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PoE 2 Build

Thorns Ritualist - Endgame Guide - KallTorak

Huntress

0.2 DotH

End Game

Ritualist

Creator

By KallTorak

Updated on May 20, 2025

May 20, 2025

Build Overview

Hey guys, KallTorak here! I'm an Off-Meta creator with an affinity for silly goose time builds! This is my Thorns Ritualist build for leveling through the campaign.

Thorns Ritualist Leveling Video

Thorns Ritualist End Game Video

POE Ninja

For years now monsters in ARPGs have gotten too used to the idea of hitting us with no repercussion. Thorns is a really fun playstyle where you take damage to deal damage! However that isn't the only way we deal damage. Thorns is a very diverse playstyle that can be used to enhance many different skills in the game. Crown of the Pale King makes it to where all hits we take deal thorns damage and proc us Barbs and Quill Burst. This helmet is required to play thorns, so if you are SSF do not play this build until you have it. Thorns builds play no different than your standard melee skill builds, we just take advantage of the fact that melee characters are always getting pummeled with lots of blows!

Shoutout to Lolcohol and Dalkora for help with the guides layout

Strengths and Weaknesses

Thorns is cool
Ritualist is budget friendly benefiting greatly from the additional ring slot from Unfurled Finger
Leech and bleed are all powerful for thorns. Ritualist synergizes with this through Wildwood Persistence & Corrupted Lifeforce

Not SSF / League Start Friendly. Crown of the Pale King is REQUIRED for thorns. Also our main support gems of Quill Burst and Barbs are gated behind level 3 support gems.
Gotta take damage to deal damage. Always risky in a game with so many one shots. This requires us to invest heavily into defenses.
Expensive chase items such as Chernobog's Pillar. Not required but you probably can't clear +4 pinnacle content easily without it.

Build Variants

Budget End Game

Expensive End Game

At this point you should have enough crit chance to play with Atziri's Acuity. This allows us to take a lot of passive points out of leech and invest them more into defenses and damage. I've grinded to level 94 with this setup very easily.

Equipment

Budget End Game

Expensive End Game

Set 1

Set 2

Equipment Priority

+10

Required Gear

For every thorns build you will use Crown of the Pale King. You can't play thorns without it. Corruption look for 2 sockets.
We are playing a crit version of thorns so Briarpatch is required. Corruption look for 2 sockets or movespeed.
We are playing an instant leech crit style that requires Atziri's Acuity. All our crits instantly leech and it provides some big heals. Corruption look for 2 sockets or damage penetrates lightning res if you are stacking lightning thorns.

Optional Gear

Spear - Strength > Dexterity > Attack Speed > Accuracy. Nothing else matters our weapon is just a stat stick.
Rings - Maximum Life > Res Cap > Strength > Rarity of Items Found > Dex. Seriously focus on Maximum Life and Res cap through your rings. You will get a massive boost to your defenses if you do this.
Amulet - Spirit > % increased Maximum Life > Maximum Life > Strength > Dex. Should be able to hit res cap from rings and other item slots.
Body Armour - Thorns Damage > Maximum Life > Res Cap > Stun Threshold > Spirit. Corruption look for a % Increased Thorns Damage enchant.
Belt - Thorns Damage > Maximum Life > Elemental Res.
Shield - High Base Block Chance(Over 40%) > Thorns Damage > Maximum Life > Elemental Res. Corruption look for a % Increased Thorns Damage enchant.

Jewels

Prism of Belief for Scavenged Plating. Scavenged plating is where a majority of our thorns damage comes from.
Ruby Thorns Damage > Block Chance(Until 75% cap) > Global Physical Damage > Bleed Hit Chance

Anoint

Heartstopping - Crit + Int | CHEAP
Parrying Motion - Block Chance % + Zoomies after blocking | CHEAP
Tempered Mind - Physical Damage + Critical Damage Bonus + Strength | EXPENSIVE

Runes

Greater Rune of Tithing - Putting these in all your sockets will greatly increase your thorns damage by around 3k-4k. This will lead to you shocking the enemy at times during bossing which is nice.
Greater Body Rune - Currently what I am using just to be as tanky as possible. Sitting at 3600 life with 16k thorns damage with max scavenged plating stacks. The Tithing damage would be nice but I'm pretty unkillable right now.

Skill Gems

Budget End Game

Expensive End Game

Support Gem Requirements:

Str 50

Dex 50

Int 25

Expand all

Rapid Assault

Scavenged Plating

Blood Hunt

Blood Boil

Herald of Blood

Herald of Plague

Attrition

Thunderous Leap

Shield Charge

Armour Breaker

Gem Priority

+25

Use Attrition for bossing. You can disable Herald of Plague and some of your support gems like Vitality for bossing if you are low on spirit.

Use the Herald of Blood and Herald of Plague tech for mapping.

No longer using Rake in end game. Too much busy work swapping Barbs and Quill Burst to Rapid Assault for bosses. Rapid Assault is required for end game dps. You get several attacks off quickly which maximize our Barbs stacks.

Passive Tree

Budget End Game

Expensive End Game

main:

123

set 1:

set 2:

How it Plays

Thorns is a modifier you can find on your gear. When you take a melee strike you deal your thorns damage back to the enemy that hit you. In the game this is called Retaliating. If I have 50 thorns damage, and the enemy hits me for 1 or 5000 it doesn't matter, you will Retaliate 50 thorns damage back to them. Get hit with a melee strike to deal thorns to the enemy. What's core to enabling thorns is Crown of the Pale King. This makes ALL hits not just melee do thorns damage. From here you just stack as much thorns damage as possible and you have the basic understanding of thorns. Take damage, proc Barbs / Quill Burst, use attack skill, things die.

Here you can find all my leveling streams for my Thorns Ritualist. I streamed the entire process of 1-60 so if you want to follow along with the vods click one of the links below.

How it Works

Why Ritualist?

Ritualist is a fun alternative to my Warbringer playstyle of thorns. It's location on the tree allows us to easily acquire all the Thorns, Block, Leech, and Physical Damage nodes that maximize this build. For end game thorns is very unique heavy. The additional ring slot from Unfurled Finger finger allows us a lot of flexibility in our gearing. You can very easily cap all your res, get over 100% rarity find, and then amplify the bonuses from your amulet via Mystic Attunement.

Thorns styles also by default lean bleed right now. Bleed synergizes well with Ritualist through Corrupted Lifeforce and Blood Boil. Vengeance is our primary defensive layer during the campaign you will almost never have to use a life flask while leveling. Combined with Wildwood Persistence you are insanely hard to kill. All off this combined leads to Ritualist being very good for thorns on a budget!