Diablo III- Skills Article XVI: The Barbarian, Might Skill- Overpower

Overpower (Cooldown 15 Seconds): Deal 165% weapon damage to all enemies within 9 yards.  Reduce the cooldown by 1 second for each critical hit you achieve with this attack.

Overpower is pretty much the default choice for a critical-focused Barbarian.  This is because while the other Might skills may have runes that make them especially n ice for a critical-hitter, Overpower is focused to get better with crits by default.  It is also your area-effect specialist Might skill, since it strikes everything around you.  The damage is fairly intense, and if you use it with enough targets, it refreshes pretty frequently, making it excellent in mass melee.  Still, between Ancient Spear, Revenge, and the better Furious Charge runes, it has some very stiff competition within its slot.  If you don’t find yourself in the middle of a stack of enemies very often, though, or don’t like the idea of fighting from the midst of the largest group of foes you can reach, then get something else.  It also lacks the control potential of Ancient Spear and Furious Charge, though the damage and consistency work out slightly better than vanilla Revenge.  Perhaps its only solid disadvantage is that it doesn’t normally generate Fury.

Storm of Steel (Cooldown 15 Seconds): Deal 165% weapon damage to all enemies within 9 yards.  Throw one axe each at up to three nearby enemies for 50% weapon damage.  Reduce the cooldown by 1 second for each critical hit you achieve with this attack.

Storm of Steel takes the already anti-mass-happy Overpower and gives it even more damage to add when you have a lot of enemies nearby.  Sadly, while this does pump the total damage up pretty high, it’s only to three targets- and if you’re using Overpower correctly, you have a lot more enemies to worry about than that- especially when that extra chunk of damage is randomly targeted.


Killing Spree (Cooldown 15 Seconds): Deal 165% weapon damage to all enemies within 9 yards.  Reduce the cooldown by 1 second for each critical hit you achieve with this attack.  Your critical hit rate is increased by 10% for the next 6 seconds.

Killing Spree is the rune of choice for critical hit monkeys, who liked Overpower to begin with- but now it’s even tastier.  This gets especially nasty if your critical hit chance is up high enough before your first swing of Overpower that you can get six critical hits on that swing.  If you don’t manage that, Best Served Cold will sometimes be better than Killing Spree- but keep in mind that Killing Spree still has superior range, making the area of effect and thus the number of enemies hit that much larger.  At that point it becomes a matter of preference and what you find happening more often.

Crushing Advance (Cooldown 15 Seconds): Deal 165% weapon damage to all enemies within 9 yards.  Reduce the cooldown by 1 second for each critical hit you achieve with this attack.  For the next 4 seconds, 30% of incoming melee and ranged damage is turned back on nearby enemies.

Crushing Advance turns Overpower into a very strange tool of the tanking/damage-engine sort.  While it’s not the most consistent thing in the world, the effect allows you to use Overpower to your advantage in a more defensive build when you are in the frontline defending an ally (or several).  This is best used to your advantage alongside skills that place enemies near you or you near enemies without disabling them- because it makes that lack of stun into not so much an advantage as less of a disadvantage.  It’s a bit quirky, but interesting and, in the right situation, very useful.

Momentum (Cooldown 15 Seconds): Deal 165% weapon damage to all enemies within 9 yards and generate 12 Fury for each enemy hit.  Reduce the cooldown by 1 second for each critical hit you achieve with this attack.

If you need to build up lots of fury for really expensive abilities when in mass-melee, then Momentum makes Overpower into an amazing Fury tool that pretty much absolves you of the need for any other such rune selections.  This works especially well with runes or passive skills that allow you to use Fury-consuming skills that normally have a cooldown time as though they had no such cooldown.

Revel (Cooldown 15 Seconds): Deal 165% weapon damage to all enemies within 9 yards and heals you of 8% of your maximum Life for each enemy hit.  Reduce the cooldown by 1 second for each critical hit you achieve with this attack.

The tool for healing, Revel beats out any other self-healing skills you can have in this slot.  Despite having a longer cooldown than the other Might skills, the healing with its larger area makes Momentum more effective than Vengeance Is Mine, the ability to dish out damage in an area makes it superior to Dread Spear, and the potential to recharge itself faster sets it beyond Dreadnought (as well as not requiring a knockback-inducing charge).  If you find yourself in need of regular healing and can’t rely on an ally for it, Revel is going to be one of your favorite skills ever.