With the removal of thornflesh, how else am I supposed to be punished for trying to have fun?

Sarcasm aside, this is a great change. It always bothered me that games tried to punish you for having too much damage. It always seemed like some sort of lazy gear check personally.

I admire this change, and hope it stays along with the new changes to reflect.

+1

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With the removal of thornflesh, how else am I supposed to be punished for trying to have fun?

By playing the game.

I don't think Thornflesh should have been removed, but instead toned down. Way down. 14% per enemy x 5 enemies = 70% reflected omgwtfbbq. 5% per enemy x 5 enemies = 25% reflected, actually still quite scary. If it was brought back in that type of fashion, I'd welcome it.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I don't think Thornflesh should have been removed, but instead toned down. Way down. 14% per enemy x 5 enemies = 70% reflected omgwtfbbq. 5% per enemy x 5 enemies = 25% reflected, actually still quite scary. If it was brought back in that type of fashion, I'd welcome it.

Agreed, and when I whined about it I actually wasn't asking for it to be removed entirely, just nerfed. I'm not complaining that they removed it, though, and I've heard rumors that they're planning on introducing something similar next league anyway (see other threads).

Reflect is a good mechanic, and I'll consistently say that. But it can't be overtuned, otherwise players are put in the kind of stupid position of needing to artificially lower our dps/accuracy when we need those things to be high in order to confront endgame content. Basically, the game pushes you to get better and better gear/power (in addition to defenses, of course) and then suddenly turns that on its head with one type of mob. It's counter-intuitive and there's no way I was the only person who felt like it was a hamfisted form of difficulty (although these forums filled with people who's builds were able to manage it often make me feel that way). GGG might as well put caps on DPS if they want to. I'd rather we just face tough enemies/bosses that can kill us, not ourselves...

d

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I'd rather they kept thornflesh and fixed maps instead...

Thornflesh was my own fault if I wasn't paying attention. I paid attention to their new map mechanics they explained during The Awakening preview... and no matter what you do you are fucked.

Thornflesh gave you a chance. Maps, you pray for RNG Jesus. I'd rather win the lottery than play to try and win this crap map system.

I disagree. I died at level 94 a few days ago to thornflesh. Why? Because I'm using a 2-hander (shame on me), they used flicker strike, and I happened to right click. That's about it. The auras weren't clear before I got there (I have ~135% movement speed with flask up, which GGG apparently wants too cause low movement speed can equal death..), it wasn't clear how many there were... and, death ensued in about .6 seconds.

That happened once in my last, say, 70 hours of mapping, but I think it's fair for me to say it was a cheap, unsatisfying death. Not one where I took on bad odds and suffered, but one where the odds were unclear, the zoomed in game worked against me, and thornflesh iced the cake. PoE needs to steer away from cheap deaths, it's got enough going against it in a number of other areas. Including crappy crappy awful stupid map drop rates.

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Yeah, an accidental click isn't your fault at all. It's thornflesh. I stand corrected.

It is thornflesh's fault if it kills me off screen due to a single piercing arrow coming its way.
Reflect in general is the worst kind of mechanic, it punishes good build design for everyone but summoners.