Diablo – Whirlwind damage

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I am trying to understand how whirlwind works exactly, because the guide explanation is quite obscure… "Deliver multiple attacks to everything in your path for 110% weapon damage". Here are my questions:

1) each attack does 110% weapon damage, but what is the attack frequency?

2) does it deliver real AOE damage (and if so, in which radius?), or only fast single target damage?

I am also wondering how whirlwind DPS compares to skills like bash or cleave for a single target (a boss).

Best Answer

From my experimentation...

  1. It deals 55% damage twice, but the attacks hit twice as fast as normal.
  2. It is AOE with a comfortable radius, I assume it's as far as any melee-type skill.

For single target, the DPS is lower than most skills, but it does get twice as many hits in the same amount of time; if you have an effect that has a certain percent chance to activate, such as freeze, then Whirlwind will give you a better chance for it to activate.

Critical hits will also trigger more often, but the damage will average to the same amount as if there is only one hit.

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