Thorns - a wasted Prefix ?

Without uniques, the highest physical damage reflect is currently 200; with a shield.

Helm, Chest, belt & shield can have the "thorn" stat (50max each). So it would be 150 without shield.

This seems like very low numbers and like a wasted Prefix.

Has anyone successfully made a build where "torns" is made usefull? Does it work with minions etc? Is it boosted by any passives?

Wasted prefix ? Yes. About as much as the life regeneration suffixes.

Yep right now the reflect damage mod on gear is absolutely terrible, hopefully they will either revamp or remove it from the game, preferably I would like a rework of it.

...I'm suddenly tempted to try and make a build that uses thorns. Is something wrong with me? I'm thinking Duelist w/ Iron Reflexes and Unwavering Stance and zero offensive passives plus a spiked shield...

But yeah, the enchants don't seem very desireable.

I expect thorns to be buffed like life regen will be. Also, they're re-adding the old thorns curse Punishment into the game. As it is now, Thorns is pretty weak... The only build we've seen effectively act as a thorns buffer was a build of the week with Tempest and Molten, not actual thorns.

Problem is i think there is no way to actually support thorns mod.
Like a passive tree entry that would actually buff dmg_from_armor_%.
Also the base dmg of max_350 is a bit middleish in comparison with other base dmg coming from weapons f.ex. .

Thorns would be better off being a % value instead of the flat value.

Take the endgame thorns shields:
"240 dmg on block to attacker" should be something like "40% of blocked attack is reflected as physical damage".

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Thalandor wrote:

Wasted prefix ? Yes. About as much as the life regeneration suffixes.

I hear that life regen mods are getting buffed in the next patch and along with the new keystone it may actually be a good mod for CI users since the typical way to stack life regen won't appeal to them so much.

Thorns in it's current state, yes it is the single worse stat in the game I'd say.

Regardless of what ARPG you're playing, things like Thorns, which are based off absorbing melee attacks, will always depend on physical damage mitigation effects (armour, in this game) in order to be successful. That doesn't mean they will be; it just means having good physical damage mitigation is a prerequisite.

Armour sucks right now.

The thorns affixes are not only useless in their current values, they also cause bugs (damage reflect doesnt interact well with various other mechanics). So its actually worse than a wasted affix; it has a few downsides, but no upsides.