Only problem I could see with a play style such as yours (taking advantage of her mobility, regeneration, and her ult), which seems to be more or less the only effective style of play for her is if she was intended to be this way, more of a ranger/scout over a sniper… Not sure if that was the intended goal.
Edit: Yeah hell not much of a sniper: seems like 60% of my damage is coming from abilities. Maybe 50%. Also above was worded horribly.
Yeah, I think her agility was supposed to be her greatest asset from the get go, and she is super mobile. Given her hit-n-run playstyle I think a long range scout is her ultimate role. Personally I think it causes her to struggle to fit on a team as well as numerous other characters. She has her niche, but it doesn’t seem to need filled very often. Oh well, I guess we’ll see how she turns out in the game proper.
Excellently worded and accurate.
Thorn has great dmg and just requires some practice. Once you know how to play her well she is a beast.
What would you say is playing her well? I don’t mean that in a smart way, I’m genuinely curious. I really like her character but have only managed mild success with her so far, so I’m game for any suggestions.
I don’t use her but my brother has had tons of success with her. I believe off the top of my head he uses her as a mobile assassin that secures kills with her ult. I believe he grabs all of the movement speed stuff on her helix such as 30% when in her blight and the melee that propels her backwards. If your curious how he uses her I’ll ask after work and post his build and what not.
Yeah that seems to be what the succesful Thorn population is doing, if anything it turns her into more of a caster. As said before the only issue I see with this is that it may or may not be her original character design, her description even states sniper, although it also states agile. So yeah… As far as balancing goes however aside from the original topic of the curse thing I think she may need a minor buff, she feels just a tad bit weak… Maybe to attack speed.
Over the course of the Technical Test and Open Beta, I’ve had tons of success with Thorn. She’s almost all I play, and I’ve played the game a lot more than most people, and a little less than some. I find the best way to take her Helix is going R2 all the way. The only one where I find it doesn’t really matter is the one where you buff curse damage, curse duration for get 100% shield pen when enemies are cursed as a mutator. I have yet to get the lvl 12 mutator, but I’m pretty close.
Thorn really is a strong caster, and her bow attacks do exceptional damage when you hit them. She’s really rewarding to people who can land her basic attacks, but that’s not always easy. When you’re fighting, you should use your spells on cool down, and keep in mind blight is a good get away tool if things go wrong. If you put down a blight, and the enemy gets out of it, try and melee them back into it. Thorn may not have a shield, but she isn’t exactly squishy and can skirmish pretty well with her kiting abilities and spells. Her ultimate has REALLY good burst and can catch enemies off guard. I hardly ever charge an arrow to curse when kiting someone because it’s slow and hardly worth. The only times I charge arrows are if someone is standing still, or if I’m hitting a big body. Thorn is really good at securing kills, and has a sort of high skill cap if you want to play her optimally.
The items I build are a health regen item that increases healing revived whenever I take damage. Then I have a move speed and heal power item. Lastly, I build an attack damage item, with move speed and increased damage when I’m below 25% hp. These items give me really good sustain in fights, and I rarely have to actually port back to base. The final item also makes me more scary to duel, and helps me win close fights, or take enemies by surprise entirely with my higher damage output when they try to dive me.
All in all, I certainly wouldn’t turn down a buff, maybe some kind of change to her curse passive, but I think she’s pretty balanced.
That’s all very helpful, but tbh I think the main think I’m taking away from it is that you need to keep at learning her and get experience using her and you’ll eventually come to understand what you’re doing. I guess I’m pretty bad for copping out and picking an easy like Oscar Mike when my team needs someone with a little more range. I’ll stick with her and see if I can improve, thanks!
I completely agree. I got on the forum to see if she was going to get nerfed. To my surprise people think she is underpowered. Good good keep it that way. Play her right and your EASILY taking down 12-20 kills every incursion match.
I didn’t think she was too strong in the CTT my self, but I have started using her as my main lately and I haven’t had a issue surpassing most other Battleborn. My average score is usually 10-0. While i do usually stay at a medium distance, I can sometimes play aggressively with blight and volley. Even got a unexpected triple kill with blight+Wrath.
Yeah, in the end the key was practice. I just had to suck it up and do terribly as her in a few matches before it started to click. Last match I played with her I went 14/3/11. Once I started to realize she could be more aggressive than I initially thought it really fell into place. That last match had a Toby on the opposing team and I just kept scampering around and dropping blight in just the right spot that it totally ruined his shield and he had to double back and I’d kill him on the chase. Learning her balance of what is and isn’t too aggressive really put her on my list of best characters. She’s advanced for a reason I guess.
Nice job! Yeah she is definitely difficult to play at first, but learning how to use blight is the key. She can definitily take out some of the bigger Battleborn, like Toby, Kleese, Montanta, etc. Only character I usually have a problem with is Ambra,
Yeah, I honestly think Ambra is a problem for most characters right now. She’s not as overpowered as everyone seems to think, IMO, but she is slightly overpowered. Given that, the fact she can heal, and that she spreads quite a bit of damage, a lot of people tend to stick close to her for both the healing and higher potential for PK’s, and it’s causing her to be difficult just because you can almost never catch her by herself, and it’s difficult to engage multiple players when she’s close by. She’s an easy target if you can get her singled out, but that’s usually a big if.
Very true. She is always with the rest of her team. Her sunspots are very annoying, that coupled with her innate healing ability, and the fact that her beam attack just doesn’t seem to miss.
Her beam attack is a lock on.
She was nerfed yesterday and is a lot more easy to fight.
Do you charge every arrow or just the first and every 8 secs?
I have no problems playing Thorn - she is (as she was in the Closed Beta) pretty much all I play. I rarely ever charge my shots - there is not much point, you simply do soooo much more damage spamming arrows without charging at all.
I have tried her legendary gear piece, which does DRASTICALLY shorten the time you need to charge an arrow before it becomes “cursed”, but I still only curse heavy enemies for the purposes of the skill damage bonuses.
*I’ll add before I go on that I play almost exclusively in PVE story missions, as I’m not a huge fan of PVP. However, the few matches I did play in PVP I did very well with the following setup/strategy as well.
My general strategy is the following:
Gear choice is VERY important, first of all:
The first piece of gear I get up is one that has “+Max Shield” on it - believe it or not it ACTUALLY gives Thorn a shield lol. I have a rather nice one at the moment that also give me a boost to max shields when I collect a pickup, which seems to both restore some shields, and kinda acts like a pseudo “overshield” effect.
My second gear piece is always one that buffs health regen. Thorn has the highest natural health regen rate of any character, but she always needs more lol. The one I have increases health regen as a primary stat, then has a secondary stats that increases it further if I “survive” for 180 seconds.
I’m still “meh” about what to use as my third gear piece - I currently have Thorn’s legendary gear equipped, but it takes so long to unlock that I find it rather annoying (costs a whopping 1800 crystals to unlock it lmao). I have been using things with shield penetration on them a lot more tbh - while the reduced draw time for Cursed Arrows is nice and all, it simply takes sooo long to unlock the damn thing lol (probably takes a lot less time in PVP matches than in PVE Story Missions, but still…).
As for my playstyle, well… I know many people see Thorn as a “sniper”, but that’s not how I play her. I get up close to enemies, constantly moving, strafing around them, and jumping as I spray them full of uncharged arrows (i.e. a single click/button tap). This allows me to dodge a lot of blows/shots, while staying close enough so that I can fill the enemy full of my entire barrage of Volley arrows. I am always making sure I am under the effects of the speed bonus pickup item as well.
I always focus on increasing my level FIRST before anything else, as well as rushing all the shard pickups (since my playstyle hinges on getting my gear up quickly). I run ahead and open all the boxes, collecting point increase pickups as well as looking for helix pickups (which give an instant +1 to your level).
Additionally, do not be afraid to use her melee attack if enemies get too close to you. Thorn’s melee “palm slam” is VERY fast (probably 2x the speed of firing a single uncharged arrow), and both does a fairly decent knockback, as well as a slight knock UP into the air. It even does a nice amount of damage, and can be spammed very quickly.
Also: AIM FOR THE HEAD! Thorn has a VERY high critical damage rate, and you do A LOT more damage with criticals! n.nU
Apart from that, the correct Helix choices matter a HELL of a lot more with Thorn than with most characters:
Still not sure what her last mutation is yet (as I still need 25 more XP till level 12 ffs - tomorrow lol), but judging by the name in the “next unlock” preview (which was something like “Trap Master”), I’m gonna assume it was something much more tailored-made for PVP usage than for PVE (which annoyingly is how ALL of her Helix mutations are ffs…).
There are a few things I want to qualify about gear pieces and what has NO effect on Thorn. These include:
Additionally, unexpected gear effects on Thorn:
…I have yet to see anyone out-Thorn me lol, and the few times I did play a PVP match, I died maybe 1-2 times during the entire match, while getting many, MANY kills… n.nU
EDIT: One final thing: I really do think this is a character that simply does NOT work very well with a gamepad (controller).
I play on PC, and while I did test playing with my gamepad a few time in both the closed and open betas, the fact that Thorn requires precision aiming without any ability to really “toggle” a slower aiming speed (i.e. “ironsight aiming”) means that a mouse will always outperform a gamepad/controller with regards to pinpoint precision.
While gamepads/controllers usually compensate for the deficiency that a joystick has over a mouse (which is to not be able to rapidly change between slow, precise movements and quick, jerky turns) by including auto-aim functionality, Thorn really does need to “lead” her shots as her arrows fly quite slowly, and thus in this case, auto-aim is fairly worthless, and even borderline unhelpful to the point of “making it harder” lol…*
*I really don’t wanna start an argument about the above statement here - I am simply stating why I believe Thorn is best played with a mouse over a gamepad/controller - this is my personal opinion on this situation (I do play quite a few games with a gamepad on my PC as well, using a Xbox 360 controller)… >_<
I read your post, and I read a bit of the responses you were getting. Thorn is in no way underpowered, she’s perfectly fine where she is. You don’t have to keep charging your arrows to benefit from the damage bonus she gets from cursed arrows.
I’m not trying to offend or attack you, but maybe you didn’t take the time to read her skills, passives, and helix to get a better understanding of how the cursed arrow mechanic works.
There are many other characters that are underperforming in their role for this to even be considered in my opinion, and this particular issue you’re having with Thorn only seems like you didn’t take the time to learn the character.
Exactly lol. Thorn takes some actual effort and practice to play, as do a lot of characters people claim are “underpowered”.
There’s a reason why she has that “Advanced” tag on her stat page, guys! If you want a character that’s easy to pick up and start wrecking with in just a few seconds, go for one with an “Easy” tag - Gearbox added those for a reason ya know! :]
Since a lot of people are having trouble with her, though, I took what I said above and wrote a guide thread for her if you wanna check it out - I will make additions, etc. there if I feel I forgot anything or want to add something: