The Saberstalkers are one of the factions you’ll have encountered in Tanaan Jungle. Like the other factions in Tanaan they offer a couple of mounts, but unlike the other factions you’ll not be able to just do daily quests to gain the reputation or items to purchase the mounts with.

The mounts require both reputation with The Saberstalkers and Blackfang Claws to purchase them. Both are earned by killing mobs in Fang’rila.

	The Wild Goretusk requires you to: Be honored with The Saberstalkers Costs 1,000 Blackfang Claws
	The Bristling Hellboar requires you to: Be exalted with The Saberstalkers Costs 5,000 Blackfang Claws

So to get both mounts you’ll need 6,000 Blackfang claws. With the mobs in Fang’rila dropping from 2 to 12 Blackfang claws each you’ll need to kill from 500 to 3,000 mobs to get enough claws for both mounts.

The downside? These are elite mobs in Tanaan and not only put out a lot of damage, but also have a lot of health. They range from ~980k to 1,400k of health. Oh and they tend to come in packs as well.

When 6.2 was released I joined one of the many Saberstalker reputation groups who’d run around killing mobs to get revered with the Saberstalkers as a part of gaining the Tanaan Diplomat achievement, one of the requirements for the Pathfinder achievement for flying.

Unfortunately the Blackfang Claws aren’t shared loot – in a group you’ll find that only the person whose loot it is will get the claws. This meant that I got to revered with the Saberstalkers with only ~900 claws or so to my name. Enough that with a little bit of work I could get the 1,000 for the Wild Goretusk, but nowhere near the 6,000 needed for both mounts.

Whilst I got some claws from Tooth and Claw daily quest you’d sometimes be offered, it was going to take a long time to get the 5,000 for the Bristling Hellboar. Plus, there was the achievement I Came, I Clawed, I Conquered which requires you to loot 5,000 Blackfang claws to gain the title “… of the jungle” and the daily quest doesn’t count towards that.

The mobs we’ll be killing have some annoying abilities; the Blackfang prowlers and Blackfang Savages have a knockback. The Blackfang Shamans have a heal and a damage reduction buff they put on themselves. The Blackfang hunters have a net which roots you in place.

The map below shows where we’ll be farming; I found it easiest to farm in three set locations. The time to kill each set of mobs meant that by the time I was finished at the 3rd position, the mobs at the 1st were up again. This assumes that no one else is doing the same thing!

I was going into the area to the west of position three for a little bit, but stopped doing so when someone else started to farm there as well. It just didn’t make sense to compete for the same mobs – especially since the three sets of mobs were letting me farm pretty much continuously.

The skulls on the map above are from the addon RareFinder which also marks rare elites you’ve killed already. It handles any Draenor rare, not just the ones in Tanaan.

There are seven mobs in this area, only one of which patrols around. There is also the rare spawn Soulslicer <Corrupted Shaman> who doesn’t drop Blackfang claws. It does give 600 Saberstalker reputation, but you can avoid pulling it if you don’t need the rep.

There is a pair of patroling mobs – a prowler and shaman. There are is a prowler & shaman static pair. In the right hand side cave there is a single shaman. In the left hand cave there are a couple of prowlers and shaman. The rare Gloomtalon <Clawshaper of the Blackfang> can spawn in this cave as well; again, no claws from this, but it does give 600 Saberstalker reputation. Unfortunately given its location in the cave you’ll need to kill it if even you don’t need the reputation as it blocks the way to a number of other mobs.

A cave with a prowler & shaman pair, a patroling pair of the same and some shaman and a hunter make up this area.

These are nasty mobs to solo – they’ll tend to come in packs and often you’ll be fighting 3-4 at once. You’ll need a suitable character for this. This means one of:

• A well geared tank
• A reasonably geared beastmaster hunter
• A well geared warlock
• A well geared class with lots of self healing and DPS output

Out of these, I went with my main, a shadowpriest. But what do I define as “well geared“? Well, he currently has:

• Average item level of 714
• Legendary DPS ring with ilvl boosted to 759 which means the on-use buff is to ~31%
• 2x and 4x piece tier bonuses

But he wasn’t alone in the fight here! My bodyguard of choice is Leorajh as they do a good amount of damage, can heal and as a trusted bodyguard (level 2) casts bloodlust which is a lovely DPS boost. Leorajh is a reward from Leorajh, the Enlightened in Spires of Arak.

I also make use the Mage Tower buff – Rune of Power. This is a rune which appears near you from time to time – you’ll need to move onto it to gain the buff, bit like the old style rune of power arcane mages would use. Once on it you’ll have a 100% critical strike chance.

My shadowpriest uses the Auspicious Spirits talent so that every shadowy apparition gives me a shadow orb to play with. Each time Shadow Word: Pain has a critical hit a shadowy apparition is generated.

Thus if my priest DoTs up lots of mobs and then stands in a rune of power he’ll have a large number of shadow orbs generated. Which in turn means I can cast Devouring Plague a lot. That not only does a lot of damage, but also heals my priest for a good amount as well.

Also thrown into the mix is the Guardian Orb – the ability you gain by having the Arcane Sanctum as your garrison outpost in Talador. Given some of the buffs they give, the Sparring Arena is another good choice, although you can’t control the buff you get.

Using all of these I found I could solo packs of around six mobs. Going over that started to get painful and I found dispersion very handy when I accidently had a pack of 9 on me!

I saved some Skada details for the DPS done to give you an idea of the damage output required, along with the healing needed. Its worth noting that whilst a shadowpriest does wear cloth, shadowform increases your armor by 100% so you’d have more physical damage reduction than on most cloth wearers.

Thanks to all of the mobs clustered up on you, the Guardian Orb is incredibly powerful – shame it has a 5 minute cooldown!

But the legendary ring proc is a good amount of the damage done. And with the mobs clustered up, they’ll all get hit by the end of the proc. Watching that kill off mobs which were close to death was very satisfying.

With no buffs up you can see just how handy Leorajh is to have around – they do a good amount of damage and throw in a debuffless heroism?

The healing you’ll need is fairly high – below a lot of my healing was from devouring plague, along with Power Word: Shield and a touch of vampiric embrace.

Overall it took me around three hours of continual farming to get the 5,000 Blackfang claws I needed for the Bristling Hellboar.

The upside is that you can see your progress and you know that if you’ve farmed up 3,000 Blackfang claws that you’ve only got another 2,000 to go – you don’t have the circuit of disappointment drops to contend with! The Rarity addon tracks the number of claws you have in your inventory & lets you know when you’ve gotten the 5,000 needed – a nice feature.