Hi, I’ve always like the idea of Spriggan form. For me it’s one of the coolest transformation skill in the game that I keep trying to build everytime whenever I get the chance, but quite sad to see its potential being too low. While it’s very fun to play, it gets tiring and unfun for quite some time due to how weak and underwhelming it can be despite a lot of time and effort has been put into building the character compared to other classes and build variant that requires very minimal investment to function properly.
I always try to make the build work, 1st in true offline mode. 2nd in online mode and now 3rd in “Season”. At Empowered Monolith with just 200 corruption, “mapping” is decent but it takes quite a while to kill any timeline boss as well as champions which can be stupidly tanky, and a Harbinger, let alone do these again on a higher corruption where enemies have more HP. Although it’s mostly just because the “hit-based” Spirit Thorn damage is way too low.
Here’s a build planner I came up with and I’m still missing some items but I pretty much have all the core uniques to make the build function:
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Bg4ybGvo
All I’m missing are Helm, Body Armor and both rings. Even assuming I get all the possible “increased damage when transformed” prefixes, I doubt that will make much difference due to how low the damage output is to begin with.
Here’s an example of the gameplay at 200 corruption. It’s not complete, it’s still squishy and still missing good blessings. And sorry I had to make it 2 parts and I don’t want to make a new youtube account to upload stuff. And the samples are at 1.2x speed to save some bandwidth also since this app doesn’t allow huge file size.
Regular Monolith:
Against Heorot and Harbinger:
I had to rely to external skill procs just so I can do “some” damage (Meteor and Spark Charge procs from unique catalyst and unique belt). Spirit Thorns alone should be able to do some damage without relying on these items. Which I think shouldn’t be the case to any skill in the game. Having a build around certain item procs is fine, it’s super totally giga fine. But what’s not is that having to rely on these because your main skill damage sucks. The skill alone should be able to dish out decent damage.
Also regarding the planner I came up with, criticisms and improvement thoughts are welcome. I really would like to make this build work for a really long time now.
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Here are some improvements and changes that I thought of. It’s mainly focused on SPIRIT THORNS and ENTANGLING ROOTS, and I didn’t look at THORN SHIELD and SUMMON VINES too much. But goes without saying that these also needs improvements.
===SPRIGGAN FORM===
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Increase SPIRIT THORN’s damage effectiveness as well as its base physical damage. Currently, it has 20 base physical damage. And its damage is only an AWFUL 60% effectiveness. It’s still extremely weak despite it can fire 4 projectiles that can hit the same target. (and possbly a little bit more projectiles with certain unique item interaction and current nodes in the tree)
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Reduce max level of BRANCH STORM to 3 and have the piercing chance to 33%/66%/100% and Physical & Cold penetration to 8%/16%/24%.
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Allow THORN TOTEMS benefit from WRATH OF THE GLADE and CYCLE OF LIFE Spriggan Form node and increase the chance to 25% (from 10%). Right now the chance is WAAAY TOO LOW and I have 149% Cast Speed and it barely procs.
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Reduce TOTEM WARDEN prequisite for Spiked Totems to 2 (from 4).
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Reduce VALE TIDE max level to 1 (from 3), and instead, make the:
- Rage gained on ENTANGLING ROOTS to 40 per VALE SPIRIT consumed (from 40 per level).
- ENTANGLING ROOTS damage to 40% per VALE SPIRIT consumed.
===SUMMON SPRIGGAN===
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Allow vines summoned by the SPRIGGAN through HUNTERSBANE to benefit from SPIRIT THORNS from SPRIGGAN FORM tree. (Casts 1 thorn each)
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Allow vines summoned by SPRIGGAN using the BRIAR SUMMONER node also benefit from the SPRIGGAN FORM tree modifications.
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Add a new big node in SUMMON SPRIGGAN that lets it utilize your VALE SPIRITS from SPRIGGAN FORM instead:
- Player cannot generate VALE SPIRITS. All VALE SPIRIT generation from other sources will be transferred to the SUMMON SPRIGGAN instead.
- When SPRIGGAN has VALE SPIRITS, it will apply the same rule from the SPRIGGAN FORM. Shoots a SPIRIT THORN for each VALE SPIRIT
- THORNS cast by VALE SPIRIT this way deals MINION damage.
- Max of 3 VALE SPIRITS. Hard coded and can’t exceed this value.
===THORN TOTEM===
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Allow Idols that casts THORN TOTEM on hit spawn on the cursor location instead of around the player. This will make the totem’s ROTTEN CORE a lot useful when used/procced by anything than melee hits.
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Add a new node in Thorn Totem skill tree that allows it to cast Spirit Thorns instead. There are few ways to do this:
- Cast Spirit Thorns instead with a maximum of 3 casts every 3 or 5 seconds.
- Cast Spirit Thorn (A single thorn for each totem)
===ENTANGLING ROOTS===
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Increase ENTANGLING ROOTS’ damage effectiveness as well as its base physical damage. Currently it has 20 base physical damage and the initial hit is only an awful 100% effectiveness. There are plenty of ways to make the “hit” based build to be less awful:
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Add a new big node after the THICK GROWTH:
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ENTANGLING ROOTS now cannot deal damage over time. All sources of damage over time increase in this tree is converted to more damage (multiplicative) for the initial hit.
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Add an informative text for LETHAL SPINES that it won’t have any effect if the new big node has been taken.
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Add a new cluster of nodes on the left side for more poison and minion-oriented builds.
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I will just call it BLOOMING FIELD for now. Taking this node causes ENTANGLING ROOTS to not be able to do initial hit damage anymore (DoT will still work). And ENTANGLING ROOTS will now leave a flower bed on its wake (20 seconds cooldown, but ENTANGLING ROOTS can still be procced by other sources except it won’t leave a flower bed within the cooldown duration) and will do the following:
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All vine and totems summoned in the flower bed will get % damage reduction buff while inside the AoE and have 1 stack of THORN SHIELD cast on each unit inside the flower bed.
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Every 2 seconds, automatically summons random vines (melee vine, ranged vine or great vine) regardless whether the player has taken the nodes from SPRIGGAN FORM tree.
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Add a new adjacent node to BLOOMING FIELD. Vines that were supposedly summoned will now instead explode in a small area dealing base physical damage and poisons enemies it hit.
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Change RENEWING POLLEN into passive healing when standing on the flower bed created by BLOOMING FIELD.
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Have EARTHY PUFFBALL as adjacent node. Remove the “Seeds burst from Upheaval” effect and instead have the explosion I mentioned above do more area and damage multiplicatively.
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Of course everything about this BLOOMING FIELD idea is also converted to cold and freeze rate if WINTERNID THORNS has been allocated.
===THORN SHIELD===
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Make the skill benefit from THORN TOTEM TREE. I think this goes well thematically. Things that increases damage, cast speed, range, armor shred, change for double damage, crit chance, poison chance and duration and element conversion increased THORN SHIELD’s damage and effects.
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Everything else in THORN TOTEM tree will have a text in additional info saying it won’t benefit THORN SHIELD.
===UNIQUE ITEM(S)===
- HAZEL ROOT.
- +3 Spell Physical Damage per 2 attunement (from +1 per 3 attunement).
- Add flat Spell Damage modifier.
- This change is to accomodate the change I mentioned about regarding THORN SHIELD having benefits from THORN TOTEM tree.
Side note: I personally never used this weapon and tried THORN SHIELD build before. So I’m not sure if it also benefits from the THORN SHIELD nodes from the SPRIGGAN FORM tree.
===CLOSING===
Also another thing about “transformation” skills for Druid suffers from “too much max level” for the nodes like “5-points that could’ve been just 2-3” instead and “too much required level prequisites” like “need 3-4pts of this to access next node” where it could’ve been just 2-3. The skill tree in general are way too split.
Normally and generally, each skill has max level of 20 where some skill gets procced by the other and creates good synergies. But it’s less the case for SPRIGGAN FORM. If you want to build around SPIRIT THORNS and THORN SHIELD, goodluck getting the bare minimum of the nodes so that you can spend on both sides. At this point it’s pretty much mandatory to get a T7 SPRIGGAN FORM on to relic, and even that is still not enough. I think all “transformation” skills should have a higher max level and get more points whenever the skill levels up.
And of course, there are infinite ways to make these skills better and feels good to use. These are just some ideas I came with. I hope I didn’t offend anyone with these. This is just how it feels for me for such a long time now about Druid.
Thank you so much for reading about my little fantasy hallucinations for the build idea that I like the most in LE.
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Im in the same boat as you, I like your suggested changes but I believe spriggan form could use more significant changes. Here are some of my ideas:
SPRIGGAN FORM - Summon vines and thorn shield should be subskills procced by other skills and items. Some on hit effects to synergies with spirit thorns. Tree needs a bit of a facelift in general.
SUMMON SPRIGGAN - spriggan form and summon spriggan should partially inherit eachothers skilltrees. Vines from summon spriggan should not be seperate from spriggan vines.
SUMMON VINES - should replace the functionality of spirit vales. Can spec into summon vines having a chance to copy your attack.
SPIRIT THORNS - really needs its own skill tree, or at the very least double the amount of nodes dedicated to it. Slightly higher base damage, a few more multipliers and or more projectiles. Remove reduced ailment proc. Otherwise this skill is really fun to use and shouldnt change mechanically much, and it should lean into the “death by a thousand cuts” vibe.
ENTANGLING ROOTS - needs to be reworked like you said. I do think seeds are an interesting mechanic that is half baked currently. And damage needs to go up for sure. Could potentialy be a skill spriggan form can use directly.
New skill - VINE LASH - A melee/spell attack in a straight line (similar to upheaval line attack). Can be used to trigger companion abilities. Inherit entangling roots tree. Vines can copy this attack when you use it.
New skill - SPROUT ROOTS - a toggle that roots the spriggan in place and gives buffs/ modifies skills. Thematically appropriate and should have incentives to be used for single target DPS (and will naturaly be terrible for monolith clear).
GENERAL - more interesting ways to scale damage, healing effectiveness → damage for example. Access to more skills via skill trees or items. More types of vine/ plants (fly trap, fungus, sunflower etc…) with interesting mechanics.
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Hello fellow Spriggan Form enjoyer. May EHG sink our boat, because I doubt we’ll get any improvement for Spriggan Form in a year or so. But we can only hope.
Yes, we really need more skill/item interaction. I think pretty much all “good” Druid builds rely too much on Maelstorm with Gathering Storm procs. I’m not saying all, but it’s like a no-brainer not to take those.
Not just having Thorn Shield and Spirit Thorns having their own skill tree, but I feel like Druid in general needs a more unique system to level up skills that is totally different from the traditional “max-Lv20-per-skill” or “max 5 specialized skills” like every class does. It’s a “transformation”-oriented class anyways which by itself is already unique. Ofc, this is going to be a lot of work.
I saw the old passive tree of Last Epoch from years ago:
Maybe they can come up with something like that or reuse that feature for all Druid transformation skills. Who knows.
