Thorns builds non-functional

4 node clusters built around thorns
Thorns damage built around having a chest with high armor values that appears directly considered with the Titan node to increase the armor value from your chest.
Thorns values added as an affix for gear to allow for stacking thorns value.


And Thorns doesn't work on ranged or spell HITs so that those mobs are effectively immune to your damage.

Sure, you could spec into other damage to handle those types of mobs, however to handle getting hit for thorns, you will have to put a ton of pts into defense and healing, so you're not likely to have many pts available for speccing into some other damage type.

And, if you're going to spec into bleed/ignite/direct damage to deal with those types of mobs, why not specialize in those and do them for all mob types to do it better?



Either make Thorns work or simply remove them from the game so they aren't a trap for players.

a) Read thorns tooltip.
b) Thorns isn't means to be built around entirely as a sole source of damage, it is meant to damage little things that swarm you but die easy.

If you can't build around it then it isn't worth the skill points. If it isn't worth the skill points, why is in the game?

It sounds like a niche to me: easily killing of low hp enemies without using skills could be useful in some situations.
The game doesn't seem to be focused on building around one thing, so maybe thorns could fit as AoE-clear into a build.

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Chandarin#0575 wrote:

a) Read thorns tooltip.
b) Thorns isn't means to be built around entirely as a sole source of damage, it is meant to damage little things that swarm you but die easy.

The question is why? Why limit fun? The nodes passives = 140% thorns damage increase by the time it is all said and done if you take all of them. This does not include jewel slots. The irony with that logic is, if I take any of these, I'm gimping my build. For instance, I can get the same % increase in Physical Damage by just equipping a weapon with 100% increase in physical and two sockets physical gems and I save 9-10 passive points. So that begs the question why I would ever take these passives? And if I should never take them, why are they in the game? Furthermore everything about PoE2 is about not getting hit. The trials for instance punish you for every hit you take. So essentially those 9 passive points become useless in that specific content.

My other question is how does thorns calculate?
Is it (thorns # x % thorns damage)?
Or is it (Enemies physical attack + thorns # x % thorn damage)?
Do the enemies attack damages play into that damage at all?

No the enemy damage plays no part in it at all. Thorns is only modified by adding all thorns items (limited to chest belt and shield),YOUR physical damage and your nodes in tree(including gems). It used to have a decent interaction with shield wall and resonating shield using explosive armor and the persistent Scavenger plating but that was removed for some dumb reason. Right now thorns is absolute trash, beyond painfully slow and insanely expensive to even attempt. The persistent skill Scavenger plating is also equally useless as it requires armor break, each instance of armor break is separate for its stacks and does not reset upon breaking more armor, at most you can get 2 stacks on a boss if you are insanely lucky.

For thorns you must have capped res, Unique helm Pale king to make it work vs range, max armor, max stun threshold, thorns on chest, shield, and belt and max health as you are forced to get hit (good luck with honor) Max regen. Completely phys weapons that adds % phys damage, # to # phys damage +melee skills. You cant socket and it does NOT count as a hit. the damage is pitiful with nothing offered in return.

For all this investment you get at level 50 the same damage as a level 12 caster will do, or less.

But wait there's more! Many mobs also have armor piercing effects and most bosses either slam for stupid damage or dont even attack just tossing dots and other garbage on you so you cant even do anything.