There’s only one item in game that scales Spirit Thorns, and it’s sad that it makes you unable to move.
What’s the point of Spirit Thorns, and its entire tree path that let’s you sink points in?
[Rose Meadow] +24% more damage for Spirit Thorns and Thorn Burst.
[Ancestral Call] you gain ward and rage per cast of Spirit Thorns.
[Spirit Whisperer] You gain stacks of Spirits that shoot Thorns at nearby enemies.
[Branch Storm] Pierce chance and resistance penetration for Spirit Thorns.
[Wrath of the Glade] Totems have a chance to cast Spirit Thorns.
Summary:
You have an entire path tree, abilities, and everything that points out that people can play as a ranged Spriggan shooting Thorns, a playstyle that doesn’t rely on dots, but in reality all these passives are completely useless and synergize with hardly anything. It’s literally pointless for Spirit Thorn attacks to penetrate physical and cold resistances otherwise, since penetration is not an ailment that lets your dots do more damage. The source of damage that penetrates is Spirit Thorns not the ailments it applies ie: Frostbite, Bleed, Poison.
You also have a Spriggan minion that increases your crit chances, another indication for playing ranged Spriggan that doesn’t rely on dots.
There are two ways to play in Spriggan form that are viable, and those are Dots and Reflective.
–Playing as ranged Spriggan–
-Physical damage Spriggan.
You have a whooping 49% increase to Physical Damage in the Druid left side of the tree, and 64% in the Primalist tree that aren’t even worth investing into since they start past the 20 points allocated to unlock the other trees. Had those 64% were on the left side of the tree it would’ve been somewhat alright if Spirit Thorns damage wasn’t as low as it is.
-Cold damage Spriggan.
Going Shaman, and selecting all the increases to cold damage boosts, and using boots that don’t allow you to move, boosts your damage to unimaginable 30k dps.
Problem 1.
The passive to cast maelstorms while shooting Spirit Thorns is frankly absurd. You don’t need malestorms if you’re playing a ranged build that has nodes that penetrate resistances with its attacks.
Problem 2.
Spending Spirits to summon Entangling roots is also pointless. While the ability on itself works for ranged build, it’s damage type and nature is completely off.
Problem 3.
Spirit Thorns have only 1 source that doubles your damage, but it’s low damage to begin with and it doesn’t let you move.
Problem 4.
Totems overwhelm the entire class, and are only useful to heal and apply dots. They don’t have any boosts like the Spriggan minion that grants you direct damage and crit increases for your ability. This is in relation to Spriggan form.
Problem 5.
You have a fun idol that casts avalanche boulders on spell or melee hit, which makes this type of build interesting, but the chance of cast is too low for a single boulder unlike the shower that avalanche uses. You can barely go to 30% per cast.
–Conclusion–
Crit builds using Spriggan Form are impossible, and in the only place they’re possible it’s far better to just go Swarmblade. There’s incredible overabundance of dot builds which frankly get annoying to play with constantly. Using totems is a must which don’t do much for this type of a build. You can’t autocast Warcry while transformed, and it only autocasts once after you use it manually and it’s only 5% of crit chance making it useless as a buff for transformation builds.
When you have passives like Penetration, increased damage while transformed, and literally a direct crit chance node that raises your crit chances by 50%, it’s sad that you can’t make Spriggan play with it.
There are skills with 5, 6 sources that boost them, and there’s only 1 for Spirit Thorns.
Everything feels all over the place.
I’ll try with a druid build since it has more nodes to critical strikes and see what I can do, but cold range Spriggan with no dots is a dud. I’ve only reached lvl 42 on the druid version, but I might pull something off.
I said two ways to play Spriggan because I see no difference between poison, cold, bleed. It’s still a dot build.
