Whirlwind and combat expertise feats

[Velqor]

Currently whirlwind is completely useless due to its high cooldown and shabby effect. My suggestion is to have it do two rounds of attack in a 360 arc. So if you have a 1 d 6 weapon it would double to a 2 d 6 on everything surrounding you. This would make this feat potentially useful and have more people going that route instead of power attack, cleave, greatcleave which can be spammed back to back and are highly useful.

Combat expertise currently shuts off whenever a spell, spell like ability, or item with a spell charge are used. I already sacrifice + 5 to hit and everyone already gets the defensive fighting feat reinforcing how not useful combat expertise is. My suggestion is for Combat expertise not to shut off but to give a chance of arcane spell failure be it 50% or 100%. Also it should not affect monk abilities or buffs from armor.

Thank you for your time.

[Angelus_dead]

Great Cleave and Whirlwind should both have the same cooldown as Cleave. Having a larger cooldown makes them inferior to a feat with fewer prereqs, which is wrong.

Even if Whirlwind got double damage like you say, that probably wouldn't really be enough to compensate for the present cooldown.

Another suggestion
The cooldown for Cleave (and similar abilities) is reduced by effects which increase your attack rate, including Haste, Tempest, and even TWF. That should apply both to the cooldown before you can Cleave again, and also to the shorter lockout period before you can resume attacking normally. Also, the Cleave animation plays correspondingly faster.

The reason for that is because Cleave starts out as moderately helpful, but it becomes relatively worse as buffs and advancement bring your attack speed up and up. For an example (using numbers from before today's patch), at low level Cleave took as long as two S&B swings, meaning that if you had two enemies it was neutral to your DPS, and with 3+ enemies your DPS would be higher. But by high level you could make 3 regular attacks in the time to Cleave, raising the threshold at which it was useful.

And if you switched to TWF, then you'd need 5+ enemies around you just for Cleave to break even with the DPS you already had.

A balance consideration
When judging the power of Cleave-like feats, it's important to remember that concentrated DPS is better than distributed (as long as we're not in an overkill situation, which doesn't really happen with melee attacks). The reason is obvious: because each individual monster stops being dangerous once a threshold of damage is reached on it.

For example, if I am surrounded by 4 monsters with 100 hp and I can use either single attacks at 50 DPS or a Cleave-feature that does 15 DPS to anything nearby, which would be better? Using Cleave means I'm putting out a total of 60 DPS, which is higher than the alternative. Since all mobs are damaged equivalently, they'll all die simultaneously in 6.6 seconds, giving them a total of 4*6.6 = 26 seconds to damage me. But single attacking would mean that they die sequentially at 2 second intervals, allowing them 4*2 + 3*2 + 2*2 + 1*2 = 20 net seconds to damage me.

Thus, going to higher DPS can be less effective if it means your damage is shared between many mobs, instead of focused on quickly getting a single mob out of the fight. (That disadvantage is greatly increased if the mobs have regeneration or healing)

[Nevernew]

Cleave and the like should be toggle skills that increase the damage and arc of your swings for the cost of swinging slower. Having whirlwind activated should swing in a 360 arc, applying full or close to full damage to every monster in range. You'll simply just swing slower than normal.

I find it odd that it's not like that currently.

[Velqor]

I disagree with both of you and think that my way would compensate better. Say I rush into the middle of a crowd with a cursespewing weapon or a destruction or any number of other things that are major debuffs on mobs. I hit every mob around me twice giving me a very high chance of hitting and getting the debuffs on them. I think this would balance it out. Not everything in game is about max damage sometimes you have to use tactics. As this feat is gained after having combat expertise it would make more sense that way.

[Angelus_dead]

I disagree with both of you and think that my way would compensate better. Say I rush into the middle of a crowd with a cursespewing weapon or a destruction or any number of other things that are major debuffs on mobs. I hit every mob around me twice giving me a very high chance of hitting and getting the debuffs on them.

Just think harder about the example you just gave:

Option 1: Keep the Whirlwind cooldown the same, but have it do two attacks on each nearby mob.
Result: You run into a bunch of mobs and hit them all with destruction 2x, which doesn't stack with itself and is no better than hitting them once.

Option 2: Reduce the Whirlwind cooldon, and keep it doing 1 attack on nearby mobs.
Result: You run into a bunch of mobs and hit them all with destruction 1x, which is just as good as twice, plus you can do it more frequently for the next bunch of mobs.

[Velqor]

Yet if your duel wielding and have 1 destruction and 1 curspewer and you hit everyone around you twice, id say totally worth it. So I just like my idea better is all. Its just my suggestion. So what do you think about combat expertise ?

[Xalerwons]

Yet if your duel wielding and have 1 destruction and 1 curspewer and you hit everyone around you twice, id say totally worth it. So I just like my idea better is all. Its just my suggestion. So what do you think about combat expertise ?

They should make combat expertise like power attack, and just neglect to give the additional AC while casting. So it's the same effect as toggling CE back on appropriately, but with much more convenience.

[Angelus_dead]

Yet if your duel wielding and have 1 destruction and 1 curspewer and you hit everyone around you twice, id say totally worth it. So I just like my idea better is all. Its just my suggestion.

No, that's not your suggestion.

Your suggestion didn't include anything about using the offhand weapon for some of the attacks.

[Velqor]

Well that is my suggestion. If you didnt see it the way i saw it because i didnt explain myself well enough then fine, but thats how I would like it to be. Also I agree with Xalerwons on a fix for combat expertise. That would be righteous.