first time playing thorns

i realy realy hope ggg reworks how thorns actually work, im not saying it is weak, because when it reflects and retaliate it actually is nice.
no what i mean is that the unique helmet is so disgustingly mandatory that i am loosing interesst in continueing playing thorns.
for those who dont know, there is a unique helmet that makes it that all damage you take reflects thorns, meaning spells projectiles etc. everything that is not physical melee hit. and playing thorns right now, i just realised how little physical melee monsters are there during campaign.
what i hope to see is that ggg makes it that thorns works on everything by default or at the very least make it a notebale on the tree, but not a unique helmet (crown of the pale king).
also i dont know if anyone, but very most likely already did, mentioned it.
i am also not talking about making thorns stronger, just generaly aviable, because if you realy want to argue that way, slams work, spells work, shapeshift works, so many other niche builds work aswell without the need of unique items, but the general core of thorns needs a unique to work.
yes i know i can buy it for like 1 alch on trade, sure, thats beside my point as i already have cleared the entire game with another toon and havent seen that helmet once sofar myself. in fact i havent even seen that helmet last league when i had a full endgame set prefarmed for thorns specificly >.>

Hello,

Like you I really felt like playing a thorns build so this league I went for it and I figured out a couple of things about thorns which make it actually very strong.

I only partially agree with you on thorns needing to be more accessible.
I do feel there are to few ways to apply thorns proactively isntead of relying on being hit. I'd very much like to see a few more ways and not being limited to slams for it but there are 2 other ways. To deal reliable damage both of those still hinge on another unique though.

Let me start with the issues that I've found, then with the ways I've found to work around those, and finishing with the benefits of thorns.

The issues are like what you've stated.
Initially it only works vs melee mobs. Those are actually not that rare but rather it's rare that you're hit by them. Every single thing in this game pushes you towards killing everything on your screen ASAP and because of that you'll most likely just have a ability that kills those melee mobs before they even reach you, even if you have a 0-dps build.

The second issue is the need to be hit in the first place. Melee or not, the game REALLY is against you being hit as mitigation is still hard.

The most obvious solution is to use the helmet so that every hit you get trigger thorns but there are other ways to trigger thorns damage even without being hit.
There is a unique ring which lets a heavy stunning hit apply the thorns damage. It's called "prized pain" and it is what I am using. The tradeoff is that you'll need stun buildup to be able to reliably trigger it.
A second way to trigger Thorns without needing to be hit is the support gem for slams called "Brambleslam". This places some veins on the ground which will trigger when enemies touch them. These deal some low base damage + your thorns damage.

In my build I combine the helmet, the on stun, AND brambleslam.
I generally can kill T16 citadel bosses in under a minute even if they don't hit me a lot.

There are also some VERY strong things in favor of thorns.
What many people don't realize is that thorns damage is applied BEFORE the enemies hit damage and that a enemy cant deal hit damage when it's dead.
If a enemy deals damage with a straight up (multiple)hitting ability which is instantly canceled when they die? That means if your thorns damage 1shots them they can't damage you. So thorns is a insanely strong defensive layer as long as you've reached that instakill on retaliate threshold for at least weaker mobs.

Thorns is also incredibly easy to get 100% crit chance on, with the briarpatch boots, a heart of the well with base crit chance, 3 talents into thornhide, 2 stag augments in your helm, and 1 talent wheel of increased crit chance you're already at or near a 100% which is very low investment.

Another great thing but also a double edged sword about thorns through the ring setup is that it's a separate hit from the skill you use it with.
I use resonating shield and shieldwall. If either of those stuns it applies the thorns damage. The support gems in those skills do NOTHING for thorns, thats both a downside and a upside. The downside is more obvious as thorns won't gain ele/phys damage for example BUT the upside? You can invest into armour break through talents/ascention/gear and have thorns damage break armour while your skill consumes that armour break.
I have my shieldwall consume armour break yet when it stuns enemies are still getting their armour broken by the thorns hit that comes with the stun.