Whirlwind Barbarian Build Skills for Diablo 2 Resurrected

1. 1 point to all prerequisites
2. 20 points to Whirlwind — Main damage skill, required
3. 1 point to Leap Attack — Useful for movement, required
4. 20 points to Weapon Mastery of choice (for instance, Sword Mastery) — Passively increases damage, Attack Rating, and Critical Strike
5. 1 point to Increased Speed — Helps you move faster, required
6. 1 point to Natural Resistance — Massive boost to Resistances, required
7. 1 point to Battle Command — Increases the level of all skills, required
8. 20 points to Battle Orders — Massive Life and Mana increase, required
9. 1+ points to Shout — Increases Defense, required
10. 1 point to Taunt — Can be useful to draw out monsters, optional
11. 1+ points to Battle Cry — Great for lowering the Damage and Defense of monsters, optional
12. 1+ points to Find Item — Useful to use on Unique monsters for additonal loot, optional

Whirlwind has plenty of points to discuss, first being that at level 1, it actually has a -50% Damage penalty and provides no Attack Rating. As such, you may wish to wait until a few skill points have been invested into the skill before relying entirely on it.

The attack speed of Whirlwind is also worth discussing. Since Diablo 2 runs at 25 frames per second (even if Diablo 2: Resurrected runs faster, the back-end system still computes values based on the 25 frames per second). The first two attacks during the animation of Whirlwind come on the 4th and 8th frame, no matter which weapon is equipped. The following attacks will then hit anywhere from 4 to 14 frames later, depending on the speed of the weapon as well as whether it is one- or two-handed. This generally means that you will want to equip very fast weapons or use Whirlwind in very short bursts to benefit from the two first frames, which always deal damage at the highest speed possible. Another benefit of what is commonly known as "short spins" is that they allow you to use Potions between casts, as Whirlwind prevents the use of Potions for its duration. It also allows for better control.

Once the Barbarian starts to find some decent gear like Grief or Breath of the Dying, the build really picks up in power and becomes one of the strongest builds both capable of PvM and PvP fights. Generally not advised as a first character, but not impossible to play through the game.

The following section discusses how many attribute points should be allocated to each of the primary stats.

Enough for gear — Your weapon will most likely have the highest Strength requirement for this build, and so investing whatever that number may be is the appropriate thing to do. However, this number always changes based on the gear you are using, so make sure to always double check the Strength requirement of each piece of gear you have as well as how much Strength each piece will provide once equipped. You technically can place additional points into Strength to increase your damage if you feel that you are resilient enough as it is. Each point of Strength provides a modest 1% Increased Damage for most weapons.

Enough for gear — The same logic as Strength applies to Dexterity. The little amount of Attack Rating gained per Dexterity point ends up not being worth it most of the time and, and it is generally better to invest into more Vitality instead.

Everything else into Vitality — 250+ Vitality. Every excess attribute point should be allocated to Vitality, as long as you can meet the Strength and Dexterity requirements of your items by the time you wish to equip them.

Nothing — allocating stat points to Energy in a final build is universally considered sub-par for almost every character due to the widespread availability of Mana Potions.