About casting Entangling Roots in Spriggan / Werebear form

[Vatinas]

Hello!

I’ve been trying to play around Entangling Roots lately, which is one of my favourite skills. Since it requires a high amount of passives in Druid, two build archetypes came to mind, Spriggan Form and Werebear Form, which both can cast Entangling Roots while transformed.

Here is how Entangling Roots can be cast in each form:

• In Spriggan Form, you can summon Vale Spirits every 5 casts of Spirit Thorns. If you allocate three points in Spiritwhisperer, for 3 maximum Vale Spirits, you can then allocate up to three points in Valetide, which each add another maximum Vale Spirits, and make it so that when you cast Spirit Thorns while at maximum Vale Spirits, you consume the Spirits to cast Entangling Roots, dealing more damage per point allocated.

• In Werebear form, you can make it so that you cast Entangling Roots whenever you cast Maul.

In Spriggan Form, if you want to cast Entangling Roots as often as possible, you only allocate one point in Valetide, making it so that you cast it every 20 casts of Spirit Thorns (a total of 4 Vale Spirits, each summoned every 5 casts), while in Werebear Form, you can cast it every cast of Maul, which is roughly every 4 seconds.

Spriggan Form does get a more damage modifier whenever it casts Entangling Roots, but:

• That is basically useless if you intend to use Entangling Roots as a support skill, and the spell has a lot of very interesting support nodes.
• Even if you use Entangling Roots as a damage skill, the damage multiplier, in my opinion, doesn’t make up for the very high number of Spirit Thorns casts required to trigger it (once again, it’s at least every 20 casts versus every cast of a skill with a short cooldown).
• In my opinion, it doesn’t really make sense thematically that a bear can trigger a spell like Entangling Roots more often than a spriggan.

I would really like it if Spriggan Form had a more reliable, or more frequent, way to trigger Entangling Roots, as it’s a very interesting, very versatile Druid skill that really fits the Spriggan Form theme.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: I just remembered that you can also have a chance to summon a Vale Spirit when a Healing Totem dies, but I don’t think that’s reliable enough to be taken into account if you want to build around Entangling Roots.

[Bankaikiller]

Not only that but you would think that spriggan form being the most vine, and totem heavy build enabler would get easy access to frenzying thorns node in the entangling roots tree.
but this is not the case. so instead, you bypass being in spriggan form all together, and use human form, and/or wearbear to achieve the same effect, keeping spriggan form tree specced as a buff for your vines that you can summon, and are affected by ettera’s path unique boots, and fury leaps vine procs.

[Vatinas]

True, I completely forgot about that node. Thanks for the reminder

[jehzir]

I personally prefer not to auto-cast Entangling Roots. I often do not get my cursor in the right spot and I also am using it off the thorn totem rather than circle casting off me. The cast in the circle on a near edge of the screen thorn totem will clear off-screen as well while in human form. As Bankaikiller said this is better as a human form skill. I use the spriggan form when I OOM and use the rage from vines nodes to quickly throw out 12 vines and keep the rage built up, shift back and then have full mana.

[Vatinas]

I understand it’s a good skill while outside of Spriggan/Werebear form, my post was just meant to address the fact that Werebear has a much more reliable and frequent way to trigger it than Spriggan, and why I don’t think it makes sense.

[jehzir]

I was just explaining my reasoning behind why it is difficult to use properly in spriggan form. I just found that the shifting made better use of the skill when you are able to target either the thorn totems or center it on yourself. Maybe I just did not convey my thought well enough. That the spriggan form should have better Entangling Roots usage as the heart of the skill is vines and immobility.