Hey guys,
Been messing around with lod thornes and wonder why people don’t use heart of iron more? There are not a ton of great armor options to cube because quite frankly you are wearing all the cool stuff you want to use. Would 10K points of vit outperform 10k strength?
Any other cool thornes stuff going on?
That’s because you equip the Aquila Cuirass and cube the Stone Gauntlets, both of which give you large amounts of damage mitigation, so there’s no room to fit in the Heart of Iron. The Aquila can still have a thorns secondary affix so, whilst it’s not guaranteed like on the Heart, you can still get the same amount of base thorns increase.
That leaves you with the legendary power which gives an increase in thorns equivalent to your 300% of your vitality. Well, let’s say you have 4-5K Vitality. So, you’d gain 12-15K thorns. On a well geared thorns Crusader, you’ll be looking at having 300-350K thorns, so that’s a 365/350 increase, which is roughly a 4% increase. It’s not worth losing 50% mitigation for.
No, for the simple reason that the vitality would increase your base thorns, but strength is a damage multiplier. It’s better to have a slightly lower base value, with a high multiplier than a slightly higher base value, and a lower multiplier.
Further info…
https://maxroll.gg/guides/lon-bombardment-crusader-guide
Here is a better one explaining thorn damage
Diablo 3 Damage Multipliers and Thorns Explained - Maxroll.gg
I know 5k worth of vit isn’t a lot of thorns. I’m more thinking 15-20k, lol.
You get 25% of your main stat as a damage modifier so it’s not like playing a DPS class.
rather 24k-30k because of iron maiden passive, which nets ~10% more thorns
Try and go for a good balance between Your str and vit when useing HoI. Sadly some how other thorns items went in the trash like Hack and Vo’ Toyias. Guess the new Invoker and the pony set made them useless.
Tried both eventually. The base thorn damage outperforms the skill damage str gives it if your multipliers are high enough. With season 25, you get a shard that allows you to crit thorn damage, so imagine this.
It’s the end of season 24, you’re all decked out and paragoned up. You get a perfect hit on a monster with COE peaking. It hits for 15 bajillion damage. You are stoked! Everything dies. Now it’s season 25, same guy with new season gear, you have 100 crit damage on your neck, 50 both rings, 50 gloves and if you are LoN/LoD 50 more on belt. That 15 bajillion damage hit turns into 50 something gazillion hits giving you a 19 and a half tier increase. The above scenario doesn’t have a lot to do with str vs unit of thornes, but is a great example of how powerful thornes will be.
I loved Heart of Iron until I was taking so much damage I had to switch to something more defense. But for sheer damage, it’s a great option.
HoI is 8-18% damage. With perfect gear, Blackthorne pants are a bit stronger but with less than ideal gear (if you’re missing thorns), HoI can be better. You always play aquila so the question is never on really on toughness.
That’s assuming you play LoD/LoN bomb. Of course you would never play HoI on A6I2.
HoI is minor stuff. Here is some perspective…
When I pushed Invoker i had the choice to cube HoI or Strongarms w/ 5.1% knockback. I took Strongarms.
As Kikaha said, HoI’s most practical home is on a LoN build.
It will be more damage with crits, yeah? That 8-18 gets a nice 3x multiplier.
Im going to start with invoker, then switch to Akkan, etc once I get the parts. Eventually lon/lod.