Thorns needs more love in POE 2 - some suggestions for 0.4.0

Just a note that Thorns needs some love as it is emerging as a viable play style, but it is very limited right now.


To be clear, Thorns needs more variety, and it really needs an Ascendency home.


As it stands, the Ritualist Ascendency is VERY underwhelming, and thematically, it would fit well with a thorns build.


So my suggestions?


RITUALIST:

Change Corrupted Life force from:

"Grants Skill: Blood Boil"

to

"Grants Skill: Blood Boil, Thorns Damage is Triggered by All Hits"


Change Blood Boil from:

"Enemies in your Presence accumulate blood boils periodically. When they die, the boils pop applying Corrupted Blood to enemies near them."

to

"Enemies in your Presence accumulate blood boils periodically. When they die, the boils pop applying Corrupted Blood plus accumulated Thorns Damage to enemies near them."

This means, when enemies with Blood Boil die, any damage they took from Thorns while they are alive gets reflected to the enemies around them when they die, hitting them with corrupted blood that scales with whatever thorns damage they incurred.


OTHER CHANGES:

Thorns damage can now roll on rings. (This also will benefit the Ritualist for a Thorns Play style. You can base the damage values on the rings with this in mind)

Crown of the Pale King: Keep mostly the same, but add a line:

"10% less Thorns Damage"


This will allow other classes to play thorns without a huge penalty, but will still incentivize Ritualist for the Thorns playstyle.


Flip all Thorns Passives on the left side of the Passive tree to the right side of the tree, with the exception of the "Thorns damage + Block Chance" tree. Replace those passives which were flipped with all "Thorns Damage + Block Chance" nodes

New Thorns notable on the right side of the tree with appropriate Thorns/deflect passives preceding it, stating "25% of damage deflected is applied to the enemy as physical thorns damage."

Have one of the future Druid Ascendancies involve tying in Thorns with Block, as well as tying in Cold Thorns damage into the ascendency.
(Crown of the Pale King is Armour and ES, as is Icetomb, and would synergize with such an ascendency, which is where the Armor + ES portion of the tree is).

Change Arctic Armour from dealing "Cold Spell Damage" to "Cold Thorns Damage"

Add Cold Thorns nodes in the Armor/ES portion of the tree.






I think if this is done right, you have 2 different distinct thorns play styles, 2 different ascendencies (when Druid is released) that play into the thorns playstyle, Plus all of it in areas where it encourages other classes to be able to sample thorns in their respective areas where it makes sense.