Hi, some weeks ago I tried to make a build around Spiked Vespiary, the node in Swarmblade Form that makes pretty much turns hives into thorn totems.
I couldn’t make it work to a point that it was fun or worth it even in certain situations, compared to Spriggan Form. I think this could be a viable build if some changes were made:
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Increase the current 2 hive limit to 3 or 4. Without this node we have a limit of 3 hives, which is usually ok. But 2 hives is just terrible, particularly considering how usually thorn totem builds summon 5 totems instantly. When taking Forest Expanse for additional totems in the Thorn Totem tree this hive limit is indeed increased, but I found that going all the way with it for 5 hives was too hard on rage, easily taking half my pool. If the base limit was higher then this wouldn’t be mandatory and less rage expensive.
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Stop counting thorns that come out from slashing your totems. Right now I see no other benefit of using thorn totem as swarmblade other than being able to cast them with slashes, therefor attack speed, instead of cast speed and also stacking dodge and ailments from Serpent Strike. Currently taking this node makes the hives last for a couple of seconds, depending of your attack speed. This change could make the build actually viable.