MANIFESTO IN DEFENSE OF THE SPRIGGAN – A comprehensive review

Primalist
1

This message is intended for the game developers. I am the Lord Commander, author of the Build “Iorek Byrnison - A Thorn Shield bear | Build Guide | 0.8.5.”

LORE

My forms:

Bear: a wild animal that mauls its victims.
Insect: with a swarm, exterminates animals.
Ents/Spriggan: in Tolkien’s culture, ancient tree-like beings, wise, with immense vitality and full of magic.

THE ISSUES

The Spriggan transformation has poor synergies, no interaction with companions, and lacks access to the magic that should be inherent: Entangling Roots.

SIMPLE PROPOSALS

The main idea for a re-work for Spriggan is to understand that nature is cyclical:
Birth – growth – Death.
The following skill sequences should be natural for Spriggan:

Spirit Thorn → Entangling root → Vines
Thorn Shield → Eterra Blessing → Companion abilities

So, i suggest some changes:

  • Spriggan Form/Summon Vines: have a node that allows them to be permanent and distributed within a radius of 10m from the Spriggan.
  • Spriggan Form/Barbed Ticket – allow the chance to bleed bonus and increased physical damage to work on itself.
  • Spriggan Form/Damage reflect – allow reflected damage to scale with equipment and have nodes with More Damage.
  • Entangling Roots – The use of Vale Spirit to invoke root magic is so bad that no one used it. I tried to play and simply realized that it doesn’t work. The proposal is that the death of a target through Spirit Thorns generates an explosion of roots with Entangling Roots. Do not be afraid to make Spriggan’s access to its root easier – this should be its main magic, and currently, it is only used by the Bear (the bear can use Vines and roots better than the Spriggan).
  • Eterra Blessing/Eterra Furor: Makes it cast Companion Habilities, not refresh it…
  • Spriggan Form/Thorn Shield: include a node that activates the Companion’s active ability if it is not on cooldown. Additionally, this ability should allow a relevant area increase.

ITEMS

  • Roots of Vithrasil: You gain 75% MORE damage with Spirit Thorn in exchange for losing mobility for 4 seconds or more. This is impossible to use. Add a 200% area increase with Thorn Shield.
2 Likes
2

Perhaps they could kinda burrow underground to reposition as you move?

3

As far as synergies go, I have a Beastmaster who runs around in Spriggan form the whole time. Buffing the thorn totems to heal and having healing Spriggan pets, plus tanky nodes from the passives makes for a tough little army.

4

The problem with spriggan form is that by itself it’s useless because you can’t spec into multiple abilities of the form. It only has maelstrom synergy and summon spriggan. We should have more options tbh. Maybe I don’t want to play as a werebear. Maybe I want to be a pure spriggan. I should be able to play that build. We need more skills relating to nature or spriggan form.

Maybe let us fuse with our spriggans and become a giant treant/ tree(tree of etrea or etreas guardian). With reduced mobility and more hp/stats. For those who don’t want to play as a summoner that could be an option.

I believe spriggan Form should take inspiration from the werebear tree and have more synergies with spells outside of the druid form. Such as how upheaval and swipe are autocast for the bear form.