The latest update to Twisted Sword does not work as intended, and is inadvertently a slight dps nerf compared to the prior version, aside from not doing what the tooltip says.
Per patch notes:
" The Twisted Sword: The Twisted Sword: Energy Twister damage is increased by 125-150% for each Energy Twister you have out up to a maximum of 5. The Raging Storm rune is automatically applied to Energy Twister and allows the tornado to merge with 3 additional Energy Twisters. … We want to address the lag situation of multiple Energy Twisters doing AoE by allowing them to combine up to 5 while dealing with their combined damage."
First Bug
As a simple matter, the supposedly inherited Raging Storm rune does not impart the damage modifier of Raging Storm, and you still receive higher damage if you also select the Raging Storm rune. If you have Twisted Sword equipped and select no rune, you have a modifier of 1525% damage and gain the merging functionality. If you have Twisted Sword equipped and select the Raging Storm rune, you have a modifier higher than 1525% , supposedly 1600% per twister (the tooltip of 3200% is for the merged 2 twisters, thus averaging to 1600%) - The second bug explained below makes the modifier variable based on number of twisters merged.
It seems silly to add the rune to an item, but still have to take the rune manually to get its full effects. The fact that the twisters merge is pointless from a player-perspective, the rune is taken for the fact that it gives the highest damage output of the available runes.
Second Bug
The merging effect added to Twisted Sword works as intended, only if you take any rune except for Raging Storm. For any other rune (or no rune), it takes the base damage of the manually equipped rune and multiplies by the number of merged twisters. For instance, the damage of 5 merged twisters may be represented as: Dmg * 5.
If you manually equip the rune Raging Storm, for the higher base damage, it does not use this formula. Instead, the first two merged twisters use Raging Storm’s damage, while the 3rd, 4th, and 5th twisters use the damage of a base no-rune twister. For instance, the damage of 5 merged twisters may be represented as: DmgRagingStorm * 2 + DmgNoRune * 3.
Due to this bug, optimal dps is achieved by making sure that you merge only 2 twisters together, and actively avoid merging 3-5 twisters together. This is contrary to the stated purpose for the change. Due to the nature of moving twisters and combined with the current changes, it won’t be feasible to only have 2-stack merged twisters, thus making this change an effective dps nerf to the build compared to the prior PTR patch.