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Thorns Damage Scaling with Spell Power
Published on October 31, 2008 by Phaelia 
Spells and Talents 
18 Comments
Reader Vreenash of Dragonblight (US) reports this evening:
Not sure if anyone has picked on this yet, but Thorns has been changed to include about 6.5% of your spell power as bonus damage. The amount of damage that is done can fluctuate during a fight due to spell power procs and such (idols, trinkets etc.).
I have 1097 spell power at the moment, and it’s putting out about 102 damage, as seen in the screenshot. Offhand hits seem to lessen that amount by 10%, once again as seen in screenshot as 92 damage. When I use [Essence of the Martyr] (which increases spell power by 158) it adds 10 damage to Thorns.
I’m headed out to a party (I respecced Feral and am going as a Cat!), but I wanted to share this with anyone whose sitting around waiting for trick-or-treaters. 
Let’s hope it’s a treat and not a trick!
Edit: It appears that the damage scaling is based upon the recipient’s spell damage and not the caster’s. In other words, a Restoration Druid would be more prickly than a Feral Druid because the Restoration Druid stacks spell power. This caveat makes me suspect this may, in fact, be a bug, but I’ll take any kind of bonus to my Thorn Bush leveling spec I can get!
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The same is true of a Thorns-like ability, Retribution Aura, which has the same 6.5% Spell Damage coeff.
I feel sorry for rogues, and other fast meleers, before the change I used to kill rogues with my thorns. I’m gonna go find some rogues, right after hunting down some more gnomer rep.
roll a priest and spec him discipline. not only is that a cool name for a spec, it is now the most fun kind of healer to play imho.
i’m a longtime resto druid, i was resto before there was a tree form. i stayed resto most of the time leveling 60-70 (horrible idea in hindsight).
since the patch, i specced feral, specced my priest discipline (was shadow). this patch changed everything and i think resto is going to be a half-assed spec until the late 70s or until 80.
this way i am always going to be able to find a group for 5 mans in wotlk, and easily level up both the toons at about the same rate.
I’ve noticed the thorns damage in the BGs. I was going up against one druid & was getting hit for something like 135 from thorns. Then against another, it was only around 90 or so. Guess that’s one way to see who’s spec’d feral. lol
On lvl 74 we going to get another rank of Thorns, causing 73 damage. With 1800 SP, this means 196 damage. Brambles could increase it 343.
Putting this damage into Phaelia’s calculation (http://www.resto4life.com/2007/12/12/dont-poke-fun-at-thorns/) it means 161.6 TPS for the tank.
My question is that with this numbers, is Brambles a worthy talent for a resto druid for 5 mans?
Other question, to maybe a theorycrafting moonkin. Is Brambles a worthy talent for a raiding moonkin? I mean the +70 TPS means +100 DPS for all raid DPS-er (assuming they are capable of DPS at the threat limit)
Oops! I made some testing with thorns. It is affected by NOT the caster’s spellpower but the thorny guy’s. So if you cast it on a 0 SP warrior, it will damage just the base. So maybe a pala tank can use it, a moonkin-melee-tank can use it well (if there’s any), but I wouldn’t count on this spell for others.
Ghostboci,
It’s strange that it would be affected by the target’s spellpower instead of the caster’s.
I had guessed that this was a glitch of some sort when I noticed it Silithus and later in AV. There were random “132 Nature Damage” spikes, but I checked the tooltip on Thorns and it only said 43-44 (with Brambles specced). Good to see that Thorns really…grew some Thorns in the WotLK patch.
It’s a bit of both trick & treat.
Treat for PvP casters against fast hitting melee, trick for PvE tanks.
The scaling is based on the recipients spellpower not the casters. I’m currently not specced into brambles & I’ve stopped casting it on tanks as they’ll only get 25 dmg return from normally slow hitting bosses.
Throw in the glyph that extends the duration of thorns to 60 minutes on the caster and it looks like thorns has become a leveling and PvP option for balance & restos at the cost of been a minor raid buff for tanks.
Thorns last blog post..Happy Hallows End
Oh and btw way Phae, it’s vreenash of Nagrad (Oceanic) now
. Transfered a week ago because of work. So get in a timezone where I could get in a heroic dungeon, where everyone wasn’t sleeping.
I attacked those same mobs with brambles (3 point) talent points. The numbers were: 198 damage 178 off-hand damage.
cheers,
Vree
I tried it, it’s scaling with the spell power of the guy who thorns is on at the time the reflected damage is ticking. I swapped to resto gear, cast thorns, dealt about 100 damage per tick… swapped back to feral gear (same buff), dropped down to normal.
I guess this is obvious but that’s a bit weird. The people who would benefit most from thorns (tanks and ferals) are the ones who are least likely to have the stats to improve it. It would make more sense if it scaled with Stam or Agi, for example.
I’m throwing it on those aggro greedy Warlocks from now on. That’ll learn ‘em.
Thorns is pretty good now for sure, but the damage sucks when cast on tanks. With brambles my thorns ticks for 176 in pvp. With the new tree form I can kill rogues pretty easy now unless they know how to play.
I was really curious as to whether it was a deliberate change to thorns, or a change to DoTs in general. Now with thorns popping a damage trinket temporarily increases the thorns damage. Does the same thing now happen with DoTs? If a warlock casts corruption then uses a damage trinket afterwards does it change how much the corruption ticks for?
Paladin tanks get some spell power so it’s decent on them.
It’s really best when aoe farming though. With some naxx10 gear on beta I was getting over 340 per tick damage, it’s pretty insane.
HAI THAR. GET YOUR MATH OUT OF MAI BUTTON MASHING PLZKTHX.
I think they decided to implement this as another utility for leveling. Mine tick for around 135 at around 1400 spell power, thorns is still useful on tanks. Why would a little extra threat hurt when you are on new content that isn’t nerfed? It allows dps to push that much more. Its pretty cool being resto and watching rogues kill themselves when they jump me.
@Jotch: It’s certainly possible that this was added to help Restoration Druids level, especially given how popular Hurricane-spamming has become and the fact that they recently mentioned being disatisfied with the damage output of Druids attempting to level while specced Resto.
I think they changed it to use caster’s spellpower now, worth swapping specs and gear to buff yourself if you are a feral tank then i’d imagine