I've always felt like Thorns was a weak spell. It's always been a bit of a misfit spell. It does damage, but not much. It provides threat, but not much. Lately, with the way damage and threat have scaled, Thorns seems negligible. I don't think that's the direction Blizzard wants to go with any spells. In lieu of a new beta build to talk about, I'll yak about this!

Let me credit the original idea to Anaro over on the beta forums (and his own blog, Cataclysmic Shift). He suggested that Thorns become a usable ability like Barkskin. Upon reading his suggestion, I had an epiphany: That IS a great idea for Thorns. So I got permission to flesh it out here, on my blog. Hopefully you'll leave some feedback about the thoughts and what you think Thorns should be. Here's the idea:



Ok, so that's the base ability. It would give the resto druid some added danger. The bear druid would get another cooldown that they could trigger if Barkskin was not needed. For the raiding cat and the raiding Moonkin, this would offer very little. Since our goal here is raiding utility, let's introduce another talent. This talent would fundamentally alter the ability, which I think could be considered and "interesting" challenge.



This is the caster version, planted down pretty far in the Balance tree to make it unique to Balance druids. A similar version could be used for cats but, honestly, they don't need more crap! Some napkin math says that this would be approximately a 2.5% increase in DPS if used on cooldown (assuming a constant DPS). It could have interesting implications with Eclipse, Starsurge, and DoTs, as far as when to cast, etc. I think this is on par with the kind of increases we are looking for from talents. It sure beats Genesis and Owlkin Frenzy, that's for sure!

TL:DR

Ironic that I would include this on one of my shorter posts, but here it is. Thorns is an uninteresting spell in both live and beta. It also feels rather useless. Changing it into a usable offensive cooldown with a talent to augment it for the caster's benefit offers a solution to both of those problems. It also creates an interesting talent, not like the current Brambles, which is simply a percentage increase /yawn. Leave your thoughts and comments!