#15

The only “nerf” I can see is that her slow is now at level six. In my eyes though this is actually a late game buff. The two hardest helixes to choose from for me has always been level one left and right. Depending on which one you choose, it would affect how you played the rest of the match. Now a person can get both major helixes, making thorn an even bigger late game monster. How do you think she got nerfed? There is literally nothing bad about the changes.

3 Likes
#16

One of the reasons I loved Thorn was early game control. Having Blight with slow and damage was excellent lane control and now it’s wasted to later in the game, which is probably negated due to the fact the opposing Battleborn are stronger. I main’d Thorn from the original Technical Test and having to hit jumping targets with an arrow isn’t so easy whilst others spray & play or have AoE damage and have more chance of hitting, so I personally don’t like the changes. I haven’t played for a while and found her wanting a bit yesterday.

As for the DoT change to Melka, makes no sense. It’s just a pest which negates healing, not a killer so why make it useless? I agree it should remain as it was. Something to cancel the enemy healing at least.

1 Like
#17

in their explanation, they said they wanted to give blight damage back to her but taking away the slow at level 1 causes people and minions to just go right through the blight. 15% damage boost is hardly relevant when enemies go right through it. They’d take more damage from the extra tick or 2 they’d take from a slow blight. Losing the movement speed at level 2 is harmful to her escapability. The damage helix at level 2 is cool but again people can walk through blight so they won’t take that last tick bonus damage anyways. The mutation at level 4 was amazing for burst damage, but that’s gone now. And I never took the bleed anyways because I built for burst damage from focused volley before but I’d probably do it now.

#18

I also mained thorn in the CTT. I know what you mean about the slow being nice for early game. The changes to her bow, and the 60fps has made it much easier to hit with her bow though. I personally loved the thorn changes. Some days my aim is truly atrocious. Those days I usually play something else, because for some reason I can’t hit anything. Other days I can hit close to every shot I take on the bounciest enemy thorn, the cloaked running around Pendles that thinks he’s oh so sneaky, and the caldarius that ulted to try to escape, but got shot out of the sky. I think you just have to be completely ready. I’ve been consistently playing her since beta. My most played character at 1117 matches.

For early game when you don’t have the slow, always wait until the minions are being attacked by your team, or your own minions before you drop blight. They will stay in pretty much the same exact spot, allowing you to get full damage on them from the blight.

Personally believe level 1 left helix is incredibly inferior to piercing volley for mid-late game bleeds. Then I go with 2 mid for that last damage tick. Pretty sure it’s roughly 120 some odd damage. 99% if the time I go for burst propulsion for escapes, and bouncing around toons. This completely solves the problem with 2 right getting moved down to 8. The other 1% is when there are no melee enemies, and an annoying Toby.

At four I was a die-hard focused volley supporter for months. Long distance focused volley crits were the sexiest thing about Thorn. After the size and damage nerf to blight though, I had to adapt to a bleed volley. Personally have never minded the damage nerf, but the size is a tad pitiful at times. Especially when I go look at my old recorded videos.

Haven’t gotten the chance to properly test splinter volley yet. I doubt it’s worth taking over the bleed though unfortunately.

#19

Use an ability to have real up time, up time.

So you point out that all this damage relies on the use of pretty much Volley. Also the use of a helix option that last time I checked was almost never used, volley pen helix. Everyone opts for the MS through blight for safety. They might take it now thanks to the splinter helix. However do you really need it for the wave clear with the tail end buff to Blight and just the splinter passive which gives you two arrows anyways? Or you take the stand in blight to curse which then you’d trade blight’s damage for curse.

After those two options you rely on a full charged arrow that takes about 3 seconds. Then you can still miss that arrow. It makes getting that high bleed dps inconsistent at best. This is also why people just stuck with half fire arrows because you only have to charge for about .5 seconds to get half the damage a full charge gets. Also it’s way to punishing and not very rewarding for landing a full charge.

Then you assume that the bleed just stacks up on you after you land curse. So even if you were to curse a target with a full charged arrow you’d trade 144 bleed damage over 8 seconds for a potential 400~ potential burst damage. Which is why I’m like the amp damage is greater. Just off of that alone because her AoE’s are pretty good you can end up doing more damage to enemy players alone. The best part is its instant. You land 2 skills and you have matched the bleed damage entirely.

1 Like
#20

I for one used the volley pen helix ever since blight got nerfed. I found it to be highly superior to the slow, especially after I learned how to lay down blight for full damage on waves without needing the slow. Pretty sure everyone opted for the movement speed through blight, because it was the only logical choice. Blight Brawler was just terrible, and it makes no sense to give up your waveclear ability for easy curses. I almost never received the movement speed buff. I had been wishing for an alternative for months.

It defiantly does not take 3 seconds to fully charge an arrow. From my testing, it took .75-1 second from the moment one presses in the main attacks button, till the arrow was fully charged. This is while not using the legendary that makes it charge faster. Your argument is starting to look a tad shaky. Just out of curiosity? Have you actually done any testing on any of this? The fact that you thought it took three seconds to charge an arrow makes me question that just a tad.

All you need to do is get used to it. Am I saying one should fully charge every arrow? No. If you aren’t fully charging any of your arrows though, you are limiting yourself in every way possible. Re-cursing someone will not stack bleed, but it will reset the 8 second counter. One should at least try to re-apply curse to a target every 6-8 seconds for max DPS.

Now I know you did absolutely no testing.

Ok let’s put this into perspective for you. To match the amount of damage a single application of cursed bleed will do, with better curse, one must deal 1440 damage BEFORE adding cursed extra damage.
Let’s start with the 25% extra damage.
14401.25=1800. 1800 damage is what you would deal with base curse
Next the 35% curse.
14401.35=1944
1944-1800= 144 exactly. The only time you might possibly do that much damage to a single target only using skills is at level 10, and even then it’s so farfetched and unlikely that it’s not even funny.
Remember, a level ten ult with hextension will do 1012 damage. You need to do another 932 damage with skills and charged arrows to even match the 144 bleed damage. When you take into account that you can only beat the damage at level 10, it’s only to a single target, and it’s highly unlikely to even do, the bleed is by far superior.
Take piercing volley. Take curse volley. Take bleeding curse. Volley a minion wave. That is an extra 144 damage per minion. In an instant. Using only one skill. You can’t do 144 extra damage to a single target using all your skills with hextension.
I rest my case.

Edit: hit post before I was done on accident.

1 Like
#21

You’re absolutely insane if you took volley pen at level one over the slow.

1 Like
#22

Not entirely. The volley pen is and was a great choice. It forced one to be more careful with how you used blight is all. Like I said, put down blight after enemy minion wave has engaged your team or your minions. You will get the full damage of it that way. the size reduction back in the last update made the slow much less powerful. You were less likely to slow the enemy battleborn to make it easier to hit them, because of the pitiful size. It was still always a hard choice between the two, but now a person can get both by level six. I see that as a mid-late game buff

3 Likes
#23

Not at all, personally I think he was looking down the line when gearbox said they were trying to get people to stop playing thorn almost purely as a caster. He adapted and now for his use of the character received a buff in mid-late game, but no need to try to disparage someone using a different build.

3 Likes
#24

@AncientBelgareth
:clap:

1 Like
#25

Kinda unhinged my own topic didn’t I. Oh well. Thanks @hexhammer. Never had a good excuse to do so much math in a while. Was kinda fun actually.

1 Like
#26

Came off harsh. I just can’t see any scenario where if the helixes were the same where I wouldn’t take the slow. Enhances so much of the rest of her kit and helps the team so much more.

1 Like
#27

No I know exactly what you mean, and agree completely. I just find it harder to apply usefully against enemy battleborn with the size nerf. Sure you can still apply the slow, but the area denial is pretty negligible now. I just found the piercing volley to be really viable after the blight nerf. I probably chose the slow about 50% of the time depending on map, enemies, teammates, etc. I played with someone who played a lot of earnest, and he picked the slow pretty often, which made taking slow on blight a bit redundant most of the time.

#28

Ah okay, understandable then. I just very rarely pass up opportunities for more cc

#29

I agree, blight got nerfed by size not by its dmg. I started to use its pircing volley a lot.

Does anyone know if pircing volley can hit more than 1 time? I usually tries to get in high ground or jump to land the arros in an V trying to hit twice an enemy or wave.

If they can hit twice that means splinter helix is op right?

1 Like
#30

Still not sure about the splinter helix. I need to test it some more before I get any real opinion about it.

2 Likes
#31

It seemed decent to me when I messed with it actually, each enemy hit spawns 2 more arrows that are aimed towards enemies and seemed to actually get some results for me but it also isn’t as easy to predict since it could pick any nearby enemy for the splinter arrows

1 Like
#32

I know I’ve used it a few times, and it did seem so be doing some good damage, but I haven’t actually done the math yet to see how much damage it could actually do. It could very well have more damage potential than the bleeding volley, but I am just not sure yet. One of these days I’ll take the time to sit down and figure it out.

1 Like
#33

With piercing it could be really strong but idk if it works on every target it hits, and if the volley keeps on going in 2 pieces or part keeps going and two split off randomly, etc

1 Like
#34

Your right I didn’t the added amp burst is only 105.5 with 2 skills which is far lower but not really. The total tick of blight with the passive adds 52, with the triple damage at blights end 65 damage. It would take roughly about 3 seconds of blight time to over power the Bleed. Funny part is getting that 4.5 seconds is easier than cursing someone with a full drawn arrow. Even if you don’t get it, 1 second of blight time shrinks the window to 33 damage.

The bleed bleeds over 8 seconds and takes roughly 5.5 seconds to even do 100 damage, technically 6. There’s a reason why it was never used. That’s a lot of time to give someone to live in this game.

Added in that the only practical way to curse someone is through Volley. I’d give that 39ish damage any day.