Thinking of switching to pure whirlwind after a new patch. What do you think, can this build reach meta, like petbarb or nah, bad idea?
Damage coefficient too low even with Gohr’s change. WW does not have enough multiplicative buckets to offset the relatively low Base Damage. You cannot Overpower with it which already makes your attacks over x150% less effective. That is a huge delta.
Blizzard messed up having 3 separate modifier buckets (Vulnerable, Critical Strike, and Overpower) and not designing builds to have to focus on one element. Since you have builds that can grab all 3 and have 100% uptime of them all well, that is where the balance problem comes from.
This is specifically why Bleed is so far behind also and Blizzard put controls on Bleeds which limits their potential not because Bleeds were overperforming but DD skills (like Bash) were scaling way out of whack converting Damage to Bleed and double-dipping all 3 of those buckets AND applying Bleeds.
3 Likes
sadly it doesn’t seem to perform very well
1 Like
Guess it’s back to POE2 for me then…maybe one day WW will be a thing again
I thought vulnerable was no longer a “bucket” per se, as in it only gets the inherent 20% multipler then everything after tha tis additive.
You can get 400M WW ticks with 1.2B Gohrs explosion with relatively cheap gear.
Its T4 viable, but nowhere near the meta. With the same level of gear earthquake will still do roughly 10x the damage, I’d estimate.
Its kind of fun though to take on the challenge and very rewarding when you actually farm T4 ^^.
Vulnerable damage still gives you 1.2x Base damage. There are a few sources that give you additional Multplicative Vulnerable Damage but the Affix, like Critical Strike Damage, is just an additive bucket.
The point being that if you cannot apply Vulnerable all the time, you are losing out on a ton of damage. There isn’t a single build to my knowledge that ignores Vulnerable Damage.
If you want to calculate the exact result, you can chek-out the open-source damage calculator: https://bytemind-de.github.io/apps/d4/damage.html
As others mentioned, vulnerable has a bas 1.2x multiplier and all “vulnerable damage” that is marked with “[+]” will be additive and collected in one big bucket, depending on what states are active.
You really think they will make the most popular gameplay, spin to win S tier?
You’re not supposed to have fun mate. Get back on your Hota like every other season.
1 Like
Do you only have fun with S-tier builds?
S-tier is just another name for easy-mode. Some people like it, some think its boring.
also ok on T4… not the best but playable
Dalkora’s WW Barb Build S7
//mobalytics. gg/diablo-4/profile/74eb7faa-c82f-438c-bf06-8d4e5a110a39/builds/235eeb0b-ea1b-4622-84a5-03d6a9b8c7a9?coreTab=paragon-board&equipmentTab=aspects-and-uniques&variantTab=0
for bossing a little bit underpowered…
What I take this to mean is that you want vulnerable application for the 20% multiplicative damage boost, but you don’t want to stack +vulnerable damage.
If you have to take an additive bucket, you always take the highest value with the highest uptime. Enemies can be thought of as Vulnerable almost 100% of the time for most builds.
It is fairly easy to get to 100% Critical Strike Chance, so for many, this will also be 100% of the time.
If you just compared Vulnerable and Critical Strike Damage, the additive damage is getting calculated exactly the same for all intents and purposes. The only caveat to this would be things like Blood Rage which takes an additive bucket like Damage While Berserking and having a portion of it also provide multiplicative damage up to a cap.
Between those two, assuming you have both a 100% uptime to Vulnerable and Critical Strike Chance, +Critical Strike Damage almost always rolls higher than +Vulnerable. For example Grand Sapphires provide +54% Vulnerable Damage as opposed to Grand Emeralds which provide +76% Critical Strike Damage. Emeralds would be a better choice under these circumstances.
IF however your attacks cannot Critically Strike, that additive bucket of +Critical Strike Damage is not getting calculated at all and can effectively thought of as zero. If some of your attacks can Critically Strike and some cannot, it has less value depending on the ratio of damage that can vs cannot Critically Strike.
The part that is difficult for people to comprehend however are Overpowers. The additive bucket for Overpowers tends to be much higher than either of the above, however not all builds that can utilize Overpower are able to have ALL attacks Overpower or even ALL Primary Damage Overpower. This is where you have to treat it as a coefficient to see if the bucket is worth it. If you have +2,000 Overpower Damage but can only Overpower every 4th Primary Attack, that additive bucket average is closer to +500 Damage which is far less potent. This is of course however how effective Burst Damage is over DPS. If you can kill enemies in a single hit, the higher additive value may be worth it even if your attacks only Overpower every few seconds.
I digress however. TLDR, the 1.2x Vulnerable Damage is entirely different than the additive +Vulnerable Damage. Any conditions that are met will be calculated when you strike a Vulnerable target. This is often why it is considered a pre-requisite in effectively building your character as pretty much everyone should easily be able to make enemies Vulnerable all the time. The next step would be to focus on Crit, followed by OP if you can achieve it.