Whirlwind is, without question, my favorite build in the game. Particularly so lately, as I injured my arm and could only play using my right arm, which kind of got me thinking about how it might be worth reworking the Whirlwind Barbarian a bit.
Rather than just “increase our damage, bro!”, what if you instead combine its fantasy with the idea of D2’s “singer barb”, where in addition to your whirlwind (and likely Rend, with the Ambo-Lamentation wombo), your guy is just casting various shouts automatically as you kill enemies?
A couple of specific suggestions:
First up, just have Whirlwind get all runes when using the Wastes set. At least we’d get some flexibility in visuals.
Rework Skull Ring; maybe the longer you whirlwind, it increases the size of your Whirlwind as well as its attack speed over time?
An item of some kind that causes your Barb to activate various shouts and battle-cries upon killing enemies, provided they’re on your bar already.
Perhaps another item that, while using Whirlwind, converts Movement Speed into damage and damage-mitigation instead, resulting in a slower, but much more powerful Whirlwind?
Maybe a rework to Rend so that it doesn’t break animation if used while already using Whirlwind
Just a couple quick ideas! I don’t think any of that would be game-breaking stuff, but maybe help the build up a bit. More intense buffs might still be necessary to make it truly competitive again, but at the very least, I appreciate a nice chill build, I just wish it were strong enough to at least farm a bit more efficiently.
Forget D2 and move on. Any new changes needs brand new playstyle. Primary priority is cut ties off terrible action sequence of d2. D2 was a legendary rpg game in action form, not action game in rpg form as the franchise should be heading.
While I agree with the nuance of this point of view, I concur with only certain aspects presented in this thoughtful paradigm. Can you please expound on this idea?
The idea on that last part is, you could either keep Whirlwind for moving super fast, or convert it to something where you move slower, but being much more devastating damage and more tanky. So where most builds are all about “fast-moving glass cannons”, this could be a build that upends that a bit, being slower to move but hitting harder.
So it’s not some be-all, end-all build for every type of content, but specifically for pushing and tackling enemies that are difficult to kill normally.
Just shifting the paradigm a bit, where Whirlwind is typically useful for speed-farming and nothing else.
That’s where they got it right with Monk PoJ set, well indirectly. The skill that gets procced isn’t your main damage dealer. It only assists the build. I do think they could’ve done a bit better job with the Sweeping Wind itemization though.