Thorns

From WoWWiki

Thorns
Thorns Instant cast 30 yd range 400 Mana Causes X Nature damage to attackers.
Usable by
Class	Druid
Properties
Type	Utility, Defensive
School	Nature
Cooldown	None/Global Cooldown
Talents
Improvement talents	Brambles
Other information
Ranks	7
Related buff
Magic Thorns Causes X Nature damage to attackers. Duration: 10 min

We can learn much from the elder vine, which threatens with barbs the hand that would trim it back.^{TCGDP 28}

Thorns is a spell that can be learned from druid trainers. It is part of the Balance line, and grants a buff to friendly targets that causes Nature damage to attackers. This buff only affects melee attackers.

Rank table

Rank	Level	Mana Cost	Nature Damage	Cost
1	6	35	3	1
2	14	60	6	9
3	24	105	9	40
4	34	170	12	1
5	44	240	15	1 80
6	54	320	18	2 80
7	64	400	25	5 30

Notes

The Druid Tier 1 armor set, Cenarion Raiment, boosts the effectiveness of Thorns. The three piece bonus increases the damage caused by 4 and the duration by 50%.

Talent improvement

The Druid talent Brambles increases the Nature damage caused by Thorns by X% (maximum 75%).

Tips and tactics

• Although this spell doesn't sound too useful, it doesn't cost much mana, and is instant cast. Sometimes, additional damage can help.
• You should probably not cast this on non-melee classes (healer, mage), because the damage caused by thorns does increase aggro, making it harder to pull mobs off the caster. Conversely, you should cast this on melee classes so they can keep aggro and cause additional damage to mobs.
• Thorns will act as a buffer against PvP anti-magic, e.g. Spellsteal and Purge.
• The damage caused by it can break skills like Hibernate. Do not use it if you want to crowd control. (Note that a Hibernated creature will not attack. However it can reduce Entangling Roots duration if enemy is able to shoot or someone is in melee.)
• If you or someone in your party has latency of over 500, you may want to avoid using Thorns if you are using any in-combat crowd control such as Hibernate or Polymorph. This is because the mob can deal it's damage before it gets CCed but have the damage reflected after the CC, breaking it.
• This can be useful when being attacked by an enemy that has one/low health (eg. summoned swarmers from a Silithid Swarmer) as it will kill itself.

Past changes

• Spell damage stats do not currently increase Thorns damage. According to Thottbot, +spellDam did have an effect around the BC release, but it was swiftly reduced to zero.

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