Thorns and its Propose

General Discussion
1

As a returning player and just played the from season 29 to 31.
I would appreciate if anyone could tell me what the above do as Defence or Offence?

Thanks you very much.

2

There aren’t many thorns builds anymore (to my knowledge at least).

Also something here:

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3

The Crusader also has this Bombardment Thorns build, that is much more fun to play than Invoker (but much more difficult to gear properly and to master): https://maxroll.gg/d3/guides/lon-bombardment-crusader-guide

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4

Thorns has always been a “get hit, deal damage”. It is quite odd tbh. However, the thorns crusader is rather good. Not needing to roll for crit chance / dmg, it opens up for a lot of cd reduction and overall toughness

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5

Thorns are worthless in my book.

6

Ahem…

7

They tried making thorns an option for the necro but the damage was never there.

Imho, the reworked Rathma should have made enemies take significant thorns damage from the revive minions in addition to the player’s aotd nuke.

8

Currently tier C build. And like I said. “in my book”. Which means in my opinion.

9

From what I remember, it was the other way around. Thorns necro was OP but got heavily nerfed by Blizz because they deemed the playstyle required to be successful with it was not what they wanted for players. I remember it being super fishy and fiddly - if you lost your thorns stacks halfway through the floor you may as well quit and start again.

I don’t know if anyone else remembers fishing for Blighter?

Edit: the nerf was to Bone Ringer in 2.6.7. h/t to Perusoe’s marvellous wiki article of the patch notes. The pertinent bit here:

  • Bone Ringer
    • Now has a cap of 60 stacks.
    • Developer Note: We never intended for this item to be used in a way where you farm stacks for an egregious amount of time (5+ minutes) and then watch all their health disappear in less than a second. It’s not an engaging style of gameplay, and we don’t want that experience to be the best way to play the Necromancer.
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10

Thorns was a thing for Witch Doctors and Barbarians. In time Witch Doctors lost that privilege as they only had one proper passive for it, then passed the torch to Necromancers when they turned out to be THE summoner with thorns abilities. Until then, the thorns were always in the ballpark of Barbarians and later Crusaders.

Currently, only Crusader can put Thorns to a good use while Necros and Barbs can utilize it in a way. While thorns, could still be viable for Boneringer Necros and LoN Frenzy Barbarians, their power would be very limited compared to Invoker Crusader.
Other classes only use thorns to tag monsters by visible health bars in dimly lit areas and nothing more. Thorns can not critically hit or proc any effect so it wasn’t preferred by any known build, pets or not.

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11

Ah, that does ring a bell (or a bone in this case). But it was the multiplier effect of Bone Ringer on thorns itself, not the damage of thorns based skills/runes and thorns specific necro legendary affixes that was the problem.

I was never a Necro fan… especially not fiddly builds like this. I just remember the Necro having a few few thorns specific legendaries and passives but they never really amounted to much. Spear of Jairo for example… I can’t recall if this was ever included in any end game build.

12

It was a tricksy build but maybe more about luring a juggernaut yellow the length of a rift without breaking your bone ringer stacks on it. so the trick was avoiding getting your elite stuck on certain terrain for 9-10 minutes.

From what I remember the crucial bits were Spear of Jairo (with Topaz), Bone Ringer, Command Skellies, Boyarsky’s Chip (thorns gem) and the thorns passive. I’m sure someone will correct me or add other stuff it required. It was one of the first fishes I watched on Twitch and a weird mix of compelling and awful as the tension built in a rift only for them to lose their stacks on a corner. It was certainly a very different playstyle compared to the other builds on D3, and I think that’s why I liked it.

I realised that the demise of thorns necro coincided with the start of the introduction of new sets so that might be why a number of people have forgotten it… new toys have a way of doing that.

13

Different playstyles keep the game interesting. I certainly find it interesting when players discover effective interactions in the game. The builds that stick out for me:

  • Embodiment of Laziness DH build (S2/M2 I think)… this was the build I used to do my first GR70 or GR75 solo to complete Guardian… but I sure hated the build
  • double generator Monk build… interesting interaction
  • zdps WD that used the Tiki mask to root enemy mobs… so easy to gear up and made rifting in teams so easy
  • zMonk… especially with the insane life regen it granted when first discovered
  • that broken interaction between Sever and the DH’s MfD skill
  • the Bonestorm Inarius/Mirinae build… never made this myself but it certainly looked cool
  • all those reverse archon builds where the damage is done outside of archon

It’s a shame so many interesting builds get killed rather than balanced properly.

I suspect that’s what happened with me.

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14

Thanks everyone, at least learn something new from all. Thanks again.

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15

Easiest build in the game. On a crusader level up your lod gem. Collect ancient non set items preferably with thorns secondaries. Avoid crit everything. Stack str, life, attack speed, cooldown and area damage. Lvl up a thorns gem and stricken.
Eventually through trial and error you learn what works. Or, peek at the no set item leaderboard and get ideas there.