37 réponses à ce sujet

[Azayat]

So I'm playing as a 2H warrior and finally got round to learning the reaver specialisation. I have a bit of a conundrum though because I now want more skills than I can fit on my panel so I need to decide what to drop. I currently have equipped (apologies for forgotten skill names):

From 2H tree:
-smash/knock down
-the other smash that sets the ground on fire
-spin to win

From Vanguard:
-charging bull (can't live without a gap closer)

From reaver:
-all four active skills including rampage

This seems OK but a lot of the time I really feel I need either Pommel Strike or mass taunt (to build guard if nothing else) or both, but I wouldn't know what to replace. Maybe the final reaver skill isn't all that good (I take enough damage as it is without hurting myself).

I do always have another warrior in the party, usually Cassandra who I have set up as sword/shield Templar.

What do you think?

[TevinterMagister]

I'm on console (xbox) so I chose more out of gameplay than efficiency, for me that is what's fun to play after having to get used to the combat system which I was not a fan of at first, but after playing for a bit I found something I enjoy. On console what the skill does and what button it is mapped to matters, for me anyway so that it feels natural, certain types like charging bull always on RB, just feels off having it elsewhere.

 

This setup is available as soon as you can unlock reaver but you won't have all the upgrades and passives, but that'll come later.

 

RB: Charging Bull

X: Mighty Blow (flexible slot)

Y: Devour (flexible slot)

B: Combat Roll

 

LT+RB: Grappling Chain

LT+X: War Cry

LT+Y: Focus ability

LT+B: Ring of Pain

 

Plays really well I think, probably not optimized but it's not point. Flexible slots can either be Dragon Rage instead of Mighty Blow or perhaps 1H+Shield skills if I feel the need for change and have the points to spare.

[Matth85]

The question is: Do you build for tanking, or for dps?

 

For dps: Drop guard. You don't need guard. You don't get hit. Get everything in Reaver, get the defensive passives in SnB tree, get combat roll, damage on knockdown/stun and stamina regen in battlemaster, get mighty blow in 2 hander and eventually get bull rush for guard.

 

On my level 20 dps reaver, on Nightmare, things goes as follows: I get barrier as combat start. I use Ring of Pain. I use Dragon Roar. I hit for 2k-5k per hit, it cleaves as well. Everything is dead. Once I am down to 10% health, I make sure I got stamina to use ring of pain+ Devour a few times. I am back to 50%. I repeat it. 

It's such a faceroll.

 

For tank: Again, drop guard. Guard is not a very good stat. 25% of your max health? at 1k health thats 250 health. So a counter strike for 15% guard is 37.5 damage. A level 3 enemy hits harder than that. Go for all the defensives in SnB shield, go down the left of 2h for Pommel Strike and forget about reaver untill you craft yourself some Tier 3 gear. Once you get about 50% melee defense, among other things, go into reaver and just annihilate things.

 

------

 

As it stands, reaver is a very annoying specialization. If you invest into reaver, your dps skyrockets, but you don't actually use any other skill. Your stamina is needed or Ring of Pain and Devour. I enjoyed playing no-specialization from 1-19 on nightmare. The control and damage of a knockdown-focused warrior is insane! But.. the damage is useless on dragons. I wish we had Berserk specialization, or something 2 handed that is not reaver!

[Nosseboss]

 

For tank: Again, drop guard. Guard is not a very good stat. 25% of your max health? at 1k health thats 250 health. So a counter strike for 15% guard is 37.5 damage. A level 3 enemy hits harder than that. Go for all the defensives in SnB shield, go down the left of 2h for Pommel Strike and forget about reaver untill you craft yourself some Tier 3 gear. Once you get about 50% melee defense, among other things, go into reaver and just annihilate things.

 

 

I have to disagree with you on this one, guard is the best defensive stat besides barrier. Because over the course of a long dragon fight, you will gain and lose guard equal to multiple total health pools. 

 

And especially for reaver, where you really become a beast when sitting on 20 - 30 % HP, you need to have that guard up to stay alive.

I am playing on Nightmare without a tank and having no problem staying alive while dishing out heavy damage.

 

*Also posted this in the classbuild forum:

 

I played the 2H Reaver on Nightmare and must say I loved it!

Playing as a bloodthirsty beast, trying to balance yourself on 20 - 30 % HP with guard up is really intense:)

 

I skipped the battlemaster and 2H tree completely.

 

At level 12:

Reaver 9 points (everyhing except upgraded ring of pain and upgraded devour)

Vanguard: 3 points (AoE taunt and upgraded Charging Bull)

 

At level 19:

Reaver 9 points (everyhing except upgraded ring of pain and upgraded devour)

Vanguard: 3 points (AoE taunt and upgraded Charging Bull for free devour)

W & S: 7 points (All 4 passives, damage reduction and stamina gain)

 

After this you can pick the points you want to, I upgraded Ring of Pain and Devour and took Crippling Blows in Battlemaster tree.

 

Companions:

Solas (Spirit + Rift) 

Vivienne (Spirit + Winter)

Varric (Pure DPS) (Used Cassandra as a tank until level 15 when I got fade-touched silverite for guard on hit and had some defensive passives)

 

Masterwork on gear for this build: 5 Guard on Hit (2 or 3 works on lower levels)

 

Inquisition Perk: 10% reduced damage taken.

 

Playstyle:

1: Charge in to knockdown enemies and generate guard

2: Use free devour

3: Place Ring of Pain (dont bother in singletarget fights with a lot of movement)

4: Dragon Rage spam until Charge off cooldown

5: Charging Bull to knockdown enemies and generate guard

6: Use free devour

7: Dragon Rage Spam

 

How do you survive on Nightmare with this spec and no main-tank?

* The 3 defensive passives in W & S tree are really strong and work without a shield! And they stack with the 10% inquisition perk

* 2x Mages with Barrier helps alot

* Guard on hit and guard on charge helps a ton.

* The companions have *preferred* on life-saver abilities like stealth, fade step and resurrection so they can survive for some time, but on dragon fights I sometimes end up fighting solo

[Matth85]

And especially for reaver, where you really become a beast when sitting on 20 - 30 % HP, you need to have that guard up to stay alive.

I am playing on Nightmare without a tank and having no problem staying alive while dishing out heavy damage.

 

Are we talking before, or after, you have crafted full Tier 3 with enough resistance to faceroll the game? Because the former I can not agree with you. 

Let's sat you are level 12. You will have about 700 health(You do...). 100% guard is 175. You don't get 100% guard though, you usually get something like 30%. A:la 50. So on top of the 700 health pool, you get 50. Fereldan Frostback hits my level 11 Blackwall, with 200 armor, 44% fire res and 20% melee res, for 86 with a 2 hander on(fully tank specced) with a melee swing. Basically, he breaks my guard faster than I can generate it. 

 

My point is: Guard is not bad. Just not great. It got its uses, especially later-game and on a reaver. But, really, why would you need it? On my Reaver 2h level 21 I juggle Dragon-Roar(is that the name?) and Devour to constantly sit between 10-30% health.  But don't build for it early-game. Other things got priority. Defense % and armor are a lot better. Guard only start to shine when you get solid gear and a lot of health.

[Adhin]

Yeaaah this whole drop guard thing on NM as a Reaver is... no. I can tell you my skills, but 'dropping guard' is a pointless endevor. Also Charging Bull is a very effective method for building Guard. Block and Slash isn't very effective, but it's good battle control and lets you completely avoid 1 normal hit (useless against giants, dragons, and all but the basic attack chain of the 2H brutes). That all said, Dragon-Rage is definitely the highest dmg output skill for a Warrior in the game. Mighty Blow and the like are a redundancy and strain on your stamina. If you want to use em, then use em, but using them means your not using Dragon-Rage, or getting your health back to... use more Dragon-Rage heh. Anyway, skills I use are as follows.

 

X: Dragon's Rage

Y: Block and Slash

B: Combat Roll

RB: War Cry (for a DPS focus, challenge is more worth wild for the 15 stamina per sec buff)

 

2nd Set

X: Devour

Y: Ring of Pain

B: Charging Bull

RB: Rampage

 

So, I mostly don't use Ring of Pain atm unless I need the health back. Basically I Dragon Rage when I need to output more dmg (like when I'm not 'directly' taking dmg). If HP starts getting low I can quickly swap skills and tap Y, then X for a quick health grab. Thing to keep in mind is the description on Devour is a lie. It's not 60% missing hp its 40%. That is its not 40% 'bonus' its 20% bonus while in ring of pain 'to' 40%. Maybe thats a bug and they'll actually upgrade it TO 60%.. that would be nice. Anyway, if your actually taking hits and tanking at that point in time, I tend to leave ring of pain on and auto-attack, counter/roll when needed and use Devour regularly.

 

As far as passives, all the SnB passives are great. Dragon-Rage actually works to trigger the 10% stamina for every 10% HP lost, but you wont be losing 10% of your max life per-second with DRage so your not about to compensate for Ring of Pain with it. But if you just came off using Ring of Pain + Devour and your stamina is low, but hp is high, D-Rage with that passive can help boost it up by the time you need to use Devour again. Beyond that the Vanguard passives for 'not dying' are less useful and should be taken last. When getting Combat Roll going on the left passive is a solid bet. Every Crit will weaken enemies which results in them doing less dmg, which will result in the 20% from the front passive having less to eat at, which will ultimately mean far less dmg for your armor to need to deal with.

 

Which reminds me, the order of all of that is Weakened enemy DMG -> Passive DR% -> Armor -> Defenses. Armor is actually removing x2 the amount it states. So lets say an enemy is doing 800 dmg to your barrier and there hitting you with this from the front. 15% weaken is gonna bring that down to 680, 20% from the front DR is gonna brnig 'that' down to 544 and with higher end armor at 250 armor your looking at only taking 44 dmg from that. Keep in mind most enemies don't hit that hard, and when they do it's a special case, lotta extra bonus dmg and all that nonsense. Things like that you can easily dodge roll. Most basic hits are 400-500 on NM and with 200 Armor, and what I said above, you'll be taking 1 dmg from the front in most cases making your guard this great shield between you and your HP. Which means your HP gets to be a resource for Dragon-Rage. Course, if you get to comfortable, at some point, 'something' till tear your guard again and get at your HP so.. be careful, dodge the bad stuff, counter some stuff periodically, and don't get so cocky you think you can DRage-tank everything - you can't.

 

-edit-

@Matth85: Your talking lvl 11 early game but taking on dragons? That's an... not sure why you would do that on NM. As far as Guard building, Charging Bull is a very effective way while giving you an 'out'. It's pretty cheap too. Actually, one nice combo you can do is Ring of Pain, and just 'tap' charge, which makes the devour free.

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention I'm pretty sure bonus healing helps devour. Pretty sure I got it to 50% instead of 40% with 25% bonus.. though it's hard to test that and I could be seeing things. Anyway theres no need to 'focus' on guard building, because some skills will build it that you'll want to use anyway. Crafted gear later on just make it a hell of a lot easier. +5 guard on hit with 25% dmg regenerated over 10 seconds is a pretty crazy tank combo, especially for a Reaver. or that +5 with 10% chance of Unbowed? Unbowed skill description is lying horribly, it does a hell of a lot more then 10% and yeah... that procs kinda crazy. It'll give you 40-60% proc on a dragon. Easily max you out mid fight in a group.

 

Thing is, getting that doesn't mean I'm gonna just drop Charging Bull. I might not need CB for guard build at that point, but it lets you RUN through enemies, knock things down, reposition, get a free devour use, and close the distance on some jumping dragon. It's like the Warriors multitool skill, I sure as hell aint dropping it just cause I don't need it anymore for guard late game.

[Matth85]

 

@Matth85: Your talking lvl 11 early game but taking on dragons? That's an... not sure why you would do that on NM. As far as Guard building, Charging Bull is a very effective way while giving you an 'out'. It's pretty cheap too. Actually, one nice combo you can do is Ring of Pain, and just 'tap' charge, which makes the devour free.

Ferelden Frostback is only level 12, so I figured it would be fine. It wasn't too much of a problem either.

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention I'm pretty sure bonus healing helps devour.

 

Indeed it does!

 

Thing is, getting that doesn't mean I'm gonna just drop Charging Bull. I might not need CB for guard build at that point, but it lets you RUN through enemies, knock things down, reposition, get a free devour use. It's like the Warriors multitool skill, I sure as hell aint dropping it just cause I don't need it anymore for guard late game.

 

 

Bull Rush gives you 4 things:

1) Movement for position.

2) Knockback for combos.

3) Free hit.

4) Guard.

 

I would not take Bull Rush away, but I would not use it explicitly for guard either -- guard does not hold that much weight in terms of what it does. Bull rush is worth the points it take to get it for many reason. My point was not that Bull Rush was bad -- it's that Guard is not that great. I see plenty of people wondering why they keep dying on Nightmare, just to see them building purely for guard. Guard is good mid-end game, but early on it hold little weight. Of course, if you can get free guard, it's free "health", but don't put your life in the hands of guard.

[Downluck]

Guard is fine when you're generating it passively via fade touched items, but I would never actually spend skill points on it.  

 

Matth85's build recommendation is good.  You just need stuff that complements spamming of dragon rage.  

[Adhin]

Oh yeah you can't rely on Guard solely. I just think saying ignore guard entirely is the opposite extreme and is just as bad of an idea as building purely for guard. You need a middle ground, and thankfully theres a butt-ton of ways to actually build guard with out worrying about it. Also, it's not like guard is barriers here. Ideally you wont actually be taking that 100+ dmg everytime you get hit. You will early on, which is kinda a pain in the ass but that's where dmg avoidance comes in (some of which builds guard, some that doesn't).

 

I'd rather build guard while not focus on it, then drop it entirely is all im saying. And avoiding it like some demon plague isn't a good idea, just as build exclusively for guard is kinda a waste as eventually you'll either take so little dmg 100 max guard would be fine. That and as you've said, earlier lvls no amount of guards gonna really make you a tank-god, it'll help, but its an unreliable help.

 

Also, as has been mentioned in another thread, spending points on something is worth it if it gets you to something you want/need. Vanguard passives I think, honestly, are mostly a waste except the 20% armor boost with guard on. Which would be FAR more useful if it wasn't broken. Sadly, it's broken, and as such loses much of its weight. But in a patch or 2 that wont be the case anymore, it'll stop sucking and it'll function properly at which point getting a 20% armor boost just for having 1 point of guard will be very useful, especially early in the game where you don't 'have' the T3 armor.

 

That's also part of the issue right now though isn't it? A lot of this craps not even working right. +25% max guard? doesn't work in Vanguard, %armor bonuses? Don't work from the front, only from behind/sides. Still useful but not 'as' useful as it should be. And as such I would recommend only getting them late game and only if your being the main tank.

[Azayat]

Thanks for all the advice, to be honest it's more than I bargained for, I'm only playing on Normal so I'm not looking for anything super fine tuned.

 

Can I ask why nobody is using whirlwind? It's probably one of my favorite abilities but I'm just wondering why nobody is using it in their builds.

 

The combat roll seems like an interesting idea, I've been neglecting that tree generally but maybe that and/or grappling chain would be nice. Except it reduces my AoE damage output, no? Can't spam Dragon's Rage 24/7 or I'll kill myself.

[Matth85]

Whirlwind: 75% of your weapons damage(er.....).

- Your normal swing as a 2h does AoE as well. Only after the 4th swing(with the upgrade) will it do more than a normal swing does.

- It requires you to be in the middle of the fight. This tends to mean you get hit by enemy melee cleave.

- There are better abilities to use your global cooldown on. 

- Reaver is about spamming Dragon Roar and Devour. I know! it sucks. But.. that's it. 

 

- Whirlwind is amazing against High Dragons, as you can hit all their legs efficiently doing 4 *75% weapon damage, which increase every spin and gives you stamina back with the passive below it. 

- Whirlwind is amazing with the Hidden Blade Fade Touched Masterwork effect. You procc it constantly.

 

Basically: As a reaver you are too busy spamming Dragon Roar to spend time spinning. Save the stamina for Devour or Ring of Pain.

[Downluck]

Whirlwind is useless for reavers, since dragon rage hits harder, has no cooldown, and is still aoe.  

[EngineerEd]

As it stands, reaver is a very annoying specialization. If you invest into reaver, your dps skyrockets, but you don't actually use any other skill. Your stamina is needed or Ring of Pain and Devour. I enjoyed playing no-specialization from 1-19 on nightmare. The control and damage of a knockdown-focused warrior is insane! But.. the damage is useless on dragons. I wish we had Berserk specialization, or something 2 handed that is not reaver!

 

I wouldn't call it annoying, but I do agree with the general sentiment.

 

I feel that 2H Reaver is basically a slightly more durable DW rogue without stealth. You forego defensive abilities such as block and slash for more damage. You never taunt anymore either. You aim to stay alive more by avoiding any punishing hits with combat roll and/or charge. With lesser enemies why even bother using block and slash when you can kill them with three hits of dragon rage at most. 

 

2H Reaver definitely makes the 2H more comparable to other classes in terms of viability. However it changes the role from an off-tank with two detonators (mighty blow+whirlwind) and two CCs (mighty blow+pommel strike, maybe upgraded grappling chain too) to simply a focused DPSer who can take a hit but prefers not to.

[Azayat]

OK, the explanation makes sense. I guess I'm just drawn in by how "cool" whirlwind looks and feels, but actually come to think of it, IT IS a bit impractical. Funny enough, although the high dragons are the most "efficient" use for the spin, I can never get more than a couple of spins off before the thing either kicks me in the face or just jumps somewhere out of range.

 

Do the Dragon's Rage attacks make use of life steal, as in if I have rings of life steal?

[Adhin]

I'm pretty sure 'Ring of Life Steal' is heal on death, not actual life steal... but yeah it does. There is the Fade-touched stuff that will heal you 1% of your max life per hit? That would work too with Dragon-Rage, ultimately cutting its cost in half. Mixed with Ring of Pains upgrade (which does a 20% reduction) would mean you'd only be losing .6% of your max HP per attack instead of 1 (or well 1.6% but then healing back 1%).

 

Thing is, Dragon-Rage damage output is reliant mostly on you actually 'losing' health. So leeching it back would, ultimately, slow that. Not to bad for a tank-reaver but kinda a waste on a DPS reaver. But if your just looking to get a chunk of your life back everytime something dies, Ring of Life Steal would definitely fulfill that role rather nicely.

 

Are there any rings that give Heal bonus? Cause I'd rather stack that. I know you can get a belt that adds some heal bonus, if you could get that on a ring and a belt that would be pretty nice. Though most folks would probably rather throw in a Dragon-Rage dmg ring instead cause... dmg. Personally I had a Rampage Ring on so I could extent its duration to 13 seconds.

 

Speaking of which, Tier 3 Rampage is... amazing. Sure you stay at max health to whole time but 30% dmg + 30% attack speed with Dragon Rage? Ooohh man your a raging ball of destruction... for 10 seconds (or 13 with the ring).

 

-edit-

So I just saw something when looking up materials. Apparently theres 2 that lower your HP to 12, but make all dmg sources only do 1 dmg. Like doesn't matter how hard it hits, its always 1 dmg, from all dmg sources. That means you can survive 12 hits. Now thinking about this, guard is 25% of your 'max life' right, if that's 12 that would be 3 guard. Add 3 guard on hit and... max guard every hit, needs 3 hits to get rid of guard but you... hit again? Am I the only one that thinks that sounds like DW Rogue or Reaver immunity land?

 

I'd imagine Dragon-Rage would also always do 1 dmg, and Devour would restore you to a max of 4 of your life. You'd be safe-ish to do 10 attacks in a row. With a maxed out Dragon-Rage you could get a double-chain in, 6 hits, use devour, get back 2.4? Wonder if that would be 2, or 3. I guess with 25% heal bonus it would be 3 on the dot, 6 max if you where at 1 left.

 

Man that whole thing just has me super curious now, sounds like that mixed with guard on hit could be absurdly powerful. Would also render a good bit of passives on Warriors useless (like all the SnB ones). Has to be a catch in that right? Like guard ignores that and goes off your normal max HP and takes normal dmg or... something?

[viperidae]

i'm personally invested heavily in the battlemaster and reaver tree, and the "standard" 2H abilities are more my utlitiy skills.

 

What's on my bar atm: Horn of valor - Combat Roll - Devour - Dragon Rage - Ring of Pain  - Mighty Blow - Earthshaking Strike - Rampage

 

Basically, use Horn, plop down Ring of Pain, use Mighty Blow against single target and Earthshaking if there's a group (AA a few times to get stamina and devour here if you've lost health) . Then you just go crazy with Dragon Rage until you're scared about how low health you are, at which point you can either roll out and reset your stamina in safety, or go balls deep and just use auto-attacks to get stamina back (also works if you get bailed out by barrier/taunting at this point).

 

 It's essentially Dragon Rage and your DPS ability until you go low, then get your stamina up, use Devour, and ONLY use dragon rage to reset the cooldown of devour until you're at a comfortable level of HP again.

 

Essential skill points to have imho are the skill that gives stamina regen when you're below 50% staminaa and the upgrades to dragon rage and ring of pain.

 

Oh yeah, and % healing bonus is of course always good to have

[TK8]

There is fade-touched snoufleur skin that gives 1% lifesteal on-hit. I dont know if they stack, but if they do you can completely mitigate the self damage from dragon-rage. If it doesn't stack you can still use dragon-rage twice as long.

 

I haven't tested if it is 1% of your max health or 1% of the damage you deal.

snoufleurs are in emprise de lion really close to the first camp.

[Adhin]

Yeah it states 1% of your max life per hit, not dmg delt. None of these things have proven to stack and I don't think theres a lower % version of it. So you almost certainly can't stack it with even a lower variant. Ring of Pain upgrade also cuts the cost by 20% which ultimately would mean it would only cost you .6% of your max life per use with the 1% max life leech + ring of pain upgrade.

 

Can be worth it but theres a buncha other stuff I'd rather have honestly. To bad there isn't a stamina per hit thing. Would love to be able to use Dragon-Rage to compensate Ring of Pains constant and extremely extensive stamina drain.

[Ou_Deis]

Are the numbers in the dragon rage tooltip accurate? It seems to do much more damage than expected.

 

What's the actual DPS for dragon rage? Anyone timed it? It's like dual wielding two-handed mauls....

[EDM]

Can be worth it but theres a buncha other stuff I'd rather have honestly. To bad there isn't a stamina per hit thing. Would love to be able to use Dragon-Rage to compensate Ring of Pains constant and extremely extensive stamina drain.

 

I just use the SnB passive "Warrior's resolve" that gives 10% stamina back per 10% health lost, I didn't make any close observation but it seems to be working. Ever since I got it I rarely run into situations where I can't devour after a DR 3-hit combo, something that happens very frequently before.

[Adhin]

Yeah, it'll still mean having to turn off Ring of Pain. I never really had a stamina issue with out it I just mean Ring of Pain completely cuts off stamina regen 'and' costs 10 per second. Which is pretty crazy overall, normal auto-attack can on its own over compensate that though. I just would of loved away to do that 'with' Dragon Rage you know?

 

Either way I already planned to get resolve, but that's 10% per 10%. That 'should' take 5 total dragon rage hits (1 hit shy of 2 combos) just to net you what ring of pain cost 'per second'. No way your compensating that lol. Now with that + the one in 2H you could in groups, of course, each hit giving you 10% past the first target? That'd be amazing but wont help on an individual boss fight or anything.

 

Ahh it all doesn't matter, theres just not a singular easy answer to what I want to do. Outside of a group fight it's just not possible.

[Azayat]

OK, so if I invest less heavily into the 2H tree and try to get a bit more utility out of it instead of damage, that opens up a space. I'm thinking something like this:

-Mighty Blow
-Pommel Strike
-Combat Roll
-Charging Bull
-Ring of Pain
-Devour
-Dragon's Rage
-Rampage

I'm not sure how many points I'll have left after that to get upgrades and/or passives from the SnS tree.

As for tactics, I normally charge in then get bailed out by Cassandra who is set to protect me with a leap/war cry/shield bash. And I have her Wrath of Heaven on manual so that's always ready when things really go down. I like having a Templar around but I'm not sure I've built her optimally either, though that's a separate question.

[xaragon]

Had to create an account to give a different point of view currently level 19 nightmare destroying everything.

The main ability I use is whirlwind it seems to be dismissed by everyone else so far as just a dragon killer but they way I run it ( with my other class combinations) it just disintegrates everything in seconds.

Combined with a rift Mage and static cage it spews out rupture combos combined with the reaver passives it kills everything so fast. It can be taken further adding in haste from necro so on and so on.

I would say there is no better aoe combination in the game and if there is I would love to see it.

I'm trying to find the mats for hidden blades- quick question they can be applied to armor not nuts weapons?

Anyway just my two cents.

[Matth85]

Afaik Hidden blade can be put on armor as well. Don't quote me on that though!

 

I see why Whirlwind is there.. but the math doesn't add up. Your AoE normal melee cleave tends to be close to 100% weapon damage. Ungraded whirlwind does 75% weapon damage and cost stamina. What a waste! If you upgrade it you won't hit harder than your melee swing before the 4th(I think) spin. That is a lot  of time wasted. At that point I have killed a High Dragon by spamming Dragon Rage. By using Whirlwind you are also putting yourself in the middle of the pack. If some enemies cleave, you are going to get hit. 

 

But, yes. If you build heavy AoE/CC, then it's nice. It won't do nearly as much damage as Dragon Rage spamming, but it works good enough!

[knownastherat]

I can confirm Hidden Blades on armor. Have it on Iron Bull and it works.