Thorns and Riposte against a fully absorbed hit

Contents

Question: If Armor, Shield, or Insurance eats the whole hit, does the defender still retaliate?
Answer: Only Insurance leaves the retaliation intact. Armor or Shield swallowing the hit silences it.

900.26aThorns and Riposte answer a damage event, and they deal a fixed amount that never reads what the hit was worth — Thorns the rune's per-tier value, Riposte your resonance level.
900.26bThat is exactly why Insurance cannot silence them. Insurance prevents the damage but the hostile event still happened, so both are dispatched from the absorption itself.
900.26cArmor and Shield are different. The rest of the on-damage-taken fanout is gated on Vitality damage that actually landed, and so are Thorns and Riposte on that path — an instance Armor reduces to nothing, or one Shield absorbs whole, leaves no event for either to answer.
900.26dRetort behaves like the Armor and Shield case even against Insurance: its line is gated on landed damage, so a fully prevented instance does not fire it. So does the boss Reflect rune, which reads the damage the boss actually took.
900.26eWhat Thorns and Riposte send back is a Vitality loss, not damage. The attacker's own Armor, Shield, Insurance, and damage-ignore charges are all irrelevant to it, and it cannot trigger the attacker's own retaliation in turn.
900.26fBoss Reflect is the exception on that point too. It answers with a real damage instance, so the attacker's Armor and Shield do reduce it — and because it is damage, it can set off the attacker's own Thorns and Riposte back at the boss.