Thorns on yourself?Follow

YES!!!!!!!!!!

Keep ALL of your buffs(Thorns, MoTW, ect..) active on yourself at ALL times! Not useing your buffs is about as bad as not wearing armor, because it just doesn't look cool!

Aside from the instance situation CapG brought up, there is one minor other exception to this rule that nonetheless bears mentioning. Anyone who wears the Green Whelp armor for the sleep effect (And I know that I still do for PvP purposes), take off thorns! The reflected damage will cancel the sleep immidiately. I can only assume this is because the sleep effect is applied immediately upon getting hit, and the thorns damage is applied just after.

Speaking of thorns, I think I actually killed a guild mate with them in a duel earlier today. Him and I were dueling in front of Orgrimmar and we both got down very low on health, and he blasted me with one final Sinister Strike, while he only had a small sliver of life left, I got the yellow text that he defeated me in the duel, but immediately after that he collapsed, dead at my feet! I was kind of surprised and I thought maybe the alliance were attacking us, but then I realized he wasn't pvp flagged or anything, and no mobs were around to agro him (not that they could have hit him,) so the only logical reason why he died was that my thorns took him out. I never knew that could happen, but I just thought I would add that to the thread =)

All good points, that I did not mention. As he is level 5, Green Whelp Armor and instance parties is out of the question for several levels.

Well thats why i posted



it all comes down to the delay in the Thorns damamge, thronrs is applyed after all other dammage but before the Rogue became "freindly".

And do not apply thorns to rogues it will break sap.

No, it doesn't generate rage, nor does it build hate. Thorns is a great buff for solo work, but in groups or raids I usually only keep it up on the warriors and not even them if they are pulling.

Of course, the more buffs you have, the more things a dispeller has to dispell.

If you only have MotW on, and a Warlock attacks you with Felhunter, you can kiss MotW goodbye. If you have Thorns and/or any other buffs, there is a chance they will be dispelled first.


Think of lesser buffs as meat shields for greater ones.

I am inclide to agree with you, mosttly as i have never seen a warrior aoe taunt and reestablish (lost) aggro with thorns, sure they attack for the durration of the taunt but go back if no new dammage is done, but i think your point on original dammage is right on as it seems to hold mobs on the tank .... at least at the begening.

In EQ a druid's thorns generated aggro but did not tag the mob as being attacked by the caster or the person who has thorns on themselves. I know it sounds wierd but i know this becuase i powerlvled with a 70 druid by 1: running around and getting aggro by getting too close to a mob 2: letting the mob hit the druid for a while 3: attacking the mob with my lowbie, by doing this the mob would die by the druid's thorns but would count as my lowbie doing the killing becuase he did the only damage to it.
Of course this has nothing to do with WoW except that i tried to do the same thing and it didnt work becuase Thorns in WoW count as damage by whoever has thorns on them. What im trying to say is that if a warrior has thorns on him it will create aggro for him becuase it counts as him attacking (however small) and not for the druid who cast it on him.
I have done testing.

Put thorns on whoever SHOULD be taking aggro. Believe it or not I think this buff actually helps me hold aggro in bear form if I'm tanking, because it's regular damage the mob is taking from you, and therefore regular threat. (even though damage doesn't always = threat, it's still worthwhile)

I wouldn't go around trying to cast it on an entire raid group or something ridiculous like that, your mana just won't hold for one thing. But also you don't want to generate threat for anything other than tanks.

In solo, naturally keep ALL your buffs on you at ALL times. As small as the damage is it chops about 2-3 seconds off the length of a solo PvE fight. More if you're fighting a rogue-like (damage-little-but-often) mob.

And to the later topic.. I use Green Whelp Armor, and Thorns never breaks it for me. What breaks it is Moonfire, Rake, Rip etc.. There's a mod somewhere called SheepDefender that's wonderful for Green Whelp Armor users, stops you breaking it with swings.. but really, I've never had a problem with it at all. Not once. And I've used Green Whelp Armor for quite a while now.