I've been thinking for a while now, "How would one fix Thorns?"
I believe the solution can be pretty simple: We apply Primary Stat damage multiplier to it. Think of Thorns damage as weapon damage, let's say we have 1000 Thorns damage, then we multiply it to the Primary Stat damage bonus; let's say you're a Barb and you've got 2000 strength; this will mean your Thorns does 20,000 damage to your melee attackers.
I've seen other solutions like direct weapon damage rather than independent damage values we see on items today. With the suggestion above, we can retain the current Thorns values so there would be no need for item overhauls.
Deal X% of enemy's max HP per hit. For instance, a pair of gloves with 6% thorns damage will deal about 3.5 million damage to a champion Skullcleaver on MP10 (~58M HP) every time it hits you. It'll deal about 600K damage to a regular Demonic Tremor on MP10 (~10M HP) every time it hits you. Percentage is multiplicative, so you can't stack 100% and one-shot everything that touches you, but you can get it way up there that it becomes viable offense, allowing you to stack huge EHP and mitigation and just run around letting things kill themselves over time.
Deal X% of your max HP per hit. Say you have 100K HP. Thorns % could be buffed higher than the example I used earlier, say double it, so 12% thorns gloves will deal 12,000 to anything that touches you. Maybe items can roll up to 25% or maybe more. But again, multiplicative so you can't stack 100%. Anyway, you can again stack huge EHP and life pool. It's possible to get up to and over 300K HP as of now, I believe. So let's say with a bunch of gear, you stack up to 86% thorns. That's 258K damage to anything that touches you. Sounds like decent damage for someone who stacks pure EHP.
Maybe thorns can crit!
Your primary stats idea is a good one, as well. But primary stats are already a little boring considering they up your DPS—and strength for armor, dexterity for evasion and intelligence for resistance, so why not work in the vitality stat?
I'm not sure it can be fixed. It's already been pointed out (by Blizzard... I think) that it's a stat whose usefulness decreases as players become more powerful (or even just better at staying out of harm's way). I think it would either have to have a damage mitigation component (e.g. it absorbs as much as it reflects) or made into a damaging passive AoE... and just for the hell of it, multiply its power by some function of armor... because I'd really love to see D3's defensive stats claw their way back into the spotlight
I think the best way, would be a X% of your maximum life.
This way you can promote a different way to play, maximizing defensive stats and still doing a good amount of damage.
Maybe a mix of primary stat + max life could be better, so people don't stack, let's say dexterity, to add too much ehp.
I don't think that would be the best way, though it is another way. Vitality as a multiplier would seem a lot simpler though.
Your primary stats idea is a good one, as well. But primary stats are already a little boring considering they up your DPS—and strength for armor, dexterity for evasion and intelligence for resistance, so why not work in the vitality stat?
Suggestion 1 would be pretty powerful even if it was multiplicative. I think it's in the realm of D2's Static Field and even Crushing Blow. Suggestion 2 would be similar to m4elstr0m's suggestion.
Over all, now, I think making it dependent on a Defensive stat is better than what I first suggested. It feels like a better direction.
I'm not sure it can be fixed. It's already been pointed out (by Blizzard... I think) that it's a stat whose usefulness decreases as players become more powerful (or even just better at staying out of harm's way). I think it would either have to have a damage mitigation component (e.g. it absorbs as much as it reflects) or made into a damaging passive AoE... and just for the hell of it, multiply its power by some function of armor... because I'd really love to see D3's defensive stats claw their way back into the spotlight
I think you're referring to Reflect Damage like the one on Mantra of Retribution and not D3 Thorns.
Deal X% of enemy's max HP per hit. For instance, a pair of gloves with 6% thorns damage will deal about 3.5 million damage to a champion Skullcleaver on MP10 (~58M HP) every time it hits you. It'll deal about 600K damage to a regular Demonic Tremor on MP10 (~10M HP) every time it hits you. Percentage is multiplicative, so you can't stack 100% and one-shot everything that touches you, but you can get it way up there that it becomes viable offense, allowing you to stack huge EHP and mitigation and just run around letting things kill themselves over time.
Deal X% of your max HP per hit. Say you have 100K HP. Thorns % could be buffed higher than the example I used earlier, say double it, so 12% thorns gloves will deal 12,000 to anything that touches you. Maybe items can roll up to 25% or maybe more. But again, multiplicative so you can't stack 100%. Anyway, you can again stack huge EHP and life pool. It's possible to get up to and over 300K HP as of now, I believe. So let's say with a bunch of gear, you stack up to 86% thorns. That's 258K damage to anything that touches you. Sounds like decent damage for someone who stacks pure EHP.
Maybe thorns can crit!
Your primary stats idea is a good one, as well. But primary stats are already a little boring considering they up your DPS—and strength for armor, dexterity for evasion and intelligence for resistance, so why not work in the vitality stat?
Amazing ideas.
I personally love the first one. Wouldn't be too op because mobs still don't attack insanely fast, so it's not like you can get every single enemy to attack you 15 times in a couple seconds. Great idea.
And maybe for elites it deals only half of that percentage.
I'm not sure it can be fixed. It's already been pointed out (by Blizzard... I think) that it's a stat whose usefulness decreases as players become more powerful (or even just better at staying out of harm's way). I think it would either have to have a damage mitigation component (e.g. it absorbs as much as it reflects) or made into a damaging passive AoE... and just for the hell of it, multiply its power by some function of armor... because I'd really love to see D3's defensive stats claw their way back into the spotlight
I think you're referring to Reflect Damage like the one on Mantra of Retribution and not D3 Thorns.
Well that, too... except that thorns is worse, because it doesn't scale. But they both have the same fundamental problem... they depend on the player getting hit and offer a minimal DPS increase with no defensive advantage.
I think the best way, would be a X% of your maximum life.
This way you can promote a different way to play, maximizing defensive stats and still doing a good amount of damage.
Maybe a mix of primary stat + max life could be better, so people don't stack, let's say dexterity, to add too much ehp.
Omg way to steal my idea!!
Personally though I think this is the best solution. It promotes one facet of the defensive style play and that's a good thing
I think the highest possible value of Thorns is around 21k, I guess 10k would be a normalized value. Even at 1% of your Armor, the damage would be 100k each time you were hit at 5k Armor, and I do believe we can go beyond 7k with a Shield and no skill bonuses.
There is already an improved version of thorns in game, it the wizzard skill Storm armour - Reactive Armor "Ranged and melee attackers are shocked for 70% weapon damage as Lightning".
So instead of the fixed % of reactive armour items with thorns would have "returns x% weapon damage to attackers". Though combined with reactive armour it might be bot heaven with to much passive damage.
That is the ideal, but that would require a complete overhaul of all Thorns across all existing items.
I would add base stat multiplier. In addition a new leg shield that gives thorns the ability to crit.
i would love that shield comeback:D
but imo thorns should look like this:
"returns x% of damage dealt to you to attackers"
percentage has to be tested, but my idea gives one plus => strong mobs hits harder themselves, thrash monsters hit apropriate with lower power
Actually that kind of thorns is classic D2 and it is on Mantra of Retribution. Iron Maiden and the Thorns Auras return values could go past 300% if I remember correctly. The problem is, if X% is too high you can potentially one shot yourself in PvP which is why I think it value of Mantra of Retribution's returns are so low.
Ok we had some math thrown aroubd, but the question is much deeper, almost conceptional.
1 : Do you want all attributes to be useful ? Or do you want some atributes that are conceptually bad ?
I dont think that any game producer will ever have in any game a balance that is 100% perfect. Where all classes, abilities, attributes and items are equaly useful. It just never happened so far and I dont see how the game producers could win against 1000's of theorycrafting nerds that want to find something that is half a % better than the rest. So why not bulid in some stats that are designed to be undesired and at least have some control over what the gamers want ? ( from a game producers perspective, that is )
2 : If you realy want to buff the thorns damage, how do you balance it ? Some people suggested stuff that would push thorns up to 20k damage per hit taken. If 5 mobs hit on you, that's like 100k dpes rigth there. How do you balance it ? Do you nerf the rest of the damage, or do you increase mob health, or dont you do anything and let the game become even easier ?
I think the math part is the easy one after you made those conceptual decisions...
I like abstract thougths. They are still enugh on topic though. It feels like you just want to pick on me. Dont tell me what to do.
addition on thorns : why would we want a mechanic that requires us to be hit in the first place ? It's like a additional boost for melees while they allready have the 30% damage reduction.
I wouldnt be sad if they remove it completely. Maybe they allready have ? Its impact is so small that we would probably not even notice...
I believe the solution can be pretty simple: We apply Primary Stat damage multiplier to it. Think of Thorns damage as weapon damage, let's say we have 1000 Thorns damage, then we multiply it to the Primary Stat damage bonus; let's say you're a Barb and you've got 2000 strength; this will mean your Thorns does 20,000 damage to your melee attackers.
I've seen other solutions like direct weapon damage rather than independent damage values we see on items today. With the suggestion above, we can retain the current Thorns values so there would be no need for item overhauls.
So doods, what are your thoughts on this?
Deal X% of your max HP per hit. Say you have 100K HP. Thorns % could be buffed higher than the example I used earlier, say double it, so 12% thorns gloves will deal 12,000 to anything that touches you. Maybe items can roll up to 25% or maybe more. But again, multiplicative so you can't stack 100%. Anyway, you can again stack huge EHP and life pool. It's possible to get up to and over 300K HP as of now, I believe. So let's say with a bunch of gear, you stack up to 86% thorns. That's 258K damage to anything that touches you. Sounds like decent damage for someone who stacks pure EHP.
Maybe thorns can crit!
Your primary stats idea is a good one, as well. But primary stats are already a little boring considering they up your DPS—and strength for armor, dexterity for evasion and intelligence for resistance, so why not work in the vitality stat?
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I don't think that would be the best way, though it is another way. Vitality as a multiplier would seem a lot simpler though.
Suggestion 1 would be pretty powerful even if it was multiplicative. I think it's in the realm of D2's Static Field and even Crushing Blow. Suggestion 2 would be similar to m4elstr0m's suggestion.
Over all, now, I think making it dependent on a Defensive stat is better than what I first suggested. It feels like a better direction.
I think you're referring to Reflect Damage like the one on Mantra of Retribution and not D3 Thorns.
I personally love the first one. Wouldn't be too op because mobs still don't attack insanely fast, so it's not like you can get every single enemy to attack you 15 times in a couple seconds. Great idea.
And maybe for elites it deals only half of that percentage.
It doesn't?
Well that, too... except that thorns is worse, because it doesn't scale. But they both have the same fundamental problem... they depend on the player getting hit and offer a minimal DPS increase with no defensive advantage.
Omg way to steal my idea!!
Personally though I think this is the best solution. It promotes one facet of the defensive style play and that's a good thing
(Y% Armor)*(Thorns Value) = Effective Thorns Damage
At 5000 Armor, 1000 Thorns, Y = 1%
0.01*5k*1k=50k
I think the highest possible value of Thorns is around 21k, I guess 10k would be a normalized value. Even at 1% of your Armor, the damage would be 100k each time you were hit at 5k Armor, and I do believe we can go beyond 7k with a Shield and no skill bonuses.
That is the ideal, but that would require a complete overhaul of all Thorns across all existing items.
Actually that kind of thorns is classic D2 and it is on Mantra of Retribution. Iron Maiden and the Thorns Auras return values could go past 300% if I remember correctly. The problem is, if X% is too high you can potentially one shot yourself in PvP which is why I think it value of Mantra of Retribution's returns are so low.
1 : Do you want all attributes to be useful ? Or do you want some atributes that are conceptually bad ?
I dont think that any game producer will ever have in any game a balance that is 100% perfect. Where all classes, abilities, attributes and items are equaly useful. It just never happened so far and I dont see how the game producers could win against 1000's of theorycrafting nerds that want to find something that is half a % better than the rest. So why not bulid in some stats that are designed to be undesired and at least have some control over what the gamers want ? ( from a game producers perspective, that is )
2 : If you realy want to buff the thorns damage, how do you balance it ? Some people suggested stuff that would push thorns up to 20k damage per hit taken. If 5 mobs hit on you, that's like 100k dpes rigth there. How do you balance it ? Do you nerf the rest of the damage, or do you increase mob health, or dont you do anything and let the game become even easier ?
I think the math part is the easy one after you made those conceptual decisions...
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
addition on thorns : why would we want a mechanic that requires us to be hit in the first place ? It's like a additional boost for melees while they allready have the 30% damage reduction.
I wouldnt be sad if they remove it completely. Maybe they allready have ? Its impact is so small that we would probably not even notice...
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841