Guides > Barbarian > Magic Find/Critical Strike Barbarian

Written by Wizard

In Diablo 2 there was but a single magic finding class, but in Diablo 3 there are magic finding options for every class. However, the Barbarian has several advantages over other classes when it comes to finding those rare items: several of his skills actually increase his magic find percentage on critical strikes. In this guide we will focus on critting hard and often, giving us both high damage output and good magic finding ability.

Skills

	Bash Available at level 1 Unleashed
Generate: 6 Fury per attack Brutally smash an enemy for 145% weapon damage with a 20% chance to knock the enemy back. Generate 7 additional Fury per attack.

This is a good damage spell, and a spectacular way to gain fury using the Golden runestone: Unleashed.

	Frenzy Available at level 11 Sidearm
Generate: 3 Fury per attack Swing for 80% weapon damage. Each swing increases attack speed of Frenzy by 15% for 4 seconds. This effect can stack up to 5 times for a total bonus of 75% attack speed. Each strike has a 55% chance to throw a piercing axe at a nearby enemy that deals 100% weapon damage to all enemies in its path.

Faster attack speed means more opportunities to critical strike. This is also a fury builder, making it a no brainer for a crit build.

	Battle Rage Available at level 3 Swords to Ploughshares
Cost: 20 Fury Enter a rage which increases damage by 30% and critical hit chance by 4% for 30 seconds. Critical hits have a 20% chance to cause enemies to drop additional treasure or health globes.

This is one of the most important skills in the build, it gives you increased damage and critical chance, as well as boosting your magic find with the obsidian runestone on every critical hit. The whole build is centered around this spell, so you will use it pretty much every time it is up.

	Hammer of the Ancients Available at level 2 Birthright
Cost: 20 Fury Call forth a massive hammer to smash enemies directly in front of you for 180% weapon damage. Hammer of the Ancients has a 15% increased chance to critical hit. Critical hits have a 55% chance to cause enemies to drop treasure or health globes.

This spell does a huge amount of damage, and has an increased critical chance, making it ideal for a critical magic find build. And if you thought it wasn't good enough critical strikes with this spell add a whopping 55% to magic find, and it crits often.

	Revenge Available at level 12 Best Served Cold
Inflict 150% weapon damage to all enemies within 8 yards and gain 5.0% Life for each enemy hit. Revenge has a 10% chance to become active for a short time each time you are hit by an attack. After using Revenge, your critical strike chance is increased by 27% for 10 seconds.

Revenge will give you extra damage just for getting hit, and with the Alabaster runestone it will also increase your critical strike chance by quite a bit whenever Revenge procs. This is one of the spells that really allows you to be critting all the time.

	Overpower Available at level 18 Killing Spree
Press the advantage of a powerful attack to overwhelm the enemy for 150% weapon damage to all targets within 9 yards. Overpower becomes available whenever you make a critical hit against an enemy. Whenever used, your chance to critical hit is increased by 22% for 6.0 seconds.

You get to use Overpower every time you crit, which should be extremely often, to deal quite a bit of extra damage. Using the Crimson runestone we can also increase the chance to crit by 22%, meaning that we have a good chance of chaining crits together to just keep critical hitting the enemy.

This is a pretty simple skill set to use. Use frenzy and battle rage whenever you need to reapply them. Whenever you run low on fury and cant get enough from frenzy alone, use Bash to replenish your stores. Bash also deals pretty good damage on its own. Every time you critical hit (which will be quite often) use Overpower, and if your Overpower crits then keep using it until you can't any more. There is a 10% chance that Revenge will proc any time you get hit, just use it every time it is available. Your main source of damage will be Hammer of the Ancients, use this any time you do not have an Overpower up and you have plenty of fury. If a Revenge procs it is good to use Hammer of the Ancients right after, because the Alabaster runestone Best Served Cold gives you a 27% icnreased chance of critical hitting on your next attack.

Passives

	Ruthless Available at level 0
Critical hit chance increased by 5%. Critical hit damage increased by 50%. Many skills and runestone effects rely on critical hits to trigger their effects.

This passive is really key for this build. It gives you a small amount of increased critical chance, but increases critical damage by a whopping 50%! Since you will crit all the time, this is a big icnrease in overall damage.

	Weapons Master Available at level 0
Gain a bonus based on the weapon type of your main hand weapon: Swords/Daggers: 10% increased damage Maces/Axes: 5% chance to critical hit Polearms/Spears: 10% attack speed Mighty Weapons: 1 Fury per hit

If you wanted a different passive or if you don't have any good Axes or Maces I would lose this one first. That said, every bit of increased critical chance makes this build that much stronger, so I would still recomend going for this.

	Unforgiving Available at level 0
You no longer degenerate Fury. Instead, you gain 1 Fury every 2 seconds.

If you do not end up have any fury problems, you can switch this out for something else. With this however, you should always be able to use your most powerful abilities.

General

This build takes those skills (Hammer of the Ancients and Battle Cry) and builds in a very high critical strike chance so you will always have the magic find bonus. In addition to that, this build actually deals quite a bit of damage through constantly critical striking your enemies with increased critical damage through the Ruthless passive. You will also be able to have long streaks of critical hits with the Overpower skill coupled with its Crimson runestone: Killing Spree. Overall this build will give you good damage, high magic find, and little to no fury problems.

Items

Items with high crit, high damage, and high attack speed are the best for this build. Maces and Axes are ideal if you are using the Weapon Master passive. Good armor and lifesteal helps quite a bit, as they are not provided in the skills.

PvE

Getting yourself into fights with a large amount of monsters will increase your chances of Revenge proc'ing, and once it does you can use your Hammer of the Ancients to deal AOE damage to anything right in front of you. This build does not have any lifesteal built in, so getting that on an item or having very good armor will be a must.

PvP

This build is not meant for PvP, as all the magic find would be useless. Don't use this in PvP!!!

Closing

Overall this build is very strong for just playing through the game, giving you better drop rates and good damage at the same time. If you have any suggestions for the build or you have found any mistakes please PM me on the forums.