What the heck? Did they just say Thorns Druid? And on a budget, too? How is it even possible? Well friends, here is what I made for my budget Ladder Thorns Druid, MeSoThorny. And it works, surprisingly well, in fact, far better than it has any right to, despite people thinking the thorns changes were terrible or didn’t do anything, people also forget there’s another change which happened, and that is with the Act 3 Mercenaries, the Lightning one specifically, now casts Static Field.
Hmm. Static Field, large AoE radius chunking down enemy life, only to hit on your summons affected by Thorns and Spirit of the Barbs, = …??? Something that actually works, with little input from you, the player.
The core build is as follows. 20 Spirit Wolf, 20 Dire Wolf, 20 Grizzly, 20 Spirit of the Barbs, Pre-requisites, and then whatever else you want (Ravens? Creeper?). The other part of the core build is the usage of the cheap Edge runeword bow, which grants a level 15 Thorns Aura to combine with your level 20+ Spirit of the Barbs, as enemies get Static Fielded down to where they hit any of your 9 summons, and fall over, even if they don’t actually “hit” which was another change in 2.4, thorns and spirit of barbs works even if the enemy doesn’t connect.
As for the budget part, I used simple but effective pieces in the build, from 3 piece Angelics (Armor, Amulet, 2xRings), 2 piece Death’s (Gloves, Belt - upgraded to exceptional), any Edge bow works but the best are the Hunter and Composite bow variants due to their attack speed (you don’t have to use their Elite form if you want to save stats, the Exceptional variants are perfectly good enough, all it’s really there for is Thorns and Prevent Monster Heal and some leech). Then use any boots you want, any helm/pelt you like, and don’t forget that Lightning Mercenary, and voila…suddenly you have a cheap, yet powerful and effective build where you don’t have to really do a thing and enemies will die. Pretty cool, eh? Who knew