Do you think a "Thorns/IM" skill will come back?

[Drytchnath]

With the reliance on pots now gone, do you think Blizzard will add in a skill that deals retaliatory damage? If they did it would be brutal: whack a few mobs with a ridiculously powerful weapon, run up and hit someone with a thorn skill activated and *BAM* 1-shotted by your own attack.

I actually would rather not see thorns return, or at least drastically tone it down but still make it useful. It may be asking for too much but I always hated playing Act4 with a barb (or zealadin...jabazon, p-strike sin, etc...) JUST b/c of the IM'ing mobs in the Chaos Sanctuary.

Then theres physical immunes...but thats a different topic for a different thread.

Edit: Ooops, just saw the skill forum further down, I'll move this post to there.

[Mackan]

I have a feeling most of older skills will not return in Diablo 3.. could be bad, could be good..

[Starving_Poet]

I'd have to say that I'd rather like to see D3 'curses' affect AI more than just act as glorious damage modifiers.

[Apocalypse]

my opinion is there will be a "of thorns" effect for players but not mobs. i also believe it would not work in pvp play

[jmurrayufo]

I don't think their is any reason we wont see a thorns monster, or something like it. Picture a shield skelly with a reflecting damage shield. It gives you a reason to find a way around them, or deal with the shield without directly bashing it face on.

Not all of D2's gameplay is gonna translate, but that doesn't mean you can't re-invent the old stuff into the newer gameplay.

[stillman]

I won't even play a melee barb simply because I like to do many CS runs. I also don't play any melee chr like a pally, kicker, etc. It seems like the IM problem does much more than challenge us; it takes away a big chunk of the game. So I hope Blizzard thinks hard about this and chooses not to include IM, but that's just me.

[Arbedark]

I won't even play a melee barb simply because I like to do many CS runs. I also don't play any melee chr like a pally, kicker, etc. It seems like the IM problem does much more than challenge us; it takes away a big chunk of the game. So I hope Blizzard thinks hard about this and chooses not to include IM, but that's just me.

Why do people fail to realise that beacuse something is broken in D2, it doesn't mean its going to be broken in D3?

This is like those whiners claiming that Paladins and/or Blessed Hammer shouldn't be in D3 since they were overpowered in D2, so they MUST be overpowered in D3.

[Chase]

I hope not.

The skills were always either grossly overpowered or completely useless.

Mobs do low damage and have high health. Maybe if they evened t out a bit so mobs were closer to player stats it would work.

[Gamekk]

Obviously not. It's too "agressive". If one of DIII devs played a barbarian in act IV, they understood that Iron Maiden was a sucky idea that they need to remove. They're gonna make things more smooth.

Balance will be new in Diablo... good or bad? IDK...

[ill logic]

I think it will. I'd never accuse Blizz of a lack of originality, but the thorns/iron maiden/spirit of barbs/damage reflected/returned concept is so common that it's unlikely that it won't be in Diablo 3 in some form.

Moreover, it'll probably be in because it would fit better than in D2.

Here's why.

"when you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them… by just spiking the difficulty.”- Jay Wilson, http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/08/14/diablo-iii-designer-diablo-fans-broad-audience/

Eh, not really true. He does imply that chars did tons of damage. As a result, monsters had to have high HP to survive decently long. But chars had low HP in general, so monsters damage relative to their HP was low. But what's interesting is in how they plan to design monsters in D3, with the introduction of health orbs and things like that, so that monsters won't have to be low dam/high HP normally (some monsters weren't so skewed). As long as they aren't skewed that way predominantly (eg. mod dam/mod HP, high dam/mod HP etc), thorns-type skills would rock. Unfortunately, Blizz was never able to balance the arms race enough so that those skills were decent. Revives and conversion skills were not good offensively for those reasons. And they may never have realized there was a problem--hell, they even included Spirit of Barbs and made it into the lvl 30 skill for the expansion. I mean, really?

Other stuff to think about is that many players would rather kill stuff more quickly rather than get hit first. Hence some new players wondered if Thorns had a hidden effect, making them lose HP or something. Blizz would have to consider that sort of tradeoff.

stillman: Melee'ers should just have better options. Like a Berserk/Vengeance that hits groups and doesn't penalize our defense or rob so much mana :( Ofc there's always the item solution, tho it sucks not to be able to do it purely by skills. Just for diversity of enemy skills, I wouldn't mind monsters having IM. My Shockwave better be able to take them out tho.

[Sein Schatten]

If anything it will be Thorns. Percentages are more difficult to balance in this case. Thorns is also better as the developer knows exactly what damage Thorns does on any given scenario. IM can do 1k damage or 100 damage. Thorns is okay, imo.

[Pyrohemia]

If it is restricted to hurting only monsters (aka player uses thorns aura, or casts IM on a monster) then I will be fine with it. If there is something that hurts players that scales with damage like Oblivion knights casting IM then I will be very annoyed. The consistent damage that you take from attacking, for example, razor spines is a fair mechanic, but IM is not fair and greatly reduces the gameplay experiance for melee classes.

[Starving_Poet]

I think Iron Maiden would always have made much more sense if it did damage to the attacker on a percentage of the attackers life - like Crushing Blow - so that it couldn't kill you, but it could drop you pretty fast.

Just think of how useful THAT curse would have been?

[Xdeathfire]

I don't think it would become a skill mainly due to the general worthlessness of IM and thorns as a skill to actually invest points in.

Since they can only work against physical damage, like holy bolt and undead, it turns people off from them instantly. Since most players wouldn't be interested in investing large number of points into those skills mostly regardless of its power, I would think the developers would rather put in another more interesting/useful skills.