Does Thorns suck?

[yovargas]

I searched and couldn't find anything on this. I was wondering if there was anything that modified thorns damage or if it's always just the flat damage stated on an item. I was shocked to put a chipped ruby in my weapon and see that monsters were hurt for exactly 2 dmg when they hit me. Unless there's some way to vastly increase that dmg I don't know about, why on earth would anyone use that gem??

[zakaluka]

I have heard that flat %damage bonuses apply to thorns, but I don't know if this is true. It also doesn't have great synergy since really you want defensive bonuses with thorns.
But there is the barbarian skill, Tough as nails - thorns +50%.

I think it's only got any potential on a barb, since they have all the %life based self healing. And look at how thorns scales:
1800 from topaz in weapon
21k is max possible on all gear,
so you could stack up to 23k thorns.
add 50% from tough as nails, 35k thorns.

That can be quite a lot of dps in certain situations (esp any situation where block is effective) but I can't see it being that great for champ farming or bosses. It'd have to be a really high mitigation build with tons of vit, and probably only really works in situations where you're swarmed by trash. Pretty much any build can cope with that anyway.

All in all I think it could be a fun playstyle, but it will only work with a barb and then only if you are rich. But if you are this rich to stack mitigation, vit and thorns you could just make a 200k dps dual-wield crit barb. One thing that makes it somewhat more attractive is that you're gaining passive DPS in a turtle build without the use of any active skills. Only one passive, and tough as nails isn't a horrible passive for defense anyway.

[Rpgguy]

I just see it as an added bonus, most barbs in inferno ( like me ) have that +50% thorns bonus anyways. I wont gem my weapon with thorns or search for it on the AH but when an armor piece already have something like +700 thorns damage then you do 1k damage to everything that attacks you as an added bonus... ( for someone with 12k dps thats not bad... )

[swayzesghost]

Thorns is broken in d3 and will never be worth it. Moving on.

[yovargas]

I think it's only got any potential on a barb, since they have all the %life based self healing. And look at how thorns scales:
1800 from topaz in weapon
21k is max possible on all gear,
so you could stack up to 23k thorns.
add 50% from tough as nails, 35k thorns.

Hm, 35K sounds pretty good, better than I thought you could get, but when you literally need to max out every slot to get it PLUS take a passive, it's pretty pathetic. I definitely hope they buff this a lot to make it a reasonable and interesting options for some builds (even Monks!). In part cuz I already find gems very dull as it is and having that weapon topaz be so bad is making it even worse.