Can we make Thorns/Physical Reflect viable?

Problem: General Thorns Damage: We can't scale thorns/reflect damage directly, only indirectly through debuffing the monsters, yet this still doesn't do enough damage to make a viable build. We have a huge range of flat damage (1,000-10,000) from the new version of Thousand Teeth Temu that cannot be scaled, cannot ignore enemy physical damage reduction, and cannot roll lucky damage with the Gladiator Ascendancy node "Violent Retaliation" - because it's not classified as a hit, attack, or counterattack.

Solution: Make thorns/reflected damage scalable. Allow it to be affected by global physical damage, frenzy charges, double/triple damage, and generic damage mods. Allow it to be classified as an attack and a counterattack. Allow it to hit, bleed, poison, and impale. Prevent it from being converted to elemental damage to avoid excessive scaling that is not in line with the physical theme of thorns.


Problem: Bramblejack: Reflecting 1,000% of the damage you take forces you to take more damage if you want to deal more damage, which results in death and shitty damage. Even if you stack enough regen, leech, and life gained on hit/block to sustain through end-game hits (pretty much impossible) you still aren't doing dick for damage. It's terrible and essentially impossible to make it work well in POE, as increasing the damage you take in any way/shape/form most certainly results in death.

Solution: In addition to the changes outlined above for generic thorns scaling, add a modifier to Bramblejack that also reflects 1,000% of the physical damage prevented to melee attackers. Or split it to 500% taken and 500% prevented.

Problem: The Anvil doesn't heal enough, add enough maximum block chance, nor does it feel very special in terms of uniqueness. It's essentially a mandatory item, but it doesn't feel rewarding enough.

Solution: Increase the flat life/mana gained on block to 150-300. Increase maximum block chance to 5%. Add 10% spell block. Add a new modifier "Reflected/thorns damage you deal is considered a counterattack". Add a new modifier "Your physical damage cannot be converted". Boom.

Problem: There is no weapon or skill gem that synergizes with thorns.

Solution: Make a weapon that applies reflected/thorns damage (or a portion of it) on hit. Make a defensively (shield?) themed skill gem that would be used in place of an attack that either applies thorns/reflected damage or absorbs damage to deal reflected/thorns damage on hit.


With the improvements made to all of the unique thorns items (except Advancing Fortress) I was excited to make a Thorns Gladiator. It's clearly the perfect ascendancy for this, but the lackluster thorns mechanics in this game makes the build blow goats. There is massive potential for a very fun and unique playstyle, but it needs a bit of attention.

Nothing?

I like the write-up. It has a clear topic and has details to go with it. I wouldn’t know too much about thorns and now I know it doesn’t seem to be viable when building specifically for it. I’ll keep an eye on this!

*Eats Vanilla Wafers with Strawberry Milk in the afternoon*

The potential is there. It needs some love. I figured they paid enough attention to it to alter 4 uniques that are based around a build idea, so they should complete the idea and allow it to be a viable end-game build.

How do I link the appropriate staff members to this thread?

They could realize that by adding a Mastery that allows exactly that.

Would love to see that in the future.

Mastery point for "Your reflected/thorns damage counts as a counterattack. Physical damage cannot be converted." would be amazing.

Very simple and easy. Great suggestion. Either impale or block mastery would suffice, I imagine.

I can tell you from experience that Reflect mechanics are incredibly problematic.

There's multiple reasons for this. Damage taken Reflected obvious means you have to survive the damage. Reducing said damage through another layer then acts as a multiplier to the Reflected damage. This essentially becomes a binary condition. Similar to maps rolling Reflect.

Yes you can kill things and survive being hit or no you can't.

Then you also have AI aspects of this. If an NPC takes more damage from hitting a character than they deal. They simply would stop hitting that character. You see this in turn based CRPGs.

Reflect in every form should just be purged from this game. It's not worth the trouble.
At this point "Reflect" is just a key word for the damage source and nothing more.

I thought reflect did reflect pre mitigation dmg? It is still weak though.

Fun fact, there WAS a reflect 500% of mitigated physical damage armour mastery in the pathofbuilding files right before they released masteries, but they took it out I'm assuming because of the heal for 30% of reflect damage unique hat. The hat was just reworked to leech reflected damage though and it would no longer be problematic due to the leech cap. They could totally add it back.

I'm not sure about overhauling reflect, at least to that crazy of a degree, but they could totally give counter-attacks some MUCH needed love.

Counter attacks were NOT buffed when they did a blanket buff to almost all melee skill and are basically doing ancient pre power creep damage which is kinda pathetic.

Porcupine builds do deserve a place in this game in my opinion. Not as a main skill or damage source, but rather as a way to give tankier lower damage characters a bit of easy damage that is especially noticable when dealing with swarms of low health enemies.

From what I have tested, and how it's worded, Bramblejack is based on the melee physical damage taken. I don't know how or why it would be pre mitigation, but I hope I'm wrong. Yet, I've noticed a significant increase in damage when I wear Gluttony (you have no armour), when I'm cursed with Vulnerability, and without Fortify. So, in my experience, you absolutely have to increase the damage you take in order to deliver more damage. It's also limited to melee physical only, so any type of elemental damage from melee isn't reflected from Bramblejack.

I assumed the change to the Pale King hat would also come with a reintroduction of the proposed 500% prevented mastery, but another fail/oversight from GGG.