How to make a pure Thorns Necro

PC General Discussion
1

I dont get it, why cant i make a pure thorns necro?
Every variation i see uses ShadowBlight, Shadow mages, and no mention of using Iron Maiden or even the Revenge Glyth.

I want to make a viable Thorns Necro, using…
Razorplate, Revenge Glyth, Iron Maiden, all thorns in all gears if possible, but there is NO paragon board specific for thorns, WHY? I dont want my focus to be shadowmages and shadowblight, with corpse tendrils, etc.

Is there any guide or builds out there I can use to get a pure specific Thorns necro build, I need to know what gear, legendary aspect i need, paragon board allocations, which golem and minions to use, etc, to make a thorns necro viable.

And NO, i will not make one based on Shadowblight as its main damage, main damage needs to be from Thorns/Iron Maiden combo, etc.

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2

This sounds like a chance to make something new. Use a build planner and get to work.

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3

nothing is stopping you from making one. you are complaining about not being able to copy/paste one from a website.

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4

A thorns paragon board would be nice. They also need to rework the paragons and give real value to filling up the boards. At this point everyone knows they are wasting points filling them instead of on another glyph.

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5

Try the Necromancer sub forum for help.

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6

just for reference when you build one. i believe stacking armor increases the damage and thorns of the bone golem. friend told me his bone golem does insane thorns damage now that he has like 40k armor.

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I was actually a Thorns Minion necro for most of the season, using a mostly homebrew build:

(WoWhead is putting the ‘best Necromancer…’ caption on it, not me… I assure you, it’s certainly NOT the best… )

I cleared up to T63 Pit with it (pre-patch) and managed to kill all of the Tormented bosses except for Beast and Andariel - I even one-shot Gregoire without any deaths.

I was originally using Iron Maiden instead of Decrepify, but I found I lacked ‘on demand’ damage, so buffed my golem a bit and switched to Decrepify for the DR and CD reduction.

The Cold Mages make all the mobs Vulnerable, all the time, as well as providing stagger, and CC. Hemorrage provided me with constant fortify as well Blood Orbs to keep up my shield from Temerity - Life on Hit and on Kill helps maintain the shield as well. The Sacreligious Ring keeps everyone buffed at all times, and gives me a second Corpse Tendrils - it makes for a very relaxed playstyle too: most things are automated… just curse, spam hemorrage to proc lucky hits/get blood orbs/fortify, and activate golem on cooldown. Watching ranged mobs delete themselves is also very satisfying.

Andariel was a hard-stop for this build: the thorns did a TON of damage to her, but I didnt have enough damage to kill the Tormented Effigies in a timely manner - if we’re not being hit, we dont do much damage! - so I was being stuck in phases where I needed to dodge, and, being clumsy, that all but guaranteed failure. I ended up switching to a homebrew Shadowblight build instead of thorns for Andariel and the Beast, but, ironically, I went BACK to a hybrid thorns/shadowblight build for the Beast when I finally killed him: I was so busy avoiding stuff on the ground (I’m very clumsy so this wasnt often a success :frowning: ) that I couldnt time the Shadowblight combo properly… so I put on Razorplate and let him carve himself up on my boney bois while I was Blood Misting around in a panic.

This build does undermine itself though: there is so much CC baked into it, that when mobs are stunned and frozen, damage drops considerably - as with the Tormented Effigies, the team needs to be hit to do damage.

I’ve been trying to kill Lilith with my Shadowblight build - observing the mechanics - for the past several days… at least 20 hours so far, and several million in repairs… ready to give up on the game out of frustration. :confused:

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Ok thanks. i’m casual, and just looking for something viable, not so hardcore as to need to kill the touchest bosses, just able to handle like Pit 60 is good enough for me. thx. i’'ll brew up something just for the fun of it.

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Literally nothing is stopping you. Go make it and play it. Will it be as min/max as the maxroll builds that people spend hours theory crafting? Of course not, but I bet it’ll be more fun and rewarding that worrying about where someone else told you to put your points and playing the game using instructions instead of by having fun.

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So true. I’m useing maxroll builds as a guide line. I full well I will not get the same affixes, with the same roll ,on the same peices of gear. In the end all we need is a few key affixes and aspects(varries by build ofc) for the build to work.

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I can give you a few tips as someone who is using a thorns necro build right now:

Tip 1: Skeletal Defenders with the 99% damage reduction option are your friend. Taunt may seem like the better choice because enemies will be 100% attacking your minions and not you, but the 99% damage reduction is superior, especially when you’re pushing higher Nightmare Dungeons and Pit levels. They will not do as much damage as Reaper or the default Warriors, but they’ll be taking the majority of the hits and can survive anything that gets thrown at them.

Tip 2: Use Cold Skeletal Mages for extra CC until you get a ‘Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul’. You can get an early version of it from, I believe, the Iron Wolves rep caches for this season. The 925 version of it you’ll have to farm the Tormented Echo of Varshan for it to drop. Once you have that ring swap to Bone Skeletal Mages and choose the version that leaves a corpse when it dies and fortifies you when it attacks. The reason you want the ring is because it automatically casts Raise Skeleton every 2 seconds, which means that while your Skeletal Mages will die (as bone mages lose life with every attack), they’ll be respawned just as quickly.

Tip 3: For your Golem, the best choice is the Blood Golem, second option is best. Your Golem is rarely going to get hit hard enough to make it lose its healthy status, meaning it’s always going to have 25% damage reduction and a 50% damage buff, but if it does get wounded you can activate the golem ability and it will heal itself back up.

As far as gear is concerned, obviously you want to get Razorplate as that is a must for any Thorns build, but other uniques that are mandatory in my opinion are the Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul, as mentioned above, the Ring of Mendeln, which massively buffs your minion damage and Temerity, which is a set of unique legs which give you a barrier whenever you heal above 100% health. You want to combine Temerity with the Conceited Aspect which gives you a damage buff whenever you have a barrier.

As far as damaging abilities are concerned, I don’t like using shadow abilities, so I use blood abilities instead. You can swap things around here though. I only use Haemorrhage (1/5) with the Enhanced and Initiate’s nodes to buff it because I like being fortified, but I use Corpse Tendrils (5/5 with the Enhanced and Plagued nodes) as well for my build to group enemies up and stun them (very useful against blocking enemies or when you want to grab an enemy with damage reduction aura and drag them closer to your minions). Corpse Tendrils is also auto-cast by the Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul as I mentioned above. But if you don’t like Corpse Tendrils, you can swap that out for say, Blood Lance, which is one of my favourite blood skills to use as an essence spender. Obviously Iron Maiden is the curse of choice. You want to cast that on every enemy you see.

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i’ve seen this on the Youtube. Basically you just watch boss attacking your minions and losing all hp with 1 AOE hit.

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Good question.

I bet you could if you dont follow a guide. Saph has some great tips above.

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Guides are useful to get started, especially if you’re trying out a new build (especially with regards to paragon boards, they can be a nightmare to navigate if you’re trying something new) but yeah, I find homebrewing builds to be far better and it was homebrewing that allowed me to enjoy D4 early on since people were freaking out about the ‘lack of builds’ precisely because they were relying on guides at the time.

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Great! thanks Saphelli, i will follow your tips.

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Two more tips:

If you decide to use Grasping Veins in your build (it is really useful for reasons mentioned above, especially with it auto-casting once you have the Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul) use a 1h weapon and an off-hand focus instead of a shield. While you will give up some Thorns for it (around 705 at level 80 with a 925 legendary) you can imprint Aspect of Grasping Veins onto it.

Aspect of Grasping Veins is very useful for increased damage as you’ll get a 25% (maximum) crit buff every time it casts for 6 seconds and enemies affected by it will take an extra 50% (maximum) critical strike damage for 6 seconds. The auto cast, by the way, doesn’t trigger the cooldown for the ability on your action bar, so if you can pay attention to the timing and cast corpse tendrils 6 seconds after its auto-cast, the crit buff can stay active for 12 seconds, leaving only 4 seconds of downtime before your ring auto-casts it again. That might be a bit much for a new player trying the build, but if you can manage it, more damage for you!

If you’re not using Grasping Veins though, feel free to throw a shield on instead for the extra thorns and plug in another aspect of your choice onto the shield. I use Coldbringer’s Aspect for the skeleton mage blizzard.

Second tip and this is a simple one, for your amulet, make sure to imprint Aspect of Occult Dominion on it. That will give you an extra 3 skeleton defenders and mages, which just means more minions body blocking for you and dealing thorns damage whenever anything hits them.

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i built a thorn minions with razor & mendeln. bone golem taunt with golem paragon priority. it’s quite fun, which all that matters.

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i see. ok thanks all. let me level my thorns necro up.

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Amen. I hate Shadowblight. I made a pure Thorns Minions build that doesn’t use it. It can be quite powerful if you do it correctly. I can one shot the WB solo and other bosses like the Blood Maiden. I can sleep walk through NM 100 dungeons. I only started pushing in the pits. I easily finished level 79 pre-nerf of The Pits before I stopped to farm for more gold to take advantage the First Year Anniversary bonuses before they expire.

The key to the build is understanding how Thorns damage works on the Minions and building around that. I would also recommend avoid using Iron Maiden as it’s not an effective skill right now. You’re better off using the skill points elsewhere.

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I disagree.

I’ve found Iron Maiden to be very effective, especially with the right tempered affixes. Since when upgraded it costs no essence to use and instead generates essence, it can be placed on your action bar to be an essence generator instead of using basic skills (Note: Only really works in areas with high mob density, since the essence generation only works once). So not only do enemies take thorns damage by striking your minions, but Iron Maiden also causes them to take damage when striking your minions.

Additionally you could combine using Iron Maiden with Torturous Aspect, which turns it into a darkness spell and gives it a 25% to CC (stun) every time an enemy attacks. Extremely useful, especially against bosses because that CC break bar is going to fill rapidly as they keep attacking your minions, especially when combined with the additional CC from Corpse Tendrils.