Pro-tips for Whirlers
Whirling Assaults recoil is dog shit and typically players dodge roll out of it to not be vulnerable.
Both Frozen Locus and Wave of Frost can be used at any point as a “dodge” out of whirl, so once you’re wrapping up the spin you can cancel out of the Whirling Assault animation and stack some damage/utility on top of it.
Frozen Locus is good for AoE chill but has a difficult time freezing monsters in temple. It also can be socketed to impale cold damage as of physical, allowing you to stack some extra damage on your next attack. It has a huge attack damage multiplier and can really help clean up harder to kill enemies.
The angle of Wave of Frost is narrow but it does freeze much more reliably, turning on Bhatair’s easily. With a t2 attack speed mod on weapon and rapid strikes 2 the animation is fairly fluid and fast. It takes some calibrating and getting used to, but once you’ve got it down, it will feel smooth as butter. Bonus points because it combos well into staggering palm off the rip, you look straight up like Jackie Chan using these three in tandem.
Staggering Palm is insane. You may have seen my posts about Ancestral Cry as an ability, adding a ~500% attack damage slam to your steps (which activates many times while whirling). Getting ignite on an enemy amplifies Staggering Palm significantly.
Staggering Palm will give you a buff that fires projectiles when you stun a target. At lvl 30 this is about ~400% attack damage. Socketing it with Fan the Flames II will add another ~300% attack damage hit that all of your projectiles will proc when they hit a burning enemy.
As you can see, there are some niche interactions that turn a basic whirling assault into a damage shitfest that rivals comet. It is not unusual for me to run into a temple room and it be cleaned out in 5 seconds, especially if I’ve been doing good keeping my buffs up.
Forgive me for coming to my Ted Talk.
