https://i.imgur.com/EWn3hCh.jpg
Introduction:
Have you wanted to play a minion build that doesn’t play like a traditional minion build? Have you wanted to speed clear/farm empowered monoliths on bad rare gear? Do you want to play as a bear with a lot of vines spitting thorns everywhere? Do you enjoy seeing a number spam of a million hits? If so, then you’ve come to the right place.
This is an extremely detailed build guide aimed at explaining everything about the build in particular for newer players.
The build leverages many interlocking mechanisms introduced in 0.8.4 with the druid rework. We will remain 100% of time in werebear form but generate our primary source of damage from twelve ranged vines and a single summoned Spriggan. We boost these vines and Spriggan up massively through numerous sources of flat added spell damage along with numerous multipliers. We also gain a substantial amount of secondary damage from the 200+ poisons on the targets. As a tertiary source of damage our own werebear attacks will still do low/mediocre damage.
Basic attack pattern is (1) attack with “Maul” which spawns/buffs all your minions and roots enemies (2) if needed use “Roar” to interrupt (3) immediately use “Rampage” to start charging to next pack and (4) Repeat on next pack. Rampage lets you move extremely fast through the map - get in the habit of just spawning vines and then charging away to improve clear speed. If single target just keep repeatedly using maul off cooldown while dodging hits in between. Weave in a Roar for an on-demand stun and damage buff for your Spriggan.
This build is very new player friendly as it doesn’t really require special gear. Garbage rares you find and throw a little crafting onto will more than carry you through empowered monoliths. There is only one required unique (Thorn Slinger belt) and two optional end-game uniques (Julra’s Obsession & Usurpers). Thorn Slinger is an incredibly common one that you’ll probably find one if you haven’t already; even without a Thorn Slinger a rare with life/resists works fine. The build itself is also very very forgiving to player mistakes.
The build is Hardcore friendly. I only died once between levels 1 and 96 and it was during leveling. Once the build was setup properly I have never died. The on-demand stun is really good for avoiding getting caught standing in something you shouldn’t.
How does build actually work?
- We attack with werebear’s “Maul”. This causes multiple things to happen…
- Because we have “Skull Crusher” the Maul skill also benefits from Fury Tree passives.
- The Fury Tree summons six vines on each maul (three at origin of jump and three at landing).
- These vines benefit from the Spriggan Form tree which because of the “Garden of Rage” passive gives you rage/vine every second (you have 12 max vines so this is a +12/sec rage generator allowing you to stay in werebear permanently)
- The vines have ranged “spell” attacks thanks to the “Huntersbane” node. They also pierce 80% of the time thanks to “Branch Storm” allowing them to easily AOE clear packs.
- Werebear passive “Wild Command” boosts our minion damage by 200% after the Maul
- Fury Tree passive “Warrior’s Entrance” boosts our minion damage by 100% after the Maul
- Werebear passive “Woodland Bear” triggers Entangling Root to go off
- Entangling root massively buffs all of our minions by giving them a whopping flat +50 spell damage, 50% cast speed, and 500 armor.
- Enemies are rooted and (usually) chilled.
- Spriggan aura also provides buffs to itself and the vines (+15 spell damage, 8 crit chance, and 72 crit avoidance).
- The Spriggan also follows us around getting the same buffs and doing massive damage on top of the vines.
Pro/Cons
Pros:
- Extremely high DPS
- Extremely high effective health
- Many layers of defenses
- One of fastest builds for clearing monoliths thanks to Rampage
- On demand stun
- Easy to gear / will work on garbage gear
- No special uniques required (although I do recommend a Thorn Slinger Belt if you have one).
- A lot of attributes from passives and skills (e.g. 100% crit avoidance and 58% endurance without any gear)
- Passively damages foes such that you can focus all attention on mechanics without losing much DPS downtime.
Cons:
- The life recovery/regen/leech is on the low side. You’ll be using potions a lot. (Note if you manage to craft a Minion Spell Damage Usurper’s Mandate it will resolve this con - see legendaries section).
- Sometimes tankier mobs die behind you meaning you’ll miss the loot
- If you have the mentality of waiting to kill everything before moving to next pack, you’ll lose a lot of clear speed. This build is “drop minions” → “rush to next pack”. Likewise, don’t feel bad about charging completely past a small pack if you have a good straight line hallway.
- One bug still persists that your vine minions won’t attack “new” enemies (i.e. if you drop vines and then enemies spawn after they vines the vines will sit there doing nothing).
Defensive Layers
- 4058 raw health
- 1522 endurance threshold w/ 58% endurance (60% if you have a suffix, which I do not)
- 2013 armor (37% vs physical and 26% non-physical)
- Chilled enemies
- Root enemies
- -16% damage from nearby enemies
- -30% damage reduction from aspect of boar if hit by melee attack recently (note this applies to all damage, not melee… its just only triggered by melee)
- Minions to distract and take focus off of you
- High movespeed
- On demand stun to avoid getting hit by big attack that you failed (or don’t want to) dodge
Full Build Planner
Level 79: Druid, Level 79 (LE Beta 0.8.4e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Level 100: Druid, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.4e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Note, the “core” build is pretty much done at level 79. The remaining points is mostly for more defensive (aspect of boar, more life, chill chance).
+ Level of Skills Discussions
If you click the build planner or look at the skills you’ll notice I have a lot of skills above 20. This build derives a lot of its damage from +levels to its skills. In particular Entangling Roots will benefit the most from extra skill points. This section details out the ideal thresholds you’ll be aiming for for maximum damage. You can go over these and still benefit, but it has diminishing returns.
Sources of +Skill Points:
- Helmet: +1-2 Entangling Roots, Werebear, and Summon Spriggan. Ideally you should aim to have +2 (Tier 5) Entangling Roots prefix. Werebear and Summon Spriggan are nice to have but not necessary prefixes.
- Relic: +1-2 Spriggan Form and Fury Leap. You’ll probably want to aim for +2 spriggan form, but its not super important. You’re stuck with a specific base type (Living Seed) so you’ll have less flexibility here.
- Unique Belt “Thorn Slinger”: +1 Physical spells. This boost 4 of your 5 skills. Highly recommended if you have. It’s pretty common.
- Horned Staff: +1 minion skills. This boosts both Spriggan Form and Summon Spriggan. Its the ideal weapon base type, but you’re better off with a good rolled other staff if you have one. Still, aim for trying to craft a Horned Staff.
- Body (leveling only): You can use the Valeroot unique armor for leveling for +1 spriggan form. You’ll want to replace this with a good attribute rare later though. There are no good rare +level of skill prefixes that are useful for this build.
Skill thresholds in order of importance:
- Entangling Roots: Level 23 is the ideal threshold. I’d recommend +1 from Thorn Slinger belt and +2 from T5 prefix on helmet
- Summon Spriggan: Level 21 is the ideal threshold. A single horned staff basetype is probably best way to accomplish this. Alternatively you can aim for a T1 prefix on helmet (note you’ll still want to also get +2 entangling roots on it as well if you go this route).
- Werebear Form: Level 21 is ideal threshold. This is easily accomplished with Thorn Slinger belt.
- Springan Form: Level 22 is ideal threshold. This is accomplished numerous ways (+1 thorn slinger, +1 horned staff, +1 or 2 relic). Pick whichever best suites you. Getting above level 22 isn’t a big boost but is easily doable.
Skills and discussion
Spriggan Form
https://i.imgur.com/znKUDit.jpg
There are three build defining nodes on this tree: “Garden of Rage”, “Huntersbane”, and “Branchstorm”.
Garden of Rage should be the first node you build towards as it will be your rage sustainment tool. Only one point is really needed (you can put two points in if you have a low rage/mana pool, but I found that one point was enough to keep my rage up).
Next build towards getting Huntersbane. This is important because it converts the vine attacksfrom “attacks” to “spells”. This lets them benefit from all the spell damage we’ll be adding to them.
Then build towards Branchstorm and put 4/4 points in it. This will massively boost your clear speed by giving pierce (and a decent damage boost) to the vines. This should use up 13 points.
The next 7-9 points should be put in the following order (1) 5/5 overgrowth (2) 5/5 Creeping Underbrush and (3) 3/3 Rose Meadow. This should use up 22 skill points (see skill point breakpoints). If you have level 23 or 24 on the skill you can put the remaining into Nightshade for some extra poison chance.
Werebear Form
https://i.imgur.com/mpmTXre.jpg
There are five primary nodes on this tree: “Skull Crusher”, “Fury of the Maul”, “Woodland Bear”, “Wild Command” and “Ursine Heart”.
The skull crusher is the first node you’ll want to immediately rush to. It’s still important to go the longer pathing direction (through Territorial and Fury of the Maul) because we’ll need to branch off of them later. This will enable the Fury Leap tree to apply to Maul which is how we will be summoning the vines. Note that every time Maul casts it will also cost the rage of Fury Leap.
Next put a second 2/2 point into Fury of the Maul. This cooldown reduction is really important quality of life so that you aren’t waiting to attack.
Next you’ll want to rush Woodland Bear node. This will cause Entangling Root to cast every time we use Maul. Note that every time Maul casts it will also cost the rage of Entangling Roots (which is quite substantial).
If you have trouble running out of rage trying to get all 12 vines up… try doing (1) Human form Fury Leap → (2) Transform into werebear → (3) Maul. This will result in twelve total vines. This is how I start off every map. Alternatively make sure you have enough Attunement which should build your total rage/mana pool giving you more wiggle room to sustain the burst rage costs of Entangling/Fury Leap. Also make sure you have all the vine passives in Fury Leap to make sure you aren’t accidentally not summoning 6 vines with each leap.
For the third/fourth focus you have a choice of defense or offense. Spread out the points amongst “Ursine Heart” for defense (endurance % and threshold) and “Wild Command” for offense. I personally put 4/4 into Ursine heart first because I don’t like dying and then the last 5/5 into Wild Command.
This will put you at 21 total skill points. If you don’t have a +1 to werebear form (likely from Thorn Slinger belt) then leave Wild Command at 4/5 skills.
Fury Leap
https://i.imgur.com/puQNjZ7.jpg
This tree is almost solely for the two nodes “Rise” and “Poisonous Thicket”. Rush these and put 4/4 in each of these two nodes. This is our primary rage sustain and damage.
You could note that I could save a single point by going through Ambush Predator instead of Crushing Impact. I don’t do this as Crushing Impact can substantially boost your Summon Spriggan with the stun (see Brutal Mire node in Summon Spriggan).
After getting your vine passives each at 4/4, put in 3/3 points into Panther Strike for more cooldown.
The last 6 or 7 points should be put into 5/5 Warrior’s Entrance for 100% damage for your minions and 1/3 or 2/3 in Crater for some added AOE. I personally put one point in Crater before Warriors entrance just because that AOE helps during leveling.
While the AOE doesn’t seem important (since our primary damage isn’t coming from our leap) it is still important as you have to “hit” an enemy in order to trigger the werebear passive Wild Command.
Summon Spriggan
https://i.imgur.com/lAs9r46.jpg
The Spriggan tree mostly can be built in any order to your preference. I personally went for 3/3 in Vile Bramble first (as enemies will ALWAYS be poisoned due to your vines). I then rush Barbed Assault for an extra thorn per cast (and potentially two extra). I then rush Aura of Kinship for the +flat spell damage to both the Spriggan and your vines. Then fill out the rest.
Note that you may have some trouble keeping the spriggan alive if you didn’t properly build for it. Please see “Keeping your Spriggan Alive” section.
Entangling Roots
https://i.imgur.com/4ORffXS.jpg
Note, of all the trees to get +levels to, this is by far the most important. You really want to aim for level 23 (+2 from helmet and +1 from thorn slinger belt). Level 22 end game isn’t the end of the world.
First you should rush “Overgrown Garden”. This might not seem important but it is. Our entangling root has to “hit” our own minions. Our Spriggan is usually behind us. When we leap we always spawn 3 vines behind us (and often 1 or 2 of the last three will spawn behind us). Without this node Entangling Roots will miss most of our minions. So while its a lot of points, it’s important to take and take early. Note, it “adds a cooldown”, but this downside does not apply to the trigger. Therefore it will always trigger whenever you use maul.
Next I’d recommend putting in 5/5 in Frenzying Thorns and 1/1 in Bramblewood Wardens. This will grant a MASSIVE +50% cast speed along with 500 armor to all your vines and your Spriggan. It’ll also give your spriggan a guaranteed extra projectile every cast.
Next start rushing Blooming Magic on the other side of the tree. This will add a ton of flat base spell damage to your vines and spriggan that will be scaled by all your other modifiers.
Finally put your 23rd point in “Wild Weapon” for more physical damage. If you lack a point you can drop it from here. If you lack three points then you can also drop two from blooming magic (although I recommend you work on getting a helmet with +2 even if that is the only attribute it has).
Passive Tree Discussion
I’d put first 20 points in Primalist.
Then 55 points in Druid
Then 9 points in Beastmaster
Then 8 points in Shaman
Then fill out remainder of Shaman and Beastmaster trees as you see fit.
Primalist
We are putting just enough points in here to unlock the Druid tree. Most of this tree is pretty self explanatory.
8/8 in natural attunement for resists and attunement.
5/5 in hunters restoration for life and a little recovery
6/6 in wisdom of wild for minion damage
The 20th point is a bit of a toss up. If you’re going dual wielding route (scepter/sword) then put it in the dual wield passive. Otherwise put it in either Hunter’s Emanation (heals trigger on minions with little damage) OR Primal Medicine (potions heal minions with little damage). I couldn’t decide which was better to be honest as they’re both about balanced.
Druid
After the initial 20 points, you should put the next 55 points in Druid.
8/8 Chitinous Armor gives endurance %, armor, and minion armor.
7/7 in Claws of the Forest for minion damage
6/7 in Druidic Prowess. This gives some good general attributes (attunement for damage and strength for armor). In the level 100 tree you’ll notice its at 7/7, that 7th point should probably be a pretty late point, we only go to 6/7 earlier because we need it to get far enough into tree.
5/5 Wind in the Leaves. Cast speed for minions is big damage buff especially before we have Entangling Roots leveled up.
8/10 Harmonious Wizard. We are taking enough to trigger the 8 point bonus. You’ll get 72% crit avoidance from the aura of the Spriggan. You’ll get +31 attunement from the tree alone meaning this node will let you reach 100% crit avoidance without any gear.
10/10 Force of Nature. Damage buff to minions. This is less important later in build since we’ll be getting a lot of flat damage from Entangling Roots, but its still a nice bump.
1/6 Woodland Beings. This is a small damage buff but we’re really just doing this to unlock next node.
1/1 Natural Duality. This will really help your Spriggan survive. The downside is ignorable since we only have one companion anyways!
10/10 Hideskin. This node is ridiculously good and the only reason we’re going deeper than unlocking Entangling Roots. This is an enormous effective HP bump (both by boosting your endurance threshold and maximum health). This will make health stacking even better.
Beastmaster
5/8 in Ursine Strength. This is a good survivability node and we’ll come back to fill it back to 8/8 after getting some points in Shaman, but for now we’re trying to unlock next node.
1/1 Artor’s Loyalty. This will be a massive damage boost to your Spriggan. The downside is the same as Natural Duality… so there is no real downside!
8/8 in Ursine Strength.Post Level 79 you can come back and start filling out remaining points:
5/5 in Boar Heart for Aspect of the Boar which is awesome.
1/5 in Call of the Pack for a little health but more importantly is needed to unlock next tier
5/5 Porcine Constitution to improve Aspect of the Boar
Shaman
8/8 in Shamanic Infusion for attunement and penetration (for minions)
Post Level 79 you can come back and fill out remaining points.
8/8 in Tempest Form for health and chill chance. Every time you attack with maul you will end up hitting each mob twice (maul hit + entangling root) which equates to a 48% single chill chance and 16% double chill chance every time you use maul. Its not a sure thing but its a nice defensive boost for a node that already gives health.
Gear
In rough order of importance:
Helmet
We want +2 entangling roots on our helmet. This should be your top priority as its a lot of extra flat damage.
The Darkwolf Helmet is the best base type (+minion physical).
For the other prefix I’d aim for just a single T1 spell minion strike chance. There is a big jump going from nothing to T1. We get a lot of flat added crit but don’t have a lot of % scaling so we can get it here. You can also get a +levels to werebear or summon spriggan here as well, but its lower priority.
For suffixes life and resists. Note that both “% health” and “+health” can roll on helmets.
Weapon
You have several options here. For leveling I’d recommend going with a Reach of the Grave Reach of the Grave - Unique Archive Wand - Wand - Last Epoch Item Database if you have one.
Otherwise, and end-game wise, you should aim for a staff. Preferably on a Horned Staff (+minion skill) base. We ONLY care about the suffixes here. We want T5 Minion Physical Damage and T5 Minion Spell Damage. These are both “uncommon” so make sure to shatter any that you find. You’re looking for a staff to hopefully drop with one of them (and hopefully a blank second suffix). You can also pick up horned staffs with a single suffix and use glyphs of Chaos and hope you get lucky (and then craft on second mod that you need).
Prefixes are not really important as we aren’t trying to scale our own damage. Physical damage and crit chance for extra leech is nice to have but not critical.
Alternatively instead of a staff you can run a scepter/offhand sword/axe. You will need to take the Druid node to allow for dual wielding. Unfortunately this causes you to take more damage so I don’t recommend it, but it is an option if you have a good Exalted item or two. The scepter should have the same two suffixes (Minion Physical and Minion Spell). The sword/axe should have the minion spell suffix (swords/axes can’t roll minion physical damage).
Lastly, a unique “Usurper’s Mandate” Usurper's Mandate - Unique Bone Scythe - Two-Handed Axe - Last Epoch Item Database is a good starter unique if you have one. It gives a lot of health recovery and triggers whenever the vines get resummoned. It’ll have a substantially less amount of damage over a staff, but the health + health recovery is a nice defensive boost. If you have one lying around with legendary potential trying to land a T5+ minion spell damage is an enormous boost: https://i.imgur.com/LWcUEh2.jpg . Thanks to @hellolitwo for the great suggestion.
Relic
The basetype is the most important part here (Living Seed) as it will mostly solve any Spriggan death issues (see “How do I keep my Spriggan Alive?”). This is a fairly low level 11 base, so make sure to keep a look out while leveling. I tend to find the easiest way to get one is to gamble for one.
For prefixes you’re looking for +Level to Spriggan Form and Attunement.
For suffixes you’re looking for resistances and health.
Belt
This is the only unique equipment i’d recommend: Thorn Slinger - Unique Leather Belt - Belt - Last Epoch Item Database . The rolls don’t really matter.
If you don’t have a Thorn Slinger (you’ll probably find one, it’s a pretty common leveling unique) you can use a rare in its place:
Prefixes: Minion health, minion damage, minion health regen
Suffixes: Health, % Health, Health, resistances (i’d recommend not relying/gearing on belt for resistances assuming you’ll eventually find a Thorn Slinger).
Rings
Ideal basetype is Turquoise ring because it gives minion damage, minion health, and minion crit multi (and remember our spriggan gives flat crit chance to all your minions!). The most important implicit roll is the minion health though to help boost the total life pool for your Spriggan.
For prefixes: Attunement, minion health, minion damage, minion regen
For suffixes: Health, resistances
Gloves
Crusader gloves are a hard base type to pass up as they give a ton of void resistance.
Prefixes: minion health, minion damage, attunement
Suffixes: resistances, hybrid health, health, chance to apply frailitiy, chance to shred armorJulra’s obsession also make for a great pair of unique gloves, especially if you can land some good legendary potential on it. Julra's Obsession - Unique Crusader Gauntlets - Gloves - Last Epoch Item Database
Boots
Much like crusader gloves, Solarum Greaves are by far the best base type due to the high armor and fire resistance. We get +cold and lightning resists from the tree, so we’re lacking in fire resistance and this helps a ton.
Given this is a speed clear build, I really recommend getting T5 movespeed as most important attribute.
Prefixes: Movespeed, Attunement, vitality
Suffixes: Resistances, health, hybrid health
Body Armor
There are numerous good base types here. You might settle for whatever you can get good rolls on.
The rolls on body armor are much higher than other pieces of gear. As such, I highly recommend prioritizing health here and maybe a big single resist. Vitality is good too.
Prefixes: Vitality, Shared Increased Spell Damage, Minion Spell Critical Strike Chance, Attunement
Suffixes: Health, % Health, Resists
Amulet
Best basetype is Bone Amulet as we need both necrotic and physical resists
Prefixes: Minion health, minion damage
Suffixes: Health, resists, chance to apply frailitiy, chance to shred armor
How do i keep my Spriggan Alive?
The +10health/second is just not enough to keep him alive. The Spriggan needs some better recovery. Since you are in werebear form permanently you can’t easily recast a new spriggan if he dies. As such, you either need to revive him (which is super annoying) or wait for corpse to expire, leave bear form, resummon, and reenter bear form (which is even more annoying). As such, we aim to never have to revive our spriggan.
First, it’s important enough that he has enough of a health pool to survive large damage. I find that one T5 minion health roll is important to have somewhere on your gear (it doesn’t matter too much which piece). You’ll also get a bunch of minion health from the Druid passive Natural Duality (which is multiplicative with the minion health roll). You can also squeeze out a little more minion health by wearing double Turquoise Rings (up to 70% minion health).
There are three options:
- Use a “Living Seed” relic base type. This gives your minions up to 2.4% life leech. I find that at about 1.5-2% rolls your minion should stay alive. This is my recommended solution. Note you are probably best off gambling for these as the base types aren’t super common (level 35 base type).
- Use a “Reach from the Grave” wand. You’ll lose a lot of damage over a staff, but you won’t have any problems with the spriggan dying. This is a good option when leveling but you should probably aim for a Living Seed end-game.
- Stack 2 or 3 T5 minion regen prefixes. This will keep him alive, but will make gearing significantly harder. It still doesn’t hurt to get 1 T5 minion regen if you can afford it on top of the Living seed.
Lastly, there are just some mechanics/bosses where your spriggan is going to die. For example, the boss for the Winter timeline is going to kill them everytime as the AI will stand stupidly in the damaging AOE. Unlike a lot of other minion builds though, you aren’t hopeless without the Spriggan as the vines will continue to be summoned in the safe zones.
Monolith Blessings
- Black Sun - Health
- Reign of Dragons - All resistances (this is ideal since we dont need crit avoidance). I think a lot of people overlook this and think its just elemental resists. It’s +% to every single resist. So a +20% all resist roll is the equivalent of a whopping 140%!
- Age of Winter - Endurance Threshold ideally. Cold or Physical resists aren’t bad but can better be found on gear.
- Spirits of Fire - Armor (we have a mediocre amount of strength in this build too) or Minion Damage.
- Ending the Storm - Lightning Resists or Health Regen
- Remainder ones - your choice.
Gameplay Video
Bug with Vines Currently in Game (vines becoming inactive)
The vines have a bug where they won’t attack monsters that spawn after the vine was spawned. In otherwords if you spawn a vine and then an enemy spawns (e.g. like in arena) the vine won’t recognize the new monster. You can easily see this in arena by spawning a bunch of vines before a new wave and then watch them sit around worthlessly. Hopefully this will get fixed. Bug report is here: Spriggan Form Vine becoming "inactive" Ⅱ
Loot Filter
Aschere's Vinebear v1 - Pastebin.com
You can change the colors to whatever you want. It’s a personal preference color system (just go into loot filter and change the color if you want). The loot filter is on the stricter side, so you can always make it more broad (more basetypes/less tiers) if you’re starting out.
Gold = Unique items
Purple = Exalted items (T6+ roll(s))
Green = Set items
Pink = Good Helmet bases to start crafting on (most important craft)
Teal = Good Ring, Boots, Amulets, Body Armor, Gloves, Relics, Staffs to craft on
Yellow = Generic rares that are just good (not specific to this build)
Red = Important shatter items
Blue = General shatter mods ((its just all the specialty mods, you can uncheck mark and hide this if its too much).
Leveling
For levels 1-25 level with whatever you want (i used thorn totem).
When you hit level 25 you can unlock Spriggan form and use that to manually cast vines.
Once you’ve gotten one point in “Garden of Rage” (Spriggan Form), one point in “Skull Crusher” (Werebear) and about 6 points in Rise/Poisonous Thicket (Fury Leap), you can swap to the main build. It’ll just grow in power as you level and get more points.
Leveling uniques that are valuable: Reach of the Grave Wand ( Reach of the Grave - Unique Archive Wand - Wand - Last Epoch Item Database ) and Valeroot ( Valeroot - Unique Forest Garb - Body Armour - Last Epoch Item Database )
Arboreal Circuit ring is good to help keep your spriggan alive during leveling as he’ll be a little squishy. Arboreal Circuit - Unique Silver Ring - Ring - Last Epoch Item Database . Thanks @Guurzak for suggestion.
Legendaries
0.8.4. added a new mechanic called “legendaries”. This lets you take a unique item that has “legendary potential”, combine it with a four mod exalted (purple) item. This then randomly adds 1-4 of the exalted item stats permanently to the unique item. The number of mods added is dependent upon the “legendary potential”. The resulting item turns red and becomes “legendary”. They can’t drop.
The most obvious legendary target is Thorn Slinger Thorn Slinger - Unique Leather Belt - Belt - Last Epoch Item Database. Try to add the mods Health, % Health, Hybrid Health, Resistances, Endurance Threshold, Minion Health, or Minion Damage.
The second less obvious legendary target is a Usurper’s Mandate Usurper's Mandate - Unique Bone Scythe - Two-Handed Axe - Last Epoch Item Database. Without getting a legendary, you’re probably better off with a rare; but if you can land a “minion spell damage” legendary on Usurper’s it will add a ton of life recovery and is worth replacing whatever rare/exalted weapon you were using. It’s worth the damage drop off in my opinion. Here is mine: https://i.imgur.com/LWcUEh2.jpg
For gloves Julra’s Obsession Julra's Obsession - Unique Crusader Gauntlets - Gloves - Last Epoch Item Database just makes a great well rounded legendary. You need the void resistance badly already and that is default. Try to use a version with a high minion damage roll. For LP try to add:
Prefixes: minion health, minion damage, attunement
Suffixes: resistances, hybrid health, health, chance to apply frailitiy, chance to shred armor
Reach of the Grave Reach of the Grave - Unique Archive Wand - Wand - Last Epoch Item Database is also a good legendary target if you can land “Minion spell damage” and/or “minion physical damage” on it. It’ll let you drop the relic for minion leech. You can then either run an offhand axe/sword or a shield/catalyst.
Edit: Reach of the grave can’t get minion spell damage or minion physical damage on it. The wand affixes aren’t all that useful.
FAQ
Why are we scaling "minion physical damage", "minion spell damage", and/or "cast speed"? Aren't the vines poison damage and/or attacks (non-spells)?
The tooltip is very hard to figure out on the vines. After taking the “Huntersbane” node the vines are “casting” a “physical” “spell” called “Spirit thorns” that has a chance to poison. You can scale their non-poison hit damage with “minion physical”, “minion spell”, “minion cast speed”, “attunement”, and generic “minion damage”. It’ll also benefit from other sources of shred armor or physical shred.
We are also adding a substantial amount of flat physical and “adaptive” damage (which turns into physical damage since the base vine skill is physical). We get +10 from tree, +50 from entangling roots, and a +15 adaptive from spriggan aura which is all scaled with minion spell or physical.
“Minion attack speed” or “minion melee damage” does nothing.
Their poison damage (which we aren’t focused on but will get a lot of benefits from scaling the hit damage) is also scaled with “minion cast speed”, “attunement” (gives more % chance to poison), “minion poison damage”, “minion poison chance”, or generic “minion damage”. It’ll also benefit from other poison sources (since more poison stacks = lower poison resist on enemy).
I can't activate my Spriggan "aura" in bear form... why are we adding bonuses to it?
This is easy to confuse. There are two “aura” skills that the Spriggan has: (1) Healing Aura and (2) Rejuvinating Wind. The healing aura is always active and applies to all allies (all vines, the spriggan himself, and player… it has a fairly large range). The rejuvinating wind is the “active” skill that replaces the summon hotkey. We won’t be using rejuvinating wind.
The two nodes we take (crit avoidance, crit chance, and flat spell damage) benefit the passive healing aura meaning they will always be effecting you and your minions.
I'm only at 58% endurance threshold? Am I not aiming for 60%?
We naturally hit 58% with no gear investment. 60% is obviously more preferable so picking up a single T1 endurance % on some gear somewhere is a really good idea (maybe on something that has low crafting potential on it and one open mod). I don’t have one in the gear planner, but I’d recommend it if you get gear with some. Its basically on par with a T3 life roll (2% of 1500 is 30 life). It could save you passives or werebear skill points, but we don’t really want to drop them anyways so if you get a really good T5 Endurance % roll on your gear its mostly a waste so don’t go overboard/out of the way too much trying to chase the extra 2%.
Can I build this as a low life ward build?
Absolutely. That is a certainly viable variant. Just be warned it’ll take much more specific gear and be harder to craft. You can use a Exsangunous Exsanguinous - Unique Noble Raiment - Body Armour - Last Epoch Item Database and Last Steps of the Living Last Steps of the Living - Unique Arcane Boots - Boots - Last Epoch Item Database . You will need to stack intelligent prefixes on as many of your other pieces of gear (which don’t benefit your damage but will improve your ward retention).
If you do, you can respec out of the endurance nodes on the passive tree and the werebear tree. I’d pick up the extra movespeed in werebear tree and maybe life on the passive tree.
The build will likely be a lot lower health and loses out on endurance benefits, but the health (ward) recovery is absolutely insanely good on exsangunous/last steps builds. So it’s a tradeoff depending upon what your preferences are.
Can I build my Spriggan to boost his heal aura instead?
Spriggan is about 30K DPS from me fiddling around on practice dummy. So he’s got a decent chunk of your total DPS. He scales with every way we’re scaling the vines so he gets boosted quite a bit.
The problem I had with scaling the healing aura was its such a minuscule base amount. The “active” rejuvenating wind aura is a good amount of healing, but since we’re in werebear form we can’t activate it. 5/5 points in Aura of Life gives 200% aura healing which makes the heal 30health/sec. Assuming you have 200% minion healing effectiveness that is a final 90health/sec.
You could potentially take the “aura healing to minions” and avoiding having to get minion leech though which is really nice. If I did, i’d probably pick up one more point for all that dodge.
So in short to answer the question I’d probably only do it if you have a +2 helmet (which means you also need two +2 level prefixes on same helmet) and +1 minion staff. Drop 2 points in brutal mire and maybe a 3 points in floral ascendance. Then 5/5 in Aura of life and 1/4 in Aura of Loyalty and 1/1 in Aura of evasion (assuming you have decent base attunement). That’ll be about a 12K DPS loss, but give you and your spriggan better survivability.
Which skill order should i take specializations when leveling?
It’s important to note that a lot of the skills are level locked (e.g. entangling roots in particular as you have to be 35 points into druid tree). As such this will guide which skills you tend to take more than which is strictly better/more important.
I’d probably specialize in some other damaging skill (I used Thorn Totems) early game. Once you pick up your ascendancy that is where i’d start selecting the important skills (they re-level very fast so its not a big deal if you took something else earlier).
For first and second skills once you pick up Druid I’d immediately spec: Fury Leap, Werebear Form, and whatever I was using to level in third slot.
For third slot, I’d then drop the leveling skill and take Spriggan Form as soon as you get 5 points into Druid tree - you can use Spriggan Form for leveling now even without it leveled.
Level with Spriggan form until you get the key required passives unlocked (one point in “Garden of Rage” (Spriggan Form), one point in “Skull Crusher” (Werebear) and about 6 points in Rise/Poisonous Thicket (Fury Leap)). Once those passives are unlocked switch to werebear form and start playing like the normal build.
For fourth skill, spec it into the slot as soon as you unlock Summon Spriggan once you get 15 points in Druid.
For fifth skill, spec it into the slot as soon as you unlock Entangling Roots once you get 35 points in Druid. It’ll take a while to get enough skill points in werebear to unlock the entangling roots trigger anyways.
Been enjoying the build in early echos. Probably a stupid question, but why are we looking for minion physical damage on weapon? I thought the vines only scaled off of spell damage, but maybe I am missing a detail/interaction somewhere? Thanks 
