So with 1.2, I feel like thorns or reflect got a pretty sizable boost in use argument, as with the new weaver idosl “of the briar” You can get anywhere from 1000 to 3000 flat thorns.
Previously t7 body and t7 shield reflect max rolled add up to 1068, so essentially there is an easy 2k more obtainable with just average idols.
So I rolled a reflect FG to play it up to 300c and defeat aberroth. I managed to do both, though not without some major hiccups.
Problem 1, you just simply cant kill some enemies. A build focused on thorns has to give up a lot to make the thorns worth using, I think there might be a janky hybrid build out there. but for our purposes this build is a “pure reflect” build, well immortal eyes have two attacks a cone and a laser, both are “DoT” so you can never kill them. Wengari spires are a forced reset, they will never hit you they are pure DoT.
problem 2. Some enemies do hit you, but extremely slowly or only from some ranges. Siege golems have tons of hp, and can charge, flamethrower, or missile nuke, if you are in range they will just spam flamethrower a DoT. This makes these enemies take an extremely long time to kill, to the point of “kill the roaming siege golems” is a reset or a 10 minute adventure.
Problem 3, I think this one is a bug, “Shrouded” enemies, or the modifier that causes them to take less damage from distant enemies is bugged with thorns. They will always reduce this damage even if you are on their face. This leads to any rare/champ that spawns with this, immediately taking 4x as long, as you immediately take a 75% less damage penalty forever. I reported this as a bug with the ingame tool, because thorns should not be reduced by anything as it ignores defenses. and this is true for things like “nearby allies take less damage” So shrouded is some kinda exception id call a bug, if intended, it needs to change. it routes into problem 4.
problem 4. Damage just isnt there. Even with my character having something like 2.5k base thorns, and 171 attunement, which worked out to just about 60k thorns, enemies take a long time. I farm lagon, because he ended up being one of the faster fights. I did about 3% a reflect to him at 330c, it wasnt super slow, but it wasnt fast either. But sometimes id run into a +health shrouded champ on a health map, and id do 2% a hit… if it was a champ/enemy type that hit slowly? i was fighting it longer then lagon!
Before I propose my solutions, this was my character after beating abby. https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Bx7jyGZQ
https://i.imgur.com/Zs7B9Vf.jpeg and a pic of the kill.
So my proposed solution isnt to change much really. Maybe bump thornshells scaling slightly. rather then 5 to 9, make it 8 to 12. This will result in more damage leading to a higher ceiling.
My other suggestion, is that thorns to become a viable build type needs a way to deal with DoT enemies. perhaps if you have taken 1 second of DoT from a given enemy, you do a single thorns reflect to it. That way it does not scale with the tickrate of the DoT as that would be a bit too strong. Just something that lets me kill these DoT heavy enemies.
if the bug with shrouded is fixed, and thorns is given a way to deal with DoT enemies better, Id 100% be open to trying this archetype again, but currently its just a bit too jank imo.
ive not played the spriggan version, as it does not jive with me, but I understand its quite a bit better. but I dont think thorns should be restricted to a single character build like that. So id like to see it buffed so other thorns builds can be a bit more viable.