There seems to be a problem with thorns with the necromancer, as I have tried both LoN Thorns and Inarius Thorns with the Hack axe, and it doesnt seem to apply the LoN or Inarius 6p bonus damage for the thorns. Anyone had same thoughts?
Well, first I used D3-planner to quickly put together a build I thought would work quite well (which was based around Inarius set, hack and spear of jairo for large damage numbers). With all the multipliers put together, (int, elemental dmg, krysbin, endless walk, inarius 6p etc,,) the thorns from hack would easily go beyond billions of damage, but after equipping all gear and physically trying the build, I barely made it over a million damage. (Hack weapon damage rolled off)
Knowing that Inarius 6p has a 2750% increase damage from necro, I thought that would be a better choice than LoN's 1300% dmg boost. But I tried with LoN as well to see if I would have the same issue, and yet again my damage numbers are only laughable. (~600 k damage numbers on attack).
Unless I have done something horribly wrong, I think there is a good chance thorns in some way is not working correctly with the necro.
There could be a few victims here, but these are the ones I suspect the most:
1. Hack axe not applying thorns damage like it should. (seems to work with other characters)
2. Inarius set not applying damage to thorns
3. Thorns damage not applied correctly
I'm a huge fan of thorns, and I hope that this could be throughly tested and fixed, unless I've overlooked some basic factors for this to work.
For the record, here is something i have tested:
- With LoN gear and hack equipped, I tested damage done attacking mob vs mob attacking me. I did ~1 million to mob, but they took ~300 million damaging me. Odd, considering Hack applies thorns on attacks.
Just raw gear, no extra stats applied. with just 10 stacks of jairo, triple krysbin damage and bone armor activated for 2750% damage, it appears to give hack billions of damage. Bracers could maybe go in the trillions too, haha.
I'm sure some skills could be swapped out, but the idea was to get as high attack speed as possible.
Hack is the issue. If you use a skill with a high proc coefficient, Hack will probably work. It still relies on procs as far as I understand.
I've been playing around with a thorns pet build and I can confirm I don't see any difference with Hack, at least not through the pets.
However, having seen your results with hack not working, I'd recommend swapping out skeleton mages for Revives and to also use skeletons. That makes 17 targets applying thorns - any monsters with any type of AoE(basically every elite) will be attacking as many as 17(19 with golem + self) targets simultaneously, equaling 17x your thorns damage with the additional 200% bonus from the passive. It's really fun to see a mallet lord rift guardian one shot himself because he just got hit by 100mil thorns x 17 x 200%
Don't use stun or freeze - chill/slow are ok but you want enemies to be attacking your minions, so freezing, stunning, or turning them into chickens with the enchantress is detrimental.
This is probably the most viable necro thorns build for now, until they release a set for a real thorns build in the next season, which they will definitely be doing considering we already have spear + passive. It's really fun, and there is a lot less "sit and wait" than you might think, though you do have to wait for an attack vs rift guardians or bosses.
using ring of royal grandeur(or not if going LoN - inarius is probably better though) + mask of scarlet death will give your revives up to 1500% MORE thorns and can take this build over the top, but it also means you need to be casting revive much more frequently to keep 10 minions up(though no mana cost, the only cost is your management time)
10 stacks of Jairo is very modest - I have seen my thorns sheet dmg north of 1mil without using Eternal Torment and casting decrep on a few packs, and my chip is only at lvl 25 currently. Sheet dmg on thorns with 0 stacks is at about 100k currently.
This build also gives you a lot of flexibility in skills. The only real requirement is decrep, revive, skeletons(much easier to get them focused on a single target quickly than revives), and the thorns passive. If going inarius vs LoN, obv bone armor is required too.
Handling resource generation is wide open - I use devouring aura, along with fueled by death + speed passive on decrep which gives me acceptable farming rate without blood rush. I like land of the dead for unlimited 10 stack revives, but it's not at all needed without mask of scarlet death. Skeleton mages could be yet another source of thorns. you can choose to use golem or not, etc.
I will look into your suggestion. But it really irritates me that hack wont apply thorns through skills and even minions. I guess there is no need for hack with necro yet. If they decide to fix/change it, i think a inarius thorn build would really blast damage numbers through the roof.
[p]Wording on Hack legendary affix is quite open to interpretations:[/p]
p class="item-property-category">Secondary
[*]
[p]75–100% of your Thorns damage is applied on every attack.[/p]
[/list]
[p]Though I highly doubt that it is considered to work with pets attacking. It would be stupidly broken [/p]
[p]In your tests, have you noticed thorns doing any notable damage when pets are being hit?[/p]
List tags are malformed.
Yes. Thorns is massive damage when pets get hit. The 200% thorns on pets passive is a huge buff.
Especially since there are 17 minions standing there(10 revive, 7 skellies). If a big attack hits, thorns gets applied x17
@Dragonhaze97
Hack definitely does not work with pets, but it most likely works with some direct attacks from the necromancer himself. If we can find a direct damage attack that fits well within a pets build that can proc Hack damage, that will be cool.
I am going to follow this thread for a while - keep experimenting and see if you find something that seems to work well!
Yeah, i think now the reason my spells didn't deal thorn damage is because the spells I used might have 0 proc rate for thorns. I will start testing all the spells with all runes, to see if anything has proc rate greater than 0, as spells on other classes has varied proc rates.
let me clarify a few things about thorns and hack for you guys.
1) Hack does not do a thing for pets, because they are not an "attack skill". They are minions. Hack only works with yout direct attacks, or skills that actually have thorns as damage.
2) There is no fast enough attack for Necro to apply thorns through Hack efficiently
3) If there will be 17 pets with thorns it does not necessary means that there will be "x17 thorns damage. "
It means that every pet will simply have a pool of 200% of your thorns.
4) Pets have no thorns attacks. All their "attacks" will be "passive", because they will simply reflect all incoming damage. When something hits them = they do damage via reflect. When they attack directly with their skills = they do no thorns damage, they just use their normal "skill" damage.
So the only way how pets can work with thorns is:
1) Huge amount of pets. More = better
2) As close-range minions as possible. Mages for example will not be very useful as they are mosly in the second line.
I apologize if my post wasn't clear - the only way you would get x17 thorns damage are when all 17 pets get hit, Which does happen when an enemy attacks with an AoE and they all have him swarmed. That's why I mentioned the Mallet lord - I've seen it happen a bunch of times and with his huge attack it makes it really easy to notice and pretty funny.
I'd add:
1) Huge amount of pets. More = better
2) As close-range minions as possible. Mages for example will not be very useful as they are mosly in the second line.
3) avoid stun, freeze, blind, immobilize, as enemies need to be able to attack in order to receive damage
4) Sucks at goblins. Unless we can find a skill which works well with Hack, you just have no means of damaging them effectively.
Great info @Angry_Roleplayer, but I am wondering how you determined there is no necro attack that can apply thorns efficiently? Clearly it will need to be a direct attack, but it seems to me with the possibility of getting into the billions of thorns damage through Jairo, there could be something useful even if only for single target DPS, no?
after some testing, here are a few relevant obersvations I made:
- All primary skills seem to apply thorns via Hack, but Grim Schythe and Bone Spikes being AoE skills, appears to proc only one enemy with thorns per attack. (which makes sense after reading Cheng's comment.)
- Siphon blood always proc thorns the first tick, but as you keep channeling it will not. If you spam Siphon blood by recasting constantly, you will proc thorns alot faster than attacking with Grim Scythe or Bone Spikes. (unless you hit faster than ~3.5-4 APS which was the rate of the SB-spam) Also worth noting here, is that Attack Speed didn't seem to affect the rate of how fast I could spam the skill.
-With my sheet 145k Thorns, Inarius 6p + krysbyn, i would deal around 1B damage with Siphon blood (Weapon Damage rolled off). Slowed enemies would take ~2B. Frozen enemies 6B, and with just 30 stacks of Jairo, goes over 30B. With this a GR 60 was doable, but the fact that you can't apply thorns multiple times per attack sadly makes it pretty useless no matter how many stacks :'( Even if damage is dealt from pets taking damage as well, I feel thorns are simply not coming out fast enough.
These are known facts for all thorns barbs and invoker players
This is why, like i mentioned above, the best way to apply thorns is a very fast attack, not a channelling spell or something. Or an actual thorns skill like a bomb. Despite all this, i still think that pets and Thorns have potential. Through a LON setup at least
Did you try with revives + skeletons + thorns passive? Thorns comes out fast. As you run through, everything melts.
Seems like supplementing with a direct single target attack for gobs and bosses with hack could work, the only issue being taking up a slot for a primarily situational scenario.
I still think Inarius can be a lot stronger than LoN due to its ridiculously OP bonus. You don't get a few of the nice utility bonuses, like 30%Dr from the golem pants, but I also don't think their usefulness trumps the damage bonus from inarius.
Per that Cheng quote, it sure would be nice if they had worded it accurately. The in-game wording is almost the opposite of what he said there. The 800% bonus from 6p invoker is worded properly, and hack should reflect the same. (100% thorns damage to the first enemy hit)
I did try skeletals and revives, but after what I could see only the regular skeletons were proccing thorns when hit. Didn't test them too much, but I couldn't see a single thorn number coming from mages and revives. Monsters appeared to ignore skeletal mages but fight revives. This would probably need better testing, of course.
I did try skeletals and revives, but after what I could see only the regular skeletons were proccing thorns when hit. Didn't test them too much, but I couldn't see a single thorn number coming from mages and revives. Monsters appeared to ignore skeletal mages but fight revives. This would probably need better testing, of course.
Hmm.. it's a bug for sure, cause all minions must be proccing thorns
There seems to be a problem with thorns with the necromancer, as I have tried both LoN Thorns and Inarius Thorns with the Hack axe, and it doesnt seem to apply the LoN or Inarius 6p bonus damage for the thorns. Anyone had same thoughts?
Edit: now seems to work.
And how did you test it and realized it does not apply thorns multiplier?
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110
Well, first I used D3-planner to quickly put together a build I thought would work quite well (which was based around Inarius set, hack and spear of jairo for large damage numbers). With all the multipliers put together, (int, elemental dmg, krysbin, endless walk, inarius 6p etc,,) the thorns from hack would easily go beyond billions of damage, but after equipping all gear and physically trying the build, I barely made it over a million damage. (Hack weapon damage rolled off)
Knowing that Inarius 6p has a 2750% increase damage from necro, I thought that would be a better choice than LoN's 1300% dmg boost. But I tried with LoN as well to see if I would have the same issue, and yet again my damage numbers are only laughable. (~600 k damage numbers on attack).
Unless I have done something horribly wrong, I think there is a good chance thorns in some way is not working correctly with the necro.
There could be a few victims here, but these are the ones I suspect the most:
1. Hack axe not applying thorns damage like it should. (seems to work with other characters)
2. Inarius set not applying damage to thorns
3. Thorns damage not applied correctly
I'm a huge fan of thorns, and I hope that this could be throughly tested and fixed, unless I've overlooked some basic factors for this to work.
For the record, here is something i have tested:
- With LoN gear and hack equipped, I tested damage done attacking mob vs mob attacking me. I did ~1 million to mob, but they took ~300 million damaging me. Odd, considering Hack applies thorns on attacks.
Can you share d3planner link?
You need a thorns skill or a very fast attack to apply thorns through Hack effectively. Just a few multipliers will not transition into crazy damage.
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110
https://www.d3planner.com/253188927
Just raw gear, no extra stats applied. with just 10 stacks of jairo, triple krysbin damage and bone armor activated for 2750% damage, it appears to give hack billions of damage. Bracers could maybe go in the trillions too, haha.
I'm sure some skills could be swapped out, but the idea was to get as high attack speed as possible.
Hack is the issue. If you use a skill with a high proc coefficient, Hack will probably work. It still relies on procs as far as I understand.
I've been playing around with a thorns pet build and I can confirm I don't see any difference with Hack, at least not through the pets.
However, having seen your results with hack not working, I'd recommend swapping out skeleton mages for Revives and to also use skeletons. That makes 17 targets applying thorns - any monsters with any type of AoE(basically every elite) will be attacking as many as 17(19 with golem + self) targets simultaneously, equaling 17x your thorns damage with the additional 200% bonus from the passive. It's really fun to see a mallet lord rift guardian one shot himself because he just got hit by 100mil thorns x 17 x 200%
Don't use stun or freeze - chill/slow are ok but you want enemies to be attacking your minions, so freezing, stunning, or turning them into chickens with the enchantress is detrimental.
This is probably the most viable necro thorns build for now, until they release a set for a real thorns build in the next season, which they will definitely be doing considering we already have spear + passive. It's really fun, and there is a lot less "sit and wait" than you might think, though you do have to wait for an attack vs rift guardians or bosses.
using ring of royal grandeur(or not if going LoN - inarius is probably better though) + mask of scarlet death will give your revives up to 1500% MORE thorns and can take this build over the top, but it also means you need to be casting revive much more frequently to keep 10 minions up(though no mana cost, the only cost is your management time)
10 stacks of Jairo is very modest - I have seen my thorns sheet dmg north of 1mil without using Eternal Torment and casting decrep on a few packs, and my chip is only at lvl 25 currently. Sheet dmg on thorns with 0 stacks is at about 100k currently.
This build also gives you a lot of flexibility in skills. The only real requirement is decrep, revive, skeletons(much easier to get them focused on a single target quickly than revives), and the thorns passive. If going inarius vs LoN, obv bone armor is required too.
Handling resource generation is wide open - I use devouring aura, along with fueled by death + speed passive on decrep which gives me acceptable farming rate without blood rush. I like land of the dead for unlimited 10 stack revives, but it's not at all needed without mask of scarlet death. Skeleton mages could be yet another source of thorns. you can choose to use golem or not, etc.
I will look into your suggestion. But it really irritates me that hack wont apply thorns through skills and even minions. I guess there is no need for hack with necro yet. If they decide to fix/change it, i think a inarius thorn build would really blast damage numbers through the roof.
List tags are malformed.
I mean you harm.
@ch1zra
Yes. Thorns is massive damage when pets get hit. The 200% thorns on pets passive is a huge buff.
Especially since there are 17 minions standing there(10 revive, 7 skellies). If a big attack hits, thorns gets applied x17
@Dragonhaze97
Hack definitely does not work with pets, but it most likely works with some direct attacks from the necromancer himself. If we can find a direct damage attack that fits well within a pets build that can proc Hack damage, that will be cool.
I am going to follow this thread for a while - keep experimenting and see if you find something that seems to work well!
Yeah, i think now the reason my spells didn't deal thorn damage is because the spells I used might have 0 proc rate for thorns. I will start testing all the spells with all runes, to see if anything has proc rate greater than 0, as spells on other classes has varied proc rates.
let me clarify a few things about thorns and hack for you guys.
1) Hack does not do a thing for pets, because they are not an "attack skill". They are minions. Hack only works with yout direct attacks, or skills that actually have thorns as damage.
2) There is no fast enough attack for Necro to apply thorns through Hack efficiently
3) If there will be 17 pets with thorns it does not necessary means that there will be "x17 thorns damage. "
It means that every pet will simply have a pool of 200% of your thorns.
4) Pets have no thorns attacks. All their "attacks" will be "passive", because they will simply reflect all incoming damage. When something hits them = they do damage via reflect. When they attack directly with their skills = they do no thorns damage, they just use their normal "skill" damage.
So the only way how pets can work with thorns is:
1) Huge amount of pets. More = better
2) As close-range minions as possible. Mages for example will not be very useful as they are mosly in the second line.
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110
I apologize if my post wasn't clear - the only way you would get x17 thorns damage are when all 17 pets get hit, Which does happen when an enemy attacks with an AoE and they all have him swarmed. That's why I mentioned the Mallet lord - I've seen it happen a bunch of times and with his huge attack it makes it really easy to notice and pretty funny.
I'd add:
1) Huge amount of pets. More = better
2) As close-range minions as possible. Mages for example will not be very useful as they are mosly in the second line.
3) avoid stun, freeze, blind, immobilize, as enemies need to be able to attack in order to receive damage
4) Sucks at goblins. Unless we can find a skill which works well with Hack, you just have no means of damaging them effectively.
Great info @Angry_Roleplayer, but I am wondering how you determined there is no necro attack that can apply thorns efficiently? Clearly it will need to be a direct attack, but it seems to me with the possibility of getting into the billions of thorns damage through Jairo, there could be something useful even if only for single target DPS, no?
Did some research, and found a comment from skill designer Wyatt Cheng about the Hack:
"The design of Hack is that it will trigger exactly once every time you make an attack that actually requires you to push a button." (Cheng, 2015 http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/60925-thorns-interaction-with-fire-walkers)
after some testing, here are a few relevant obersvations I made:
- All primary skills seem to apply thorns via Hack, but Grim Schythe and Bone Spikes being AoE skills, appears to proc only one enemy with thorns per attack. (which makes sense after reading Cheng's comment.)
- Siphon blood always proc thorns the first tick, but as you keep channeling it will not. If you spam Siphon blood by recasting constantly, you will proc thorns alot faster than attacking with Grim Scythe or Bone Spikes. (unless you hit faster than ~3.5-4 APS which was the rate of the SB-spam) Also worth noting here, is that Attack Speed didn't seem to affect the rate of how fast I could spam the skill.
-With my sheet 145k Thorns, Inarius 6p + krysbyn, i would deal around 1B damage with Siphon blood (Weapon Damage rolled off). Slowed enemies would take ~2B. Frozen enemies 6B, and with just 30 stacks of Jairo, goes over 30B. With this a GR 60 was doable, but the fact that you can't apply thorns multiple times per attack sadly makes it pretty useless no matter how many stacks :'( Even if damage is dealt from pets taking damage as well, I feel thorns are simply not coming out fast enough.
These are known facts for all thorns barbs and invoker players
This is why, like i mentioned above, the best way to apply thorns is a very fast attack, not a channelling spell or something. Or an actual thorns skill like a bomb. Despite all this, i still think that pets and Thorns have potential. Through a LON setup at least
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110
Did you try with revives + skeletons + thorns passive? Thorns comes out fast. As you run through, everything melts.
Seems like supplementing with a direct single target attack for gobs and bosses with hack could work, the only issue being taking up a slot for a primarily situational scenario.
I still think Inarius can be a lot stronger than LoN due to its ridiculously OP bonus. You don't get a few of the nice utility bonuses, like 30%Dr from the golem pants, but I also don't think their usefulness trumps the damage bonus from inarius.
Per that Cheng quote, it sure would be nice if they had worded it accurately. The in-game wording is almost the opposite of what he said there. The 800% bonus from 6p invoker is worded properly, and hack should reflect the same. (100% thorns damage to the first enemy hit)
I did try skeletals and revives, but after what I could see only the regular skeletons were proccing thorns when hit. Didn't test them too much, but I couldn't see a single thorn number coming from mages and revives. Monsters appeared to ignore skeletal mages but fight revives. This would probably need better testing, of course.
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110