Diablo II: Whirlwind Barbarian Skill Layout

A Whirlwind (WW) Barbarian is a character that uses the Combat skill Whirlwind as his main attack. This skill consists of the character spinning through hordes of monsters damaging them as he goes. He can take damage as this happens, but will only die once the WW cycle is complete. The damage this type of build generates completely depends on what type of weapon is utilized. Most of the damage will be physical, but with certain equipment choices quite a bit of elemental damage can be included as well to allow the character to deal with physically immune monsters. This particular build is a fairly slow starter and lots of skill points are left unused initially. The skill setup is as follows:

Bash - 1
Howl - 1
Leap - 1
Shout - 1
Taunt - 1

At level six some prerequisites become available. None of that are all that special, although the warcries do allow the character a fair amount of crowd control for such a low level. To this end Howl is quite helpful to keep the character from being mobbed while Bash becomes the main attacking skill.

Stun - 1

At level twelve not much changes from level six. Stun isn't used to replace Bash as the main attacking skill as Bash does well enough to allow the character to progress at a fair pace.

Leap Attack - 1
Concentrate - 1
Battle Cry - 1
Iron Skin - 1

At level eighteen a few more skills become available that make progression simple for the character. Concentrate can replace Bash if desired as the main attack, but it's not completely necessary, and war tactics remain basically the same up to this point.

Battle Orders - 1

At level twenty-four the character obtains the use of one of his main skills. At this level it isn't very useful due to the short duration period, but for some battles every little bit helps. It's best to recast BO after each monster encounter to ensure it doesn't run out during a heated fight.

Battle Orders - 7
Battle Command - 1
Natural Resistance - 1
Whirlwind - 1
Berserk - 1

At level thirty is where things start to get going for this character. All of his main skills are now available and he is able to use his main attack, Whirlwind. Along with this the duration of BO is extended to be more viable as it doesn't require as much recasting as before.

Whirlwind - 20
Battle Orders - 20

The next thing to accomplish is to max out both of the main skills, which is finished at level forty-nine. This means at the very beginning of Nightmare the character has an insane amount of life and deals quite a bit of damage, as long as he is able to leech back enough mana to keep going as WW is a fairly mana intensive skill.

Shout - 20

Shout is maxed out by level sixty-five. This gives a greater duration to BO and BC and also increases the character's defense significantly. While increased defense may not seem like much, if the right equipment is used it helps ensure that the character can avoid enough damage to survive each WW cycle. The extended duration of BO means it only needs to be cast every once and a while and doesn't need to be worried about as much as before.

Mastery - 20

At this point the weapon mastery should be maxed to provide extra Attack Rating and damage to the character's attack. This is completed by level eighty-one. The type of mastery to max out depends on the weapon(s) chosen by the character. This can be left to last as the bonuses given will not make or break the build and Hell can be completed without this skill, depending on weapon chosen of course. After this the skills to place points in could be either Iron Skin for the added defense bonus or Natural Resistance for the added resistances. Which one depends on what the character is in need of. If the character is fairly close to the 10,000 defense mark then Iron Skin would be fairly useful, otherwise Natural Resistance is the route to take.

Final Skill Distribution:

Whirlwind - 20
Mastery - 20
Shout - 20
Battle Orders - 20
Battle Command - 1
Berserk - 1
Natural Resistance - 1
Iron Skin - 1