Lightning Thorns

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big_aug wrote:

It's either reflecting melee or physical damage.

They destroyed my marauder even at 82 with almost 5k HP, 80 AR, etc, etc. One ground slam onto a pack of the guards would drop me to half HP sometimes.

They don't even dmg my LA shadow.

Do you use life on hit / life steal?

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thepmrc wrote:

"

big_aug wrote:

It's either reflecting melee or physical damage.

They destroyed my marauder even at 82 with almost 5k HP, 80 AR, etc, etc. One ground slam onto a pack of the guards would drop me to half HP sometimes.

They don't even dmg my LA shadow.

Do you use life on hit / life steal?

Those helped, but the damage is instant while the life steal is not.

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big_aug wrote:

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thepmrc wrote:

"

big_aug wrote:

It's either reflecting melee or physical damage.

They destroyed my marauder even at 82 with almost 5k HP, 80 AR, etc, etc. One ground slam onto a pack of the guards would drop me to half HP sometimes.

They don't even dmg my LA shadow.

Do you use life on hit / life steal?

Those helped, but the damage is instant while the life steal is not.

life on hit is instant. I was just wondering, because like I said, I used to get raped by lightning thorns and now it is not even relevant really.

Thanks for the heads up on this potential death for my cleaving HC char. Just about to enter this zone...

Yea, to my experience also with max res it seems like the lightning thorns just reflect straight up somewhere in the vicinity of 1500-2500 dmg to any melee attacker, but not to ranged attacks ; of course one can be careful, one can try to take the mages down first the moment there are shield chargers because they're a near-guaranteed combination, but even then as some have pointed out, there are situations where 2-3 mobs you are just about to hit suddently get buffed from offscreen with this and you just oneshot yourself with no chance of reacting, negating, or otherwise preventing the damage (apart from maphacking to know where the casters are before engaging their allies, and let's not pretend like the game is meant to be played with maphacks if you're melee).

Rather than a straight-up nerf to the damage, it could simply be altered to a staggered effect instead of an instantaneous one ; i.e. when hit in melee whilst having the buff, a small amount of instant initial damage is inflicted, say in the range of 500-1000dmg per target, followed by another 500-1000 damage either as a DoT over 3 seconds or so, or instantly after a small cooldown period. Possibly the DoT or 2nd dmg tick if instant could even apply a guaranteed shock stack to the player to put a more clear emphasis on the need to deal with the root of the problem(the casters) before finishing the shielded mobs.

Obviously though, the ability ought to also have some impact on ranged classes, though the damage amounts reflected to ranged attackers i think should still be less than that reflected to melee, as ranged characters can typically be expected to notice the buff's presence slower than meleers, as well as it can be expected that melee characters will have an easier time reaching the back row of the mob packs to deal with the casters than ranged characters, since the ranged will mostly be on the opposite side of the mob><player engagement.

I've had a few deaths to this ability so far, a couple of them preventable, and while i don't mind dying, i prefer to at least have a chance of survival, such as is the case with the chargers/rhoas(obviously except in cases of desynced charges :P)

It hurts :(

I have 9.3k armor, 81%physical damage reduction, 80% all resist except chaos and 3.6k hp and I'm getting 1 shot :(


I think it does more damage to lightning damage in general? My single target is glacial hammer and it doesn't hurt too bad but I have enough life leech for it to balance out, but the chain LS just destroys me, especially when there are thorns on multiple mobs.

I have 4 characters in maps now... only one had problems with lightning thorns ( big problems). And that is my ground slam marauder. I also have a PHYSICAL ice shot duelsit, elemental split arrow ranger, and EK shadow. I dont even notice the thorns on any charatcer but my marauder. I think somthing is bugged cause that makes no sense to me. I've never died to it but I take SIGNIFICANT damage where as my othere characters are seemingly umharmed. All have capped resists.

EDIT - the bow users and marauder all use life on hit. the shadow uses life leech. so that doesn't seem to effect the result of lightning thorns.

Also have significant problems with these monsters. Reminds me of D2s chaos sanctuary and iron maiden. Basically if a zone has Lightning Thorns monsters you are inviting death if you use any kind of melee AoE skills. Yes yes, high hp, high armour, max resist.

And like others, I'm perplexed why (again) ranged characters are completely free of this burden?

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Cruxation wrote:

I have 4 characters in maps now... only one had problems with lightning thorns ( big problems). And that is my ground slam marauder. I also have a PHYSICAL ice shot duelsit, elemental split arrow ranger, and EK shadow. I dont even notice the thorns on any charatcer but my marauder. I think somthing is bugged cause that makes no sense to me. I've never died to it but I take SIGNIFICANT damage where as my othere characters are seemingly umharmed. All have capped resists.

EDIT - the bow users and marauder all use life on hit. the shadow uses life leech. so that doesn't seem to effect the result of lightning thorns.

I'm a little surprised it affects ground slam. I always thought it was basically doing a static amount of lightning damage to anyone who physically hits the mob with melee. Ground slam is semi-ranged and you don't actually hit the enemy, you kinda create a heat/shockwave or something that damages the enemy.