Two Whirlwind Questions

[edistotiger]

The WW + Tornado build may be a bit overpowered, but it takes a very large gear investment to make it work properly. It also has more weaknesses than something like a sword and board build with WoTB + EQ. With decent DPS, you can kill literally any pack in the game with WoTB + EQ at the cost of sometimes being stuck waiting for a 2 min CD.

WW + Tornado build can decimate a lot of stuff extremely quickly, but that pack of Shielding + Molten shamans is going to kite you around for several minutes and make you wish you had EQ.

[Raider]

^100% agreed

I do hope that Blizzard doesn't nerf this build, its not overpowered as it has many disadvantages:

- its kinda bad with parties as you must lure many enemies to keep your Fury and WotB. Lots of enemies together is good only for this class and I find myself using Frenzy + Sprint more than WW when playing in a group.
- As stated above, enemies that run like Shamans, Waps, Guardians (from Zoltun Kulle dungeons) and the like with Molten are a nightmare for this build and take a lot of time to go down.
- As stated by many in this post the build is very equipment deppendant and expensive. Especially LoH and Crit Chance itens.
- Sometimes you can die very quickly to elemental damage or hard hitters since you usually dont have the resists neither the armor (coz the lack of a shield) of our Tank Barbs mates.

[aerial]

Your test is not a test; you can't use the build without the fury from sprint just like you also can't lay tornados very effectively without whirlwind or some similar skill. I do spend time with only tornados available because I don't have a spammable fury generator (I use Overpower). Fury management requires that I stop whirlwinding to rebuild fury. During this period, the damage I deal drops dramatically. I've spent many hours observing this in effect.

The way you word things makes me doubt I'll convince you, but maybe other people reading this won't be mislead to believe that whirlwind's damage is insignificant.

If i run just with sprint, and lose all whirlwind advantages (positioning of tornados) i still kill MUCH faster than if i play with whirlwind (but without tornados). I lose a tool to position tornados, I lose whirlwind as damage source, and still sprint only and kiting elite packs with tornados is several times faster. You can just run therough act 3 inferno, doesnt matter if 4 player game or solo, ignore enemies (use charge to not get stuck, as main generator), and just let them follow, everything dies to this.

Saying that it isnt overpowered, or is overpowered just a bit, might be because you guys don't have right gear yet, and it indeed can be tricky with wrong/bad items. But once you obtain better gear, you gonna see that this spec is infinity times better than anything else. Clearing entire act 3 inferno, all dungeons all elite packs in less than 1h? no problem.
Joining a players 4 public game (with for example 3 decently geared demon hunters), and clearing entire zone before they can even approach first elite pack? no problem.
It is really absurd power if you get to certain gear level. It shouldn't be nowhere near that strong.

And fact that it needs very dedicated gear is also untrue. You can't pull it off with really bad items, that is true, but for example on my 2h barb spec, that has zero life on hit, painfully slow 2h weapon, just overall good str/vita/all res gear, i can just spec is as tornado and clear acts very fast with it, without any special tweaks, 30% crit in tanky spec, tornados hit really slow (but hard), whirlwind uses fury slower because of 2h, so it makes up for slower fury replenish. And this is about 3-4x better than any other build I can come up with (even a dedicated eq/berserker that is able to one-shot 15m hp elite pack in player 4 game). Tornado can kill several elite packs from zone just by running through that zone and ignoring them.
Now imagine what happens if you actually dual wield with very high crit chance and attack speed. It is blatantly overpowered. A sprint rune is highest barbarian damage skill, if you consider stacking it properly, not sure if that was intented by blizzard.

[Raider]

Yeah maybe the damage of Sprint is a little too much or its WW damage that low, anyway if Blizz nerf Sprint they will only nerf the rune: Run like the wind, because all the other runes are garbage. If they nerf only the damage its okay, because the best effects (LoH and Into the fray procs) will still be there.

[Deced]

whirlwind hurricane - 110% weapon damage, two 55% weapon damage hits per attack speed

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by this.

To clear up any confusion: Whirlwind's per hit damage is the normal damage equation divided by 3.

For example, Frenzy and Whirlwind are both listed as 110% weapon damage. Say hypothetically you were using a 27 dmg weapon, had 880 str and weren't using any skill damage modifiers.

Your Frenzy swings would each do 27 * 9.8 * 1.1 = 291 damage. Your Whirlwind hits would actually do 97.

As an aside for those who didn't know, each "hit" of Run Like the Wind Tornadoes are also ( WD * Str * [skill modifiers if applicable] * .6 ) / 3.

[aerial]

As far as I know, whirlwind hits twice in its attack duration. If your total attack speed is 1.00 (one attack per second), your normal attack will occur once per second (bash for example). One "cast" of whirlwind, as one fury cost (-16 fury) will last one second, and hit twice for half of whirlwind listed damage (110% total, but in two hits each for 55% weapon damage).
Now, if you for example increase your attack speed by getting faster weapon, attack speed mod on other items, let's say to 2.00 (2 attacks per second), your whirlwind will consume 16 fury in 0.5s (because you can perform two attacks = two whirlwinds in 1s), and it will hit twice in 0.5s, so 4 times per second. Getting faster attack speed, means whirlwind consumes fury faster (also hits faster), but it can be considered as disadvantage, if you look at whirlwind from "movement tool" perspective (for same amount of fury you can whirl for shorter period of time). It is kind of surprising how long you can cast whirlwind with 0.9 speed 2h mace for example (without any fury replenish per crit mechanics).

[Volpula]

Can I ask a question? Does the white damages of Sprint's tornadoes trigger 3 fury if you are using a Mighty weapon? With Weapons Master passive.

[Karth]

Can I ask a question? Does the white damages of Sprint's tornadoes trigger 3 fury if you are using a Mighty weapon? With Weapons Master passive.

Tornado hits do trigger fury generation from using a mighty weapon with weapon mastery, yes.

[aerial]

What is important, not every hit, but proc coefficient decides how many, it used to be 20%, but I think one patch nerfed it reducing to 1/4 of original effectiveness (so 5%). Fury per hit, same as fury per crit from battle rage (into the fray), is affected by that value. This is why lot of skills have in description that something has "chance" to trigger some effect (replenish fury in that example).

[Karth]

Either way, though I doubt the proc coefficient is 5%, the fury generated is substantial. Enough that with ~3 mobs I can use Warcry to get the fury for Sprint, then Sprint to get the fury for Battle Rage which almost immediately gives me enough fury to actually start worrying about killing stuff. I suspect the 20% proc coefficient listed elsewhere would be about what is required for this, but cbf to do the math.