Diablo III- Skills Article XXIX: The Barbarian, Theorycraft One: Critical Splash

This version of the Barbarian is a critical hit monkey that relies on area attacks and swinging as fast as it can to generate a maximum number of side effects.

Primary Skill- Frenzy (Sidearm)
Secondary Skill- Whirlwind (Blood Funnel)
Defensive Skill- Leap (Call of Arreat)
Might Skill- Overpower (Killing Spree)
Tactics Skill- Battle Rage (Bloodshed)
Rage Skill- Wrath of the Berserker (Slaughter)
Passive Skills- Ruthless, Weapons Master, Boon of Bul-Kathos

By keeping Bloodshed active, just the skills on the build will maintain an extra 18% critical hit rate as long as the main-hand weapon (preferably dual-wielding) is an axe or mace weapon.  When Killing Spree and Slaughter are both active (as they should be a good part of the time Slaughter is active), the critical hit rate bonus improves to 38%- better than one in three hits.  This makes reduction on the recharge for Overpower(Killing Spree) pretty much a certainty, and using Whirlwind (Blood Funnel) and Frenzy (Sidearm) in between Bloodshed swings will keep the rate of critical hits up.  The sheer number of hits being pumped out should keep Critical Splash’s Fury up, especially if the off-hand weapon is one of the Mighty swords that Barbarians can use.  Leap is used to enter combat, Call of Arreat providing plenty of targets for the first shot of Overpower and ideally causing it to recharge quickly even on the first hit.  Because of Slaughter and Bloodshed, a lot of the damage coming out will get spread between nearby targets, so it doesn’t even matter that Frenzy is a single target attack- particularly with the aid of Sidearm it should be regularly dishing out area bursts of damage.

Alternatively, Cleave (Rupture) can be used as a Primary skill, just to increase the area-effect damage, though there’s likely going to be a smaller number of critical hits fed out that way, and Fury isn’t going to be generated as quickly.  There’s some potential to be a Fury-guzzler in the build, since the only skills providing Fury are Leap and Frenzy, but thankfully Overpower doesn’t burn any Fury, and Wrath only fires once every minute and a half even if you conserve Fury for it.

Some would use Revenge instead of Overpower, but in this case the Barbarian is going to be ideally slaying everything near them too quickly to get hit much, and Overpower is simply better for that than Revenge.  A more ‘passive’ build could be done with Revenge (Best Served Cold), Cleave (Scattering Blast), Hammer of the Ancients (Birthright),  and swapping Boon of Bul-Kathos out for Pound of Flesh just to get some health globes in, but that would not really be a good way to take advantage of a high critical rate- a setup like that involves knocking enemies away and letting them come back, where a critical Barbarian usually will want to take the fight to the enemy.