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PoE 2 Build

Thorns Ritualist - Leveling Guide - KallTorak

Huntress

Ritualist

Speed Leveling

Starter

0.3 TTE

Verified

By KallTorak

Updated on Aug 29, 2025

Aug 29, 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
Cheap, Fun, and Fast Leveling
Thorns is very unique heavy and benefits greatly from the additional ring slot from Unfurled Finger
Recoup, 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 Defiance of Destiny & Chernobog's Pillar. Neither required but man do they help.

Build Variants

Levels | 1 - 16

Levels | 16 - 28

Levels | 28 - 38

Levels | 38 - 48

Levels | 48 - 60

Do not start your thorns leveling journey without Quill Burst and Barbs. Leveling without these support gems makes thorns horribly slow. They are unfortunately gated behind Uncut Level 3 Support Gems right now. If you are looking to SSF start this build and you do not have any level 3 support gems you will not be able to level this way. You can easily handle leveling with Rake + Quill Burst + Barbs for act 1 normal.

Equipment

Levels | 1 - 16

Levels | 16 - 28

Levels | 28 - 38

Levels | 38 - 48

Levels | 48 - 60

Set 1

Set 2

Equipment Priority

Helmet

Crown of the Pale King

Off Hand

Splintered Tower Shield

Body

Rusted Cuirass

Belt

Rawhide Belt

Boots

Briarpatch

Required Leveling Gear

For every thorns build you will use Crown of the Pale King. You can't play thorns without it.

Optional Leveling Gear

Briarpatch 25% FLAT critical hit chance is insane. You will use this forever once you put it on so invest into this early.
Greater Rune of Tithing are not required for leveling but they make the process so much faster. If you can afford to socket these into your leveling gear do it. Put them into Crown of the Pale King and Briarpatch first. You will use these items forever.
Cloak of Flame is a solid leveling unique because of how tanky it makes us. Rare chests with thorns modifiers will out scale its damage eventually but you can use a cloak of flame until you reach end game.
Dreadfist Solid gloves for leveling as we can't get thorns damage on this slot. Painter's Servant are a good secondary option for gloves if you are using lots of Greater Rune of Tithing.
Prized Pain okay leveling option alongside of Ming's Heart. I've found it's better to use rare rings to round out resistances and stats though.
Saitha's Spear for aggravate bleed. Not required but a comfy leveling unique you will use until end game.
Alkem Eira is a solid leveling shield since it has a high base block chance. Rare shields are fine though since they will provide us with raw thorns damage.
Get a rare neck or body armour with atleast 30 spirit. This will help you afford all the spirit gems you want early on in the campaign.

Thorns Rare Gear

You can find thorns damage rolls on the following item slots: Belt, Chest, and Shield. You will want to get items with thorns damage rolls at the following leveling brackets:

Level 1 - 1-4 Physical Thorns Damage
Level 8 - 5-10 Physical Thorns Damage
Level 16 - 11-23 Physical Thorns Damage
Level 28 - 24-53 Physical Thorns Damage
Level 38 - 40-92 Physical Thorns Damage
Level 48 - 64-145 Physical Thorns Damage
Level 60 - 101-220 Physical Thorns Damage

To make the leveling process as smooth as possible you will want to be upgrading your Belt, Chest, and Shield as often as possible. Each level bracket our thorns damage receives a MASSIVE spike. If you find your damage is lacking try upgrading your gear at these level brackets.

Important Stats For Leveling

Cap Elemental Resistances
Maximum Life
Block %
Strength
Bleed hit %
Thorns Damage
Thorns Damage %

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

Skill Gems

Levels | 1 - 16

Levels | 16 - 28

Levels | 28 - 38

Levels | 38 - 48

Levels | 48 - 60

Support Gem Requirements:

Str 30

Dex 5

Int 5

Expand all

Rake

Scavenged Plating

Armour Breaker

Shield Charge

Disengage

Spear Stab

Gem Priority

Skills

Scavenged Plating is your most important skill when playing thorns. It is very important you prioritize leveling this gem whenever you can. It is where a majority of our damage comes from. You must break armour to gain stacks of Scavenged Plating.

Rake is our main attack skill for the entire campaign. You can use Rapid Assault for bossing but I find it to be too much busy work swapping support gems and not needed for leveling. You do not need to level rake to max level, its fine to keep it low since we are limited in Dexterity. Start with Splinter, Quill Burst, and Barbs. Splinter is pretty good at breaking armour when your damage is better.

If you find your damage is struggling early on replace Splinter with Stomping Ground until cruel.

Splinter will be inconsistent with breaking armour at times. That's where Armour Breaker comes in. In your weapon set 2 have a mace with a decent attack speed. It is very important you level up Armour Breaker with your character. It'll make breaking armour so much easier. If you find your damage is lacking it means you aren't managing your Scavenged Plating stacks well enough.

On bossing if you find yourself needing to refresh Scavenged Plating you can use Exploit Weakness in Spear Stab. This will remove their broken armour and allow you to rebreak it with Armour Breaker for an easy refresh of Scavenged Plating.

Passive Tree

Levels | 1 - 16

Levels | 16 - 28

Levels | 28 - 38

Levels | 38 - 48

Levels | 48 - 60

main:

123

set 1:

set 2:

Pathing straight for Vengeance. Leech is our major defensive layer while leveling.

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!