Whirling Blades

I see no real reason to use this skill over Cyclone except as an escape mechanism and even then it is not reliable.

Even if you do not consider the massive desynch this skill causes, it's still incredibly lacklustre.

What I think needs to be changed:

-The area of effect radius around your character should be larger.
-Increase the damage, or
-Leave the damage as is and lower the pause after the skill is completed, or
-Leave damage as is, and give a large damage taken decrease during pause.
-Fix the desynch issues.
-Allow us to whirl over small obstacles.
-Maybe have the spell suck nearby enemies in so it is easy to continuously hit.

Having used this skill for a while now, I think I understand why it desyncs. Due to how the game works, characters are always tiny bit out of sync. This is probably something that will never be fixed, and for 99% of the builds, it doesn't have to. For Whirling Blades however, when you're in an indoors area and bumping into a wall stops the action, trying to whirl through the door is bound to bump into a wall because of these tiny desyncs.

So how could this skill be fixed then? It's actually very easy, and probably not too difficult to program either because the tech already exists. When you issue a walk command, the game uses pathfinding which means that you won't bump into that wall, but instead walk through the door. This skill simply needs to use the same pathfinding.

I am currently planning to use this skill on switch for my GS-Templar.

I use dualcurse Temporal Chains and Vulnerability, and I recently found a +3 Melee dagger. I think it might be useful to add Viper Strike as bosskiller to my switch-slot.

To get to the point: I plan to use Whirling blades as a means of transportation:

a) Curse 2 times, whirl to the boss(Piety), Viper Strike 4 times, switch, Hammer away.
b) whirling might be faster than running while proceeding to the next mob.

Here are my questions related to Whirling Blades:

1. Is desync an issue while using this skill just to walk faster between mobs, or is desync only a problem in narrow spaces?
2. Does WB have a fixed duration like Leap Slam, or can I walk faster by using a Fancy Foil instead of my slow +3-Gutting Knive?
3. If that is the case, how exactly is my whirling-movement sped up if I team up my slow knife with a "25% increased attack speed fancy foil"? Does it matter wich weapon is in my main hand?


I hope i don't get off topic:
Wich skill travels faster? Leap Slam or Whirling Blades? Or do I walk/shield-charge faster with 25% boots + "Dagger and Steel"? This should take the whole animation into account. Dps isn't a concern, because I have other means of dealing damage, I just want to be as fast as possible to keep charges up between mobs.

Thank you in advance!

the "dessync" issue happens if you use it more than 2 times in a row, or twice if your ping is already somewhat high. if you're using it for transportation, pace yourself a little and you'll be fine.

Yep, Desyncing is a big issue with this skill specifically.

Is this skill still entirely worthless?

Seems like it. I had hoped it would've had some changes/fixes but there has been nothing since the open beta release. I still use it on my duelist but only as a distance closer and escape, it never does reliable damage to anything, and if I use it multiple times in a row I always get desynced.

So ...

Why is this skill still doing no damage ? What exactly justifies that .8 damage mod ? Please just remove that BS. Not even bother talking about desync ..... Seriously, when an attack animation takes like 5 minutes, there is really no reason to lower the damage.

OT: Sorry, I came back because a friend told me that melee was buffed. I've yet to experience that buff ... so far there only seem to be those couple of new skills which usefulness are debatable. Especially AA seems to help ranged more than melee ( once again ).

Edit: Just read about reave. Maybe there is some hope. But don't forget about whirling blades plx ! :p

Would be nice if this worked with all 1h-edged weapons (i.e. 1handed axes).

Well, the damage is underwhelming so when I could I switched to leap slam. And then switched back. Just because, even though desync is a bitch, this skill is awesome for dodging/kiting, especially since animation is really short.

@Mortezzah Allowing it for axes and maces would be a bad idea - axes already seem so much better as a dps (and we are talking about dps classes), whirling blades utility gives at least some justification for using other weapons as a, let's say, duelist.

One thing that hurts me is that sometimes it still freezes. Like, normaly I do dash-dash-dash. But once in a while.... zzzzt... and I behave like I have 1-sec cooldown or sth. Frustring when moving, deadly inside mob groups.

One other thing is path finding - slightly missing los requirement while standing just before doors and ceases to work at all. I would like if it either a) dashed me in to a wall, thus giving me a feedback on where I'm missing, or b) slightly adjusting to reach the viable path if it's near enough.