by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Oh Thorns, you’ve been around forever and you even have a set to support you, but you are yet to become a viable option. What is so wrong with Thorns? Lets find out!

How Powerful can Thorns be?

The first thing working against Thorns is the fact that it is a Secondary stat. Secondary stats are meant to be more utility than power, so for those of us who would like to have an entire build based on thorns, are walking an uphill road.

Thorns adds damage output, every build can add Thorns to get a bit of extra damage and while Thorns does provide more damage on tankier specs that absorb hits instead of avoiding them, the damage Thorns can do is severely limited by the fact that it adds power in form of extra DPS.

Thorns cannot be powerful enough on its own, otherwise everyone one that takes damage would be adding it to their arsenals. So in order to make Thorns “viable”, Blizzard has given us skills and items that compliment Thorns.

How much Thorns can we get?

Right now you can get about 35k thorns on your gear. Considering that Thorns only benefits from 25% of your base stat then, you have about 9000 base Thorns damage that scales fully with strength.

In comparison, weapons have around 1500-3500 base damage. The thing is, Weapon Damage doesn’t just scale with strength, it also scales with the skill you decide to use. It also scales with Crit, Attack Speed, Skill Damage, Elemental Damage, and plenty of other stuff. You can see how Thorns damage easily falls behind any kind of traditional weapon damage based builds.

Supporting Thorns

So as a secondary stat, Thorns is meant to be weak. So it should only become viable if you have the right supporting cast. What does Thorns need to become viable?

Basically, it needs synergies. Thorns should deal physical damage and should scale with +Physical Damage gear. Thorns’s main weakness are their weak numerical values so we need things that really pump those numbers up.

Give the Demon Set a little rework, what about the bonuses reading like this:

• 2 set: Your Thorns now deal double damage
• 3 set: Fire Damage is increased by 25%
• 4 set: Your Thorns now deal fire damage.

While you are at it, buff the Invokers set considerably.

Sanguinary Vambraces should be the big hitter, 1000% is just not enough. Maybe 5000% and add an internal cooldown to regulate?

And what about Hack?

Insert Hack.JPG here.

Well hack has two main problems, one is that it only gets half of its benefit when you are dual wielding. The other one is that 75%-100% is a bit low. Would you use a skill that does 175% weapon damage and nothing else? Yeah, 300-400% would actually make Thorns build a bit more interesting. And what about another weapon to make dual wielding hack more palatable?

Slash -Legendary One-Handed Axe

• Secondary:
  • Enemies hit by slash receive double damage from thorns for 5 seconds.

Now you can happily Hack and Slash your way with your Thorns build, but why end there?

Spiked Traveler -Legendary Boots

• Secondary:
  • Every time you walk X yards you Apply Y% of your  thorns damage to all enemies in a 40 yard radius around you.

Maybe a Whirlwind Barb with Mr.Yan’s pants? Or if you prefer to remain stationary:

Iron Maiden’s Guard – Legendary Pants

• Secondary:
  • Gain a 50% bonus to thorns per second for every second you remain stationary,stacking up to 3 times. This bonus is reset 5 seconds after you move.

So these are just examples of items that could make Thorns a viable option, but we also need some skills to synergize with us. Some classes have a thing here or there that would help with thorns, but maybe Blizz should look at some of the least used runes and add a few more tools for those thorns builds.

What if Thorns was a primary stat?

If Thorns was a primary stat, things would really start to get interesting. As a primary stat, the numbers on Thorns would definately see a big raise, in fact Thorns would be absolutely justified to scale with 100% of your main stat. Since you only get 4 or 5 primary stats per item, If Thorns can’t crit, then you would have to make a conscious choice between Crit or Thorns, adding further build diversity.

Now the argument against thorns is that it can be a pretty boring playstyle, waiting for the monsters to kill themselves on your spike wall doesn’t seem like a too compelling playstyle. But what if we make Hack’s legendary ability baseline to all classes? Now you are rewarded for attacking, in fact having Thorns as your main source of damage would greatly benefit support builds as they wouldn’t have to waste two stat slots in both Crit and Crit damage! They could finally afford focusing on Cooldown Reduction, Defenses, and what not.

So what’s the future of Thorns?

ok, this might be the past

Thorns is a pretty interesting mechanic, and with the proper tweaks it could become either a viable niche build or even a mainstream choice. All you have to do is tweak a number here or there and you could give thousands of people a new play style to take to the depths of greater rifts.
The Diablo 3 item and skill system is beautifully designed and allows for very interesting things to be made with it. These systems haven’t been used to their full potential yet, but with every passing patch the game is getting better. The future is bright for Diablo 3, and thorns will eventually get its much needed makeover.