Removed thornflesh?

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Kalidor wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

Wow. Hyperbole much?

If casual players come and try to do crit builds they will run into a whole host of problems, including but not limited to the complex mechanics and difficulty of many map bosses/bloodlines mobs.

Thornflesh was the ONE thing standing in between PoE being difficult and falling to pieces like D3, huh? Cool, so I expect no more deaths in hardcore leagues from now on! Now that nobody needs to pay attention to any mob affixes nobody will die from this moment forward. Level 100s for everyone!

Nope...

Over the years they doing their game more approachable to noob/casual players (more $$$ of course) , which at least in my opinion since the CB only hc players (elitists) existed , while the game right now is divided for casuals and for hardcore players.

So they HAVE to remove some hard content for casuals, or nerf to the ground normal mode to welcome more players.

A lot of casual/d3 players who play PoE want Crit! so GGG hears their whine about thornflesh and they simply did it.

You wont expect no more deaths in hc leagues dude, but more crit builds would appear, more clear speed, more like d3, but rips would still exist. Game wouldnt be easier if they remove this mod, but they've changing their direction slowly by removing/changing small things.

All in all the meta is changing in a way that more players want to try the game in a way more casual.
Still hc players would be there but not like the old days.


I remember GGG saying "we made this arpg that we wanted to play" but right now its like "we made this arpg that they wanted to play"

I prefer an arpg that everyone wants to play. There's is plenty of extremely challenging content and hardcore gameplay available in PoE, which is still overall a difficult game. High level maps, Act 4 merciless, atziri - I'm sure GGG is going to add more and more. But for the larger group of players - still dedicated, still willing to put in thousands of hours - who want to play mid-to-high 70s maps, reroll new characters, and play temp leagues, offscreen one-shot mechanics were a huge turnoff.

Besides normal difficulty, I'm not even sure what content exists in PoE for true "casuals." I have a hunch you regard anyone who doesn't play hardcore leagues as "casual," but if so that's not actually a realistic view of the gaming population. Putting many thousands of hours of work into characters, trading, and build design is far from casual. It's not casual to want a broader variety of builds to be able to handle endgame content, either (by "endgame" i mean maps - not necessarily the absolute hardest content or bosses).

People who have posted all the ways a character can deal with group reflect seem to have neglected to mention that the game has FAR more possibilities for builds than can actually make use of those limited - and rather gimmicky - mechanics (flasks being an exception). Listing five ways to deal with group reflect might seem like a lot, but there are a hell of a lot more builds than five in this game. And I'd rather they be able to pursue their own methods of defense without flocking to the same few items or strategies. Builds that can deal with reflect can run maps with the reflect mod - great! That gives them an advantage. But many builds can't, and getting killed before you can even react (that's not an exaggeration, although I'm sure I'll be accused of exaggerating) takes away control over the consequences of our choices/map mods.

Thornflesh was not necessary to prevent people from making bad builds or "casual" crit builds (as if crit builds weren't expensive). But it did limit build diversity, and I'm glad it's gone.

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demon9675 wrote:

Thornflesh was not necessary to prevent people from making bad builds or "casual" crit builds (as if crit builds weren't expensive). But it did limit build diversity, and I'm glad it's gone.

Now that Thornflesh is gone, there is no limiter for mega-dps (predominantly crit) builds.
Build diversity is going to suffer because of it; not improve.

This is certainly making the game a lot easier, for better or for worse.

I don't see why this had to be removed entirely. There are so many other terrifying bullshit ways to die that don't exist in normal + cruel or are restricted to maps only. At least just move it to maps or even restrict it to only appearing if the more magic monsters mod is rolled on maps. The reflect map mod exists anyway, no reason to keep thornflesh out too. Or even just buff the reflect rares, those things do pretty much nothing currently. I understand wanting to make it easier for less experienced players to get to endgame, but maps are supposed to be the top level hardest stuff around, with no punches pulled.

What builds are even scared of getting oneshot offscreen anyway? Ranger/Shadow bow builds evade and dodge their own attacks as long as they maintain reasonably low accuracy. Wand builds can block and also tend to have bad accuracy. Both can take vaal pact or run life gain on hit. It sucks for explosive arrow, but I was running that in tempest and managed to not die to offscreen thornflesh multiple times simply by not max stacking fuses. Is there any other build that is even capable of dealing enough damage in one hit to kill itself before you can pop flasks? Maybe flameblast, but if you actually intentionally channel offscreen you can just pop ruby to be safe.

I don't know, there have been plenty of complete bullshit scary things put into poe over the years, but thornflesh (and old rare monster reflect) was something that certain builds were scared of and had to build around. If you built and played smart it was 100% manageable. I'm not gonna say the game is ruined or some shit because thornflesh is gone, but it's a bit sad to me that an aspect of the game that has been around for years and players have had to build around for years is suddenly taken out of the game. I like having to design my build to deal with the scary shit in the game, that's 90% of what makes it fun.

Time to bust out the vagan weapons i guess.

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pneuma wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

Thornflesh was not necessary to prevent people from making bad builds or "casual" crit builds (as if crit builds weren't expensive). But it did limit build diversity, and I'm glad it's gone.

Now that Thornflesh is gone, there is no limiter for mega-dps (predominantly crit) builds.
Build diversity is going to suffer because of it; not improve.

This is certainly making the game a lot easier, for better or for worse.

Exactly what i was trying to say! thank you pneuma!

They somehow "push" the players to go into overall AOE high clear speed DPS, which will be fun for new players and not boring like some years ago. Thats why they removed it. Single hit in this game is dead for good!

Generally they kinda want the fast paced/clear speed of d3...and that makes me puke!

ZiggyD asked one of the devs on stream last night, can't remember which one exactly, and the dev told him something along the lines of:

"We plan on introducing something later, in the next league, but for now we didn't feel thornflesh was a good mechanic so we took it out"

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ElChivoDiablo wrote:

Anybody remember Lightning Thorns? Is that still even in the game?

yep it is, the promenade boss especially uses it to great effect.

I honestly think it was the word thorn in thorn flesh being the same word as lightning thorns but functioning differently (reflect instead of taking x damage per hit) that at least partially lead to the removal. I wouldn't be surprised to see it come back under a different name (or at least one could hope)

I don't like the removal either

reflect acted like a soft cap on crit, as well as prevented blind offscreen possibilities for ranged builds. it also provided the player with a build that could potentially have problem with reflect, account for it.

with it removed, there are things in the game that are useless right now, like vaal pact and acuity

hopefully its just removed for now and similar mechanic will take effect later. however if GGG thinks current meta (which is more defensive and steady damage than crit) solved the crit problem, they might be for a bad suprise soon

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pneuma wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

Thornflesh was not necessary to prevent people from making bad builds or "casual" crit builds (as if crit builds weren't expensive). But it did limit build diversity, and I'm glad it's gone.

Now that Thornflesh is gone, there is no limiter for mega-dps (predominantly crit) builds.
Build diversity is going to suffer because of it; not improve.

This is certainly making the game a lot easier, for better or for worse.

How about the fact that most mega-dps builds die at the gust of the wind? And before the whole 'WELL I'LL JUST OFFSCREEN EVERYTHING' one proximity shield will fucking ruin your day and you know it.

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allbusiness wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

Thornflesh was not necessary to prevent people from making bad builds or "casual" crit builds (as if crit builds weren't expensive). But it did limit build diversity, and I'm glad it's gone.

Now that Thornflesh is gone, there is no limiter for mega-dps (predominantly crit) builds.
Build diversity is going to suffer because of it; not improve.

This is certainly making the game a lot easier, for better or for worse.

How about the fact that most mega-dps builds die at the gust of the wind? And before the whole 'WELL I'LL JUST OFFSCREEN EVERYTHING' one proximity shield will fucking ruin your day and you know it.

Totally agree. I'm not really sure why people think Thornflesh was the one thing standing in the way of easy glass-cannon DPS builds taking over the game. Reflect isn't the ONE mechanic that prevents people from ignoring defense - the buffed difficulty of mobs and bosses in 2.0 seems more effective at doing that!

Nobody felt Thornflesh/mob reflect was some essential pillar of PoE until it was taken away. Mostly, people will defend any mechanic that's difficult just because it's difficult, even if it's a hamfisted form of difficulty that turns the game's incentives on their head and punishes certain builds while ignoring others.

I really believe that without group reflect it's easier for GGG to balance other mobs - they know people don't need to artificially gimp their own DPS, and so they can introduce enemies with higher HP at the top end of the difficulty scale in order to challenge players with mirrored weapons. Additionally, group reflect heavily encouraged insta-heal in various forms, and it seems GGG is trying to move away from that metagame.

If they didn't go full retard on nerfing leech to pieces, Thornflesh would've been fine.


But they did.