Thorns Crusader

[Valks 2,375]

This thread is for comments about our Thorns Crusader build guide.

[Guest Dark]

Why don't you incorporate Vo'toyias Spiker into this build? Isn't double damage buff worth it?

[Guest Thalion]

I used to think the Spiker would be useful too but following the build here and testing it at gr80+ made me see otherwise. 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the Spiker just increase the thorns damage when it applies to being hit? The other conditions of the invoker set say "% of your thorns as damage" while the Spiker says "thorns damage". 

 

I understood it as 2 separate events. The invoker multiplies your current thorns value and applies it as separate damage from the normal thorns that procs when hit. 

[Guest Technowonder]

Can’t have consecration and iron skin at the same time. Think you’re missing a skill...

[Guest general]

On 1/25/2019 at 2:46 AM, Guest Technowonder said:

Can’t have consecration and iron skin at the same time. Think you’re missing a skill...

What? Yes you can. Use elective mode.

 

[Guest Technowonder]

13 hours ago, Guest general said:

What? Yes you can. Use elective mode.

 

Doh! I was never here...

[Guest PainGod]

How about using dombringer as weapon, isn't the unique max 20% physical damage and ability to roll 5 primary stats worth noting. It does have bit lower attackspeed, only 1.4/sec.

[Knutsanity 15]

Awaiting answer. I now have the pig sticker I just got, ancient and almost perfect for this build, and a doom bringer ancient and almost perfect for this build. It's a toss up to me. I think 20% dmg is 20% dmg, and .1X Attack speed is 10% dmg, or less going from 1.4 to 1.5 is more like 6 or 7 %? So it should out weight the slight attack speed difference I think.  But a lot of things are beasts and humans, like half of them probably. I can't remember for sure but I think I got just over 20% dmg for beasts and just under for humans, which struck me as a massive difference from normal and must've been high rolls, in a wide range. Also the bane of the stricken needs to be taken into account. The more attacks the better in the same amount of time. Perfect world I guess is the pig sticker with perfect rolls. Both my current options are 1 roll away from being perfectly suited, still have the dmg range as they had other stats more in need of changing.
Also using Hack which is a 1.4 as well, adds an extra thorns dmg. With the new boost in dmg I imagine its value went down. As it was it basically made the 54X thorns dmg on punish 55X? or did it apply more effectively then that?  Which didn't seem like enough to me, but I never got a decent one to try it out. I did get a nail biter once and it was terrible no matter how cool thorns dmg on a weapon is. 
Yet I've seen it mentioned  hack is right up there with the other options. Never seen anyone talk much about it in detail recently, with the new patch it would be nice if there was a new thorough breakdown on these weapon choices and including the doombringer. 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Knutsanity

[Knutsanity 15]

For those of us who like to switch between multiple classes, and haven't and likely won't reach end game for all of them, it would be nice to know from those capable of it and very experienced with the options, just how big a difference these different weapon choices make. Then if they are very smilar, or users choice, once you get an incredible ancient or primal with suited stats of any of the options, you can stop looking for a weapon. 

[Guest PainGod]

I think that about 50% of mosters fall to beasts/humans category but other half is demons/undead/others.

Doombringer adds 20% damage against all enemies, and in 10 seconds loses only ~1-2 attack roughly.

Pigsticker adds up to 30% against 50% of enemies, gains roughly  1-2 attack more in 10 seconds

 

How many rift bosses are beasts/humans since elites and normal mobs takes less than 10 seconds to kill.

 

Im also interested that does thorns damage ( 15yard set bonus of just plain got hit) activeate Bane Of Striken boost.

 

[Guest PainGod]

Just checked rift guardians and only few of them is beast/human, and majority falls to else gategory. So pigsticker damage against the target that needs it most is not that great.

 

Siftmount and doombringer make some difference to rift progress.

[Guest PainGod]

Did a little math.

-Pigsticker vs non bonus mob: base damage 15 (can be any value because it is the same with every weapon) x weapon sepeed 1.5/second x speed % lets say 50% x 60 seconds = 2025 damage in minute

-Pigsticker vs bonus mob: base damage 15  x weapon sepeed 1.5/second x speed %  50% x max 30% multiplier x 60 seconds = 2632,5 damage in minute

-Doombringer: Base 15 x weaponspeed 1.4/second x speed % 50% x max 20% multiplier x 60 seconds = 2268 damage per minute

 

Conclusion:

Since all bonuses are % based you can change values of speed % and base damage(thorns), this makes doombrnger most efficent weapon against majorty of rift bosses and roughly 50% of time against pigsticker.

Swiftmount is also good with correct rolls in it, since you get to elite/rare packs faster.

Hack is no good with base speed of 1.3, 15000% thorns +max 100% is 15100% thorns, so dps gain is 0,66% thorns damage and suffer major speed loss.

[paperchase 0]

I have a tough time managing my Akarat's Champion CD. And if its down, I die pretty quickly. Am I missing something?

[Guest PainGod]

With cubed aquilla I have base toughness 288millions, with bobardment buff it goes to double, when moving around again double then pop consecration iron skin and law of blabla as soon as ypu begin to hit enemies. Save akkarat to special situations when you take too much damage ( like arcane enchanted, orbiter, plagued,etc...). If you are missing aquilla or justice latern you suffer sigfnigant toughness loss. Iron skin and law recharges much faster than akkarat so you should be able to use them in every brawl, even multiple times.

 

Hope this helps.

[Guest PainGod]

For all those seeking ansvers to thorns crusader, i found this:

It seems that there has been extensive testing.

[Knutsanity 15]

Wow, super neat breakdown. Still no Doom bringer, but hack sounds not bad. Not great, but not bad. Very surprised the breakdown is almost positive physical damage does not help the huge thorns application on punish!!! Just the thorns in the 15 yard radius when you get hit. By far the most important dmg is the 100X (now, I beleive with the update) thorns application on punish. So I need to change out my physical dmg. I'm surprised by this, it looked like it helped me quite a bit, but I must admit, when I got to changing my amulet and bracers to physical dmg%, if I remember correctly, that coincided with me improving with my last ancient set piece and a Caldessan recipe, so maybe it barely helped my improvements. 
The build suggests Physical dmg%, on hardcore I will go back to toughness stats on the ones I can change I guess until we get another opinion on Physical Dmg%. 
Appreciate the effort on your breakdown of Doombringer vs the others as well, Pain god, looks right to me. I didn't know those dmg bonuses on the pig sticker can get up to 30%, swear I've mostly seen around 12%-18%.... with this new information about physical dmg % it is clear the pig sticker way more effective than Doombringer. Though I don't necessarily believe the physical dmg % doesn't apply to the thorns application on punish or slash. Again, by far the biggest part of the build. 
We definitely need confirmation on that. 
Edit** I see that post is 3 years old, I think I heard that it had been updated more recently to make physical dmg apply to thorns. Which probably does include the 6pc set bonus application on punish/ slash. I don't see why it would be included in the build otherwise. I don't know maybe I'll Try out that doombringer. 

Edited February 4, 2019 by Knutsanity

[PainGod 1]

I have doombringer with 20% phys bonus and primal darklight, should the darklight hit more than doombringer the its confirmed.

20% phys should raise damage significantly so should be easy to see.

Going to try out today, and post it here.

Area damage was also surprise, but makes sense, since if you hit bilions of damage with 6pc bonus area damage would be way overpowered. with 100% area, that would be murder in big packs.

[Valks 2,375]

I've dropped Deadset a message, so we can get his opinion on this as well, as well as why he might have put Pig Sticker in over Doom (if there is one, if not, we'll update it!).

[PainGod 1]

Im sorry about my absence, got influenza and have been too tired to play.

Yesterday i tested that does phys dam% work with invoker 6 ppiece bonus, and it so happens that it does ideed work.

Seems that it got patched at some point.

So Doombringer is least my weapon of choise.

Edited February 7, 2019 by PainGod

[Knutsanity 15]

Cool, thanks guys. No worries about the time, I can't ask for more, I'll be my monk for the foreseeable future, so I won't be testing it myself likely, so good to know. And looking forward to the second opinion from Deadset. 

[PainGod 1]

Test in detail:

First stripped to bare minimum gear, only full set, blue weapon and shield.

Went hit zombies and checked damage (was bout 21m)

Crafted ammy with phys bonus and rolled str away so there isnt any other warables.

Again went to hit same type of zombies and checked if affix affect damage, and it did (was now about 24m with +13%physical bonus).

 

Edit.

Fast math was 12,5% increase with values that i wrote here, so that checked also.

Edited February 7, 2019 by PainGod

[Guest consecrate]

I've personally found that consecrate helps me far less than provoke(hit me). the added block procs the shield more and offers better survivability. Also it seems to help pull in scattered groups better.

[PainGod 1]

22 hours ago, Guest consecrate said:

I've personally found that consecrate helps me far less than provoke(hit me). the added block procs the shield more and offers better survivability. Also it seems to help pull in scattered groups better.

If you use the build from site you should have base blockchance of ~90%

30% hold your ground, 20% blood brother, 12- 16% justice latern, shield base (10-20%) + 11% extra affix.

Then just one punish and *pop* 100% block.

This makes it inferrior to consecrate. As you should have 100% block 99% of time, +50% is wasted.

Damage effect on conse is somewhat useless in high rift levels but healing is really welcome and you can swap for higher healing rune if you wish( tho life/hit on gear works much better).

I even tried condemn - vacuum, instead of conse, but that was no good.

Shield glare - divine verdict, has 20% damage boost but blind is bad.

Judgement - debilitate adds nice 40% dr, but again immobilize isn't that nessessary.

[Guest guest]

Can someone explain to me vit gems vs. str gems?

Since you use heart of iron wouldn't it be better to stack vit gems instead of str gems to get more damage? Also how does heart of iron actually work, does life% affect it in any way?

[PainGod 1]

With max rolled heart of iron you get 3 points of thorns for each point of vitality in character sheet (ie 8000x3=24000)

As for life%, it is copletely different stat, it affects how much life you gain per point of vitality.

Heart of iron is good for all vit that you have in gear. Thorns scale up from strength better than thorns gained from vitality. Therefore cant recommend using paragons/gems to augment vita.

Cant say that i know exact math behind str, but check my older post.