Thorns Minions Necromancer Not in a Good Place in Season 6

Necromancer
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Blizzard killed the end game viability of the Thorns Minions build this season thanks to the entire rework of the gear stats and difficulty levels. While it was always at best a C Tier build, it was good enough in Seasons 4 and 5 to do all the end game content.

However things drastically changed with the massive rework to the game this season. Thorns in general got weaker from the stat squish. Thorns don’t scale as well after this change as they did previously. That’s why you don’t see the Thorns Barb or Thorns Spiritborn doing well as other builds in their respective classes.

The Thorns Necromancer always was the weaker sibling to other classes Thorns builds as bugs and oversights have held this build back including % Summoning Damage not working on Thorns as well the Needleflare Aspect never working on Minions even though Blizzard stated they fixed it in Season 4.

So given all that was holding Thorns back on a Necromancer build, it got exponentially worse in Season 6. Blizzard knows that the Thorns Necromancer is vastly underperforming so they implemented a last minute change giving the Bone Golem an increase from 70% of your Total Armor converted into Thorns when the Golem is activated to a whopping 200% of your Total Armor converted into Thorns.

On the surface this sounds great. Thorns is finally a viable option for the Necromancer. However this change actually made the build even worse in the end game. You start to feel your damage nerfed once you get to Torment 1 as you lose 250 Armor. It gets progressively worse as you increase your Torment difficulty. By the time you get to Torment 4, you’ve lost cumulatively 2,500 Total Armor or 7,500 Thorns from your Bone Golem just from changing your difficulty levels. No other build gets this large of a damage nerf just from changing your difficulty levels.

To try to overcome these built in damage nerfs, you need to stack + Armor and % Total Armor on all your gear and tempers. That means you need to make a 100% commitment to a Thorns build and forgo every other type of damage. Your Thorns build at the end will need to have 20k Total Armor just to do enough damage in Torment 4. Even then only your Bone Golem will be doing all your Thorns damage. Your Skeletal Warriors will be doing little Thorns damage where in previous seasons, it was actually possible to make them your primary Thorns damage dealer.

So the other large problem still exists with this build. How do you do damage to passive targets that don’t proc your Thorns? This season the answer is the reworked Mendeln Ring. However because your build is 100% committed to getting as much Armor as is possible, you don’t have anything left to buff your Mendeln damage. Even without any buffs to CHC and CHD, the Ring of Mendeln will actually out damage your Bone Golem’s Thorns in most circumstances.

This tells you the sad state Thorns is in currently. Even after making a total commitment to putting in as much Armor into your build as possible, you’ll still do more damage from one ring that you’ve put zero effort into supporting.

Unfortunately I’m forced to make a decision now on how I what I want to play for the rest of this season. I can continue with my favorite build in the game and be frustrated at being stuck in the D Tier this season and struggle to play all the end game content, or I can accept the fact that Thorns just isn’t viable after all the changes made to the game, and go all in on making an S Tier build revolving around a certain ring even though it’s not my preference in how I want to play this game.

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I’m playing with my EVERYSEASONTHORNSMINION (hahaha) right now. And I can attest your words. I can’t increase my bone golem thorns, because my armor is always around 1k.

I talked not exactly about this, but about the juggernaut aspect nerf in this thread and how it compromises our builds: https: // Juggernaut's Aspect WEAK

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Thorns, does not apparently work equally among characters.
Apparently on Icy Veins, there are a few very viable Thorns builds, and at least one that is specced around Thorns damage, in the S tier. Just totes sayin…

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I did a search right now and didnt find any thorns build for necromancer on Icy veins. Maybe is because on S6 this archetype is sadly weak to put on a tier…

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I agree that thorns builds are not great this season. I am doing a golem armor thorns build, and after a few days of grinding, the golem proc is only about 600M. T3 hordes is a blast, with bosses almost one shotting themselves, but T4 bosses take quite a while. With end game gear, each proc can potentially be a couple of Bils, but nothing amazing compared to top Necro builds (of course we don’t compare to other classes) especially when thorns damage requires very cooperative monsters.

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Can u show ur build? I find a lot of problems to increase my armor/thorns on this season… Im trying put Spiked armor on all my gear

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I am running something similar to this, but without Shako. I am at about 10k armor in T4, and the golem does about 600m thorns damage per proc when buffed. Still missing some multipliers like hellbent commander, masterworking crits on masteries, and glyph legendary bonuses.
maxrollDOTgg/d4/planner/cv9710zm

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Interesting. U drop “inherit thorns” and put “% armor” on his place. And a unusual Non-razorplate throns golem.

My try to this season is something like this: maxroll _ gg/d4/planner/jp5cy0dd

But im falling on T3… I dont like mendeln because “its just not thorns damage” or something like that for my playstyle.

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Mendeln is also for the mastery ranks. It helps a lot for golem thorns. In my current build, the golem Mendeln proc (with crit) is about 100m, still a fraction of its thorns damage.
Here are some thoughts about the Razorplate:
Why no Razorplate?

  1. The thorns rolls from Razorplate appear quite low compared to what we can potentially get from the golem armor. A Razorplate gives 3-4k thorns depending on how many GAs it has. Also the unique effect of Razorplate while very nice, tops at 10% chance x 200% amp = 20% x buff on average, which is about the same as a legendary aspect such as blood getters, but you lose the golem mastery, and other affixes including an armor roll and one armor% temper.
  2. To fully utilize the Razorplate, we need the thorns inheritance temper (a utility temper) that conflicts with the Soulrift duration temper. In this patch, Soulrift is just too good too pass. For a Non-Razorplate golem thorns build, we don’t need the inheritance temper because the thorns come from armor not from inheritance, so we can temper armor% and Soulrift duration. When we can maintain 100% soulrist coverage, we can then temper other utility slots for spiked armor (from the thorn army recipe).
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Per my previous reply, I think my armor version of golem thorns will be able to farm T4 hordes quite easily in the end game form, but the damage still falls behind top necro builds. With my running setup now, anything in T3 hordes is about one shot from golem thorns, and I was able to get 970 Aether yesterday from a solo run.

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U have a really good point here. I confess that I imagined a build non-razorplate at the end of S5, but I was afraid to put it into practice. U helped me look beyond that. Thank u very much for explanation.

Today I started another build based on Bone Spear + Minions… Up this build will help me to lose my thorns build frustrations and gain a new breath to make him to top again like has since s1. TY again.

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Just as an update before I try other builds: I upgraded most pieces to 12 (random crits), and leveled my glyphs to about lvl 50, the golem thorns procs are about 1.1b

[https://i.imgur.com/RW4rxJE.png]
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Thats is really amazing. When I return to my thorns build, Ill try a mix Armor + Razorplate without mendeln.

Great Feast does same os +2~3 skill to summons bonus on mendeln and I really dislike this ring and crit damage mechanics for a thorns build… But maybe just concept trouble mine.

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I’m in Torment 4, but I’m still using my 3 star 190% Razorplate. I haven’t found a better chest piece to beat my Razorplate yet. I still like using my Razorplate as at least my Skeletons can still do some Thorns damage albeit much less than my Bone Golem versus almost no Thorns damage if I drop my Razorplate.

At this point I’d only consider dropping my Razorplate if I got a Shroud of False Death. Have you considered using Shroud in your Thorns build?

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I have a Razorplate 4GA with 190%…
But I’m going to test a legendary armor with Golem Mastery GA that I found.

The %dmg on razorplate maybe can do difference.

This look’s a good idea. Ill try too. I’ve the armor.

Ahh. I’m trying Fists of Fate with my razorplate and so far it seems to work fine. haha

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That’s almost a perfect Razorplate. Congratulations. I’m already having a hard time considering dropping my Razorplate as it the best one I’ve ever had, but I’d be even more reluctant to drop it for another chest piece if I had yours.

I know Fist of Fate works on Thorns damage from minions, but I’m reluctant to use it for a couple reasons:

  1. I really don’t want to lose an offensive aspect on an already aspect starved build as well as a couple important tempers switching to the unique gloves.

  2. I don’t want my build to be that reliant on luck given how bad Blizzard is in implementing RNG mechanics into the game.

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Im trying FFate because my dmg seems too low…

Im building around bonestorm (Seems more durable a confiable then new ult). But maybe I need sacrifice two or three spiked armor tempers to get soulrift duration…

I decided use Warrior Glyph to give more armor to golem. And to my happiness its works great! Even better than others glyphs ive tested (like amplify, corporeal…)

My plan is this (under construction): maxroll___gg/d4/planner/6ce8w0hv#3

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I don’t think the Shroud is good for thorns. Mathematically the +1 to all passives only gives you ~50% x multiplicative damage (probably less because some passives don’t work with thorns), and it has two dead stats for thorns . On the other hand, a legendary chest can give golem mastery, anther 2 useful stats, and 2 tempers, and one aspect. Assuming you have +5 mastery ranks from the Mendeln, and +3 from skills, then the +6 golem mastery from the legendary chest is a 50% x multi already.
I ran warrior focused thorns back in S4 and was able to clear pit 134 at that time, however in this patch the thorns number from the Razorplate is just too low. If you get a chance you can try the dummies and see how much thorns damage the skeletons are doing. Maybe 30M, maybe 80M, maybe 120M if you push it, and that is a combined total (given they are all hit by the same attack) of like 500M~1B per proc, not great. The mages do very little thorns because they are not often attacked.
From my testing, the armor version of Golem thorns is the one relatively playable in the patch (still needs like 10-50 times buffed to compete with top necro builds). My current setup gives about 4B per proc against the dummies, while being very tanky and with 100% soulrift uptime.

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Another way to show how weak thorns builds are is to compare the base thorns value to the Mendeln base value. You get ~4k thorns from a gg Razorplate, and you may potentially make it to 10k for your minions by thorns inheritance tempers. Yet a Mendeln proc base damage is about 7k already, with higher multipliers (for example Mendeln proc can crit). Plus, thorns have to rely on monster attacks to trigger.

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How u get 100%? Seems amazing. Im running 100% bonestorm (maxroll___gg/d4/planner/6ce8w0hv#3), but im losing 30%dmg from soulrift.

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