Currently messing around with a Serpent’s Milk build with Druid, and was thinking of theory crafting something.
Using the shapeshifter buff in the Druid tree to apply to minions, you can give them 75% increased crit chance and 50% crit multi. I would set it around 10 seconds and build thorn totem with duration to last about the same time frame.
What I am thinking you would do is start in Spriggan and drop 2x sets of vines and all 9 totems. Shift to Swarmblade and use the Locust Master node to spam summon all locusts from those 2 hives. Then, summon 2 more hives and shift causing all the locusts from those 2 hives to immediately release granting you 20x locusts that will have the shape shifter buff. Then, rinse and repeat. Add entangling thorns to make it more complex if you can spare it.
Any thoughts. I think it sounds somewhat convoluted, but I think there is a working build somewhere in there?
I thought of shapeshifter spriggan/Swarmblade minions too but if I’m not wrong, every time you transform into swarmblade, you use swarm strike which consumes all locusts. I haven’t tested this out but I think this is the case because my Phys swarmblade druid with wolf procs howl whenever I transform (Companion ability on swarm strike).
Also btw you can summon regular thorn totems also using the totem on hit idols to get way more totems. I remember having seen a thorn totem build shredding t4 Julra on reddit (was flat dmg and also using serpent’s milk for the more dmg per poison with thorn totem)
So, about this. You either go the all thorn totems drop at the same time route, or summon them 1 by 1. Ideally, you shouldn’t be casting anything except Spirit Thorns to release vale spirits if you are using Entangling Roots.
Yeah that’s not the part I’m worried about, it’s when you go from Spriggan->Swarmblade you consume all your active locusts with the initial swarm strike. This means shapeshifter will also not apply to any new locusts because it only affects the active minions on transform who all get consumed by the swarm strike.
So when you go swarm-spriggan its great cos a lot of locusts with shapeshift buff
But when you transform back spriggan-swarm you need to resummon all locusts and they won’t get the buff.
Needs ingame testing to see how smooth/clunky it would feel. If locusts are tanky and deal enough dmg without shapeshifter then it should be fine.
Grove mind + entangling roots would be a large cost tho. IK shapeshifter resets but still would it be enough ?
Spirit thorns procs thorn totems pretty well imo.
Use an 10% to proc thorn totem idol and your mana/rage issues are solved as it doesn’t use either. Free summon.
Locusts only last 9 seconds anyway. You have them rush the boss and stack poison, drop your 3x sets of healing totems for 9 in total and maybe proc the idol if you use it for 5 more totems, then shift back into swarm so the totems get the shapeshifter benefit and drop your locusts again cause they will be up and ready to go.
Locusts really could only be used for bosses or spec them for rage generation or something else beneficial.
Procs from idols don’t trigger mana or other resource costs from what I remember. Specifically, totems as I’ve played using that with beastmaster and shaman.
