New Thornmail: Good direction, but a little undertuned?

darkdill·Jul 17, 2017·9 votes·635 views

I like the new direction for Thornmail, but I've found in practice that, even as Rammus or Malphite, the damage still doesn't quite match up against enemy ADCs who have a MR item like . Add on that and also end up gimping the item damage, and it still doesn't QUITE reach what the tanks need.

One thing I'd like to ask is why Thornmail doesn't deal true damage, but have terribly low numbers. Is it because Riot doesn't like the idea of true-damage Thorns at all?

Either way, Thornmail's damage needs to be tad more potent in late-game to compensate for enemies who will probably have magic resistance and/or the above items that can drastically lower Thorns damage potency.

11 Comments

ShadewolfJul 17, 20173 votes

old thornmail was way stronger, even without healreduce. do some maths :) you can calculate it easy.

the new one is only good against soraka and the summonerspell heal, not against lifesteal and so on.

the damage of the old thornmail scaled with 25% bonus armor + 15% of the enemies Damage, so it dealed more damage than the new one (even if you calculate the healreduce as bonus damage dealed to the attacker).

Samura YukisunaJul 17, 20172 votes

Thornmail? Undertuned. Bramble vest? Broken as all hell

darkdillJul 17, 20171 votes

Yeah. Some power shifts are definitely needed.

LankPantsJul 17, 20171 votes

God forbid tanks should not get destroyed when Fiora looks at them funny, right?

SSJTribeJul 17, 20172 votes

There was a recent thread that I can't seem to find, but in essence it stated that Thornmail is not meant to be a damage item. It is for tanks that build a lot of HP who don't want to be a "lifesteal battery" for the enemy adc. The grievous wounds and damage reflect passive both help contribute to this, basically an adc won't lifesteal off of the tank as much as someone else. The cold steel passive also does this, lowering the number of attacks the adc will have.

Sir YamazukiJul 17, 20172 votes

Current version of Thornmail is far worse than the previous. Other healing champions have the option of not even auto attacking you, and ADCs can shrug it off especially when you factor in the support with shields+ardent. Early on the GW is useless other than for their heal summoner, and by the time they have lifesteal where you would use GW it doesn't matter as their damage output is high enough+their support that they out sustain the damage of Thornmail even with GW.

By the way, I'm confused why you think Bramble is op because of GW. Not a whole lot of top laners care if GW is applied to them and it requires auto attacks to trigger the GW anyways. Even some top laners with sustain can just not even auto attack. At that point unless you're a Nasus, Irelia, or Yorick basically all the GW is doing is lowering regen/potions. Also, the GW only applies for a single second in addition to needing a basic attack to trigger it. Compare that to executioners calling that applies on all physical damage dealt for 3 seconds that also costs 100g less. For a finished item morellos lasts 8 seconds and even if it requires a health threshold it's at a point where a mages burst would get to anyways.

vidghostJul 19, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sir Yamazuki,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=38WGcx65,comment-id=0005,timestamp=2017-07-17T15:05:45.499+0000)

By the way, I'm confused why you think Bramble is op because of GW. Not a whole lot of top laners care if GW is applied to them and it requires auto attacks to trigger the GW anyways. Even some top laners with sustain can just not even auto attack. At that point unless you're a Nasus, Irelia, or Yorick basically all the GW is doing is lowering regen/potions. Also, the GW only applies for a single second in addition to needing a basic attack to trigger it. Compare that to executioners calling that applies on all physical damage dealt for 3 seconds that also costs 100g less. For a finished item morellos lasts 8 seconds and even if it requires a health threshold it's at a point where a mages burst would get to anyways.

bramble vest is OP because for 900g you get 35 armor + 20 magic damage returned per being hit plus -40% healing of any kind with GW ... its a super value for money item.. thats it in a nutshell its almost one of the first items you can buy and super early game 20 damage is worthwhile. ITS LIKE damage and protection at the same time! even when versing a mage if they auto attack you for 10 damage they get 20 damage returned lol ARMOR is good because minions only do AD damage.. along with towers. IVE been seeing mages buying bramble vest .. no joke.. every champ benefits from bramble vest.. every single one.

FantasySniperJul 17, 20171 votes

The base damage should scale with level. The fact that it's superior to Cinder and even its upgrades is a huge inconsistency.

LadyRenlyJul 17, 20171 votes

I dont like cold steel on it at all.

Standard o HonorJul 18, 20171 votes

Hey what if instead of doing more damage on hit than bramblevest it stored charges and could be used as an active that does sudden burst of aoe damage based on stacks/lvl instead, with a medium length cd. Sort of like a reverse kalista type thing.

Play around minion agro or taking sup AAs to get more stacks.