Thorns Druid (Budget) Huh?

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

And immun to physical packs?

The fire ironwolf does enough damage to kill them, i guess the lightning one should work well too.

I tried static merc in PTR, and found the cast AI quite annoying, it was just total random which spell he used, is this better now?

If he would use static when high life monsters are nearby and lightning if not, he would sure easily be the best merc for alot builds.

Lightning merc…spirit wolves deal cold damage…skip em…use something on your weapon swap to deal with them, like Harmony bow deals decent elemental damage and/or lets you run past easily.

@PaChu That’s true, and if needed, one could always use a more expensive act 5 barb option with like crescent moon and lawbringer, this would probably be best for this build, however this character is meant as super budget. Of course feel free to experiment in many ways, theres always Bramble armor to consider, maybe you invest in poison creeper then with extra points, who knows.

So the thorns build is a lot faster than the ususual druid summorer with heart of wolverine?

IMHO nah. Thorns to not deal that much damage. This build also rely’s on A3 Light merc usage of Static, which is just random. This sure is an nice budget variation of the summon which sure runs nice, but i doubt it runs “a lot faster than the usual”.

I’m running HoW and A1 Fire and it also runs very efficent. Though i got some items that are not really budget, but totally affordable.

The A1 merc uses Inner Sight, which helps alot with hit chance, also for raven, which can’t be buffed with auras. And she can use Edge, so you can have spirit sword / shield (as budget). And for Barbs, i don’t really see the point in double thorns, IMHO HoW is always the best for summoner.

if ironwolf gets a better casting AI though, he would sure be better then rogue.

1 Like