Barbarian: Whirlwind Bleed Build

PC General Discussion
1

I am a big fan of Whirlwind Barbarians and after reaching level 25 and testing out as many legendary powers, I think I came up with a build to make whirlwind viable.

Skill Points: Includes 2 points from Renown System (26 points total)
3x Flay - Enhanced Flay - Battle Flay (makes enemies Vulnerable)
5x Whirlwind Rank 3 - Enhanced Whirlwind - Furious Whirlwind (applies Bleed)
3x Pressure Point Passive (30% chance to make enemies Vulnerable)
3x Rallying Cry - Enhanced Rallying Cry (unstoppable) - Tactical Rallying Cry (gain Fury)
2x War Cry - Enhanced War Cry (berserking)
4x Death Blow Rank 2 - Enhanced Death Blow - Strategic Death Blow (gain Fury)
1x Pit Fighter Passive (increased damage to close enemies)
1x Hamstring Passive (bleeds slow enemies)
1x Cut to the Bone Passive (bleeds deal increased damage to Vulnerable enemies)
3x Call of the Ancients - Prime and Supreme upgrades for Fury Generation

Legendary Powers:
Damage Powers:
Whirlwind pulls enemies toward you
Whirlwind has a chance to summon an Ancient
Whirlwind creates Dust Devils
Whirlwind has increased crit
Bleeding has a chance to Stun enemies
Increased Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
Bleeds have a chance to do % of its damage as direct damage
Increased Damage when Barrier is Active

Resource Powers:
Dodging gives you Fury
Using Shouts reduces cooldown for each nearby enemy (Using both shouts near big mobs greatly reduces the CD allowing for more fury generation and longer damage buff duration)

Defensive Power:
Gain Barrier when you hit an elite (fairly certain bosses count as elites)

There was another power that I am forgetting but these are the main ones. It was a sub optimal build. I am sure I could have tweeked it to be better than what it was. That said, I was almost instantly melting mob packs and Boss fights were fairly easy with Barrier and Call of the Ancients. It falls behind the Rend Thorns Barb slightly as far as Single Target boss fights but in every other instance it wrecks.

Cons: It is extremely dependant on Legendary Powers. Too much imho. If you don’t find all the damage powers listed, the build feels pretty flat. There should be some wiggle room for utility or resource generation in the legendary power department but there isn’t really. The build is also resource starved. While you using Whirlwind in large packs, you have a lot of Fury with popping both shouts. You can also use Call of the Ancients after your Fury drops low for Elite and Boss fights to get more Fury. Problem is half of the time during boss fights, you will have to switch to Flay and using Death Blow when Flay makes the Boss Vulnerable. Another issue is when getting gear upgrades and having to extract the Aspect power to put on the new piece of gear. That process can get quite expensive.

Overall it is a good start to a Whirlwind Bleed build. I just wish the build wasn’t so dependant on the Legendary Powers. If the Enhanced Whirlwind trait could give a little more fury per hit, that would be nice too.

EDIT: I would like to add that using The Butcher’s Cleaver unique 1H Axe would probably be the best for this build and would be the final power you would want to aim for. Unfortunately it never dropped in the early access open beta when I killed The Butcher. I believe it only drops in Nightmare and Torment.

The reason I say this is because when you critically strike, you immobilize your target. This works in conjunction with the 2 powers (increased damage to CC enemies, whirlwind has increased crit) for the build.

2 Likes
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I did something similar to this once I got that aspect to pull mobs towards you. It was fun but needed to get the right gear. It will definitely be gear hunt once we are all maxed out.

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With more skill points, I am sure that Fury generation would be less of an issue but early game this build is slow to get off the ground. Once you have everything above though, this build pops off. Another gripe I have is that duel wielding two 1H swords would be good for the extra fury generation but the damage rolls significantly lower on the swords for some reason over the axes and maces. For that reason, I would suggest having at least one 1H axe for the Furious Whirlwind upgrade. There is no reason I can see that the damage of the swords (both 2H and 1H) are lower compared to the axes and maces.

4

I did a “One-Kick Barb” WW build and it seemed to work pretty nicely. Basically it uses the legendary power that’s draws in enemies with WW to corral them for massive Power Kicks and Deathblows.

Furthermore though I don’t really have the skills (i.e. Unbridled Fury), fury generation, or fury pool to do it nor the talents or legendary like Berserk Ripping aspect or Battle Fervor talent to make Berserk uptime more reliable. Supreme Wrath of the Berserker gives you 25% more damage for every 50 fury you spend while its active.

Meaning with lots of fury generating abilities like WW, Death Blow and big spenders like Power Kick and Unbridaled Fury WW with massively increased attack speed I can potentially build up towards massive damage with Supreme Wrath of the Berserk thus the moniker “One Kick Barb.”

I made a post about it if you want to see and have some videos of it in action though I am embarrassed by the traps getting me in the dungeon.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d4/t/one-kick-barbarian-build-what-do-you-guys-think/5522

1 Like
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Bleed barb highest bleed dot ticks in beta WW barb i felt was lacking I saw bleed ticks for 2776 a tick per tick over 5 seconds doing thousands of dmg . Rend, flay, iron skin, warcry, and iron maelstrom. BY FAR THE MOST OP CLASS HANDS DOWN.

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So I ran a WW non bleed build to 25 and only had a couple of bosses cause issues. Though i definitely think Bleed on top of WW is a better choice. I didn’t even grind out a bunch of WW Legendaries. I only had the aspect that makes dust devils and it seemed fine. Wasn’t super fast but it was fast enough. I ran Bash, WW, Battle Cry, the defensive shout ( can’t remember the name), leap, and WoTB.

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Initially I thought Wrath of the Berserker would be great as well but as I was reaching the moment to spend a skill point in an Ultimate ability, I was still lacking Fury so I opted for Call of the Ancients. After trying out Call of the Ancients, I dont think I would want to go back to WotB. The AI is pretty good and it does massive damage (which it should being an Ultimate) on top of generating Fury.

That said, I think WotB would be good for late game when you have more sources for Fury generation but I would recommend sticking with CotA until level 35-40. At that time, you should have enough skill points put into Fury generation to possibly pass on CotA.

Also I think the Ultimate passive Unconstrained (increases berserking by 5 seconds and increase its damage bonus by 25%) in conjunction with the Brawling passive Prolific Fury (increase Fury generation while Berserking) would probably be the best for WotB. I dont know as we didnt have enough skill points at the end to test Unconstrained. However there are a lot of abilities that proc Berserking that you could have it nearly 100% on uptime.

The other only real choice in the Ultimate Passives is Walking Arsenal but i dont think it is good for WW as it wants you to weapon swap often in order to keep the 45% damage buff up. Great choice for active Barb builds but not WW as you will channel it beyond the weapon swap requirement.

Unbridled Rage sounds like it would be great for WW but the 100% increased cost makes it just a bad choice. Especially since using WW makes you Fury starved already. It is probably great for Core skills you only use moderately such as Rend or Upheaval. Maybe. I still think Rend and Upheaval would benefit more from Walking Arsenal.

Gushing Wounds is just bad. It does AoE after you kill bleeding enemies. Maybe good for Rend builds but that is a pretty big maybe.

8

The reason why I think Unbridled Rage might be great for WW is that WW can also act as a Fury generator in heavy AoE situations which means if you have enough fury generation you can theoretically overcome the double fury cost and do 135% more damage with your core ability which would also have the added bonus of feeding into Prime WotB.

It should be noted that on the paragon board on the datamined Diablo 4 talent calculator (can’t link to it because Blizzard) That it looks like there will be ways to significantly increase fury generation/fury cap (See Warbringer board) and buffs to berserking be it in duration, damage and or ways to get it (See Carnage board) and we don’t even know what’s in store for glyphs.

In my experience my Barb even with rando yolo legendries and less than optimal rares never had any issues with being fury starved.

My build was as follows:

Combat Bash
Violent Whirlwind
Tactical Rally Cry
Power Kick
Fighter’s Death Blow (Which I didn’t max out in favor of 3/3 Imposing Presence cause I thought I was playing hardcore)
Wrath of the Berserker

In short, 4 out my 6 buttons, (and if increasing fury generation counts include a 5th skill WotB) can generate Fury. If anything I had a little too much fury, not so much to compensate for a 100% increase Fury cost to WW but it was not uncommon for me to be in a situation where WW could become a fury net gain even without a 100% increase to fury generation from Tactical Rally cry.

9

Yeah but when it is saying 135% more damage, that isnt a multiplier. That is additive. Simplifying it down if you do 6 direct damage each time it hits, it would be roughly 14 direct damage per hit with Unbridled Rage but it would cost twice as much to channel.

If what you say is true and there will be ways to over generate Fury while Whirlwinding, I would rather forgo this passive and take the legendary power that gives you a damage boost for over generating primary resource, take WotB, take Unconstrained, and just have 100% uptime on Whirlwind. Applying bleeds, ccs, and finishing them partially for extra damage all passively. That would also allow me to take more skill buffs and get rid of abilities that dont help Whirlwind or keep me alive.