WoW Forever Thorns: Druid Scales With Spell Power

WoW Forever Thorns: thumbnail of a druid wrapped in glowing brambles facing boars in The Barrens

Article by Kami

Sodapoppin puts on 36 spell power, recasts his Thorns, and the number jumps from 9 to 14 damage. He takes off his gear: Thorns stays at 14. The streamer ran this test live during his beta marathon, and the clip, picked up by the fan channel Poggers Community Clips, sums up his reaction: « This cannot be intentional. »

Intentional or not, WoW Forever Thorns scales with spell power. And for the druid’s leveling, that changes how you gear up from the very first levels.

What Sodapoppin’s Test Shows

In his capture, his druid is level 20 with 1,173 health. He’s wearing a Sporid Cape, a level 17 cape that deals 1 nature damage on every hit taken, and his equipment manager already shows a set named « THORNS ».

The key point of the test is that Thorns reads your spell power the moment you cast it. After that, you can swap gear and the bonus stays. Sodapoppin actually built two sets right away: one for casting Thorns, one for playing.

Sodapoppin streaming in front of his level 20 druid, the Sporid Cape tooltip open showing the THORNS set — Sodapoppin on the WoW Forever beta: the Sporid Cape and his « THORNS » set (clip capture).

The 36-point test gives a rough idea: 5 extra damage on every hit taken, on a rank that deals 9 by default. Sodapoppin himself didn’t know yet exactly how much spell power the spell converts.

In Vanilla, an Effect Nobody Could See

Was this already the case back then? Hard to say. In vanilla, at low level, nobody had enough spell power to notice an effect on Thorns. Even if the spell benefited from it, the gap amounted to one or two points.

The spell’s history is actually murky. According to Warcraft Wiki, it was patch 3.1 of Wrath of the Lich King that made Thorns use the druid’s own spell power instead of the target’s. In Forever, at any rate, it’s the caster’s power that counts, and it’s measurable as early as level 20.

WoW Forever Thorns: Stronger at Every Rank

Spell power isn’t the only change. The tooltips published by Wowhead show base damage raised at every rank, compared to Classic:

Rank	Level	Classic	WoW Forever
1	6	3	4
2	14	6	9
3	24	9	11
4	34	12	13
5	44	15	16
6	54	18	22

English tooltip for Thorns rank 6 in WoW Forever: 22 nature damage dealt to attackers — Wowhead, Forever database: Thorns rank 6 rises to 22 damage, up from 18 in Classic.

In exchange, the Improved Thorns talent disappears from the Balance tree. In vanilla, it added up to 75% damage to Thorns over 3 points. Blizzard folded part of that bonus into the base spell instead, and lets spell power do the rest. You can check out the full tree in our WoW Forever Balance Druid build.

Why This Matters for Leveling

The druid’s early levels are hell. On the official European forum, on September 19, a druid going by Excellency sums up the mood: Thorns is his top damage source there, simply because everything else hits too weakly.

Message from player Excellency on the Blizzard forum explaining that Thorns accounts for half his damage while leveling — Official Blizzard forum (EU), Excellency, September 19, 2026: Thorns as the druid’s top damage source in beta.

He puts it in his own words: « a 6 dmg per proc thorns is 50% of the dmg. » If Thorns already carries that much weight, every point of spell power you add to it shows immediately.

My Advice: Spell Power and Stamina from the Start

In my opinion, the most interesting approach is to start directly with spell power, and not just for Thorns. At low level, it’s Wrath and your magic damage spells that do the work. Spell power boosts all of them at once.

Spell power: more damage on Wrath and Moonfire, and stronger Thorns.
Stamina: Thorns only hurts if you get hit. The more you tank, the longer it keeps dealing damage.
The idea: Thorns on you, pull a big pack of mobs, and let Thorns do the work while you cast your spells.
Sodapoppin’s trick: a spell power set to cast Thorns, then switch back to your combat gear. The bonus lasts until the spell ends.

With a spell power and Stamina setup, WoW Forever Thorns should let you chain big mob packs where a classic druid pulls them one at a time. It’s also useful in PvP, where every hit taken sends damage back, even though the player damage reduction I talked about in my article on WoW Forever PvP could change the equation.

One important caveat: this is beta. Sodapoppin himself wondered whether he should report the behavior as a bug. If Blizzard decides that spell power makes Thorns too strong, a fix could land before the November 4 release. Enjoy the test while it lasts, and keep an eye on the patch notes.