Whirlwind Barbarian Endgame Build Guide
Last Updated:October 7, 2024|Change Log|FAQ
The Whirlwind Barbarian Guide provides an iconic playstyle that is loved by many - the classic "hold down one button and destroy everything in my path" playstyle, or as it is more commonly known, "spin to win."
Whether it's speedfarming Nightmare Dungeons, circling the Infernal Hordes, blasting through The Pit or anything in between - Whirlwind does it all. It is extremely versatile in both what it can accomplish and also in its choice of gearing. Feel like bludgeoning your foes to death in a whirling fit of rage? Pick up that Two-Handed Mace and go ham. Want to just spin faster and rip things to shreds? Then dual-wielding a One-Handed Mace and One-Handed Sword might be for you.
In this guide, we'll focus primarily on the latter choice, as it offers us a good balance of power and comfiness for much of the game. We eventually scale its power even more with the use of powerful Unique items such as Ramaladni's Magnum Opus.
Like in Season 5, we're funneling a lot of our power into the buffed Dust Devils from Aspects such as the aptly named Dust Devil's, as well as Fierce Winds. This time around though, we're also adding Earthquakes into the mix to benefit from the newly introduced Force of Nature, which is available to us on the Paragon Board later in our journey.
If becoming a human blender and conjuring up natural disasters sounds like your idea of a good time, then let out your loudest Rallying Cry as we Whirlwind our way through this Endgame Barbarian Guide!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Barbarian Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Lunging Strike is needed to progress the skill tree. This is not used in the build but can have its uses during the early leveling process.
- Whirlwind is the core of our build, but not because of the base damage of the skill itself. We instead use it as a Bleed source and as our main way of spawning Dust Devils, which is where the bulk of our damage comes from.
- Rallying Cry provides us multiple buffs, including Fury regeneration, movement speed, and the invaluable Unstoppable effect while active.
- Challenging Shout boosts our defenses even higher with its massive damage reduction and health increase, while also Taunting any monsters in range.
- War Cry grants us the Berserking buff and a generous multiplicative damage boost while active.
- Ground Stomp does several things, but its primary use is spawning Earthquakes. Additionally, it's great for generating Fury as well as inflicting Stun and Vulnerable.
- Call of the Ancients is taken for its multiplicative damage boost, and also as a secondary high damage source when combined with Arreat's Bearing and Heavy Hitter.
Skill Rotation
- Spin. Yeah. That's kind of it. Spin and cast Shouts.
- Shouts give us a lot of our power and damage reduction, while also keeping us passively healed from Raid Leader. They also spawn additional Dust Devils from Fierce Winds.
- For more damage, use Ground Stomp to Stun and spawn Earthquakes, then continue spinning and shouting.
- Call of the Ancients can generally be cast whenever it's off cooldown for another big damage spike. At the very least, make sure it's back up in time for Boss fights.
- Earthquakes from the Tec Rune also passively generate additional Dust Devils automatically thanks to Force of Nature.
Arsenal System
The Arsenal System allows us to use a specific weapon for every attack skill, with each weapon granting different bonuses. We also have what is called the Technique Slot. With this, we can use any weapon of our choosing to always reap the benefit from, regardless of which weapon we have equipped.
For this purpose of this guide, the One-Handed Sword Expertise and One-Handed Mace Expertise are our main weapon choices since we are dual-wielding. The first offers us a way to help offset our Fury consumption, and to better utilize Ramaladni's Magnum Opus when it is acquired in the endgame. Our second choice has great utility when used against Stunned enemies, offering us a generic damage multiplier as well synergy with other damage sources such as the Wallop passive.
In the Technique Slot, the Two-Handed Axe allows us to deal 10% more damage to Vulnerable enemies. This build has high Vulnerable uptime with Tactical Ground Stomp and when using the gear affix "Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable." Unfortunately, its secondary effect does not apply here - the limitation of the Technique Slot is that it does not allow us to benefit from the second bonus that is normally gained from reaching rank 10 with any weapon expertise.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Arsenal System Guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.
Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.
Whirlwind Barbarian Endgame Paragon
Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.
Placeholder Glyphs
- Ire
- Replaced by Ambidextrous once our Damage while Berserking reaches 300%.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Twister
- Ire
- Rumble
- Territorial
- Challenger
Level 46
- Twister
- Rumble
- Territorial
- Challenger
- Ambidextrous
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Whirlwind Barbarian focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Bac + Wat - While in combat, this Runeword constantly casts Horrid Decrepify, which causes all surrounding enemies to deal 20% less damage and be Executed when they drop below 10% health.
- Xol + Tec - This combination spawns Earthquakes for us when triggered by Tam + Wat.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Moni - Alternative for Tam; requires Whirlwind spam.
- Gar - Helps cover gear options when trying to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- Ohm - Gives us a way to cast War Cry without having it on our skill bar. For Barbarians, this Rune scales with any additional ranks we have in the skill tree or on gear.
- Lum - Helps with Fury sustain.
- Zec - Can assist with keeping our Ultimate off cooldown; useful early on when lacking Cooldown Reduction.
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.
Hired: Raheir
He has a lot to offer us from a defensive standpoint. Skills like Valiance and Bastion help protect us from heavy hits and grant Unstoppable. Bastion also works in tandem with Ground Slam to provide some very strong offensive buffs with Inspiration. Lastly, he provides a pretty decent boost to all of our Resistances, which can help compensate for low rolls on gear.
Reinforcement: Aldkin
He serves as a nice panic button for dangerous encounters by casting Field of Languish, which slows enemies and reduces their damage.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Whirlwind Barbarian to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.
Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds
- 70%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 70%+ Chance for Dust Devils to Cast Twice
- 90%+ Dust Devil Size
- 70%+ Chance for Earthquakes to Cast Twice
- 80%+ Earthquake Duration
- 300%+ Damage while Berserking (Blood Rage)
- 500%+ Damage to Close Enemies (Force of Nature)
- 2500+ Strength
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 8,000+ Life
- 180%+ Movement Speed
- 200+ Maximum Fury
- 70%+ Ultimate Cooldown Reduction
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Whirlwind Barbarian, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Whirlwind Barbarian from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional Aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- Note: If arriving here after following the Whirlwind Barbarian Leveling Guide, it's perfectly fine to continue using the Starter variant described in that guide if there are no issues. There is often more than one way to play a build successfully; feel free to choose or even combine ideas from both to customize the experience!
- During early progression, Armor & Resistances should be prioritized in order to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% to all Resistances and it's recommended to keep both capped at all times; this means having a value of 1,000 for Armor and 70% for each Resistance. As masterworking levels and Paragon points are unlocked, character power naturally scales into the higher difficulties. As this happens, most of these stats can start being replaced with utility or offensive-oriented ones.
- Focus on acquiring and improving the Earthquake and Dust Devil themed Aspects, as these contribute the most to our damage output:
- Fierce Winds
- Devilish
- Dust Devil's
- Earthquake
- Bul-Kathos
- Juggernaut's, Steadfast Berserker's, and Anger Management are all extremely important, especially at this progression point. The former is very helpful for reaching Armor cap, while the latter two provide worry-free ways of keeping Fortify and Berserking.
- Bold Chieftain's helps keep our Shouts off cooldown so we can benefit from them as much as possible.
- Elements is a solid generic multiplier that increases our damage when it changes to Physical.
- Giant Strides helps keep our Leap off cooldown, which improves our mobility and lets us create more Earthquakes via Bul-Kathos.
- Ghostwalker is used in tandem with Rallying Cry for a large Movement Speed increase.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As gear is upgraded to Ancestral and more masterworking levels and Paragon points are unlocked, we can focus on replacing Armor and Resistance rolls with more desirable stats; however, staying capped at 1,000 Armor and 70% for all Resistances should always remain a priority for the current difficulty level.
- Ugly Bastard Helm is an incredibly strong item that gives some damage reduction from ranks of Aggressive Resistance, as well as a hefty damage multiplier via its Unique effect. The Wrath of the Berserker Cooldown Reduction can be completely ignored; even though this is a wasted stat, everything else is too good to pass up.
- Rage of Harrogath is a great choice for this build because of our ability to inflict Bleed from Furious Whirlwind and Rupture. This allows us to keep our Shouts off cooldown frequently and create more Dust Devils from Fierce Winds. It also inherently gives a decent chunk of Critical Strike Chance.
- Arreat's Bearing allows tremendous uptime on Call of the Ancients and helps us cap our Resistances. Aside from that, the Ancients themselves are very powerful; the Dust Devils and Earthquakes that they generate benefit from pretty much all of the modifiers we're already using to buff our own.
- Rakanoth's Wake is a solid choice for patching up Resistances, but its main draw is the large amount of Cooldown Reduction it gives. This stat should be the priority, since we have a number of skills that we want to stay off cooldown as much as possible.
- Ramaladni's Magnum Opus is an item that gives us a huge damage multiplier that is based on our Maximum Fury. For this reason, we prioritize this stat on gear and through other means, such as the Core Reserve and Hungering Fury paragon nodes.
- Fists of Fate, when rolled well, is a 50% damage multiplier on average and provides a lot of good stats along with it. The Lucky Hit-based Crowd Controls are great for locking down enemies and staggering Bosses. The high amount of Lucky Hit Chance this item provides also ensures we have good Vulnerable uptime from Pressure Point and the "Lucky Hit: Chance to Make Enemies Vulnerable" roll on our Jewelry.
- Note: In the event this item has a bugged interaction with Ramaladni's Magnum Opus (needs to be re-tested in Season 6) and doesn't work, use Devilish here instead.
- Temper Earthquake Size and Critical Strike Damage.
- See more information about this bugged interaction in the FAQ section.
- Vocalized Empowerment is taken here to help with our Fury costs.
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- Tyrael's Might is good here since it solves Resistances and damage reduction mostly on its own, and its divine barrage is great for picking off weaker enemies that are out of range.
- Ring of Starless Skies is a rather obvious choice; it gives a bunch of Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, and a large damage multiplier that is very simple to keep active.
- We swap Ghostwalker back in with this setup for more Movement Speed to offset the penalty when channeling Whirlwind. Ranks to War Cry should be a priority on Boots for a nice damage increase.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
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Gear & Skills
- For a setup that is focused purely on speed, Harlequin Crest is a great choice for the sheer amount of Cooldown Reduction it gives to all of our skills, especially ones that keep us mobile like Leap.
- With good gear and Cooldown Reduction in all the right places, we can achieve permanent uptime on Wrath of the Berserker. If more is needed, it can be rolled on the Amulet in place of Critical Strike Chance.
This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
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Gear & Skills
- This is mostly the same setup as the standard Mythic version, except we swap out Fists of Fate. At the time of this writing, this item doesn't interact with Ramaladni's Magnum Opus properly unless it is unequipped and then re-equipped; this unfortunately isn't possible while in The Pit.
- This setup is subject to change throughout the season as the meta evolves.
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Furious Whirlwind vs. Violent Whirlwind:
How do I assign skills to the correct weapon?
Why not use Gohr's Devastating Grips?
Why am I running out of Fury?
Overcapping Movement Speed:
Ramaladni's + Fists of Fate bugged interaction.
Mechanics
Learn about the mechanical details which makes the build tick.
Whirlwind
Summary
The Whirlwind Barbarian is a very relaxed build that does well in most content, especially speedfarming. Here's why it's a great build:
- Permanent Berserking uptime with help from Anger Management.
- High uptime on all Shout buffs: Rallying Cry, War Cry and Challenging Shout.
- High Ultimate uptime with Call of the Ancients and Arreat's Bearing.
- High mobility; Whirlwind is one of the few skills that can be used continuously while moving.
- Great area of effect and damage via Dust Devils and Earthquakes, with multiple ways to generate them.
Credits
Written by snail