Frenzy or WW barbarian?

Hello,
I´m now training new barbarian. Still hestitating between WW and Frenzy build. If you have an experience with both, which one do you prefer and why? The recommended BIS gear seems to be almost the same for both of them so its no big deal to try both, but I would be still interested in your suggestions..
Thanks a lot for your answers.

I play a lot of barb and always preferred Whirlwind. It has the best aoe (area of effect) feel of any melee skill in the game. The other huge bonus is that it doesn't require many skill points, so you can put a lot of points into Find Item and Find Potion to make one of the most efficient magic find/rune find builds in the game

Frenzy has an advantage very early game, and the movement speed is nice, but past normal it always really falls off for me. I think because you need so many points in synergies and you need two decent weapons. On the other hand, Whirlwind is more flexible weapon-wise and your skill allocation is pretty much maxed out damage-wise by the end of nightmare

Despite wielding two weapons with Frenzy, you only target/attack one enemy at a time, which feels so slow. It’s like you have to stop and shake hands with each monster, but Whirlwind feels much more fluid

And the fast movement speed with Frenzy doesn't matter much anyway late game, because barb has the same Teleport speed as a sorceress, so it's just more efficient to Teleport

(edited to clarify my thoughts)

I prefer Double Throw barbarian
The pierce gives you a good aoe (specially if you add Razortail and/or Wisdom)

Frenzy all the way

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Frenzy has an advantage very early game, and the movement speed is nice, but past normal it always really falls off for me.

Sounds like a gear issue. Double Black Flails shreds NM pretty easy in my experience and isn't bad for Hell either until you can get your hands on Grief, Death, Lawbringer PBs or Berserker Axes.

Plus 1 point into Berserk and 1 point into Howl and you can snipe elites without having to worry about using AOE to mop of trash mobs. Best build in the business for doing Trav runs if you ask me.

If I'm wanting AOE I would just play poison necro or lightning sorc instead of a barb. Not every class is meant to do every thing in the game well.

BigD wrote: 11 months ago

Sounds like a gear issue

Midgame, sure. Endgame, no. I've given the build a fair chance with best in slot gear. I've also given it a fair chance in mods with ridiculous over the top gear and melee aoe splash damage, so it's not really the aoe. It just feels clunky

Howl and Berserk are also staples on Whirlwind. I've done both Grief and ebotd/Death Whirlwind builds. You can run Lawbringer or reaper's toll on your merc. As OP says, the builds are very very similar

So OP needs to decide which skill feels better, and whether they care about maximizing item find efficiency. Because Frenzy can't reach 75% Find Item without significant damage synergy cuts

Flail
Phase Blade
Berserker Axe
Travincal
Breath of the Dying
The Reaper's Toll

If you're planning to do Ubers, just go Frenzy.

As BigD said, Frenzy or Whirlwind depends about the play style you want.
Barbarrian is a melee char. If you want AoE, just play another char.

Like Tornado mentioned, if you dont plan to kill anything deadly like Ubers, most likely WW is hella fun and more chill way to play. Frenzy feels like you need to pay much more attention but what do I know. Ive just played singer barb once last season so I am not really sure about the "proper combat" builds.

I prefer Frenzy as you can proc Crushing Blow, Life Leech and all that offensive traits way more times.

Whirlwind will grow boring over time, IMO. But it all sumarizes into your gameplay. Get a feel of both ways and see how it goes, which one you feel is the best.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

BigD wrote: 11 months ago

Sounds like a gear issue

Midgame, sure. Endgame, no. I've given the build a fair chance with best in slot gear. I've also given it a fair chance in mods with ridiculous over the top gear and melee aoe splash damage, so it's not really the aoe. It just feels clunky

Howl and Berserk are also staples on Whirlwind. I've done both Grief and ebotd/Death Whirlwind builds. You can run Lawbringer or reaper's toll on your merc. As OP says, the builds are very very similar

So OP needs to decide which skill feels better, and whether they care about maximizing item find efficiency. Because Frenzy can't reach 75% Find Item without significant damage synergy cuts

75% Find Item is way overkill. I only ever put 1 point and still managed to get Arach's, Gface, TGods, Verdungos just to name a few from horking Trav runs and CS runs. Sure it might help but in my experience it doesn't help as much as points elsewhere.

Preference is preference i suppose, kinda like how Hammerdin is easiest to level and shreds CS better than Zealer but I just can't stand the playstyle of Hammerdin so I always go Zealer/Smiter.

Regardless, however, as previously stated by others, if you plan on doing Ubers, Frenzy Barb will do it better than WW and doesn't need as expensive gear as other builds.

Barbs are a bit underwhelming for general PVM. Just make one dedicated to Travincal runs, this is the only place where they shine (I use WW there).

thanks to all for the replies.
I choosed WW barb and I like it a lot. I got to hell difficulty today and with two Grief phase blades it goes quite smooth.

For general PVM WW, I'd go for something like this:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/re4wj0cr

Arachnid Mesh
Guillaume's Face
Thundergod's Vigor
Verdungo's Hearty Cord

Chaos Sanctuary

OK, I trained my WW barb up to 75lvl. It´s still fun and I´m impressed how smooth it goes even on hell difficulty.

Just two more questions occured:
1) How do you do it with constant lack of mana? I either have to drink loads of mana potions or use Manald Heal ring with 7% ML (the other one I use is Raven Frost). I was thinking about putting Perfect Skull to my arreat face to get 3% more to ML. All the other gear I use is recommended at maxroll https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/whirlwind-barbarian-guide

2) Other question is about Enigma and its again about mana. After few Teleport moves my mana is gone and with the slow FCR it´s anyway not much faster then running. How do you deal with that?
I am thinking about going for Fortitude instead.

Thanks for the answers

nunuso wrote: 11 months ago

1) How do you do it with constant lack of mana? I either have to drink loads of mana potions or use Manald Heal ring with 7% ML (the other one I use is Raven Frost). I was thinking about putting Perfect Skull to my arreat face to get 3% more to ML. All the other gear I use is recommended at maxroll https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/whirlwind-barbarian-guide

Guillaume's Face gives higher DPS (especially against bosses, 35cb 15ds>). Get mana leech on a ring (preferably with AR FCR mana and if you are rich STR on top of those)

nunuso wrote: 11 months ago

2) Other question is about Enigma and its again about mana. After few Teleport moves my mana is gone and with the slow FCR it´s anyway not much faster then running. How do you deal with that?
I am thinking about going for Fortitude instead.

Get 40FCR on mainhand (arach+2xfcr rings both with different leech), feels MUCH better. With the right rings you can achive ~600mana, which is enough until you reach the next group to leech from. Teleport is a must IMO, you need to put your reaper's toll merc into action to be effective.

nunuso wrote: 11 months ago

OK, I trained my WW barb up to 75lvl. It´s still fun and I´m impressed how smooth it goes even on hell difficulty.

All the other gear I use is recommended at maxroll https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/whirlwind-barbarian-guide

...mana...How do you deal with that?
I am thinking about going for Fortitude instead.

Thanks for the answers

As uuee says, mana leech and +mana on rings is the solution. If you are teleporting long range, two wizspikes on swap helps a lot. It's also easier to hit the 105 FCR breakpoint with wizspikes (or Suicide Branch is also good)

Maxroll has always been weird about Whirlwind. Keep in mind that Raven Frost and Chilling Armor from Fortitude will shatter corpses, which means you can't use Find Item. A cheap source of CBF (and mana) is trang oul's Belt. The better option is to put a Cham in your Helm and run String of Ears

Some other options to customize the maxroll build: For more damage, consider gface and gore riders (my favorite). For more life, you want arreat's. For more MF, Immortal King's Helm and Shako with war travs are decent options

Fortitude can be good depending on what you want out of the build. If you want to maximize damage, full clear areas, and you don't care about Find Item, then it's great. But for me, barb is never going to be a good choice for full clearing areas vs other classes. Instead its specialty is fast Teleport, targeting elite monsters at p1-p3, and using Find Item on their corpse. With 75% Find Item, you effectively do 1.75 runs for every 1 run you do with a different class. With practice, you can farm some areas faster and more efficiently than a sorceress

Dual wielding Heart of the Oak on your weapon swap will make Teleport a lot faster, and they double as Shout sticks. It's what I use on my barbarian with Enigma. They helps with the mana cost too, but you will probably still need potions for Teleport spamming like in Baal runs.

Wizardspike
Trang-Oul's Girth
Gore Rider
Arreat's Face
Immortal King's Will
Harlequin Crest