How does curse's bonus work?

Battleborn Thorn
#1

Curse is Thorn’s passive. After charging an arrow fully, it will apply curse to an enemy that’s hit. However, charging up an arrow slows Thorn down–and the damage gained from a charged arrow is not massive. But, that’s what curse is for. Cursed status makes the target take 25% more damage “from Skills and charged arrows”.

So, in order to get a benefit from Thorn’s primary weapon, you need to hit your target with two fully charged arrows. Does this have any DPS gain whatsoever? I don’t think so, and I haven’t seen it in my games. Cursing for a skill damage bonus is huge, though.

Now what about Thorn’s T2 helix, cursed earth? “When Thorn is touching Blight’s field, all of her arrows become cursed.
” So, this takes away the charge time for her arrows. Sounds great! But hang on–cursed status only applies bonus damage on Charged arrows, not cursed arrows. I’ve tried to measure the damage output of an uncharged, cursed arrow on cursed enemies, and I haven’t had the chance to get conclusive numbers. But I don’t actually think it makes any difference.

If I could request anything, it would be a shooting range so we could test these values ourselves, or perhaps gearbox could just give us solid damage numbers on every skill :frowning:

#2

Very interested in this also.
Currently sticking with Thorn exclusively.
btw You know there’s a mod for Thorn that bypasses the chargeup time, right? I’m itching to get that one.

#3

You still have to full draw, but yeah, it’s really freaking good.

#4

The point is to get a headshot on the second shot for massive damage

also gives a huge boost to teamfights (even a montana will die in less then 2 seconds if your team bursts after a curse shot)

#5

…Meh, my Thorn melee can do that :sunny:
(Her melee is amazing)

#6

Only Thorn gets the buff.

I think only charged attacks doing bonus damage, and not regular attacks is kind of meh. It’s pretty good in PvE, where you can just curse a large enemy and then easily get a head shot, but that strategy isn’t so easy in PvP.

If you really wanted to test numbres and stuff, you could go into a private PvP match.

#7

The game is a little misleading in this sense, I used to wonder about this too.

I know what I am talking about here so please hear me out lol.

Curse effects EVERYTHING you hit an enemy with… so long as the arrow is fully charged. A fully charged arrow does not slow you, a cursed arrow does. Once you get her Legendary gear you learn where the full draw is, and it’s about a quarter second or less than when your arrow stops pulling back.

Curse unfortunately barely effects arrow damage, it’s hardly noticable. Where it truly shines, is with Blight and your Ultimate.

For my Thorn at lvl 10, once I get the 35% Curse damage buff, enemies take 124 damage every half second while in blight… THAT IS HUGE! I have several Triple kills from people trying to run through my blight… it’s sad how many people do that. A cursed Orendi can be one shot by your Ultimate as well.

I won’t claim that I am 100% right, I may be wrong and just assuming numbers, but from what I have experienced, it is ALWAYS worth it to get your initial curse off.

And yes, her legendary is awesome. No one is safe from my Curses! Used to be super hard to land a curse but with the legendary it is easy… infact I have gotten so used to the effect that every arrow I fire is a cursed one… which is kinda required otherwise I waste my curse but whatever! The point is, people die! :smiley:

#8

What do you mean by this? That you can get a fully charged arrow charged without reducing Thorn’s movement speed? Or that Curse slows enemies?

So what I’m getting is, you want to get that first curse off and really nothing else. And it looks like her tier 2 is mostly pointless anyway–outside of cursing many things at once. So cursed earth is probably still the best, or perhaps her melee mutation.

But more importantly, it seems that a “fully charged” arrow is a lot quicker to charge up than a cursed arrow!

#9

There is a delay after a fully charged arrow before you get the Curse effect on your arrow. Pulling back to max draw strength will not slow Thorn when you reach max draw, you will only get slowed when you get the Curse effect on the arrow.

#10

If your interested in learning more about Thorn, this is my guide on her and how I build her. Also I try to explain both sides of the Helix for most options so you can build your own helix setup the way you want with as much info as possible.

It’s a little messy in places, but that’s what happens when you write it up at 2AM, I’ll probably fix it up sometime in the future after I do more testing with her and when more maps come out for Incursion (I play Incursion almost exclusively so most of my opinions are based around the gameplay found in that match style)

#11

Thanks for all your valuable thorn research :slight_smile:

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