In Diablo 4 there are countless ways to slay monsters. A player has now stumbled across a playstyle where he simply lets himself be hit and still has a lot of fun.
What kind of build is this? The player accidentally slid into a build that focuses on thorn damage. According to his own statement, this is an “endless source of good mood”. According to his Reddit post, he uses the unique chest piece “Blade Plate”, which has a thorn value of four times. In addition, the unique effect has a chance of causing the thorns to deal up to 200% (multiplicative) more damage.
For thorn damage to be triggered, monsters have to literally get up close to him. When the player is hit, the thorns deal damage to the enemies. Such builds are mainly known from Barbarians or Necromancers.
In this case, however, he plays the Paladin. The class came with Lord of Hatred to Diablo 4, but has been playable since December 2025 if you pre-ordered an edition of the second expansion.
This is what other players say about it: Under the post, many tips from the community are already gathering. Many recommend specifically pushing the thorn values through hardening and completion. Some even suggest foregoing the unique item and instead using another item.
In general, the playstyle does not seem to be extremely dependent on perfect gear: “Good gear helps, of course, but the thing hits hard on its own,” explains user TheWinteredWolf.
And MajorV7 admits that he stores a Blade Plate for all occasions in every season but never uses it. To this, the thread creator dryly replies: “That’s your sign.”
Others remember PvP moments from earlier seasons where Hunters simply crashed against their thorn damage while they themselves calmly walked around.
Overall, the thread contains many thorn fans. Just shortly after the release of the Paladin, players stormed through the highest difficulty levels and practically wiped out bosses in passing. This was due to a build that stacked as much armor and thorns as possible: OP build in Diablo 4 causes the Paladin to deal 5 billion damage per tick, is nearly unkillable, and can almost oneshot bosses on torment 4
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