Please Buff Thorns

PC General Discussion
1

It’s one of my favorite playstyles ever since it was introduced in D2, and it annoys me that only 2 of the classes have any form of synergy with it.

I’ve been trying my absolute best to make it work, and this season I have had huge success for the most part with my Barbarian, however there are still some sticking points.

For starters, Thorns damage itself is kind of vague; I’m assuming it’s Physical damage, but confirmation would be greatly appreciated. It also annoys me that at least as far as Necromancers go, Needleflare not working on Minions frankly blows (but that belongs in a greater discussion about minions)

Beyond that, there’s the Jagged VP which I’ve been running and it’s awesome when it goes off, however there’s 2 major problems with it;

10% is honestly a joke, it should be at least 25 at level 3 to have any realistic hope of triggering during boss battles, to say nothing of the utility lost from other powers. Also, WHY does it Chill ?! The whole point is to get hit, so why in the world does it apply chill ?!

Razorplate is in dire need of an overhaul. It’s a pretty fun item on paper and legitimately one of my favorites in the game. But it offers absolutely zero defense or utility. Upgrading it doesn’t increase the Thorns either.

This would be somewhat tolerable if the Thorns value was much greater (also, Thorns scaling with Item Power is also a big concern) but as I understand it, it caps out around 19k on a 925.

It’s actually probably the biggest thing holding back my Barb from being able to tackle the upcoming AoZ (getting a Doombringer would be a massive help but I can’t count on that). Oh and not a single Paragon Board has any real support for it - even the Revenge Glyph isn’t that great.

TL;DR either make Thorns viable, or please stop teasing us already and just nix it.

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Thorns is actually true damage and will deal its exact damage value back to the attacker (does not apply for PvP only PvE). On the bright side it can Crit, and also takes into account affixes such as close to target, healthy/injured, etc. There’s also no damage range, if your thorns is 1k it will deal exactly 1k to the target, not 850, not 975, just 1k which is nice.

I can’t really comment on the viability of it as I haven’t made a barb like this myself, but it’s always looked fun. I’ll just go off your assessment and agree it needs changes for sake of argument until proven otherwise.

3

I’ve got a level 100 thorns barb which is pretty decked out in decent gear. NM 100’s are a snooze fest. Imo, Doombringer isn’t really recommended because you handicap yourself by sacrificing vital stats and affixes. I’ve tried with and without DB and I always go back to my non unique weapon. The only thing I’d like to see as a season theme or even a permanent implementation would be to apply aspects to Unique’s or at least let me apply an aspect to my Razorplate.

5

Steel Grasp does that. Gives you Berserking and Vulnerable. With Ancient’s Oath or 3 Charges, you can spam it. You can technically can get up to 4 Charges, it just isn’t advisable to give up Berserking for Warrior’s Steel Grasp.

2 Likes
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Thornes was probably the easiest NM100 I’ve ever done. Plus easier lvling than most. The trick is to not load up on thornes itself. You get the key passives, skills, aspects, powers for it. Then you load up on your main stat, life, to the highest levels you can. Razorplate should be thrown out of the game imo, it gives people bad build ideas.

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D3 had an axe that let you apply thorns by attacking. Let us get that bad boy in this game, plz!!

8

that axe was/is broken. it just hit the one target with no multipliers. lets pick something better to take :=) lol

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Thorn damage is fine as it is. Blizzard hates AFK farming. no way they’ll allow thorn builds to just sit there away from the keyboard gaining items passively. Nor will the dev turn thorn builds into a walking simulator kills mobs along the way without any input.
Also thorn can’t kill goblins…

10

Right because Ball Lightning isn’t totally brain dead.

How are people farming 100’s with Thorns if I may ask?

In general, I look for Max Life, Thorns, Damage While Berserking and Berserking Duration wherever possible, with Crit & Lucky Hit on rings and gloves.

I also run the Battle Trance for extra stacks of Frenzy for more DR and damage.

Final setup would ideally include Shako & Doombringer but I’m painfully aware that’s wishful thinking (can’t even find a decent Ramaladni’s).

I’m also starting to second guess using the fortify aspect; It works great will the build, has a lot of synergy since I don’t spend any fury (though Rama will drain it if I ever find a good 925) but I’m thinking Might is probably better… I just like it for the reliable source of Fortify

My biggest problem is likely that I don’t have Total Armor rolled on anything, and that’s probably what I’ll end up swapping Thorns rolls for sadly :confused:

11

So you just want another brain dead playstyle but on a different class? Did you know, the Codex of Power Death Wish aspect grants more thorn than extracting the same aspect from an item?

12

Nothing wrong with brain dead playstyles, button mashing on every freaking cooldown is so tiring. It’s a non competitive game, let active users have their cake, let brain dead plays have theirs as well.

Thorns are not all godly in PVP against firewall Sorcs since it doesn’t proc thorns. There’s always counter to something.

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As a filthy rogue im dreaming of a unique crossbow… shooting glowing poisoned discs with thorns on the edge that fan out at impact doing "orb"sorc damage to all enemies :heart_eyes:

Or how about a slim but deadly hot looking dark eldar rogue gathering enemies by swinging a whip while damaging the enmies with thorns. Whats left over will by finished by a swing of a stylish katana sword or sawblade.

14

we have some nice threads in the barb boards about thornes. the fun thing to do this season is mix it into frenzy. come and visit to get some build ideas.

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Right, it’s fun to mix things up and in PvP there’s nothing that auto wins in all scenarios (like you said DoT bypasses thorns) though the devs aren’t really balancing PvP anyway lol so eh.

My point is just that the devs shouldn’t jerk us around with this mechanic as they seem to keep dancing around the edges with it.

As for the whole notion of it being a brain dead playstyle, that’s not entirely accurate. It’s not as though you can just slap on a bunch of gear with Thorns, go AFK and call it a day (though that somewhat is the goal lmao)

Which circles back to my primary gripe about how badly imbalanced endgame is. I like taking Thorns as an entertaining means of turning defense into offense.

But I’m not really rewarded for that, as basically every build is forced into maxing armor, life and resistances wherever possible due to the ludicrous amounts of damage enemies throw at you. It’s turning into Diablo 3 again and I positively hate that.

Like why do Chest pieces even roll offensive options when you’re forced into taking as much defense as possible? Also rings and amulets not rolling attack speed annoys me greatly but that’s a separate topic.

Some folks might not wanna hear it, but we need another patch similar to season 1’s, but on a less drastic scale. They totally overcorrected. The beta gave the impression that D4 was going to be slower, more methodical combat and I was excited for that.

But right now it’s just Diablo 3.5 with some builds hitting for a billion or more damage and enemies killing you in 3 hits or less if you don’t have 13k armor and all resistances maxed it’s stupid.

They had all these trailers way back talking about how all the different enemy types had their own distinct mechanics and you’d have to approach them differently. That’s all out the window.

Nerfs need to happen, both to players and monsters.

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i guess you weren’t around during the beta where players stack thorns into 30k. Or see Beta Butcher OHKO itself against a barbarian thorn build. Don’t forget that this is at level 20. Yeah, thorn got nerf before release. It’ll stay this way for a bit longer until blizzard decide to add in something interactive to thorns.

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I played the betas but didn’t really touch Barb much either time or Thorns.

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I do not understand why any build is not “suitable” for the game, even if its a “brain dead play style”. different people like different play styles.

If blizzard do not what that play style in the game why have the concept in the game at all?

No one is saying that it needs to be the best build in the game, only viable.(this applies to both thorns and minions)

The more diversity, and build fluidity you have, the more people will have fun with the game, and games should be fun for as many people as possible.

19

Good point, although precedent of applying thorns via attacks is the important part.

That item was such a missed opportunity in the diablo 3 system.