Hi all,
At the moment I really try hard to get a Spriggan Cold Pet running using Spirit Thorns as my main damage. My first attempt was going crit in combo with totems and as a shaman. But this didn’t work out (so sad! would have been my preferred playstyle - I like two button builds - doesn’t get boring that fast!) As soon as I started the empowered monos it felt clunky and slow. After some research I found the build from Lizzard going cold DOT and ward. I tried his version but my crows were dying all the time and this was my only defense. And with all the uniques I was missing cast speed and damage desperately!
Long story short I switched to Druid cause of the cold penetration and the entangling roots. I speced into DOT anyways and from other builds I know that entangling roots DOT damage is super nice and clears trash super nicely.
So I speced into Valetide…and than the disappointment happened. It just triggers to randomly - most of the time no one is around me at all. What a waste I thought every time it went off. But I realized that the additional Vale Spirites really boosted my damage output with Spirit Thorns. And here we have the conflict: While fighting your are building up the additional vale spirits, the damage goes up, thorns fly around like crazy and its super satisfying and then it drops down big time and on top the roots cast into nothing or just to late… super disappointing!
Please check out my build:
This is what I can pull of as a casual gamer - it clears 100er monos and bosses (bosses could be a bit faster) but its a super fun playstyle - but scaling higher?! I really cant imagine. If I could use entangling roots at my leisure would really push it! The autocast is really not helping at all.
My suggestion: Please let us use synergistic skills even though we are transformed - or give us an additional note to switch off the roots and keep the additional vale spirits… but the way it is right now is just wasting points and frustrating… I want a viable cold spirit thorns build so badly 
What else is needed?!
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cast speed! cast speed! cast speed! My experience is with 80-90% it !starts! to feel ok, 100-120% is nice - the more the better ofc - and another thing is - waiting for maelstrom 6 stacks to have frenzy and haste is clunky as w/hell…
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more vale spirits (without sacrificing them)
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Entangling roots! Please let us use it at our leisure!
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More easy and cheaper access to switching forms back and forth - because of the wired entangling roots trigger mechanic I tried werebear as well. My thoughts were, ok - starting as werebear, rampaging into the pack, triggering roots, switching to Spriggan and shoot down the left overs, switch back to werebear…rinse and repeat - at least in my head a very nice playstyle…but I would need to invest so many points that my damage wouldn’t be enough anymore…
What do you guys think? I think its not the first discussion talking about forms and skill selection?! The hole concept of changing forms and the synergy between them is so nice and you could pull off so many things but the restriction gated behind so many skill points is killing all my ideas immediately…
Last but not least, where can I improve my build? Would be happy to hear some others opinions. The dummy is showing around 150k ticks when everything is on max.
Thx and happy discussion!