Yeah, but you're still dealing with the fact that each swing is stacking thorns indefinitely. That also assumes you have enough mitigation in the build to deal with his amplifying basic swings that he's throwing out most turns.
And to edit my initial gripe I found cleansing potion worked well in the absence of candle. It still feels lame to need to assume you're going to fight a mechanic present on only two enemies in the whole game, and lame for builds that are scraping by up to the point because it's a massive, arbitrary difficulty spike that requires a very, very specific solution. It feels like lazy difficulty tuning, and little would be lost if the spikes fell off every turn.