Dire troll

Dire trolls or berserkers are especially large and powerful trolls.

Description
A small number of trolls are strikingly larger and more heavily muscled than the rest of their brethren, though there is no racial distinction between them and the rest of the troll race. A variety of reasons might be behind this unusual size and musculature. For example, they might have been altered alchemically or magically, or they might also simply have been born larger than average. Regardless of the day-to-day prejudices that these trolls must contend with from other races, dire trolls are not regarded as monstrous by other trolls. Zandalari troll children can be seen riding upon the backs of dire troll children.

Among the military of Zandalar are the elite dire trolls. These trolls are warriors who have perfected their arts, traded portions of their lives for the dark gift of brutal strength, and serve Zandalar as her greatest weapons of war. Long ago it was decided that the Zandalari dire trolls should always have a seat on the Zanchuli Council, to ensure that those specials needs of the elite warriors were met by the government, and to provide the wisdom of war to those councilors who may seldom see a battlefront. Dire trolls are short lived.

During the Gurubashi War, Zan'non used the forbidden blood magic of Hakkar the Soulflayer — a trick he had learned from his father Jok'non — to transform a few Gurubashi trolls into hulking berserkers possessed of otherwordly strength. These mutated giants climbed the walls of Stormwind City and proceeded to rip its soldiers to pieces. This is similar to how the transform orcs into dire orcs with blood magic.

In Zul'Drak, the Scourge attempted to create dire trolls known as "Blightblood Trolls" by infusing Drakkari ice trolls with crystallized blight, but their efforts were eventually stopped by adventurers.

Female dire trolls can be found within blood troll society. Aka'ali the Conqueror was a female Zandalari dire troll princess.

Some trolls are capable of turning into dire trolls and back at will.

Notes and trivia

 * Several Zandalari dire trolls have the title of "Siegebreaker".
 * Many dire trolls have eyebrows, a trait not often seen in trolls.
 * Bucktooth Busta and Happy Jolta are two dire troll children found in Zuldazar.
 * Prior to patch 5.2.0, dire trolls used the same skeleton and animations as wights. After patch 5.2, they instead use a more upright and fluid animation skeleton, which is also used by Draenic dire orcs.
 * Dire trolls may be an adaptation of the original idea of the troll berserker, which were originally trolls altered by goblin alchemists to become nearly unstoppable in battle.
 * Several trolls hold the moniker of "berserker" and are capable of turning into dire trolls at will, such as Battok the Berserker and the Gurubashi Berserkers.
 * No friendly dire trolls are seen among the Darkspear tribe, though the Darkspear that composed Zalazane's forces during Zalazane's Fall included dire trolls.
 * Dire trolls are rather inconsistently displayed across their tribes in terms of skin color. Many dire trolls will be a plethora of random skin tones despite their origin tribe. Examples such as Korrak the Bloodrager, a Winterax troll, who are known for having pale white skin, is displayed with orange skin despite white-skinned dire trolls existing. The best example of this can be found in Zul'Gurub, where the various Gurubashi dire trolls throughout the dungeon are nearly every skin color available to the model despite being from the Gurubashi tribe.
 * Matthew McKeown Senior Character Artist at Blizzard created the Zandalari dire trolls, as well as updated the original dire trolls for Battle for Azeroth.