Whirling Blades build?

So I finally settled on Shadow after playing to act 2 with like 7 different characters. My goal is to build a dual-wielding crit dagger dervish type (with an emphasis on lightning damage). Whirling blades seems like a good skill to spam for this build, but just wondering what people thought.

I don't know all the skills and support gems well enough to know which one I should base this build around. I just know I want to be quick and do elemental damage.

Only problem with whirling blades is that it does not benefity from dual wield.

It only hits with 1 weapon (and randomly chooses) at a reduced damage.


The only dual wield compatible AoE in the game is cleave (which is STR based)


So its less than optimal to use with AoE ... but until there is better options, its cleave or whirling blades for a physical AoE >.<;

Dammit. That seems silly, it's called "Whirling Blade*s*". Oh well.

I just can't seem to settle on a character concept then. Starting to think I might have to give up on this game. Everything I think sounds fun isn't viable.

The 80% damage effectiveness of whirling blades combined with the fact that it only uses one weapon makes its damage scaling quite poor. It does an OK job of applying blind chill and shock, and does really well paired with viper strike, but if you're looking for an AoE damage spam - daggers and claws don't have one at the moment. Stick with fire traps for now. At high levels; I'm not sure what they expect us to do.

I was running a cold caster shadow and I was getting bored of his slow mobility, so I decided to do the most mobile character in the game; for now, I'd bet it is a Whirling Blades build.

So I started one on HC, I'm lvl28 right now.
I agree with the other players, damage-wise Whirling Blades is lacking in my build, maybe it's going to get better later when I start using better claws, but the main reason if using it for god-like mobility and positioning in combat.

I planned this builds so far, I'm building towards a lightly crit-based with Lightining damage (hoping for Shock), high attack speed (higher DPS and less cast animation for Whilding Blades!), Evasion, Energy Shield and Leech for Survivability.
I'm using dual-weilding early game (more fun, tons of attack speed, claw's life on hit abuse, mobility)

Dual Wield Passive Build Plan

But maybe I'll spec into shield+claw on higher levels, specially when claw start spawning with percentage based life steal (trade some dual-wield attack speed, some damage nodes and the claw % based life leech for more base evasion/ES from the armor slot, +50% evasion nodes, better block, +24% max mana for auras):

Claw+Shield Passive Build Plan

I was planning getting Chaos Inoculation but I dropped the idea.
Main gems:
Frenzy
Lightning Strike
Double Strike early (for life on hit abuse) I'll probably switch to Dual Strike later with % based leech, not sure
Whirling Blades
Grace/Discipline
Use Wrath + Added Lightning Damage for Shock procs (I didn't add the +5% lightning proc in my build but if I have 2 spare skill points I'll use it to get it)
Fire Traps (I'm still carrying it but I barely use them, although they are tactically useful sometimes, helps while leveling)

I am pretty sure Whirling Blades alternates rather than choosing randomly. I know the pause at the end depends on attack speed and I assume it would benefit from the bonus that DWing gives.

While I suppose WB can't match other AoEs for DPS I really like the fact that you move around when you use it so you are hit less often as a result. I am using DW Claws and Dual Strike and WB are pretty much the only skills I use.