Agreed. I was disappointed to see that none of the bugs related to Thorns with Minions were addressed. There’s a tiny remote chance that it did get addressed, but it didn’t make the patch notes as stealth bug fixes are thing in this game, but I’m not holding my breath that the bugs have been fixed.
Also you correctly pointed out how difficult it is to get a good tempering results with the Thorns Army book as two possible rolls are automatic bricks. I still can’t believe the devs think getting a Thorns buff on Mages is actually something that is desired. It just shows you that no one there actually plays this build.