I thought it’s the only way for them to proc it
so this is actually a frustrating part of the game design as it miss leads a lot of players. Thorns from minions can trigger abhorrent decrepify so people assume oh thorns is procing lucky hit, but its not its just triggering the lucky hit that is applied to mobs when they are cursed.
What is even more stupid is the wording does not specifcy “your damage” it just states when they take damage, so really it should work from minion attacks too, but that would be far to pwoerful lol.
Ah yeah, pretty weird.
Wait… Minions thorns cant crit? Whats the point of using thorns then? Because in practice (and my construction is focused on thorns), I feel that it is far from being effective.
Thorns was never able to crit. It does not get any bamage multipliers. It is its own thing, you can only scale it with char. level and the amount you can stack it. If Thorns would be based on something, like your damage or minster.damage dealt, than that would be a different story. But it’s separate from everything, and a flat amount if damage you can reflect. That will be lowered by enemy armour and damage reduction.
There’s Iron Maiden that is not Thorns so the combined damage can be better, amd with the new Tortureous aspect it’s niw shadow damage, so maybe that can be multiplied by shadow damage increase, damage over time increase and more damage to afflicted by shadow damage over time.
1 Like
have you tested this? I was told minion multipliers and “global” multipliers worked by a guy on the forums who knows a lot more about minion thorns builds then I. I then tested it early season 2 and it appeared to benefit from both. I am by no means infallible, but those were my findings.
What multipliers for example? Like inherit more thorns for minons? That’s an increase not a multiplier, and vuln and increased damage to afflicted by shadow dmg over time, more damage to close enemies? Those are also damage increase to the enemy if a condition is met. Yes those work, but those are not direct multipliers like crit dmg. Multipliers that increase your base damage does not, because thorns is not based on your damage, it’s separate flat damage that you deal when get directly hit. I think Int. also increases it but does not multiplies it. Nothing has a multiplicative effect on thorns, other than effects that increase all incomeing damage on the enemy.
these are multipliers? They’re dont additives?
Well yeah those are additives. That is what I want to say. You can’t increase thorns damage other than these additives. Multipliers that are strictly considered multipliers don’t have an effect on thorns, because thorns is not based on anything that could be multiplied.
1 Like
all multipliers do, so from paragon multipliers like flesh eater, to blighted aspect as well as minion specific ones like reanimation. Obviously not attack speed 
But the OP has tested and has stated this, I have tested all be it badly and a long time ago, and another guy I know on the forums also tested and showed a video of it.
Again, if you have tested recently maybe we are wrong, they do change things sometimes without letting us know.
edit
@OP
The bone golem patch notes and in game info on its ability and the thorns differ. in game it says 70% of its armour, not 70% of the players armour. Have you tested this? or are you just relaying patch notes? if so I guess ingame would be more accurate?
How? Those increase your damage, your base damage, and aything that is based off of your damage. Thorns is not based off of your damage. BUT! The Spiked Armor passive skill does, and through that these can work. It works through your main stat, and all skill damage that are effected by your main stat. But thorns stast on gear, from emeralds and on Razor plate, without the passive can not be multiplied, because they are separate from your damage that is effected by your main stat.
no idea mate, just seems to work
The minions itself acts as a multiplier. So let’s say you have 18k thorns. Your minions have 9k thorns. You have 12 minions. Let’s say a boss hits you + all of your minions. That’s 126,000 damage. Before Int calc, before additive damage affixes and before vulnerable. In actual practice, the boss would hit you + your melee minions so it’s more like 9x.
Still testing, I found it to match the in game tooltip but the guy running thorns says its player armor. Idk though because increasing minion armor also seems to increase the thorns value so?? Either way increasing player armor will inadvertently increase golem thorns either way.
This only works in theory. At the end of the day your minions don’t tank so in the niche situations where a monster flame breaths, lightning spires, or frost slams, sure. 99% of the time they only get on golem during the 6 second taunt. Bosses and the butcher can just decide to ignore your army all together so it is less of a multiplier and more of a situational happenstance.
i mean its an easy test right? see the damage without any pet armour nodes, then do it with all pet armour nodes on paragon? if it is greater with minion/golem armour nodes active its based on golem armour. also utilizing warrior glyph for this test will help a lot as its a fat 30%.
Just annoying as its a lot of respecing
what I like about this new golem ability is that it can be incorporated into any build as its purely armour scaling not thorns.
Works in practical situations. Try it on Uber Lilith or the Son of Malphas boss type (not Son of Malphas himself, but his boss type which does show up in NMD’s). You just have the Golem + Skirmishers + Yourself crowd around in front of the boss and face tank. The bosses kill themselves.
Does anyone noticed that the passive of the Bone golem that increases it’s thorns from 30% to 50% is not working properly?
Sometimes it’s not activated, you just look at the stats, sometimes the bonus is not there.
As far as I know, this is a bug that has been around for a long time. You need to summon the puppet again to receive this benefit, but teleportation will render it ineffective again
Yeah, it is currently bugged and you have to rezone to reset it.
Hey Bactyrael have you been playing any D4 and more importantly pure minion in season 3?
I would really like to know if you have, what build etc and how you have been finding it.