" This will allow Thorns to have a more consistent combat performance instead of unpredictable and riskier results."
You mean ‘Thorns will now act as ‘always on damage’ to homogenize the skill with everything else, and make sure it is not nearly as useful against high melee damage mobs’
Thanks for destroying any reason to take this skill over Might on mercenaries.
Yea I’m not sure what the point of this change is. Is it going to hit spellcasters too or something? Thorns actually worked pretty good through all difficulties. The other damage return sources like spirit of barbs and iron maiden were just kinda lame compared to it. Hopefully it ends up being a buff overall.
I think it will be weaker now where it used to really shine: against bosses.
My first Diablo kill back in middle school was with this skill (before LoD). He killed himself in four swipes on normal difficulty… bwuahahah. 
So much fun.
Difference is. It doesn’t just deal damage when hit. When attacked, when blocking and when hit. It will fire off. Until we get in and play it, we really dont know.
I hope that’s the case.
“Thorns no longer returns a percentage of damage when hit. Now thorns will deal a flat amount of damage when the aura-effected targets are attacked.” Doesn’t say with melee, just attacked.
So where were you using thorns to great effect?
I don’t know about “great effect” but my early-ladder, practically-naked summoner necromancers would use the “edge” bow runeword on an act 1 merc that gives level 15 thorns and it would carry him through nightmare and hell difficulties, albeit extremely slowly with much minion death and resummoning. The might aura from act 2 mercs is not as useful until you get a decent amount of +skill gear beefing up the skeletons. It actually made Baal’s last set of minions kill themselves pretty darn quickly, even in Hell. Also the frenzy minataurs in act 5. Most other things were slower to kill themselves.
The flat +damage would have to have silly big numbers to match the current 800% damage return (at level 15) when calculated with really hard-hitters like act bosses and those things I just mentioned.
As a Paladin I did get it to the 1000% returned at level 20 and it was very fun. But that Paladin only made it halfway through hell, and this was before LoD came out.
We also don’t know what the damage is actually going to look like. It just says deals flat damage not a percentage of damage dealt. It will be fun to test Im sure.
As for where I might use it. Poison Necro and Bramble armor (as I enjoy killing things more than teleporting around, personally.). I also summon skeleton so having the Bramble Aura and Might. Could be fun.
Thorns was useless outside of some cheese strategy in normal anyway. If you used thorns outside of normal, you were playing wrong. The damage is pitiful in higher difficulties.
Thorns is currently bad and will probably still be bad. Its never been a good mechanic in any game its been in because turns out its faster to just nuke monsters than wait for them to kill themselves on you.
Only situation i can see it being worthwhile is as an additional source of damage for always slow builds like Summoners or non-necro poison builds.
I do want to try a cheesy Rabies + Thorns summoner Druid build double stacking Bramble and maxed Spirit of Barb and Wolves just to see if it can actually work lol.