Why is thorns in the game?

Can't say much about reflect dmg on gear, don#t have this but sounds similar useless like thorns are currently in Diablo 3. It maybe should be % of recieved dmg reflected instead of an fixed value, to make it better.
by the way, do players actualy have an option to have such a powerful reflect skill like the Blackguard mages can cast at Barracks/Battlefront? Because this skill is a little bit "insane", at least when you do decent dmg. :D I died 2x yesterday within seconds (new in Merciless with Ranger and it's nice Lightning Arrow). On Normal/Cruel the reflected dmg was ok, but in merciless you can kuill yourself faster than within an blink of an eye if you are not careful. The combination of thecasters and the soldiers there is pretty dangerous.
My Ranger/Marauder need these lighnting thorns! :D At least my Summoner Witch now has a new Spectre type that is worth to use, these thorns are really evil. XD

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ritualzz wrote:

The more useless stats the harder to get the perfect item.

eternal orb. expensive way but 100% guarantee perfect item(s).

Thorns needs to do the following:

If you got a skill like tempest shield or molten shell any form of thorns damage gets added to that base along with staying the normal throns damage. SO if you got 200 lightning thorns. An attack that hits you, but is block and triggers moltenshell returns that 200 lightning 3 times. 200 on moltenshell, 200 on tempest shield block and 200 thorns damage.

Now comes the balance.

1. Either you let %phys and %ele scale the thorns damage or not. If you do the base needs to be lowered.

2. You let it add to the base damage and support gems increase the damage of thorns portion on skills such as moltenshell and tempest shield.

Assume moltenshell with 1k fire damage and +300 physical from thorns. You got added fire support gem on moltenshell, normally doing nothing now it gives 1.03* 300 = 90 added fire damage thus moltenshell would do:

1090 fire damage
300 physical damage

the thorns damage is still just 300 physical.

Similar calculations with concentrated effect etc.

You could also decide to have it not be effected by support gems.

3. Even if the damage gets added to tempest shield and moltenshell with current gear and # rolls it won't add that much.

The last thing to do with these skills is that tempest shield, moltenshell and thorns all 3 do not cause reflective damage. Due the nature that they are sort of reflect damage.

Just an idea on thorns.

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NaughtyOne wrote:

Never understood why they do not boost the value on thorns greatly, it would still be a useless stat for most builds but would open up options that are missing in POE.

I would love it if thorns damage reflected spells/projectiles and scaled off from physical/elemental damage from the passive tree, Along with a healthy increase to the base value found on items. and/or a new skill gem (Aura) that boost thorns damage by x% and allows it to reflect spells and projectiles.

I believe their reasoning was that they didn't want a "stand around until things die build". As that's as boring as it gets. However, there is interest in such a thing. And I do agree with everyone else, if it's going to be at it's current level it might as well replace "reflects 20 damage" to "lol trolled u".

Let's not even mention the anti-synergy between thorns and evasion, present on an entire class of base items, the INT/DEX shields.