Whirling Blades questions

BearCares mentioned using Whirling Blades and Elemental Proliferation as a race build. But how would that work, exactly?

1. Leech and LGOH are the first and most obvious problems I can think of. You'll only hit a few targets and most of your damage would be through burns. How would you overcome that, other than freeze, chill, AA, and other forms of slowing and hampering enemies?

2. How does Whirling Blades work, exactly? Leap Slam has a base attack time of 1.4 seconds, and is increased by attack speed. Does Whirling Blades go based solely on the attack speed of equipped weapons, and if so how does it calculate it? Say you have a weapon with an APS of 1.4 and another with an APS of 1.6. Would Whirling Blades' attack time be based as if a 1.5 APS weapon?

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Whirling_Blades

This will answer pretty much everything about how the skill works in a few simple sentences.

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zSavage wrote:

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Whirling_Blades

This will answer pretty much everything about how the skill works in a few simple sentences.

No, it doesn't.

"Attack speed will speed up the animation" is blatantly obvious, but it doesn't answer my specific question. Perhaps bolding it will help you read.

What is whirling blades' base attack speed, and how does it work with two weapons with different attack speeds? Does it average them, alternate between them, or what?

1. Whirling Blades uses the attack speed of the weapon it uses, modified by any attack speed increases.

2. If you have two weapons with different attack speeds, it uses one at random, as stated by the wiki, unless one of the weapons is incompatible with whirling blades (ie use a claw + axe, axe + sword, etc)

Thought this stuff was obvious enough from the keywords on the skill and the wiki data, but I guess not lol.

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zSavage wrote:

1. Whirling Blades uses the attack speed of the weapon it uses, modified by any attack speed increases.

2. If you have two weapons with different attack speeds, it uses one at random, as stated by the wiki, unless one of the weapons is incompatible with whirling blades (ie use a claw + axe, axe + sword, etc)

Thought this stuff was obvious enough from the keywords on the skill and the wiki data, but I guess not lol.

Then we must have two different levels of English understanding, [Removed by Support].

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When Dual Wielding, hits are dealt with either the main or off hand weapon, chosen at random.

Hits, not movement.

So no, it's not exactly "obvious".

The timing of Whirling Blades is much more complicated than the wiki would lead you to believe. There are a lot of tricks you can do to improve the skill's potency beyond what passives and weapon stats will allow.

It might be useful to think of it as a 2-part skill: the first part is the actual attack that can deal damage and plays the horizontal spin animation; the second is a recovery period where you're prone and briefly won't be able to use skills. Maximizing WB's potential involves minimizing the duration of the 2nd part.

The time it takes to move through the entire 2-part sequence is based on the distance actually traveled divided by attacks/sec (or average attacks/sec for dual wielding, IIRC). Now, normally WB travels a specific distance, but this can be cut short if you run into a wall or other obstruction. If you cut it short enough, you'll immediately be able to perform another attack. If you're in close quarters (for example, prison-type areas with those skinny corridors and catwalks) you'll be able to chain many WB attacks in quick succession, springboarding from wall to wall, getting many quick hits in, and shooting your effective DPS through the roof. It looks pretty badass too. I've been calling the technique "wall jumping", and it's one my favorite things to do in the game =)

But it gets even better. If you angle it just right along a flat surface (wall or whatever), you can reduce the distance traveled per use to near zero, which results in a nearly instant complete animation. You'll be able to hold the attack button down and it'll keep recasting it immediately until you run out of wall to follow (or run out of mana). The whole process will be quick. You'll effectively teleport from wherever you started to the end of the wall segment you're following, and any enemies in the path will take MANY hits. I call this "wall sliding". It's really only relevant on certain maps and in certain circumstances, but it sure is fun.

It's pretty much the same as Leap Slam or Sweep, the skill has a default attack speed of 0,36 APS which gets increased by regular attack speed increases and multiplied by attack speed mod on your weapon.

As for dual wielding, I tested that once and I remember it was somewhat strange. Even though it alternates weapons and it should use only the attack speed mod of the weapon you're attacking with it seems that both attack speed mods on your weapons have some impact so it will be noticeably faster with two +25% attack speed weapons than with +25% and zero in other hand. However, I couldn't notice any difference in execution speed between weapons, which means it probably averages or even sums their speed mods, which is the strange part.

So, if you want to try a build with whirling blades you should get a demon dagger or platinum kris instead of ambusher.

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raics wrote:

It's pretty much the same as Leap Slam or Sweep, the skill has a default attack speed of 0,36 APS which gets increased by regular attack speed increases and multiplied by attack speed mod on your weapon.

As for dual wielding, I tested that once and I remember it was somewhat strange. Even though it alternates weapons and it should use only the attack speed mod of the weapon you're attacking with it seems that both attack speed mods on your weapons have some impact so it will be noticeably faster with two +25% attack speed weapons than with +25% and zero in other hand. However, I couldn't notice any difference in execution speed between weapons, which means it probably averages or even sums their speed mods, which is the strange part.

So, if you want to try a build with whirling blades you should get a demon dagger or platinum kris instead of ambusher.

But if it's based on weapon speed and attack speed mods, wouldn't the ambusher be vastly superior?

The ambusher has a DPS of ~65, while Demon Dagger has ~64 and Platinum Kris ~61. Ambusher's greater base APS would make it better in both animation speed and damage potential. Why do you say the opposite?

similar to leap slam or sweep, weapon base attack speed is irrelevant because the skill has its own

local attack speed modifier on weapon still applies as a multiplier to base (Thats why is the brightbeak fastest leap slam weapon)

it makes dps kinda irrelevant too, only hit damage matters