Q's about thorn ward and concept building

cidfrieg

The defense reduction from thorn ward, does anyone know the percentage of this (Commanding Shot's specs also, if anyone knows them) as well as how long the debuff lasts? Also, do thorn wards stack on top of each other? Is the targetting for thorn ward completely random?

Concept building: Archer spec'd mainly for prime critical, but I'm indecisive about getting 20% more damage at full distance or 1 second cooldown on all my ranged encounters with each melee encounter. Using it for PVP.

Now I know in PVP the majority of classes are going to be in your face, so first question, is it 20% from your target or any enemy? Grasping roots, I've heard word that it's bugged. How so? Bugged as in grasping roots won't work on an unstoppable target? What about a TR that's rooted but dashes towards you. A lot of the times when I ME from a rooted spot, I immediately get rubberbanded back to said spot, but this doesn't always happen.

EDIT: Forgot to add, I've been having a hard time confirming it, but is each hit of Fox Shift proc'ing the Combat feat that reduces ranged cooldowns?

Another thing, anyone know the radius of each buff?

Findings: So thorn ward has 10 stacks that last 5 seconds, refreshes after each hit from thorn ward. It's targetting is not random, it targets the closest enemy to the center of the skill (the thorns). If you have combat advantage, thorn ward does combat advantage damage.

elminster

Let's see, you've answered most of the questions to Thorn Ward yourself. I don't know definitively the answer to stacking on another archer or %, so I'll leave those alone for somebody more knowledgeable than I.

PvP people get in your face a lot. You have two choices when this happens: Run (and likely die shortly afterwards), or swap to melee and try to kill the opponent faster than he kills you. If you're feeling ballsy and want to take a few choice smacks at the enemy when this happens then I'd take the CD reduction. The extra 20% damage scales depending on the distance from target, but I don't know where or if the bonus drops to zero. If you have the points I'd take it anyway, damage is damage. Oh and it's 20% regardless of your current target. i.e. if you use Split Shot on three targets, one at melee range, one at 25m, one at 30m. The one at 30m will take full damage, the one at 25m will take slightly less, and the one at melee range will take virtually no bonus damage. On the other hand if you use Rapid on the melee target, it will take only your base unmodified damage regardless of where the other two stand.

You've pretty much hit the nail with Grasping. It's a hit or miss whether it'll glitch (mine usually miss, one of the reasons I use hindering instead), so it's not reliable and not one to center your build around. That and when they fix it you'll be SoL, so better to learn right the first time instead of exploiting a glitch now and having to relearn a new strategy later on.

From my own observations I estimate buff ranges at roughly 30m. It may go further, but that's what I've seen.