Windform is that barb whirlwind skill, that added tcd, poison damage and life on striking.
First of all, whirlwind vs median tier of density = bad. As main aoe skill at least. I think nobody argues that. If you take endgame geared barb to hatred uberquest with high density (duncraig for instance), even if you 1-shot at 2fpa with ww, it still sucks, killing speed is low. Ppl usually notice it once they hit sewers with their new barbs
The reason why is simple. WW can hit one enemy in its range at any given time. So if there is many enemies around, real aoe skills that hit everything vastly outperform ww. Less enemies, the better it works.
Now the point is, there is interesting mechanics with that poison damage component.
When you WW, char sheet dps is increased by that poison damage, to all skills.
Most popular suggestion would be: use fortress before windform. When you windform, arrows carry poison damage.
Important to note, weapon poison damage, carried through fortress arrows will not be as high as windform direct hit, not only because 3/2 weapon vs 3/4, but also fact that projectiles poison wont be affected by spell damage. In reality, damage you get for projectiles, is higher than maxed snake/eagle, which takes tons of points.
The problem with fortress is, it isn't great aoe. Skill tends to hit same monsters multiple times, arrows don't pierce. It is pretty bad at spreading that poison.
So I tested other things. First was, stempede. If you stampede and then ww immediately after, following wave of axes that hit for 3/2, turns out even if you ww while they hit, they dont carry poison damage. Bummer.
Another thing - sor. If you use sor, and then ww.. it does work. It probably has to do with fact that new rocks appear while you ww (same as fortress and new arrows). You get 3/2 poison aoe with sor.
Now that alone makes it really interesting for leveling, or like really cheap char that can clear some difficult areas. You can have bear stance/runemaster/windform, and at same time deal sor poison aoe, higher than if you had maxed snake stance and synergy.
I was able to clear fauztinville destr with really bad gear this way (level 100 runewords and some random crafts).
There is another little thing that helps, and some ppl might not know. Blood hatred heal on melee strike, works with whirlwind. Whirlwind dual wield hits for 2fpa at last breakpoint, so you get heal that is comparable/better than bh itself (that hits twice as doubleswing clone). By better i mean, it can't be interrupted, you heal in spot where normally you could get stunlocked. I could do azmodan at level 100 this way, because while wwing though these monsters and healing so fast, you literally cannot die there.
I'm aware this is nowhere near farming speeds we are looking for, simply not competitive, if some builds just wipe multiple screens in seconds.
But maybe there is a way to expand this idea.
Next thing I tried is to look for more aoe.
Skill like rebound works (if axes split when you ww they carry poison). But similar to fortress, no pierce - poor effect for poison spread. Which is weird, because snake/repounder was a thing, so it should be ok.
Another thing, wyrd. 1/2 is a problem here, but it does work to some extent. Can't be used with bear.
Spikenova on kill.
Nimmenjushin + whirpool = massive aoe. But still limited by wdm of the skill.
Thundergod nova also works, if it goes off while you ww, happens sometimes. 1/2 weakens it by a lot, but gives you the idea about potential of this combo.
Using this build combined with snake stance is possible, for even more poison damage, at cost of defense. Maxing snake/eagle/windform will consume most of our skill points.
Another thing that could have potential with this, once you take care of aoe is to abuse that life on striking from ww. If you could fit in atmg on kill, heal would be great.
So I'm looking for your ideas, what do you think about this. What kind of skill/proc combo would make this even better? I didn't have sssu to test so my experience is limited
