The Thorn of Justice

Sorting the Thorn Mechanic

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

With the release of the Justice, we had a new mechanic introduced called THORNS. This will be a quick little run down of how this mechanic works. We will use the Justice since this is currently the only hull with Thorns.

To begin with, Thorns is an activated stat. It activates the instant it first gets damaged by a weapon. Once activated this is the process:

• Thorns will remain active for 10 seconds (barring overload or another Justice in the fleet).

• While active, it will deal 25 damage to the hull causing that damage for every single salvo/shot/mirv that damages the Justice (including splash fields).

• The damage dealt to the opposing hull is independent of the damage the Justice takes (in other words, the Justice will spit back 25 damage whether it gets damaged by 1 point or 1,000).

• The Thorns damage can not be mitigated. It is direct damage to the opponents health.

• At the end of the 10 seconds Thorns will have a 15 second cool-down (again, barring overload or another hull).

• Of note: Pinches/stuns will pause the timer/Thorns. It is not immune to that mechanic. 

The next part is where the cool stuff happens...

For each Justice you have in the fleet, you get some 'tweaks' to the Thorns mechanic as you can see above. These are additive in nature and will stack. Adding just a second Justice to the fleet will bring the Thorns damage up from 25 to 68.75. Thorns will also last longer and have a shorter cool-down... you can make your own dirty bon mot here.

Even worse for opponents, the Justice has a Berserk mechanic. This  is activated when a friendly ship dies.

As you can see, this is a hell of a boost and, again, is additive in nature. For 20 seconds after the friendly ship is destroyed, your Thorns (given a single hull) will do 100 damage each, the duration will be 20 seconds and the cool-down will be only 5 seconds.

I know, I know, first thing I said to myself was 'Self, the damn thing only lasts for 20 seconds, if your Thorns lasts for 20 seconds, what good is the cool-down buff'?

To which I promptly replied 'Dummy, another ship died, you could be in the middle of a cycle at that point'.

'Oh yea...'

Where was I? Oh... I was done. Yea, so, that is a quick synopsis of the Thorns mechanic. Hope it helps clarify it for you guys.