D2R Aura Stacking & Thorns ATD Explained

D2R Aura Stacking & Thorns ATD Explained | Diablo 2 Resurrected Aura Guide

12/24/2022 6:50:50 PM

With this D2R Aura Guide, we break down how to stack auras and how Thorn skills work in Diablo 2 Resurrected!

Diablo 2 Resurrected Aura Stacking & Thorns ATD

A lot of people may benefit from the deeper dive into how auras stack, how auras of the same type interact, what Thorns even really means and what is the difference between the percentage damage returned and the attacker taking damage.

Diablo 2 Resurrected Thorns

How To Stack Auras in Diablo 2 Resurrected?

How different auras are available all stacked together? Here we're going to use the Necromancer has an Edge Runeword giving Thorns Aura as well as Bramble armor giving Thorns Aura compared to our mercenary who also has thorns Aura with just the Edge Runeword on.

We are providing a level 15 Thorns Aura to your entire party. Because our mercenary has access to a level 29 Thorns Aura and is also being given to our entire party, his Aura will take precedence and this is always true. It doesn't add them together, it doesn't do some formulation where it takes half of one or half of the other, it just reads what is the highest level Aura currently acted. But when we take our Bramble armor and put it on, it will read the effective Aura level from all items that we have that are given the same type of Aura, so because Bramble armor and Edge bow are both giving Thorns Aura, their levels add together.

So with these two Diablo 2 items, we now provide a level 36 Thorns Aura which because it is a higher level than our mercenaries will take precedence, so now his is completely ignored and mine is the only one that's being applied.

Now the last thing to note, auras from items do not benefit from plus skills but they do benefit from synergies. If there were a Synergy for Thorns or we had points in that skill, the aura from our items would benefit from those synergies but if we go ahead and cast battle command from the Call to Arms, this won't change the level of aura that our items are giving us.

Call To Arms*

+1 To All Skills
+40% Increased Attack Speed
+250-290% Enhanced Damage (varies)
Adds 5-30 Fire Damage
7% Life Stolen Per Hit
+2-6 To Battle Command (varies)*
+1-6 To Battle Orders (varies)*
+1-4 To Battle Cry (varies)*
Prevent Monster Heal
Replenish Life +12
30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

Whereas casting Battle Command will increase the skill level of your mercenary from his actual skill Thorns, because he has access to that skill itself as opposed to it being given to him from an item.

Then lastly if we were to put Bramble onto the mercenary, it would check to see what level from items he has which is level 21, and it would check to see see what level he has from other sources this one being his actual skill itself. Since his skill is higher level, it will ignore the items or a level and only use his Aura level, so that doesn't stack either.

4 Thorns Skills Ingame & Compare

Let's go ahead and look at the four different types of thorns abilities that are in the game because in Diablo 2 resurrected with patch 2.4, they drastically changed how all these skills worked, everything used to just return a flat percentage of damage.

Nowadays, every skill Works differently so let's go ahead and take a look at it:

The four different skills in the game that have some type of thorns-like ability or a lot of people misname as thorns-like abilities are, these four here:

Thorns Aura (Has both xx% Returned Damage and ATD)

Thorns Aura is the best type of thorns effect in the game has two different components, it will return a percentage of damage that you take and also has ATD or attacker takes damage.

Lv 1: -250% Returned, - ATD 4

Lv 20: -1010% Returned, - ATD 144

At level 1, Thorns are going to return 2.5 times the damage that you take and a small amount of attacker takes damage of four, whereas at skill level 20 you'll be returning 10.1 times the amount of damage as well as returning 144 attacker takes damage.

Iron Maiden is just a debuff that Stacks onto a monster that says when they deal damage it will return a percentage of that damage, you'll notice that at level 1 it only returns 200 or two times modifier, and at level 20 it returns earns 675 of the damage that the monster would deal. The reason why these numbers are smaller than Thorns is that Thorns is a lot harder to implement. If you're a paladin build you actually have to have the aura active or you have to use some very Niche items like Edge and bramble to get that effect.

Whereas Iron Maiden can be cast on the monster and then whoever is using these types of abilities would be able to use anything else that they want until that curse ran out.

Iron Maiden (Has xx% Returned Damage Only)

Iron Maiden curse from Necromancer is a curse you put onto a monster that makes it so that they will take a percentage of returned damage only.

Lv 1: -200% Returned

Lv 20: -675% Returned

The interesting thing about Iron Maiden when used in conjunction with thorns is that you would just add their percentages together, so if we had a level one Thorn Aura and a level 1 Iron Maiden that means that any monster that attacks you, if they successfully hit will take 4.5 or 450 times damage, as well as the attacker takes damage. The reason why so often you would never really want to use Iron Maiden with thorns though is because all this damage being dealt to the monster is physical damage. So if you could have access to curses and Thorns or you would always use amplify damage - amplify damage is going to reduce the monster's physical resistance by a hundred. So if a monster had a 50% damage reduction, typically they would only be taking half of the return damage that they dealt to you, with Amplified damage you actually take that full damage value multiplied by 1.5 since they'd be brought down to negative 50 physical damage reduction.

Iron Golem (Has ATD Only)

Iron Golem himself which is a summon from The Necromancer, Iron Golem is interesting because the Iron Golem now gains attacker takes damage equal to skill level but no longer actually has a percentage damage return component like it used to.

Lv 1: -15 ATD

Lv 20: -225 ATD

Now the Iron Golem actually used to have its own unique Thorns type aura that it would apply, so it would return percentage damage but it was unique to the Iron Golem and didn't stack with other Thorns type effects. Now the Iron Golem actually just has attacker takes damage meaning that when they get attacked even if the monster missed they'll return a flat amount of physical damage back to that monster. At level 1 Iron Golem only has 15 attacker takes damage and at level 20 they only have 225 attacker takes damage. So now you can see why something like Iron Golem is going to drastically underperform so while you can put Thorne's Aura onto an iron golem now and it would benefit from the percentage damage returned, its small amount of attacker takes damage is almost completely negligible. The unique thing about Iron Golem is that it doesn't apply in Aura to the rest of your group, the Iron Golem itself just now has a base stat of attacker takes damage.

Spirit of Barbs (Has ATD Only)

Spirit of Barbs is one of the summonses that the Druid build gains access to now. Spirit of Barbs provides an Aura which gives those within the aura attacker takes damage.

Lv 1: -15 ATD

Lv 20: -347 ATD

Spirit of barbs actually applies in Aura, at level 1 they have an equal amount of 15 attacker takes damage for the aura and at level 20 they have 347. If you get up to skill level 44, it returns 1337 lead nice attacker takes damage. The cool thing about Spirit of barbs is that, it applies as an aura, so everyone in the party within the radius of the aura is going to gain that attacker takes damage as well, this does mean that technically speaking you could be supplying a Thorns Aura with a Spirit of Barbs up, cast Iron Maiden and then your Iron Golem, when attacked, would return a decent amount of attacker takes damage and then also return a lot of damage when hit. Spirit of barbs like every summon in this game has absolutely terrible AI and the thing just kind of walks around and gets popped immediately, but when asked all the time why not use Spirit of barbs as well? It's because of this difference between attacker takes damage and returned damage percent return damage percent just drastically outperforms since you can manipulate it both by you becoming cursed or having lower physical damage reduction and then reducing the physical damage reduction of the monster that is attacking. In that same example, before where we bring that monster down to 50 negative physical damage reduction, a level 20 Spirit of the barbs is going to deal about 500 damage per monster attack, whereas with thorns or especially if you're talking against a boss that's going to have increased damage against your summons or your mercenary, they're going to be doing upwards of 5 000 damage per hit at the same level of thorns.

Now if you just look at the first descriptor under each one of them, you'll see how they're already different and then we'll break down how these things work. If these four skills are now unique in that each one of them does a different thing, you'll start to very quickly understand why some of them aren't necessarily as good as the other ones.

How Thorn Auras Damage Works in Diablo 2 Resurrected?

When we're talking about the two different components of the Thorns or so the percentage damage return and the attacker takes the damage portion, you have to understand how they interact. For damage to be returned to a monster attacking you, they have to deal damage which means that they have to successfully hit you you have to fail to block or Dodge or evade or anything like that, and then you have to be able to take physical damage. So things like Bone armor and Energy Shield which drastically reduce how much physical damage you're going to take from a sorc and sometimes completely absorb all the incoming damage would mean regardless of how much damage that monster was supposed to do since they dealt zero damage to you Thorns won't do anything back to them.

For you to do Thorns damage you need to take damage, the reason is that Thorns damage and attacker takes damage are both dealt as physical damage back to the monster. So not only do their physical resistances actually reduce how much damage they take from these effects, but you can increase the amount of damage that you would take from the percentage damage return if you have less physical damage reduction, so you've been cursed or decertified or you're using the new bone break charm that will increase how much physical damage that you take. Because it increases how much physical damage you take, the amount of damage that you return back to the attacker is also increased.

How Attacker Takes Damage Works in Diablo 2 Resurrected?

The attacker takes damage is a little bit different in that, this will trigger as long as a monster has attacked you. It doesn't matter if the attack misses, it doesn't matter if you block or Dodge or evade, also doesn't matter if you absorb damage through Energy Shield or Bone armor, they will take that amount of damage on the skill as a flat physical damage application and then their own resistances will go forward to reduce them. So while you have to take damage for percentage damage to be returned, you don't have to take damage for the attacker to take damage, this is arguably why Thorns are the best thorns-like effect in the game because if you get hit you return a ton of damage. But if the monster misses, they're still taking some amount of damage meaning that you're never really missing out on damage, but as you can see if returning 1,370 to 13.7 times the amount of damage that you take, is a much bigger effect than just returning a little bit under 300 physical damage.

One last thing to understand is that these effects only apply when a monster actually makes a melee strike against you.