Whirling Blades

Did some testing with /oos, this skill has at least a 25% chance to induce desync on use, including both player and monster position.
Reading the past fifteen thousand pages would have told you that as well.
(Whirling Blades is the one Gem thread I always dread opening because it's literally only complaints. Guess this fits in nicely then)
I really think a lot of people are not being fair towards Whirling Blades at all.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I've been using it on my Crit Dagger based Shadow up to level 39 so far and the desync is ridiculous... very, very ridiculous... but other than that it's still a great ability. It also only gets better when you have more attack speed as it reduces the delay after using WB. That and since it keeps you mobile, you get hit a lot less, so I can spam that until my energy shield gets low and WB out of the pack.

As far as supports go Increased Attack Speed is a given. Added Cold Damage is also great since it helps with survivability when it crits. Chance to flee also seems to help as well. Maybe I'm not a high enough level yet to really see the problem, but I never really die because of the desync from WB, It's usually from some other stupid reason.


But seriously though, that desync issue needs to be fixed.
This skill is bugged; either the skill is not working as intended or the tooltip showing Attack Time is bugged.

The description in the Wiki and the remarks earlier in the thread by a dev indicate that the ability's Attack Time should scale with weapon attack speed, but according to the tooltip it does not. It does, however, get faster when you Dual Wield.

If I equip a single weapon it shows an Attack Time of 2.17 seconds, when I equip a second weapon it shows an Attack Time of 2 seconds (8.5% faster, but even that isn't right because it should be 10% faster which would be 1.97). But this is the case no matter what the speed of the weapon(s) I equip. 1.1 attacks/second or 1.3 attacks per second weapons give the same results.

I would like to see a special "Bowling Alley" map with pots arranged like bowling pins so that we can have "Bowling with Blades" tournaments :-)

EDIT to add that attack speed buffs on items do affect the Attack Time, but the speed of the weapon being used does not.
Last edited by Fillmore#2067 on Feb 18, 2013, 4:25:02 PM
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Fillmore wrote:
remarks earlier in the thread by a dev indicate that the ability's Attack Time should scale with weapon attack speed

Not entirely accurate; Mark mentions it scales with Increased Attack Speed, not Weapon Base Speed (as you noticed yourself). :) WB having a fixed attack time is working as intended to my knowledge.
so is there a fix for all the confusion/misinformation?

Last edited by galinbro#3564 on Feb 18, 2013, 9:22:01 PM
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Vipermagi wrote:
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Fillmore wrote:
remarks earlier in the thread by a dev indicate that the ability's Attack Time should scale with weapon attack speed

Not entirely accurate; Mark mentions it scales with Increased Attack Speed, not Weapon Base Speed (as you noticed yourself). :) WB having a fixed attack time is working as intended to my knowledge.


Ahh, I see where I got confused, what he said wasn't quite that specific though.

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Mark_GGG wrote:
You hit each monster you pass through as you move. You can't hit the same monster more than once with the same skill use.

When dual wielding, hits are dealt with either the main or off hand weapon, chosen at random.

Attack speed increases the speed of the entire animation (and your movement), including the 'recovery' part at the end.


"when dual wielding, hits are dealt with..." together with "Attack speed increases the speed of the entire..." made me think that the WB animation was keyed to the attack speed of the weapon being used.

When I look up "Attack speed" in the Wiki it says "Normal attacks and attack skills derive attack speed and damage from the weapon(s) equipped." which again makes me thing the skill should be using the base attack speed of the weapon being used.

Finally, there is still the bug of the DW attack speed modifier not being applied correctly since it should be 10% but is currently only working at 8.5%
OK, I found the problems that I am having with speed have to do with dual wielding when 1 or more weapons has a speed bonus which seems to be that each weapon's bonus is being halved.

But in analyzing further I have found a problem with DW speed in general even without WB (by nodes I have +18%, but when I DW it goes to 30% instead of 28% like it should - I have no nodes that affect DW speeds only). So I will do some more research on that and post in another section about DWing.

EDIT - bah, found the error is because item quality affects the modifiers on the weapon as well as its base stats. That is pretty misleading, because when you up the quality of an item it shows the base stats increasing but does not show the other modifiers increasing as well.
Last edited by Fillmore#2067 on Feb 20, 2013, 9:58:40 AM
But my new revelation about how attack speed bonuses on weapons affect WB leads me to believe that WB not keying off of base weapon speed is a bug.

When a weapon has a bonus to attack speed, that bonus only applies to that weapon, which is why when you DW that bonus is effectively halved (since the speed shown will be the average of the two weapons).

But if the bonus for attack speed on a weapon only affects the speed of that weapon, and WB does not key off of the speed of the weapon, then it should not affect WB at all.
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Fillmore wrote:
bah, found the error is because item quality affects the modifiers on the weapon as well as its base stats.

I can guarantee that's not what's happening. Qual on a weapon only increases Base Damage.

Dual-wielding two Wands on my lv4 Templar gets me the proper 10% IAS listed. *shrug*
Don't know what's happening there.

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Fillmore wrote:
But my new revelation about how attack speed bonuses on weapons affect WB leads me to believe that WB not keying off of base weapon speed is a bug.

It's how all fixed-attack time skills work; Sweep and Leap Slam become faster with on-weapon IAS, despite ignoring base Attack Speed.
Last edited by Vipermagi#0984 on Feb 20, 2013, 11:32:04 AM

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