Thorns

[Guest]

So I'm tinkering around with a paladin I just started today, and as I was looking at the aura's, I noticed thorns.

Not to say I didn't know what thorns was, it's just that I never see it used. Ever. I sort of forgot about it.

I had recently formulated a druid build in my mind, in which the druid has Spirit of Barbs, and casts a wolf among a pack of monsters. The monsters would then kill themselves. I decided not to make it when I realized Spirit of Barbs doesn't even return 300% damage when maxed.

So I go to skillplanner, and max out thorns.

1010% damage returned. Wow.

A baddie deals 1k dmg to you, and WHAM! 10k back at them. So I was thinking of a Paladin who wore no shield, and had a very low defense. The object would be to be hit as often as possible. The character's own life would be the main damage outlet.


Does anybody think this could work? I'm going to be starting him in a few minutes. I don't know what to do for skills though.

Thorns is the only thing I can think to max out. Does anybody know what other skills I should use? I was thinking of just going with Zeal and Vengeance, for use on monsters with magical attacks, but this doesn't exactly promote the theme, just helps.

[adeyke]

The problem is that monsters have much more life than players and much less damage.

Let's look at some monsters:

Zombie in act 1 hell blood moor:
mlvl 67
45-106 and 53-114 damage
4,317-6,168 life (3,238-4,626 if not on the ladder)

So, with the stronger attack, it'll deal an average of 83 damage each hit and will thus take an average of 843 damage to itself each time. With an average of 5242 life, it'll take an average of 7 hits for it to kill itself. By that time, you'll also have taken 584 damage yourself.

Except that it's 50% resistant to physical damage. So it'll really take 13 hits and deal 1085 damage to you.

Death lord in act 5 hell throne of destruction:
mlvl 85
76-115 and 76-115 damage
14,836-18,546 life (11,128-13,911 if not on the ladder)

It deals an average of 95 damage per hit, thus taking an average of 964 per hit to itself. There's an average of 16691 life, so it'll take an average of 18 hits to kill itself, dealing 1710 damage in the process.

Except that it's 66% resistant to physical damage. So it'll really take 51 hits to kill itself, dealing 4870 damage in the process.

(These numbers are rounded, and I am just talking about averages. Individual monsters could take many more or many less hits to kill themselves).

Of course, you wouldn't just be fighting individual monsters. More monsters means more damage.

So you'd really be killing things very slowly with just the thorns. And you'd be taking a lot of damage. The damage is based on how much you take, so if you get hit less or if you reduce the damage, you'll also be reducing the effectiveness of the thorns. And this wasn't even looking at things like ranged attacks or elemental damage, against which thorns is useless.

[Striker]

I'm not quite sure about this (and I'm sure adeyke or someone else can confirm it), but I believe the returned damage is affected by physical resistance. If that's true, the 1010% returned damage would get scaled down depending on the resistance.

This was done way back in the classic D2 days (I think it used to be called a sadist?), and if you don't mind getting beat up, it should be fine. Ranged characters would be the major problem, but that could be handled fairly easily with a synergized Fist of the Heavens. Or you could go the Ranger route and get a bow/crossbow and plunk away.

One thing I would recommend is getting lots of recovery gear, especially if you want to deal with ranged monsters. You can't fight back if you're in recovery all the time.

Edit: Cross post with adeyke. And it is confirmed that the returned damage is affected by resistances.

[Guest]

Keep in mind that I plan to be attacking these monsters. Assuming I've got a high damage weapon and


Hmm... What if I made an avenger, using thorns?

[Striker]

Hmm... What if I made an avenger, using thorns?

Typically avengers use conviction as the aura of choice. Conviction helps to boost the damage output by reducing elemental resistances (plus it can break immunities). Thorns is doable, but the damage output that you could get isn't as high as it could be.

Also be aware of what adeyke mentioned in his post, in that you'll most likely be dealing with many monsters at once, not individually. Why not consider using zeal? It can help your crowd control by possibly sending some monsters into hit recovery. While they wouldn't be receiving any returned damage, you're not getting damaged yourself. And last time I checked, that's a good thing. ;)

[Guest]

Ok, so assuming I wanted to max out thorns, what should I do?

[adeyke]

I'd second the notion of zeal instead of vengeance. You'd need massive amounts of life steal over time to compensate for getting hit. Zeal is better at this than vengeance.

Of course, if your zeal is too good, it might be doing more killing than the thorns ;).

[Guest]

Bah, nevermind I just won't make it...