Iron Spiral Barb Discussion

Yesterday I read suchbalance's comment on Iron Spiral in the MXL17 1.1 Changelog thread: "...if you actually gave this skill a proper test end game you would notice that the damage was quite good but the skill power didn't scale well when dealing with big monster packs."

In 2012 and when I came back to MXL in 2017 the only melee barbs I've played were essentially Yaggai barbs. I was tempted by suchbalance to test this skill which I've never played to see if it could compare to a Yaggai barb. I also thought it might be worth displaying/discussing because there is little discussion on this skill and I couldn't find an example of someone clearing dunc with it. I ended up really enjoying Iron Spiral and found that it performed in Dunc way better than I expected. Of course it's not on the level of clear speed of wolf dudu or spirit walk summoner's with PoF & Hive but I really anticipated for the build to just fall flat on its face in Dunc lol.

Apologies about the Resolution, Shadowplay only lets me record in windowed mode.

Although I have to admit this barb is carried by expensive/difficult to find gear (An issue rightly pointed out by Aerial regarding Iron Spiral), I felt that Iron Spiral has better farm potential than the other sword skills with the same exact gear/skill set up. With the upcoming buffs to Iron Spiral that suchbalance spoke of, - "The pierce change addresses exactly that, allowing you to essentially aoe most of the screen simultaneously now" - it might be possible to have better or similar results with cheaper/easier to find gear because of what seems to be a significant change in the mechanic which currently holds the skill back.

i was thinking to build this one to new ladder. sounds very fun now that those projectiles pierce. it has around same aoe as harbinger on wolf and probably hits somewhat as many times. i dont think it would need expensive gear to work tho. is there any other barb players who is gonna test this out?

My experience with this skill in 1.0 patch, it starts off really strong with +lightning damage it has, experiences from attempting speedrun. Overall you can easily level with this skill all the way up to 120.
Later it becomes weaker because of the limitations to its aoe, no pierce, exact issue that is being addressed in next version.
It was still ok skill, you can clear duncraig with it.
But lets not fool ourselves, you cannot match 110% stempede spam

not even close. I'd go as far that even if you try duncraig with sor + ww, it was already faster than spiral. There is just too many enemies for non piercing vesion. It works great when you progress and you encounter small to medium packs of enemies, then it shreds through them. Anything more dense begins to feel meh.

how many times does it hit per second in the new version? it would be nice to finally have a skill that works well with wolf companion

Gekko64 wrote:how many times does it hit per second in the new version? it would be nice to finally have a skill that works well with wolf companion

From my testing it only hits 3x per attack, idk if different enemies have bigger hitboxes or not, but that was on the super unique in coldplains.
But the pierce is very noticeable, great change. :thumb:

Helzopro wrote:
Gekko64 wrote:how many times does it hit per second in the new version? it would be nice to finally have a skill that works well with wolf companion

From my testing it only hits 3x per attack, idk if different enemies have bigger hitboxes or not, but that was on the super unique in coldplains.
But the pierce is very noticeable, great change.

atleast it looks like it hits 3 times per enemy. tested also on SP

my problem now:

1. does iron spiral work like whirlpool now (gosh that skill is powerful if no timer)?
2. since pierce + WDM is strong combo, does that mean there are less missiles or NextDelay?
3. If it is NextDelay, will the power level are much better than before (lets assume you use another proc with ND as well) in late game?

at least it is now have better coverage in late game, barb lack something burst-y (EQ only hit once per attack iirc)