What if poor old thorny dragon got a Rework?

[Big Chung Bus]

Most people have never even heard of a thorny dragon nowadays , or forget it even exists unless they have played scorched earth where it was the only wood gatherer. this is mainly for the fact that , pvp wise AND pve wise its completely overshadowed by tons of other animals in its tier , heck carnotaurus is faster and attacks faster.

Too make throny dragon viable against its BIGGEST competition being the velonasaur , its right click needs a serious buff. as it stands the right click is a joke , you can argue it does torpor and damage , but anything with 1 point of armor takes 0 damage , and the torpor is ignored by every tame AND any human with more than 2.0 fortitude. It should have the damage increased too the point that it does slightly maybe 25 per hit from the thorns BUT should have some serious torpor similar too reaper queen thorns , that way in a raid defense thornys can spam down low torpor creatures like triceratops and stegos , forcing a retreat least they want to be knocked out.

obviously with the above it shouldnt be a frontline mount , but if it comes into LITERAL contact with physical threats like giga , rex , and theriz it should have something . On that note , why not give something that only 2 other animals on the arks have , kentro and arthro counter. Its name is literally "thorny" dragon , it should make sense too give it a counter attack recoil vs attackers.

in pve this would also help it as a tame assist , but would probably not have the greatest accuracy with the thorns from very far , and it would still be balanced in pvp as its health pool isnt increadibly high , and it can still be picked up by argys , quetzals , and wyverns and so can the riders.

just some for food for thought for a VERY neglected creature in the list.

[TheSilentEcho]

I actually really like this. I love the thorny dragon but never really use it because there are better options.

[Dracul]

a LOT of dinos are in a desperate need of a TLC pass including thorny dragons but they are still in a better place than sharks, pachys, plesios, scorpions and carnotaurs. (and many more)

[retsam1]

1. 3 WC maintained maps have support thorny dragons. Im not sure why you believe they're never heard of by others. I think that is just confirmation bias on your part.

2. Thorny dragon and velo's are not in direct competition with each other. They serve different purposes in game in terms of many things. This is again just sounds like straw grasping justification for something you want versus any perceived deficiency with the thorny dragons themselves.

3. From the way you've written things, it seems almost all of these wants by you stem from wanting some sort of pvp boosts and only arbitrarily are mentioning it for pve as a side. This in itself should help inform you that your wants have an imbalance.

4. Devs do not interact on any consistent or meaningful basis on the forums here. Your "suggestions" would have better visibility on Twitter, reddit, and the official forums(sadly yes in the descending order) than on here.

5. All indications are that the team is taking Ark in a new direction going forward with the new season pass dlcs. Think on it like this: what we currently have is primarily done and stepping stones for what is to come. This could be construed that prioritizing their time to accommodate your impractical wants is quite unlikely.

[burningmime]

Originally posted by Dracul:

a LOT of dinos are in a desperate need of a TLC pass including thorny dragons but they are still in a better place than sharks, pachys, plesios, scorpions and carnotaurs. (and many more)

Not all creatures need to exist for taming purposes, though. Scorpions are there to farm for chitin in the early game. Megalodons are there to pose a risk while swimming.

[RobbEJay]

Every map with a desert has the thorny Dragon on it, the only way people haven't heard of it before is the real life version. People assume its another fantasy creature, its not.

That being said, I agree it could use a buff, but only for torpor. It'd be nice if it had similar output to the equus, making it an interesting taming companion and more of a threat in the wild. Maybe give the saddle a cooling or sandstorm buff since its covered. But it doesn't need to be brought out of it's niche as a utility dino.

Originally posted by burningmime:

Not all creatures need to exist for taming purposes, though. Scorpions are there to farm for chitin in the early game. Megalodons are there to pose a risk while swimming.

They already do though. Scorpions, megalodon, pachys, and carnos are all easy early/mid game tames. Plesios have their own niche with the platform saddle, so they don't really need a buff.

If anyone really wants one for the carno though, there's actually a mod for that btw. That's anyone's best bet for tlc's.

[Boomer]

I could see making it a wood version of the doed too. Give it a weight reduction to wood.

[Mister Oogway]

Originally posted by Boomer:

I could see making it a wood version of the doed too. Give it a weight reduction to wood.

I believe it already does https://ark.gamepedia.com/Thorny_Dragon#Weight_Reduction

[Darkside99x]

Hell, Id settle for a turret mode.

[Dracul]

Originally posted by burningmime:

Originally posted by Dracul:

a LOT of dinos are in a desperate need of a TLC pass including thorny dragons but they are still in a better place than sharks, pachys, plesios, scorpions and carnotaurs. (and many more)

Not all creatures need to exist for taming purposes, though. Scorpions are there to farm for chitin in the early game. Megalodons are there to pose a risk while swimming.

All tamable creatures should have some degree of functionality - while others just flat out need to be improved due to inherent flaws in their design, they don't need to be super overcranked TLC passes (Like the argentavis, woo) but simple stuff along with a fix to any drastic flaws.

Pachy could do with a simple ability to harvest and change its charge to cause a cause torpor to small dinos, stun to medium dinos and a minor slow to larger ones.

Scorpion could get a buff to its poison, draining stamina as well as adding torpor or getting a actual pincher attack for grabbing tiny dinos.

Plesios - fix the bad hit box, attack zone, the bubble sound it makes now, and that stupid invisible collision zone beneath its belly. (Personally I would also like them to react like tusos do when zapped by jellyfish)

Sharks - gain health when harvesting a corpse like argents.

Carnotaurs - Fix the inflatable arms, arg! Maybe bump up the stamina regen rate.

[amaoto]

You want to turn thorny dragon into a combat mount? probably a bad idea

1. In my experience (mainly PvE), most players just use either a Rex or a Giga heck i rarely see people tame spino or megalosaur out of abberration; For caves, its usually megatherium, direwolves, sabertooths or megaloceros

2. Velonasaur as competition, no, just no. They fulfill very different roles. Velos are used as Ranged attackers. Thorny dragons on the other hand is a Beaver or mammoth substitute. You use it to collect wood since you can't find beaver or mammoth in a desert; tbh i prefer Thorny dragons over those 2 because they lay eggs, which makes mutation-breeding for better stats much easier.

3. Thorny dragon's thorns/spikes aren't really meant for taming assist imo, they deal too little torpor and is probably meant to annoy or punish humans pissing it off without any decent armor.

If you want your Thorny Dragon to have some love, go look for mods; Pyria: Mythos evolved for example, has a variant of it called "Firepike Thorny Dragon" which is the combat mount you wanted; has self immolate that burns everything around it, its thorns cause burning DoT but at the cost of (ANNOYING) passive tame and lost of its utility (weight reduction and wood gathering)

[Mister Smilez]

Originally posted by retsam1:

1. 3 WC maintained maps have support thorny dragons. Im not sure why you believe they're never heard of by others. I think that is just confirmation bias on your part.

2. Thorny dragon and velo's are not in direct competition with each other. They serve different purposes in game in terms of many things. This is again just sounds like straw grasping justification for something you want versus any perceived deficiency with the thorny dragons themselves.

3. From the way you've written things, it seems almost all of these wants by you stem from wanting some sort of pvp boosts and only arbitrarily are mentioning it for pve as a side. This in itself should help inform you that your wants have an imbalance.

4. Devs do not interact on any consistent or meaningful basis on the forums here. Your "suggestions" would have better visibility on Twitter, reddit, and the official forums(sadly yes in the descending order) than on here.

5. All indications are that the team is taking Ark in a new direction going forward with the new season pass dlcs. Think on it like this: what we currently have is primarily done and stepping stones for what is to come. This could be construed that prioritizing their time to accommodate your impractical wants is quite unlikely.

A little late to this, but the point still stands.

1. People can want things, this is a steam thread not ark official support pages. No need to throw such passive aggressive comments in response to what seems like someone who just wants to enjoy a specific dino more. We all have biases.

2. In all honestly Thorny Dragon's right click is in need of a quick fix. In it's current state it is more of a visual effect than an attack.

3. On the basis of Velo compared to Thorny, you are right to consider the two incomparable. They ARE different dinos meant for different purposes. How I understood it is both projectile attacks are meant for combat. Unless the thorny dragon r-click has some super under-utilized usage for anything other than pvp, it is an entirely pointless move that doesn't really fit into any pve or pvp setting. It could be used for taming, at the same time I could sooner knock out what I want to tame with my fists than those quills. If faced with a firing squad of Thorny dragon quills and a single dilo spit, I'd be better off taking the quills. (My opinion, which is biased, fun fact.)

4. In terms of pvp, It is understandable not making this a combat oriented mount, but in the same respect to the design and logic behind thorny dragons, it should have more defensive capabilities, the darn thing is covered with spines and there doesn't seem to be a penalty to attacking it, in my opinion (meaning probably biased again) that seems rather silly. Imagine punching a cactus only for the spines to bend beneath your fist, gets rid of the point of having... well, points.

5. I'll wrap it up here. Ark is an amazing game, I have logged just under 1100 hours into it. Not as much as some. maybe a bit more than others. I don't question their process as they have never ceased to impress me with their additions to this game. TLC's will come when they come and I get that. Thorny Dragons are definitely on the lower popularity scale. I'd rather get an axe than tame one, because it just isn't good in any other way, the speed ain't too great, damage is alright, but it's not a combat mount so that's fine. However, when we compare it to other wood gatherer's (Which I'd say is a fine comparison as all these share the same utility.) A theriz packs an extreme punch thanks to it's long claws, and a mammoth is amazing for wood. It's got debuffs, buffs, damage, knockback, carry weight reduction on wood. It's a beautiful dino with a perfect role in anybody's todo list on tames. It is not outrageous to think that the Thorny could use some buffs headed their way.