Thorns

[Thirteenth]

How much better/worse are revives than skeletons for a build based on thorns from bramble and maybe Edge?

Making it a summon/venom with thorns and some other auras from merc.

[NumtyDoo]

I had bramble on a poison/summon hybrid. The thorns were ok, but definately didn't help as much as I thought.

[Thirteenth]

Ill just go with skeletons then, i can always change my gear to fit them, ive heard revives are nothing but punching bags and skeles focus more on quality.

[Poppis]

Edge might be an ok choice for act1 merc, before you can get to NM act2.

[lumpor]

The only time auras stack is when they come from the same source, like "from item on mercenary" or "from skill on character". So if you have multiple auras from items, they will stack. Spirit of barbs also isn't counted as thorins, and stacks too. Equip a bramble, edge and use the spirit of barbs charge. It will own in normal, be a good strategy in nm, but be weak in hell.

[Damric]

the problem in hell, and when you get a lot of players in the game, is that the monsters have a very low damage to life ratio, so even with amp, they won't kill themselves too fast.

But early in the game, and against monsters that do a LOT of damage in hell (like lister and his pack with fanaticism extra strong or something), damage reflection works pretty well.

[ReCo]

does the edge aura adds to act2 merc thorns aura? - EDIT: just read the answer above ;)
how much damage reflected should be enough to take down lister and his buddies in hell? (lets say i have a bear with 2k life and i can keep recasting it)

[XCodes]

does the edge aura adds to act2 merc thorns aura? - EDIT: just read the answer above ;)
how much damage reflected should be enough to take down lister and his buddies in hell? (lets say i have a bear with 2k life and i can keep recasting it)
Way too much to rely on it. Physical damage resistance affects Thorns aura, so that cuts it in half right there. Beyond that, monsters have literally thousands of HP and deal a couple hundred damage per hit, so many of them could hit something with a high-level thorns aura some 20-odd times and still not die.

[lumpor]

XCodes, you can use amp damage to lower their physical resistance

[Niniux]

Hmm, this makes me wonder how a build that focuses on Revives, Poison, and maybe leftovers thrown into GM would do...

[XCodes]

XCodes, you can use amp damage to lower their physical resistance
True, but even then it's still a painfully slow way to kill things. It's really like Corpse Explosion but it's all Phsyical damage and in slow-motion.

I know, I looked into this before. Even with a Merc's damage return aura (~400% I imagine) my skeletons were dealing several times more damage with their own attacks than the reflected damage, even with Amplify Damage. If you use Revives instead of Skeletons then I can see it being more useful given that they're just not going to do that much damage either way, but getting the mana pool to support repeat castings of Revive without dumping any points at all into Energy is extremely difficult unless you can manage an Insight polearm on an A2 Merc.

[Ed from Russia]

the problem in hell, and when you get a lot of players in the game, is that the monsters have a very low damage to life ratio, so even with amp, they won't kill themselves too fast.


That's only half the problem. Thorns also doesn't return damage to ranged attackers, or to attackers that do elemental damage. In other words, it doesn't deal with Gloams, Vipers, Spear Cats, exploding Dolls, ...

[ReCo]

and how does it deal with extra strong lister and his pack in hell? im not interested in killing regular monsters with thorns , just those crazy monsters.

btw lvl 15 thorns has 810% damage reflected as far as i know

[XCodes]

and how does it deal with extra strong lister and his pack in hell? im not interested in killing regular monsters with thorns , just those crazy monsters.
Still no dice. See for yourself (http://battle.net/diablo2exp/monsters/act5-baalsminion.shtml) the absurd ratio of HP to Damage. Even with 800% reflected damage and Amplify Damage's -100% Physical Resistance it will take ~20 hits for the monster to kill itself (if you're lucky), and as minions of an extra strong boss I believe the ratio gets even more extreme.

You're much better off reviving Urdars from the River of Flame and using their CB to take out one or two as quickly as you can and then using Corpse Explosion to take out the rest of the pack.

[lumpor]

How about wearing bramble and edge, and using the spirit of barbs charge?

With amp, it can't take over 5 hits for enemies to kill themselves right? And for archers the skeletons can still attack

[XCodes]

How about wearing bramble and edge, and using the spirit of barbs charge?

With amp, it can't take over 5 hits for enemies to kill themselves right? And for archers the skeletons can still attack
Stacking all that together still only does 1940% Damage Return, so it's now down to ~8 hits for a minion to kill itself, again if you're lucky. If you do all that then it could work, but if Lister pops with elemental enhanced or spectral hit then your skeletons are still going to get thrashed.

I still say the best course of action is Urdars + CE. There should be more than enough for both Lister and Baal on the River of Flame.

[Mad Mantis]

However for general play damage return isn't that bad. Minions of Destruction and other such boss types have a very disproportionate damage to health ratio. The general monster encountered in the various acts has a much more reasonable ratio. Still nothing too hot, but workable.

[Blood_And_Iron]

The conclusion has always been your summons will deal more damage than IM or Thorns, in general. One would only go the damage return route for an extra challenge.

[MrBill]

Well, for the record, so far my (currently) Level 78 Skeleton Mage / Lower Resist / Summoner Necro, with Thorns via my Act 1 Merc's Edge bow, is killing quite nicely thank you, he is in Act III of Hardcore Hell and the Thorns aura has made a notable difference. A few points:

(1.) I would have to agree that Thorns ain't gonna cut it in Hell by itself due to the "monster life to damage per hit" issue that has been described by other posters. On the other hand, as a supplementary source of damage for a Necro who can kill without it, Thorns adds a very useful punch to your army. The key factor here is that your minions are inflicting physical damage when they get hit by the monsters, as well as when your skellies and Revives hit the monsters with a regular attack. (This is kind of important for me as I use a Fire Golem and his damage is otherwise all single element.) It all adds up nicely.

(2.) As has been mentioned, "Thorns + Amp" is probably inferior in Hell to "Might + Amp". However there is a caveat to this, a nice little dirty trick that I play on boss monsters who are stupid enough to Amp (curse) my army, namely I Amp the monsters right back. The combination of "double damage to my army via enemy Amp" multiplied by "Thorns plus my own Amp on the enemy monsters" kills things very, very quickly -- I have even seen Thorned Hulks (Stormtree's crew) go down in one or two hits. Of course, keep in mind with my army of Skeleton Mages, the monsters are usually chilled or poisoned when this gets triggered, that probably doesn't help them very much...

(3.) The biggest problem that I am encountering with Thorns in Hell is with monsters with either "Physical Immune" (should be obvious why that's an issue) or "Stone Skin" -- the latter can take friggin' forever to kill, even with Amp, but I guess that's more or less par for the course even for a conventional Summoner... CE helps a bit but even there it can take multiple blasts to take one of these things down.

(4.) Finally, don't forget that your Merc (the one whose Edge bow bestows the Thorns aura) will kill some monsters, as well. This factor is often overlooked but if you start counting how many bad guys -- especially Demons and Undead, both of which get hit hard by the Edge Runeword -- fall to her arrows, this too starts adding up. Right now my A1 Merc, "Gwinni", is using a Boneflesh armor suit just for the Open Wounds effect, but (if it drops) I'd like to give her a Toothrow as that's even more OW... I'm poor right now so I can't really afford to make her a Treachery or Duress. Does anybody know of an affordable hat for a Merc that has either Open Wounds or Crushing Blow as an attribute?

Good luck with your Necro

Mr. Bill

(Edit: It's "CE" for "Corpse Explosion" not "CD" as in "CD-ROM" <lol>. Added comment about Merc killing monsters.)

[factotum]

(3.) The biggest problem that I am encountering with Thorns in Hell is with monsters with either "Physical Immune" (should be obvious why that's an issue) or "Stone Skin" -- the latter can take friggin' forever to kill, even with Amp, but I guess that's more or less par for the course even for a conventional Summoner... CE helps a bit but even there it can take multiple blasts to take one of these things down.


Since you apparently have a Fire Golem and Mages, use Lower Resist instead. Considering that even in the best case a Physical Immune monster will have 80% damage resistance after Amping, the elemental damage you're doing is probably going to be far more effective at taking them down; just let the skellies keep the monsters off your Mages.