Alright so I just pieced together some really random gear, no thought behind this or any testing to see what works better... so be gentle if something is stupid, I'm merely excited to inform people that you can build your crusader around thorns and actually DO stuff (Probably only works solo, even left my follower in town)
First, with all the gear and passives below I managed to do Torment 4 Act 1 Bounties. I completed all 5 bounties *Note: You will not get cursed chest/shrine events completed, but you can still complete the bounty* including killing the Skeleton king *Only hits like 3 times a minute! Rage!* I died to the keywarden in the fields of misery once, killed him the next time around and had no other trouble throughout. All total this endeavor took about 40 minutes, ~15 of which was just killing the skeleton king!
Gear:
Helm: Crown of the Invoker
Shoulders: Burden of the Invoker
Chest: Blackthorne's Surcoat
Gloves: Pride of the Invoker
Bracers: Sanguinary Vambraces
Belt: Harrington Waistguard (Had no other belt)
Ring 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Ring 2: Random rare ring with thorns damage
Pants: Blackthorne's Jousting Mail
Boots: Random boots (DIdn't have a pair of Blackthornes that would work, but I would suggest using them!!!)
Shield: Vo'toyias Spiker
Weapon: Hack
As you can see, my gear choices weren't all perfect... and a lot of the gear I had rolled REALLY BAD, so you can do this even with bad gear, but you did need just about every piece listed. There's a few items that will really shine here, Countess Julia's Cameo, Blackthorne's Boots (as mentioned), and various other things such as Ice Climbers and other items to prevent damage are highly recommended, but I was too lazy to go get them off alts and test. I had a lot of primary slots on gear wasted on silly things that didn't help thorns at all, so with PERFECT gear I imagine I can do much better.
Skills + Passives
Smite: Shatter *Trying to get multiple small hits to proc bracers + rally!*
Fist of the Heavens: Fissure *Same strategy as above*
Iron Skin: Reflective Skin *Duh?*
Provoke: Charged Up *Forgot to see if rune worked for thorns, but if it does it's amazing - if not then it still works to proc Rally*
Akarat's Champion: Rally *Permanent Iron Skin + Provoke, CDR would help this build!*
Judgement: Resolved *Thorns can't crit, merely trying to do some kind of damage when things won't hit me... sure there is a better choice!*
Passives
Iron Maiden *Duh?*
Wrathful *Healing*
Hold Your Ground *Because why not*
Renewal *Healing*
My sheet stats:
Damage: 179,573
Toughness: 17,685,152
Healing: 12,662
Thorns: 35,785.49 *Str: 6947*
CDR: 27.12%
Globe Bonus: 28,473
HP: 714,628
All Resist: 1186+
Average thorns damage:
650,000 *No buffs*
1.2 million *200% buff!*
2.4 million *200% buff x2*
10.5 million *??? ... Maybe bracers? Math no make sense here, but I was getting 10 million hits --They also looked like crits, but given my damage and skill set nothing else would hit that hard!*
**SORRY FOR MULTI-POST! Internet issues tonight.**
iwill remind you, i am doing a thorns build. the idea of this build is to use thorns to kill things, not my abilities. i do not really want to increase my damage at the cost of focusing on thorns. i doubt you manage to do T4+ with you suggestions for me, my goal for this spec is simply to be able to do T6 without dying, and killing things with thorns. ill keep your suggestions in mind for lower torments, but the goal of this for me is doing T6 easily, with gear that is quite common really... give some hope to those of us with bad gear.
You CANNOT get anywhere near efficient clearing T6 with just thorns and I'm fairly certain the majority of the damage you are currently doing is still just from spenders/generators not thorns.
Honestly changing skills like mentioned above to Punish results in a large damage increase with a decent block amount and still gives that thornsy vibe. Not many spenders fulfill the thornsy vibe so it's really your choice.
Believe me I'm all with you and want to do some serious thorns damage, but everything i've tried just doesn't equal most other specs; even bad specs. I'm waiting till some talent reworks and holding my thorns gear in hopes.
Like he posted above efficiency is not a consideration, just being able to do T6 with bad/easily obtainable thorns gear would be the goal. I voted no in the poll but would consider it if Blizzard buffed thorns a lot more in the future. Unfortunately the thorns we have now is after a "buff" by Blizzard so the chance of thorns being worth it in the future is low.
First of all. You have some really bad gear there.
Hack: Useless. Damage is too low. Change it to good 2 hander. Shaefer's hammer, Scourge, Maximus are best choices for you. If you cant get those then just get something with high damage, stre and socket.
Shield: That shield sounds really awesome, but it only doubles your white thorns damage. There is alot better choices. Westmarch Defender for lower torment levels, Stormshield for higher. Those are maybe best choices for you. Also that shield what have chance to reduce your cooldowns by 1 sec everytime you block is really nice. Can't remember name right now
Boots. Ice climbers or firewalkers. Go for them.
Rest of gear. Craft Aughilds and Demons set. Demons belt and legs, Aughilds chest and bracers. Those thorns bracers suck. Damage is really low, demons set gives you really nice thorns damage and Aughilds boosts your toughness and damage against elites. Really easy sets to get, go get them.
Also get some lightning damage on Bracers and neck.
Spec and passives. Change smite for Punish-Roar or Retiliate. You get more block, more "thorns" damage. You heal more and block more. Must have skill for this spec. For passives change Wrathfull for Heavenly strength so you can use 2 handers.
Also you have WAY too much vitality. 700k HP is useless. Drop it to 400k and get more damage. 179k damage is freaking pathetic for level 70 character. Remember that your thorns can crit during Iron skin. So you want CHD and CC too.
I'll work on the video, it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. It seems some people have seen the intent of the build, and I thank you for it! I'd love to clear T6 in blackthornes/invokers pieces... because I've gotten each piece of those sets 6-10 times just on my crusader alone. If I can get this gear into T6 with horrid rolls on it, and kill things decently enough then I'll be happy overall. Given that I handled T4 and I wasn't pulling my hair out wearing the gear mentioned above... That speaks volumes. Sure, it was slow! and NO, most of my damage did not come from abilities. Thorns was easily 80% of my damage, as shown by the 15 minute Skeleton king kill. Because he wasn't hitting me, it took WAY too long. I'm working on a solution, but I can't think of anything off-hand.
My normal setup is the standard condemn build, and I can tear through T4 really fast... but what if I didn't have that? Would I just be stuck running T1 until I got lucky and got some item that trivialized higher torments? What is wrong with being a little inefficient for the sake of lulz? or showing that gear that everyone calls "unusable" is actually usable? It isn't like we're racing to get geared, I'm playing for fun! Any time I can waste on building a pointless thorns spec just increases the time until I get tired of this game. But hey, maybe I'm just a romantic...
In the hopes of not sounding like a broken record, I am doing a thorns build.
2-hander = 300-400 more str, a tiny thorns boost at the cost of healing *Faster attacks = more wrath = more healing*
Punish = my block goes from ~46 or so to 61, and would be fewer hits to proc rally on single target *even less on mobs that don't attack much*
RoRG is fairly easy to obtain, a few days of split bounty farming on normal and you should see it at least once *also not a mandatory part of the set*
Invokers set = easily obtained, Not sure if you saw that I had found 6-10 drops of each piece on my crusader alone *sure I'm lucky, but 1 of each wouldn't be hard to come by*
Your crafted gear choices are not bad, but I'm much more interested in 4 piece blackthornes. The ability to ignore all those ground effects will surely help me stand in the thick of the fighting on higher torments. I plan to use a blackthornes belt + ice climbers and possibly a Xephirian Amulet, but that will be simply to increase the speed of my runs by allowing me to not need to move or heal as much, hopefully making a thorns build more competitive (not that I ever expect it to be fast... unless every champion pack is fire chains!)
Buffing my crits during thorns would be nifty, but I'm already doing 5 million non-crits during iron skin, 10-12 million if it does crit... I'd hate to stack crit/crit damage at the cost of survivability and just be stuck doing some crappy T4 runs like a total scrub. I will also resist the cookie cutter as much as I can, but we'll see how well it works when I get around to it.
One thing you forgot is that I'm doing a THORNS spec, so buffing my damage is pointless. My toughness is fine without the 200 extra strength, and "much more bigger" hurt my brain to read. I'm not worried about my skills, or about rift clearing speed... I just want to see how thorns performs on T6, especially with sub-optimal gearing. Also, as I've said before: my usual spec is a condemn build, I can run T4 fast all I like... just need 2 more set pieces and I'll be hitting T6.
For now, I've gotten my thorns damage per hit over 700k without any buffs. I can kill anything that will actually attack me with any regularity, so I'm not going insane, and it's an actual thorns build! Who knew?
I've been practicing with the software, and I think I'll be making a video fairly quick of this thorns-ONLY build. A lot of people really wanted a thorns build, and were quite upset to see the nerfs to it. With any luck, I'll re-kindle a fire in some of you... It won't be the retarded beta thorns, but it should work by all my estimations.
INteresting, because I'm doing T4 champion packs in a matter of seconds for most types of mobs... I can't imagine that equates to hours for T6 mobs. This IS how I'm going to do T6 thorns But hey, enjoy conformity.
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First, with all the gear and passives below I managed to do Torment 4 Act 1 Bounties. I completed all 5 bounties *Note: You will not get cursed chest/shrine events completed, but you can still complete the bounty* including killing the Skeleton king *Only hits like 3 times a minute! Rage!* I died to the keywarden in the fields of misery once, killed him the next time around and had no other trouble throughout. All total this endeavor took about 40 minutes, ~15 of which was just killing the skeleton king!
Gear:
- Helm: Crown of the Invoker
- Shoulders: Burden of the Invoker
- Chest: Blackthorne's Surcoat
- Gloves: Pride of the Invoker
- Bracers: Sanguinary Vambraces
- Belt: Harrington Waistguard (Had no other belt)
- Ring 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
- Ring 2: Random rare ring with thorns damage
- Pants: Blackthorne's Jousting Mail
- Boots: Random boots (DIdn't have a pair of Blackthornes that would work, but I would suggest using them!!!)
- Shield: Vo'toyias Spiker
- Weapon: Hack
As you can see, my gear choices weren't all perfect... and a lot of the gear I had rolled REALLY BAD, so you can do this even with bad gear, but you did need just about every piece listed. There's a few items that will really shine here, Countess Julia's Cameo, Blackthorne's Boots (as mentioned), and various other things such as Ice Climbers and other items to prevent damage are highly recommended, but I was too lazy to go get them off alts and test. I had a lot of primary slots on gear wasted on silly things that didn't help thorns at all, so with PERFECT gear I imagine I can do much better.Skills + Passives
- Smite: Shatter *Trying to get multiple small hits to proc bracers + rally!*
- Fist of the Heavens: Fissure *Same strategy as above*
- Iron Skin: Reflective Skin *Duh?*
- Provoke: Charged Up *Forgot to see if rune worked for thorns, but if it does it's amazing - if not then it still works to proc Rally*
- Akarat's Champion: Rally *Permanent Iron Skin + Provoke, CDR would help this build!*
- Judgement: Resolved *Thorns can't crit, merely trying to do some kind of damage when things won't hit me... sure there is a better choice!*
Passives- Iron Maiden *Duh?*
- Wrathful *Healing*
- Hold Your Ground *Because why not*
- Renewal *Healing*
My sheet stats:- Damage: 179,573
- Toughness: 17,685,152
- Healing: 12,662
- Thorns: 35,785.49 *Str: 6947*
- CDR: 27.12%
- Globe Bonus: 28,473
- HP: 714,628
- All Resist: 1186+
Average thorns damage:- 650,000 *No buffs*
- 1.2 million *200% buff!*
- 2.4 million *200% buff x2*
- 10.5 million *??? ... Maybe bracers? Math no make sense here, but I was getting 10 million hits --They also looked like crits, but given my damage and skill set nothing else would hit that hard!*
**SORRY FOR MULTI-POST! Internet issues tonight.**Honestly changing skills like mentioned above to Punish results in a large damage increase with a decent block amount and still gives that thornsy vibe. Not many spenders fulfill the thornsy vibe so it's really your choice.
Believe me I'm all with you and want to do some serious thorns damage, but everything i've tried just doesn't equal most other specs; even bad specs. I'm waiting till some talent reworks and holding my thorns gear in hopes.
The whole point of his thread was to show off a thorns sader. GJ OP, and it would be cool to see a video =D
My normal setup is the standard condemn build, and I can tear through T4 really fast... but what if I didn't have that? Would I just be stuck running T1 until I got lucky and got some item that trivialized higher torments? What is wrong with being a little inefficient for the sake of lulz? or showing that gear that everyone calls "unusable" is actually usable? It isn't like we're racing to get geared, I'm playing for fun! Any time I can waste on building a pointless thorns spec just increases the time until I get tired of this game. But hey, maybe I'm just a romantic...
2-hander = 300-400 more str, a tiny thorns boost at the cost of healing *Faster attacks = more wrath = more healing*
Punish = my block goes from ~46 or so to 61, and would be fewer hits to proc rally on single target *even less on mobs that don't attack much*
RoRG is fairly easy to obtain, a few days of split bounty farming on normal and you should see it at least once *also not a mandatory part of the set*
Invokers set = easily obtained, Not sure if you saw that I had found 6-10 drops of each piece on my crusader alone *sure I'm lucky, but 1 of each wouldn't be hard to come by*
Your crafted gear choices are not bad, but I'm much more interested in 4 piece blackthornes. The ability to ignore all those ground effects will surely help me stand in the thick of the fighting on higher torments. I plan to use a blackthornes belt + ice climbers and possibly a Xephirian Amulet, but that will be simply to increase the speed of my runs by allowing me to not need to move or heal as much, hopefully making a thorns build more competitive (not that I ever expect it to be fast... unless every champion pack is fire chains!)
Buffing my crits during thorns would be nifty, but I'm already doing 5 million non-crits during iron skin, 10-12 million if it does crit... I'd hate to stack crit/crit damage at the cost of survivability and just be stuck doing some crappy T4 runs like a total scrub. I will also resist the cookie cutter as much as I can, but we'll see how well it works when I get around to it.
For now, I've gotten my thorns damage per hit over 700k without any buffs. I can kill anything that will actually attack me with any regularity, so I'm not going insane, and it's an actual thorns build! Who knew?
I've been practicing with the software, and I think I'll be making a video fairly quick of this thorns-ONLY build. A lot of people really wanted a thorns build, and were quite upset to see the nerfs to it. With any luck, I'll re-kindle a fire in some of you... It won't be the retarded beta thorns, but it should work by all my estimations.