Unless you're going to have a transmuter bitch for metabolic quickening, an item to give you haste (good fucking luck), bloodthirst, or slowed enemies, whirlwind might not be super-impressive. From what I've seen, a haste/slow difference is far more important than -dex. But give it a try, why not?

Personal opinion: ward is a boring fuckin legacy. Take something like maelstrom: everyone who takes it loves it to death. Without knowing your cabal choice or goals, it's hard to really give you much advice. I assume you're wanting to fight someone, land all your -dex maledictions, then hopefully get crazy 8-hit rounds on them and kill them: you need to keep them in combat, and you need to live long enough to land all these maledicts. Cranial should do a good enough job of keeping people lagged (being enlarged would help with this, but hurt your dodging), soul is a good survivability choice on an arial, imo.