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The cycling of the 3 with Boon of Bul-Kathos + ignore pain + some extra fury stuff could be interesting.

How do you guys get all those skill calculator sigs?

Tbh, I don't really see myself using much of those long-cooldown skills... I'd rather grab yet another skill to prevent bad situations in the first place.

I think this would make sense, otherwise the passive is not that good.

Quote from sacridoc

And obviously you'll use a shield and focus on block pretty heavily.

Does blocked damage get reflected?

Quote from sacridoc

7) Thorns is interesting... but it really feels like your damage will end up being so low that it might not be so fun to play. You'll always have to be grouped with damage dealers if you want to clear things faster than what you can solo.

Yeah, since I'm planning a mostly solo build, I dunno.

But, we'll see how it pans out in-game.

I'm disappointed it took Leoric half an hour to kill him when he didn't even move. Wtf.

Quote from Sabvre

Armor reduces ALL damage (including magic).

WHAT?!

Well, see, this is why I have the disclaimer in my thread.

Quote from Sabvre

I'm guessing you can probably get up to 700+350 (50%) thorns damage with tough as nails. I think this will be more viable in PVP than PVE...

Haha, maybe, but PvP is a long way off.

I wonder if Blizzard intends for a Thorns build to be viable at all.

Quote from koetjeka

That's not quite true, I was looking on Diablonut (http://diablonut.inc...em/archon-armor) and found some nice affixes for chest armor:

Melee attackers take (1713-2544) damage per hit.

This may be the most important thing here. I am, in fact, relying on something like this existing, otherwise it just won't fly. These affixes make me wonder, though, if Ignore Pain is not worth taking, because the affixes may quickly overcome that bonus.

Quote from Barrier

i dunno, you want to take as low dmg as possible in hardcore which doesnt really cooperate well with thorns build

This isn't necessarily true. The idea here is to get abnormally high amounts of armor and compensate for the decreased damage (due to less damage-dealing skills) with Thorns.

Quote from X_Gr1m_X

Thorn armour only works against melee attackers. What are you going to do about the range attackers?

Obviously ranged is not considered. I'm more concerned with the magic attackers, tbh, since that's not defended by armor, while ranged should be.

Quote from Sxnderjyden

The build will only be useabel in coop, to tank monsters. I do not belive you can farm with the build because you will have to low dmg output, but you never know unless you try it.

Yeah, as I said, it relies heavily on the monster damage vs health balance. If monsters deal too little damage, it will be very difficult to make it work. Which is a shame.

Nothing like walking into a room and having everyone die from hitting you.

Quote from X_Gr1m_X

Also, this is a pretty sweet video I put together, using full thorn at Jar of Souls.

Yeah, exactly what I mean. Unfortunately, that doesn't show much for the future. Thorns were pretty effective early game in Diablo II, as well.

I prefer swords or axes. Originally wanted a shield, not sure anymore.

Disclaimer: I am not in beta. Therefore...

I'm thinking of doing a Thorns build for Hardcore, with the intent that my defense will be my offense. Thorns builds, though, typically have a few caveats depending on how the game is designed. I recall trying to run a Vengeance/Thorns Paladin in Diablo II and I barely made it past Act II /p8. The damage output for Thorns was just too low. It was a relatively fun and unique build but didn't feel viable.

Thorns had this damage % reflected pattern:
Damage Return +% 250 290 330 370 410 450 490 530 570 610 650 690 730 770 810 850 890 930 970 1010
(stolen from Arreat Summit)

Those are not small numbers. But, unfortunately, at 500% damage reflected, you still don't do shit.

The problem with this is that the way balancing is usually done, monsters often do very little damage to you compared to their health, so you can multiply it by 10 but it will still be too low damage. By the time you get decent damage output from Thorns you have taken way too much damage yourself. It also seems like in Diablo III, you will need to get Thorns damage mostly from items, which will affect your effectiveness in other areas. For a Thorns build to work, they should constitute a significant amount of your overall damage output. If the game doesn't provide enough damage this will simply not work just like it didn't work in DII.

Another issue is how much various damage reduction mods factor in. Ideally, Thorns would take the raw damage you are dealt prior to any armor or damage reduction. In that case, stuff like Nerves of Steel will not hinder you. Otherwise, this will really not fly with Hardcore if you have to reduce your armor. Fortunately, Diablo III removed chance to hit so we don't have to care about being hit anymore (Thorns favors basically always being hit). I also intended to use a shield here, but I'm wondering on the effects of blocking and if a specialization in low-block shields is possible. My Thorns pally was a 2hand user because of that. I kinda forgot that Thorns builds do not favor shields. Using a 2-hander should give you pretty good damage output, though.

So this is some theorycrafting here I'm doing for fun, trying to outline all the possible options for a Thorns build. This is a Thorns oriented build, not a "Thorns on the side" build (I'm not sure if there's a point to that, tbh). I definitely see a lot of room for adaptability here, i.e., if you're low on armor, you'll take one passive over the other in a real (virtual) life situation. This is an attempt to do something balanced. Active skills are bold and reddish, rune effects are italic and reddish, passive skills are just bold. Feel free to give advice on better coloring lol.

To start, skills, that, I believe, fly out the window with a Thorns build:

Wrath of the Berserker. The 20% dodge chance just seems counterproductive.

Call of the Ancients. If they are hitting those 3 guys they are not hitting you. Good skill for builds that want to disperse damage, but that's not what we're trying to achieve here.

Since I'm taking out 2 of the big skills, Boon of Bul-Kathos is probably not very useful, either.

Threatening Shout (potentially), if the damage reduction reduces Thorns damage.

Bloodthirst. Thorns builds preclude low damage output, so damage-based lifesteal is meh.

And these are the skills I foresee using:

Tough as Nails seems like a must-have passive, and Ignore Pain with Contempt for Weakness a must-have skill (granted, that rune is very high level, so until then, I'd take either Iron Hide or Ignorance is Bliss). Those are the only two Thorns-enabling skills for the Barbarian, iirc, and they both also help with damage reduction. I really don't know how widespread Thorns modifiers are on items so I'd figure these are key.

Revenge also seems very useful since you'll be hit a lot, possibly with Vengeance is Mine or Retribution. Seems like this could be a significant damage skill, but not sure how useful single target since it probably won't proc often from a single target (maybe switch to Provocation). Although, with adds, it could be all right.

Of course, we also need to worry about survival, both because we take lots of damage and as I've said this is with HC intentions.

One side of the issue is just improving your defenses, and we have skills like Nerves of Steel, which seems amazing because you end up raising your health and armor at the same time. As HC, it's quite obvious one would look at Juggernaut. The life recovery and protection from movement impairing effects seems hard to skip. But, I wonder if with a sufficiently protected build, this would actually be an issue. A Thorns Barbarian intends to be sort of in the middle of the battle, not as concerned with positioning as other builds, and perhaps not as vulnerable to snares or stuns and what not because, hey, you're just dealing damage to them. Pop Ignore Pain and be happy. With that in mind, I'm wondering if I'd prefer to grab Superstition instead. It's my wild guess that magic damage doesn't get reflected, and ranged damage is typically useless, as well. That's the stuff we don't want, and being armored-centered, we may miss out on resists a bit. Relentless is an option but I don't like it, I prefer to never get that low, and Ignore Pain does essentially the same thing.

The other side of the issue, from what I can see, is lifesteal. But, since a big chunk of our damage output isn't from hitting stuff, damage based lifesteal isn't particularly useful. Fortunately, there are a few maximum life based skills on the table. Aforementioned Revenge already heals you for 5% of your maximum life, with Vengeance is Mine raising that to 8%. Depending on how Revenge procs and when the life increase is applied, this can be extremely useful. Then there's Overpower with Revel, same thing.

Juggernaut gives you a chance to recover 15%. Depending on how often effects of that nature are applied on you, this may or may not be useful. I'm not sure on the usefulness of Pound of Flesh, kinda ignoring it right now, will be easier to say in-game. Inspiring Presence is another passive that regenerates 1% of your maximum life, depending on one's use of shouts, may be useful.

Whirlwind has a rune option Blood Funnel, which restores 1% of your maximum life every critical hit. I've actually considered using this, but I'm not sure on the efficiency of critical hits, especially without something like Weapons Master + Axes/Maces. I'm also not sure how being hit works in the middle of Whirlwind. Revenge also has Best Served Cold, a rune that increases your critical hit chance. Then there's Ruthless, with its 5% critical strike increase, but Weapons Master is more effective. There's also Overpower with Killing Spree. Critical chance can also be increased via Battle Rage, but 3% seems like a joke, and I'm not particularly impressed with Battle Rage overall. But, if this is where you want to go, it's here.

While I don't like Battle Rage, War Cry, while increasing your armor, has a number of nifty rune effects (I see a lot of potential for rune switching here...). Impunity gives you some nice resistances, and you could potentially use this instead of Superstituion and grab Inspiring Presence instead, so you have your armor, resistances, and life regeneration. Invirogate gives you really nice raw life benefits (which is potentially useful against magic as well). Hardened Wrath just gives you a good raw armor bonus. Nothing wrong with Charge!, while we're at it. On the other hand, Threatening Shout, I'm not sure. While the wording of Ignore Pain is "damage taken", here, it's "damage done by enemies", which leads me to believe this will affect Thorns damage negatively. This shout does have an interesting rune Demoralize, but I'm not sure if it will be that difficult to get everybody to attack you tbh.

(Fury considerations are not present here because I don't have experience with Fury, and because two of the main skills and main damage do not even use Fury)

I think that's more or less it on Thorns skills. From there you're left with 3 skill slots for w/e the heck you want to use for w/e reason. I can't go too far on this because I feel this will strongly depend on one's experience with the game, and I'm not even in beta. My personal plans would probably be something like this:

I may grab Bash for single target depending on how things pan out. Onslaught seems good for overall damage, maybe Punish to empower a future Revenge or something. Depending on how effective Revenge is, I may not need Bash at all. In that case, I'd probably grab Cleave with Broad Sweep instead. Or I can just grab Overpower.

Take Rend with Mutilate. I would generally call this "clean up damage", something that you put on all the mobs and if they didn't die from something else they'd die from this. Also good to put on random annoying side mobs you don't want to deal with so they die eventually.

I do see myself grabbing Whirlwind depending on how it works with being hit. Whirlwind has Volcanic Eruption for fire damage.

I'm actually tempted to grab Earthquake with The Mountains Call for "oh shit!" moments or something, and since it deals fire damage for a change (or cold with Chilling Earth). I may just take Ground Stomp with Deafening Crash instead, but I probably do want some sort of crowd-control.

Something like this: http://us.battle.net...hRkT!bVe!YbccbZ

What do you all think?

Quote from Adon

So you are saying grouping makes no sense on HC...uh why and how do you think grouping makes no sense on not only HC but also softcore? If I hostile you, your odds of living are much greater in a group and people understand this, I guess you don't?

I'm not exactly sure how you're gonna hostile me when I don't let you into my game in the first place because I'm playing solo?

If I am playing HC and hostility is allowed you will NEVER see me in a public group game ever (unless I am really eager to throw my character away, but then I'd just organize a proper duel). SC, maybe, HC, forget it. I'm not the only one.

Quote from Adon

Diablo is a PvM game, not a PvE game buddy. PvE is player vs everything which would mean hostility is correctly placed in the game, now if you want to admit that then we are fine, otherwise get the acronyms straight.

PvE and PvP are the traditionally compared modes, actually, PvE does not include PvP, if you have any doubts, check WoW and their server configuration. PvM is a rather rare term, in fact, I do not recall hearing it outside Diablo. Regardless of the semantic validity you have doubts over, PvE vs PvP is the terminology atm.

Quote from Adon

Must of gotten PK'd a lot to be so butt hurt and blind to not even recongize what hostility did offer to Diablo.

I appreciate the psychoanalysis. Let me try: you want hostility because you like jumping on people who are weaker than you in level or gear because you suck too much to actually play a proper PvP game where everyone is ready for you.

Quote from Adon

You are telling me that knowing at any moment someone could hostile you and change the way the game played that it didn't make it more dynamic and random? Really?

So do you believe Heroes of Might and Magic III should be done real time since that will make it more dynamic? I mean, obviously it's the objective of every game to be more dynamic and random, am I understanding you right? And that HAS to be implemented via forced PvP?

I'm telling you that games exist in different forms and playstyles and some of us like our PvE games to stay PvE games and if we want to PvP we load up something else. PKing is really nothing more than pushing your playstyle on someone else, that is why it got thrown out the window. Nobody here is opposed to PvP. We're opposed to PvP being forced on us when we came to kill monsters.

Quote from Adon

I'm not even going to bother with your last comments, obviously so angry you can't think straight. Do me a favor and write out your response, then walk away for an hour or so and then read it...if it still makes sense then post it.

Says the guy who can't refrain from personal attacks.

Quote from Adon

It led to more grouping if anything.

Really, by whose account? Because that logically makes no sense on Hardcore. Heck, doesn't make much sense on Softcore, either.

Quote from Adon

It made the game dynamic and random.

This is a pretty meaningless statement. I think what it did is turn the game into something it wasn't, and that something appealed to certain groups of people. Which doesn't change the fact that, at the end of the day, Diablo has always been a PvE game. For those of us who do not care for PvP, hostility just ruined one aspect of the game by forcing another on us.

If I was playing Pharaoh, and you told me how adding RTS war elements would made the game more dynamic or something, I'd tell you to go play an RTS, because it appears that's what you're looking for. If Diablo II is so bland to you that you need hostility stuff to make it more dynamic and random, I daresay you're in the wrong game. There are tons of PvP games out there including MMORPG's with PvP features. Diablo doesn't have to be one of them just because some random people like it. I like Scrabble, let's add that into Diablo III because it makes the game more intelligent.

Useless assessment is useless.

You like hostility? Fine. But if you're gonna start talking about how you're more hardcore and we're less hardcore, I'll ask you to join the Army. Remember back in the good old days people would look at us gamers and talk about how we're sissies playing with toys afraid of the real world. Remember your place.

Is this legit?

Well, I don't have beta, soooo...

Quote from KageKaze

They pretty much said the list of legendaries that are on the main site was lower than what they have planned internally, so I'm thinking there will be.

Hmm... *goes to the main website, scrolls through the item classes*

Never mind, I'm happy now.