I Played Thorns Warrior So You Wouldn't Have To And The Results Are... A Mixed Bag

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No point in adding a planner, if you're gonna give this stuff a shot try making your own attempt imo otherwise refer to the video. TLDW yea thorns feels like it's missing something and likely gets it in the future.

[@masonhales]

Maybe the real strength of thorns build is that maps modifiers like "monsters attack 500% faster and are on 300% more crack cocaine" actually become positive modifiers and increase your DPS

[@rpgambit]

Gotta stack precursor tablets for increased quantity of cocaine for extra juice

[@akn3207]

I really thought you were going to say: maybe the real strength of thorns is the friends we made along the way

[@TensaSaigo]

@@akn3207 how do you make friends when every time they try to pat your shoulder you spike them with thorns? :D

[@yoursravishankar]

​@@TensaSaigomasochists

[@LokirofRoriksted]

regular builds: "you right click and deal 9billion damage for the cost of 72 mana" thorns build: "you let enemies right click you and they take 200 damage for the cost of 7000 life"

[@Rafael-km9mx]

Dude is top 1 masochist

[@wopaolon7478]

CBT with Mathil ? Sounds fun

[@Digitalgems9000]

LOL

[@3zhay]

You need to get some cimoooo in your life that is truly a masochist grinder.

[@randomguy3869]

tbh i didnt think that thorns would do as much as you showed in the video

[@xfranchize]

Ya you could easily build that into a build as supplemental damage the investment might be high though lol.

[@KyokujiFGC]

The problem is it really requires the enemy to attack you quickly. Bosses with big slow 1 shots are gonna wreck you.

[@ChaseyIsthabomb]

this helmet could be a little better, only level 16

[@alastairchong568]

kudos for trying, it's really painful and you earned my respect brother.

[@MikeyJ28]

Leave it to Mathil to play the builds nobody wants to

[@Jadix]

I also made a thorn warrior. I found you can weapon swap to a wand with x3 damage as extra ele. So you gotta build your spikes and then weapon swap for max DPS. I think theres some other multipliers you can get but the experience was so miserable I just stopped trying.

[@JackD1615]

That's a very astute idea

[@tth1903]

Prediction: druid will have something to make thorns playable. You know, nature, thorns, why not

[@Gildorify]

I can see this being the case, but I can also see it being a meme stat GGG put in to muddy the modifiers we get on gear. I hope its not though.

[@SumSumSummerstorm]

@@Gildorify I'm pretty sure it's just like light radius, a worthless stat nobody will ever want

[@Gildorify]

@@SumSumSummerstorm That's what I am thinking its gonna be as well, though we can hope its not gonna be like that.

[@Flamewarden_Honoushugoshin]

@@Gildorify Could be both, being only really useful on a build that is entirely devoted to it and kinda a meme, like a bad version of Righteous Fire, a lot of RF gear is pretty useless on most other builds. Honestly kinda hope they bring back the idea of certain uniques scaling off light radius as well, would be cool for those trash stats to at least have niche meme builds.

[@Gildorify]

@@Flamewarden_Honoushugoshin Same brother. I would love for uniques enabling builds like that... Just don't make them too overpowered or hard-to-get. Otherwise we end up with some builds needing a specific item and being shit otherwise. *Cough* "This build requires Mageblood." *Cough*

[@EyesFireable]

The only non-click bait, real content creator that just plays the game and makes fun videos, non-click bait trend garbage!

[@nekropanzer1179]

There's a witch hunter variant I've been checking out these last few days - the build creator is KallTorak ; he went through warrior, then witch hunter with the explode ascendancy node and magma barrier which is by far the most successful and viable option ( until some other stuff gets added or discovered i guess ) .

[@krinniv7898]

You're my hero for doing this.

[@remimezelle5402]

Can we take a moment to appreciate the amount of value Mathil brings to GGG Team. Testing that sort of shit and giving feedback. Keep on testing stuff bro this is the best thing you can do you for the game.❤

[@Olvrin]

Grim Dawn's retaliation is just peak for such thing

[@Spookalypse]

This build deserves a rose 🌹

[@simply.skyler]

There's a new content creator who's working with pretty much everything thorns-esque and he felt it was possible but slow and less than viable in its current state with the support currently available. He's also made an Arctic Armor Infernalist and is looking to put out a video shortly on a Magma Barrier Witch Hunter I believe? Both of those look more viable honestly, more scaling opportunity and there's some scaling oddity with thorns right now apparently that probably isn't fully correct or what its meant to be. Edit: Realized I forgot to name him, the creator who's working on these is Kaltorak.

[@Jmerithew87]

Thorns is the best Trial of Sekhemas build, change my mind.

[@Antiquated-Ether]

You take zero damage from blocked sources

[@Shallaan]

Darkness monk says teehee xd

[@k1ngisback176]

With Fireflower Amulet and Crown of the Pale King, you can even thorns yourself for some weird potential shenanigans. Alternate source of damaging your energy shield for Barrier Invocation, or a way to self ignite for Cast on Ignite, especially if you have a way to remove the ignite. If you swap convert damage to cold, you can self Chill for the reverse chill chest piece.

[@fotok3133]

break armor from tree might work on thorn and/or warbringer ascendancy node but thorn should get a passive skill like auto attack

[@RinFutakashi]

Warrior before:SLAM POW BWHAHHAAHA Warrior after mathil: ohhh tornado lemme sit in it, ohh literal magma from the boss let me bathe in it

[@thundergodcv8939]

I actually tried this and one thing that i came up with was using %damage gained as fire/cold/lightning on a wand. with wand and shield you can still use resonating shield to break armor (which did kind of work for me), and all of those elements scale properly off the thorns/generic damage. you can get all 3 on the wand so it ends up with like 90% more damage. then i would eat armor break with shield charge so i can rebreak for the plating. you still end up with all of the same problems though and it still did not work well, but i had fun messing around at least.

[@KyokujiFGC]

My guess is the templar will have some kind of self flagellation-themed ascendancy

[@mized4]

Im going to start a thorns build like this but build into avatar of fire and use magma barrier to actually make it not so painful. Luckily the warbringer armour breaking ascendancy works on all hits so I can use magma barrier or other abilities to break armor for scavenged playing. The thorns will be turned into fire which ironically won't even benefit from armor breaking but I could curse rare mobs and monsters and see how it plays out.

[@ullantra]

only just noticed this. at 8:00 or so watch the top of the life globe. it reflects the mouse!

[@maguszero]

I played this quite a bit myself, and I definitely think Warbringer is the ascendency for it. Negative armor is probably useful while you're at max charges. Overall the main thing I learned playing this build is that Perfect Strike is amazing, so I built an Avatar of Fire Perfect Strike build with high armor.

[@lukusridley]

I did it early on with warbringer on the basis that 10% damage breaking armour I thought would let the thorns auto-trigger scavenged plating. Reader, it did not. If thorns counted for more triggers it would really help imo - I was running crown of the pale king and max thorns crit with the boots, and nothing that triggers off crits worked either.

[@maguszero]

@@lukusridley Imo, the other thorns boots are probably better. What you ideally want, I think, is ways to make lots of aftershocks to cause armor break, and a sunder totem to cash in the breaks automatically.

[@lukusridley]

@@maguszero Yeah I just liked the idea of thorns crit because it was funny

[@OctodadUnderstudy]

Does thorns still trigger while using encased in jade?

[@maguszero]

@@OctodadUnderstudy it should, but you're probably better off taking the full shield and armor break branches.

[@animeangeis]

Righteous Fire is now Righteous Thorns. That's how they kill it

[@TheNumbersPerson]

I really hope that thorns gets some serious support with flails, like entirely focus flail damage around thorns and make some skills that turn thorns into AoE tied to an ascendancy or unique or early game accessible notable.

[@ArmouredBlood]

Titan with scavenged plating seems the obvious choice but if you look at the node cut to the bone, in the witch/sorc area, and the million crit nodes around there, phys spells start to look better. Too bad they increased armor break duration so it's not possible to stack scavenged plating stacks easily on bosses. That really needs to be a cluster on the tree doing both increase/decrease instead of a flat mechanical increase.

[@Arkreaver]

My personal (maybe unpopular) hope for future Thorns support is that they don't just include a way to just tack it on to weapon strikes. That just makes it another scaling vector for attacks that's not really different from anything else. I'm hopeful we get bug fixes/interaction changes (Spiked Armour not scaling with %armour, Thorns not counting as a hit etc) and more item/skill/ascendancy support (perhaps from Druid?).

[@InfiniteMonkeysSA]

0:25 "this is truly a build and an archetype in path of exile 2"

[@Midaspl]

Thorns builds will always have one, big issue in every game. They're reliant on enemies hitting you. That means your clearspeed gets gated by whatever time to attack mobs have. You're at the mercy of mob AI and map mods.

[@godblessedxvi4594]

Unless you go the d3 crusader route that just made thorns apply to one of your attacks or some shit 😂

[@jedrusnowak3317]

nah. grim dawn made it perfect. retaliation builds are best there and they stack thorns and tankiness

[@Midaspl]

@@godblessedxvi4594 But then you're not playing "thorns build". Just stacking thorns to scale an ability. TBF the most PoE2 way would be probably a spirit gem that makes thorns proc in AoE from self-damage.

[@bausHuck]

I played thorns from level 16 to level 77. My god it was torture. Some bosses felt awesome, some felt like they never attacked, some felt like they never hit you. At 77 I switched my focus to magma barrier. Much better. But still it relies on enemies to hit you. If resonating shield proc'd magma barrier, it would be awesome. Magma barrier scales crazy with skill levels and some people are doing 2 mil per proc. Which is not crazy damage (because your dps relies on enemy attack speed), but its good enough to do all the content in the game.

[@gamerguy10101]

I would love to see you take on a dual wield molten blast build. The amount of projectiles you produce is pretty nuts but I’m not good enough at crafting builds to figure it out fully

[@specialroast5411]

Barrier invocation stormweaver utilizing all damage can shock, linked to lightning conduit sounds fun.

[@Flamewarden_Honoushugoshin]

Been playing some magma barrier with wildfire (really hope wildfire support gets buffed, it's really cool, but 2 seconds is just a bit too long for it to be meta, very good for rituals or anything where you are fighting in one area though, since with some ignite duration the corpses basically cover the ground in fire) as Gemling Legionaire, it has REALLY good gem level scaling (counts as a melee skill, so +7 from weapon with giant's blood, +3 amulet, +2 gloves, +1 from gem. leg., even +1 from Crown of the Victor if you are willing to give up your helm for ~30% more dmg, yes it is that much per level later). Main issue is there are some enemies that really do NOT like using blockable attacks or straight up don't have any, so I've been running an Ancestral Warrior totem + rolling slam (also REALLY good per/lvl gem scaling, but you kinda have to take blood magic and some ways regen the hp if you want to actually cast them, I hope they make mana costs not scale linearly or only count the base levels, since it really limits builds to a few ways to solve the cost growth) since I'm already Giant's Blood in the weapon swap. Even with only like a lvl 16 Magma Barrier gem (every level is *1.3 btw, so could be MUCH better with a lvl 21 corrupted magma barrier) at only lvl 75 I was doing ~60k dmg hit tooltip and 20k ignite dps tooltip for like 9 seconds, without investing in crit at all and focusing on stun threshold and hp for survivability while blocking. I think the real tech that made the build most fun for me was swapping to Feathered Fortress so I could move at full speed while raise shielding (I don't use resonating shield, too much mana cost and not worth it since magma barrier is all fire and I can just throw splinter on totems or something if I want to break armor). Basically, the armor scaling on Magma Barrier is like 1/10th the damage, so the shield armor doesn't really matter, and moving full speed to doge unblockable AoE and unstables is worth more than pretty much any stats I would get on the shield imo (though maybe there is a version that uses Svalinn to also use Cast on Block).

[@ferinzz]

The removal of armour breaking walks killed the skill. Of they changed it to refresh the stacks maybe it could be worth going into. As it stands, the best build would likely be scaling critical hits with a malice sceptre. But without armour break the damage would be piss poor. But without consuming the armour you don't generate stacks. So it's a mess.

[@VoiDukkha]

this could have been bait of the year with this intro

[@chicomanara]

I believe there is at least a intention on making a thorns build. In PoE 1 is full on dead mod. Might be cool with bear form. Enemies hitting you: don't care, I'm a bear!

[@jacobkable1563]

I thought about trying that shield that comes with "cast on block", possibly with molten armor infernalist? meme builds are fun to think about.

[@anathema1828]

The real thorns are the friends we made along the way…

[@Alloran]

If there was a way to have some kind of fire damage attached to the thorns or a way to get some burning, then maybe the pop chances on the tree would help give it some prolif. I'm pretty sure GGG thinks of thorns as a meme filler mod to brick your exalts.

[@cashandraven2369]

Grim Dawn has the best example to retaliation of any game, and it's been that way for YEARS. Hpefully the devs will take a look at that style and implement their own version.

[@young_herc]

Have you thought about using a corrupted Cowards Legacy and going Pain Attunement to scale the Crit Multi super high? It's extremely easy, especially with builds that have high Life pools

[@kernergades]

Question. Can you leach life thru thorns damage???

[@KhronicD]

No as it doesn't count as you hitting. Nothing that is hit based works with thorns for whatever reason.

[@oldenoughtowatchify]

YET I have faith we will be just walking around and bringing doom to mobs in the near future

[@ferretsnot]

did we ever get a head dent update?

[@bernard6065]

What about ice thorns, with herald of ice or something?

[@Alias_Fakename]

This is the PoE2Onlies ideal clear speed.

[@arrow23]

Love the no clickbait titles forever

[@Nervantoss]

Don’t understand how is so tanky got the same state on block better armour sam res, but their is no way I can face tank monster like that. Is it from leech? Do Thorne leech life from damage?

[@jedrusnowak3317]

thorns have zero support in this game. warrior is great in design but shit in practice

[@fr_z_n3727]

If looking to use Resonating Shield you'll want Unwavering Stance + Stun Threshold % + Threshold Base on gear

[@user-ne2zx3nd2k]

i've tried to do something with thorns as well and my results were even worse than Mathil, hands down god gamer.

[@SukoSeiti]

This is doing better than what I thought it would

[@Vashthalas]

Hopefully it will keep receiving support, looks like a lot of fun!

[@sephrinx4958]

I had just assumed all the thorns bullshit on the tree was just filler placeholder stuff lol

[@therocklau]

Thorns in POE basically never gonna work, because balance between skills are often based on two factors: speed and distance, hammer of god deals crazy amount of damage off range, but it attacks really slow and it has a rather long CD time, things like that, but thorn is very different, it has no distance (because of the helmet) and no speed, not from your side but from monsters, you can't balance on that, and because in POE bosses hit hard and slow which means no damage dealt, so you can't build a CD in thorn which at least allow smaller faster hits help you, but then without a CD thorns have great potential to deal giga dmage on ultra fast hit skills, and that's broken for sure, so you can't give a large amount of base flat to thorn, thorn will be most of the time very shit but in certain fights massively OP, that at best can be a side mechanic but can't be a core mechanic. Grimdawn is the only one I saw made thorn a real damage type, what did they do? They added thorn to weapon damage.

[@kamex4k]

can u turn thorn dmg into poison and prolif screens with PF?

[@brianh5844]

I was thinking this or ignite proliferate. The support is probably there to get the concept to work but my assumption is the damage will be less than just applying ignite or poison with regular skills. For thorns to be worth it, it has to do more damage than normal skills to justify the increased risk.. But if it does more damage, it's too good for botting. Ergo, thorns can never be good.

[@redaffix7320]

Could try Sunder or Stampede totems with a thorns phys to fire Warbringer. Cap block, make Armour contribute to ES regen, and use the block and armour break on Resonating Shield. Think Sunder still gets a guaranteed crit if your totems use it.

[@DoNotFearTheReapa]

Use the helmet that makes thorns damage apply to all damage and then make a good physical spell build. Would probably work unlike trying to make something bad (warrior) worse

[@coreyrachar9694]

one of my favorite things to hear is (you hear this a lot in regards to sehkema trial) "what is a thorns build supposed to do!?". As if there are actually people out there playing thorns lmao. Thorns and light raidus (as well as accuracy to some degree) are just burner stats that NO ONE WANTS. GGG refuses to budge on this point because they claim it adds value to the good affixes. While this is true, I also think that having MORE useful affixes and deleting the useless ones would make everyone happy. Like If I roll crit damage on my wand but I'm not going crit I would say 'oh this would be good for a crit build, but not me, oh well'. Instead I'm rolling an ES helmet and slam light radius followed by accuracy I would say 'wtf is this trash'. It's so damned frustrating to roll thorns or something but then GGG throw their hands up like 'what!? what about thorns builds bro!?'. Like f that lol.

[@vesedy123]

" I would say 'oh this would be good for a crit build, but not me, oh well'." that is exactly why mods like light radius and thorns exist. So not every single item you find/slam is usable. Like it or not, its good for the game

[@coreyrachar9694]

@@vesedy123 I mean it has some value in trade league but just makes it impossible for anyone playing ssf. If the game was more like poe1 I might agree somewhat but in poe2 you have no control over generating items. It's all just gambling. Gamble with orbs, gamble at the gambler, gamble excavation, gamble ritual. Then suddenly you're out of resources and have an ES helmet with accuracy, life regen, thorns and light radius.

[@InsPoE]

The real thorns is the damage you deal to your psyche playing this build 💀

[@warz3190]

There should be a skill where you damage yourself for x% of damage and it unleashes a burst of thorns dps.

[@Flanktank2]

Thorns is just one of those stats GGG puts on items like light radius which have no value in any way shape or form, and the only reason it is there is to punish players and prevent them from obtaining meaningful gear upgrades. If it doesn't have full build support (armor, weapons, passive tree nodes, skills, and supports) it shouldn't be in the game period.

[@Dabimann]

I assume templar will give us some real thorn action

[@Moonmager]

Not that you would want to play this build at all anymore, but what about bramblejack? 250% of weapon damage when you get hit

[@maguszero]

That's technically reflect, so it doesn't really work with all the thorns stuff.

[@jdRamza]

Do you know how this would scale? In a game where you don't delete screens in endgame it might be interesting. Currently though in poe2 getting hit does not feel good even if you reflect lol

[@PatientAsian]

@@jdRamza It wouldn't, that's the issue unfortunately. You have no support gems for reflected damage so the only scaling you could give it is %inc physical. Let's say a boss slaps you for 5000 damage, unmitigated. That's a heavy hit, so it's probably a slow attack. You return 12500 damage to the boss. The first breach boss of the game has about 60 million HP IIRC... so that'll be an uphill battle :)

[@Salty-Hero]

I've always thought of it as a pseudo defensive layer.

[@AlexisTheDragon]

Can you life steal off of it?

[@wolvie90]

There is thorns on the passive tree and it is an established (and OP) archetype in other ARPGs so I would assume GGG will add skills in the future that scales with it.

[@pokermitten9795]

PoE 2 is a love letter to D2 and thorns doesn't work in D2.

[@christiandanielsen7771]

Would love to see u try the hcssf challenge

[@CliseruGabriel]

left a comment for the algorithm. You deserve it :)

[@sassynasty1849]

man you're the king

[@obscurside3652]

most ''engaging gameplay'' build i've seen so far.

[@SocialDownclimber]

Thorns is about as viable as traps right now. Thorns will be in Druid for sure.

[@geanipocroianu6683]

Dude is a legend

[@m1xxx3r]

i bet thorns will be somehow woven into one of marauder ascendancies

[@samuelll3166]

"barbed"arian

[@Antiquated-Ether]

Magma barrier would work with it. 😮

[@siRrk1337]

curses next? curses will be the next meta thing

[@shogoyo788]

Your voice sounds like someone who would play thorn warrior

[@DixonYamouf]

Leave it to Mathil to not bullshit us on builds

[@Xanthus-5c]

How did they manage to create something so bad? Who tested this?

[@juryo_]

this is the most build in path of exile 2.

[@symontrelfa8868]

I've got a grand regalia with corrupted 45% thorns damage if you revisit this and want to push it further

[@Ancile4558]

Hey mathil, it's guys here once again.

[@SumSumSummerstorm]

Who are we kidding, they will never make thorns viable, it's only there to dilute the mod pool

[@CannedPeachs]

Fist build next please! c:

[@Awesomeguy83HHR]

Do a viable balista build next ;)

[@93Beefcake]

why include a stat that will be COMPLETELY useless (i know there is light radius too) even though you can't ever use it

[@Benzil_infinity]

Lol, no way. He actually titled the video, just like I said in the chat. 😂

[@breakthecode4634]

K

[@Benzil_infinity]

@breakthecode4634 :)

[@smokereapergaming3861]

If you had a damage taken gem in poe2 it will work

[@Exterminator19861]

Well ...I guess Quin69 lost his crown right thare .

[@dethsightgaming]

what are the fucking odds that i find the thorns helm at the EXACT second you start talking about it lmao.

[@jaysonbird3975]

Hope everyone poopin on quin and warrior cry like babies after massive nerfs coming. Get your weighted blankets and tissue boxes ready nerds!

[@donebymiso]

[@rancitobabito]

my hero

[@thiagofreitas4409]

sorry mathil, I try the crit and normal version, is totally trash, maybe if we can use quarterstaff with shield would be better with the unique, but is trash

[@nekocat34]

Seems like a build for me

[@KhannUurrr]

Im kinda hoping the new RF will be about Thorns, where your Thorns damage is dealt every X duration in an aoe centered on you to everything (yourself included)

[@titusandronicus8432]

I see RF come back as a paladin (flail) ability & given the thorns on the tree in the warrior/paladin area perhaps you may not be far off

[@richardsmith5803]

Still more dps than quinns crossbow bleed build 😂

[@MrGruxLike]

D4 good Baseg