Thorns

[Golbez2]

Been looking around at items, does anyone think it will be viable at the endgame? The damage doesn't look all that high given the amount of HP mobs have on higher levels.

 

[Disciple of Erebos]

As far as I can tell, thorns now scales with your mainstat, so the number it shows is actually lower than the damage it will do. Also, there are several legendaries/sets that increase thorns damage/effect. For example, the new lvl 70 set Thorns of the Invoker gives a large bonus to thorns damage, and makes your thorns damage hit all enemies within 15 yards. Another weapon, a 1-handed legendary axe called Hack, applies 75-100% of your thorns damage on every attack. Finally, in addition to the Thorns set, the new lvl 70 Demon set's 2-piece bonus adds 6000 thorns damage as fire, and since the Thorns set is only 4 pieces, you can get the Demon's set bonus with any combination of the pants, belt or chestpiece. Finally, the Flawless Royal Topaz, the highest Topaz available, adds another 5000 thorns damage.

If this all works, then Thorns should be viable if you build for it. Thorns damage now works for both ranged and melee attacks, instead of just melee, so any attack that hits you will proc the thorns damage. Mainstat goes up far higher in RoS than it does currently: most legendaries give you about 500 to mainstat, so your mainstat should be between 6000-7000, meaning that thorns damage will get a very large boost. In addition, as I have shown above, if you can stack up a lot of thorns gear, it should be very possible to get well over 20-30k thorns damage, which after damage boosts should hit for a very large amount of damage. Finally, if you are playing a Barbarian, you have a passive that increases your thorns damage by 50%, further increasing your potential damage. Basically, if all of this information is indeed correct, then thorns damage should be viable, so long as you build towards it.

 

[HardRock]

Disciple explained the situation pretty well. I only have three minor things to add:

1) The Crusader has a passive skill that gives you around 120k Thorns at level 70.

2) The monk has a percentage-based reflect aura that can supplement Thorns nicely.

3) Even if your Thorns isn't viable by itself you should also consider that it's a secondary stat and there's nothing else in that category that boosts your damage output directly. This means that with the Legendaries mentioned above at the very least it becomes a good auxiliary damage stat.

 

[yovargas]

Am I right in thinking that the damage boosts work the same way on thorns as on your weapon? So, say, you have a weapon that does 1000 dmg and you use your normal attack, that should do as much damage as 1000 thorns?

 

[HardRock]

Am I right in thinking that the damage boosts work the same way on thorns as on your weapon? So, say, you have a weapon that does 1000 dmg and you use your normal attack, that should do as much damage as 1000 thorns?

Not quite. Thorns doesn't get the full bonus from your main attribute. Based on a few short tests I did on the PTR I'd say it only gets about 30% of the benefit. Also, in a real scenario your weapon damage gets multiplied by skill damage as well of course.

 

[Disciple of Erebos]

Ok, so then if that is so, thorns should be roughly on par with regular attacks. Regular attacks have the benefit of full support from mainstat, along with dealing extra damage because of skill modifiers. Thorns, from what you have said, gets less benefit from mainstat and has no extra modifiers, but can reach much higher than a regular attack's damage thanks to stacking and legendary/set/passive skill support.

If I'm wrong on anything, please correct me. Also, thanks HardRock for pointing out the other things. I only played PTR, so I know a bunch of Crusader skills from watching beta streams, but I'm still not up on passives, or on exact damage amounts. Very nice observation as well that thorns is the only damage-based secondary stat; I hadn't even realized that, and that makes thorns always a kind of nice boost, since even a bit of thorns damage is probably more important than the small boost to a single resistance that you otherwise would have gotten.

P.S. Given what I just noted, I think that single resists should either exist alongside allres, instead of one-or-the-other, or should have vastly higher amounts. Currently, allres is only a bit weaker in numbers than single res, but it gives you much more protection. I think that single res should stack up in increments of 150-250, because in the current increments of 60-100, it's still just always much weaker than allres. It's fine for allres to be always stronger than single res, but if that is to be the case, it should not be that much stronger.

 

[yovargas]

Given what I just noted, I think that single resists should either exist alongside allres

This has been my thought as well.

 

[HardRock]

Given what I just noted, I think that single resists should either exist alongside allres, instead of one-or-the-other

The strange thing is that single res is a secondary stat, while all res is a primary one and yet the devs explicitly made it so that they can't spawn together. I can't imagine why.

 

[Mage Slayer]

^ One With Everything. The new secondary split would make it even easier for Monks to get about double the resistance other classes can get if allres and singles could coexist.

 

[yovargas]

I'm really surprised they didn't do anything about OWE. If that one passive is causing them to make decisions which negatively affect other aspects of the game, clearly that passive should be addressed.

 

[Disciple of Erebos]

Sure, but that can be fixed easily enough, either by removing OWE altogether, or by changing/nerfing its effect so that it is not so overpowering. They removed CM for Wizard, and they've nerfed several other passives when they became too strong. TBH, I don't think all that many Monks use OWE as much anymore, since it's easier to get survivability now, and there are other useful passives that Monks can take. The only Monk I know who still uses it is my friend David, who hasn't upgraded that much of his gear yet.

 

[HardRock]

The release of 2.0 and the expansion is the ideal time to remove OWE if they want to do it. Previously they worried about people who based their whole gear around it. Now players will have throw out their stuff anyway.

 

[Mage Slayer]

One of the developers mentioned it in the playtests. I think it was Travis. Someone brought up two-handers and asked if they were so bad because of Heavenly Strength in the same way it was widely assumed resistances were affected by OWE. Travis (or which ever one it was) basically said they were right that OWE was the reason for the way they handle resistances, but HS had nothing to do with 2Hs sucking. Clearly they think OWE adds more value than being able to stack allres and single resists.

One of them (Andrew?) also talked about how they were originally going to make thorns the Crusader stat, in the same way pickup radius is the WD stat, so I guess they're okay with single reses being Monk stats. (The thorns set was originally going to be a Crusader class set, but when the plan for thorns changed the set became generic, hence Cru's only having one large set instead of two like everyone else.)

 

[HardRock]

It's still kinda the Crusader set, since it's most useful with the Crusader Thorns passive.

 

[Steven Hazani]

My question: Why remove it? It changes how you build your character (CM would have as well, if the game were not all about crit spam anyways). That's exactly what good passives should do (arguments about the powerlevel of the now deceased CM nonwithstanding). Certainly more interesting than "x% damage".

At least half of all passives should be like OWE/CM/Illusionist/etc from a conceptual standpoint.

 

[Disciple of Erebos]

"x% damage" passives can also be interesting, they just have to be done in an interesting way. I feel that Loot 2.0 changes have added a good number of interesting damage passives, while most of the damage passives from D3C were indeed practical but boring and flavorless. I'd put most attention on the passives that reward playing at range or in melee, or the ones that reward you for playing with different skills. My favorite is probably Elemental Exposure, rewarding you with 20% enhanced damage if you keep hitting enemies with all 4 elements (fire, lightning, cold and arcane). However, generally I'd agree with you that the other passives are what most passives should aspire to be. There should be a few damage ones, for people who just want a cookie-cutter pure damage build, but most passives should support a playstyle, not a stat.

 

[yovargas]

My question: Why remove it?

I don't want it removed, just toned down enough that they don't have to design items around it. It's great to have a passive that changes how you build your character, it's not great to have a passive that changes how they have to design the whole item game. It can be toned down and still be useful. My thought is something like "the value of your highest resist gets split evenly amongst all your resists". So if your highest is 100, your 5 resists each get an additional 20. Something along those lines should be useful enough to build around without being so powerful that single res mods stay lame forever.

 

[Steven Hazani]

I don't want it removed, just toned down enough that they don't have to design items around it. It's great to have a passive that changes how you build your character, it's not great to have a passive that changes how they have to design the whole item game. It can be toned down and still be useful. My thought is something like "the value of your highest resist gets split evenly amongst all your resists". So if your highest is 100, your 5 resists each get an additional 20. Something along those lines should be useful enough to build around without being so powerful that single res mods stay lame forever.

Or "each item is a separate source, only the higher value of single or all resist counts". Therefore a 100 single res item is 100 for a OWE Monk, 100 all res is of course 100 all res but an item with both doesn't give 200 all (just 200 1, and 100 the others). Boom, no need for adjustment.

(That and single res currently caps at like 160, vs 100 for all so you're a bit late to the party.)

And elemental exposure does change how you'd play. as you'd normally go single element but that encourages you to try and use multi elements. I mean like say, cold blooded. It just means you take a scroundrel with a cold bow or buriza and do a little more damage.

 

[Sulle]

I bet, witch doctor with pets and thorn dmg could be fun to try out. Witch leeching beasts, he would probably feel like an ironmaiden necro from d2.

 

[Steven Hazani]

All would be something like 100-120 total. I don't think there are that many different useful abilities. Some numbers stuff is fine, but there should be many more interesting and substantive possibilities.