I had another hunter steal my tame as well. As I don’t think these new skins are all that great, especially for a pet that’s really only for PvP (which I don’t really do too much), I’ve decided it’s not worth the frustration or my time. I’d rather be camping for TLPD or Aeonaxx. 🙂
Congratulations on the solo-tame, Gar.
A hunter stealing your tame, kiting to other areas of Molten Front, aggro, and forgetting to rez and dismiss your pet are hallmarks of the Deth’tilac experience.