whirling blades as primary aoe skill?
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I just wanted to know if the damage on whirling blades is good enough to use as your primary aoe skill at higher levels 80+?
Im trying to build an claw/shield build and was thinking about using whirling blades since i hate lightning strike. ign SanoSagara / KenshinBattousai
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Not really. I could never get the damage to proc on most mobs, not to mention that cyclone is better AoE damage, or fire trap, or detonate dead.
IGN : Reamus
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Cyclone is terrible.
Leap Slam seems to be the best AoE skill for melee-dealers since it actually comes with actual movement. 2846.8 DPS with a 1H. Not sure how the effect stacks with Dual-wielding but I do believe you still get the attack speed bonus. (6L Leap Slam) Compared to Cyclone with a 6L is around ~1.7k. Cyclone shares a similar problem as Whirling Blade you will feel like you are not exactly hitting the enemy. Whirling Blades does very limited damage and it costs far too much mana (same as Cyclone) and you miss a lot (skill limitation I guess). |
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WB is not bad as a main skill. My highest WB build got to level 68 without issue, however, it has since been deleted by mistake.
I went for a high crit change and cold damage dual dagger build with my Shadow when I used it. Tied that to life leech and life on hit, and it proved rather effective. If you are using claws, the stacking of LL and Life on hit will complement it nicely. That is not to saw it is not without it's downfalls, I did struggle from around LV50-55, but that was due to gear issues more than anything else. And leap slam can not be used with claws, as far as the above post goes. As such, it is rather irrelevant to the question. ...narf
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I think Whirling Blades is actually quite decent as an AoE theoretically. By around gem level 10-12, its phys damage bonus is high enough to completely mitigate the 80% damage effectiveness. Depending on the proportion of phys to ele dmg on your weapon, you will sooner or latter get to a point where each hit of Whirling Blades does the same (or more) amount of damage as one hit from your default autoattack.
In addition, you rarely get hit while whirling, and with attack speed, the delay at the end of a whirl gets low enough that you can whirl again before enemies can hit you when you land. The mana cost is actually not that high either, only 20 at max level. It's just that the characters that tend to use it are usually dex-based characters that lack access to alot of mana or blood magic. The trouble is, due to the skill moving you around very quickly, prolonged use of this skill tends to lead to desync, which makes it hard to know where the mobs actually are in order to hit them. Because of this, its overall effectiveness is lower than other AoE's that do damage in a radius around a stationary player, such as Sweep or Ice Nova. Whirling Blade is still a decent skill, it's just that it's effectiveness is a bit inconsistent at times. Alteration Orb Union Local #7 "Holding the line, on sixteen to one!" Last edited by VoxelSquid#1095 on Mar 16, 2013, 9:26:10 PM
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" My mistake, I didn't see the claw. Until Whirling Blades is fixed to accurately hit mobs, it will be a very difficult skill to use when it comes to AoE-dps. |
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The good thing about whirling blades is that as long as you chain cast this attack, you're pretty much immune to damage. As far as I know, you can't be hit while in the middle of a WB. The downsides, as others have mentioned, is that it desyncs like crazy and tends to not actually hit mobs that you should be hitting (which is likely caused by desync). It *can* be a viable AOE skill since you won't be taking much damage, but it will take a long time to kill things and you will literally never be in sync.
IGN: EmpathicAmoeba
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as a test, I got a wb templar to mid forties, using rt to ensure on hit procs and WED to compensate for the damage effectiveness. still missed half the time, but when it hit, it was very good. So...viable, yes. But technically, not yet.
And they said *I* was bad at PoE. At least I made it out of act 1 and know how to use the /dnd function. El oh fucking el.
I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period. |
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Also, it has very good synergy with fire trap. Throw a fire trap on the ground and whirl back and forth. The mobs will try to follow you and end up just walking back and forth across the burning ground.
Alteration Orb Union Local #7
"Holding the line, on sixteen to one!" |
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" That has been my exact experience with WB. If you're going for a full-blown phys build, Mind Drinker alone is enough to fuel WB, if you have a good weapon(s), freeing a spot for another DPS support gem. Also, cyclone is so slow that nasty stuff can happen while you have no control of your character (such as a few mobs getting lightning thorns while you're happily spinning away); that doesn't happen with WB because it's so fast. [quote="Path of Exile forums"]Draft out of sync.[/quote]
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