Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Barbarians Unrelenting Ferocity – A trap to even use?

As the title says is Unrelenting Ferocity actually even worse than useless.

My reasoning goes:

First you can only use while raging, hence in combat. Second it only heals a very small amount (1D8 + Con bonus, say 6/7 total) less than you will get hit for on the next attack against you most of the time.
Third, and most seriously - the bit that makes it worse than useless, it takes an ACTION to cast – meaning you FORGO your attack that round.

TLDR: it only heals you for a very small amount and you lose your attack action to cast it, which could have been a lot of damage and have helped to end the fight. Or am I missing something?

Discuss :

I thought its ment as last action before rage ends. O_o
You know ... like last round of the fight, your group vs. enemy ... you heal yourself, someone else will finish enemy off ... next round rage will end anyway.
That kind of stuff.

Cant say i would mind they they change it to Bonus Action tho.

Yeah, it is quite bad. I would rather just be a beserker and use the special flail that heals on hit. Then you can do 2d6 healing as well as two normal attacks, with rage damage, using a +2 weapon. Seems better than just spending your whole turn for 1d8+con, which is a similar healing amount and does no damage. Add in the amulet of the absolute or grim helmet (both triggering when you would actually want/need to heal) and this ability starts looking really bad. The would healing increase to up to 3d6+1d8 for free in addition to three strong, highly damaging melee attacks in a single turn.

Also, bear-heart suffers from the same problem as other high defense oriented character builds; having no ability to “taunt” enemies into targeting them. The AI loves to go after the weakest party members (which a barbarian will never be) so the bear-heart will mostly just be ignored and not take any significant amount of damage that would require healing. I feel to make bear-heart a useful character concept, some kind of taunt-like ability is needed.

In my opinion, none of the wild-hearts really make any sense to use instead of a berserker. The only thing they have going for them is facial piercings and a cool name.

With wolfheart, why give your companions advantage in melee when you can just use enraged throw with berserker, knock them prone, and give both advantage and do a ton of damage at the same time with no positioning requirements. That said, wolf heart does seem the best of the wildhearts to me as the passive is at least useful and doesn’t require an attack roll.

Same goes for elkheart’s ability of knocking enemies prone, enraged throw does the same but also does significantly more damage (applies strength ability twice along with weapon damage and rage damage and other modifiers) and also doesn’t fail often due to a low DC saving throw like with elkheart’s ability. Being usable at range and from other elevations while also in melee range of enemies without any disadvantage or needing to disengage makes it easier and more reliable to use enraged throw than Elk’s charge ability.

But Tiger heart’s ability is probably the worst. Both low damage and can be done with any class using a weapon’s cleave action in the rare times things line up where it is more useful than just auto-attacking (which isn’t very often at all now that the damage was halved per target). It is supposed to be a bit better because it adds a bleed condition, but at the same time it doesn’t apply rage damage for some reason (bug maybe?) so it is really no better damage-wise. Worse, you can’t even reckless attack with it since reckless was implemented as an attack action instead of a passive you can toggle on or off which hurt all the wild hearts with their special non-bonus action abilities. So it is a half-damage attack with low relative accuracy; not useful unless you can hit three enemies at once which basically never happens given the small AOE area. It is significantly worse than a Ranger with Horde-breaker which serves the same goal of hitting two enemies next to each other, but the Ranger’s attacks do full damage and can also be used at range, unlike Tigerheart making their version significantly better.

I haven’t used Eagle-heart much, but I can’t imagine why I would ever want to jump on enemies from above with the only real benefit being no fall damage. It looks cool for sure, but tactically it makes no sense. Why not just stay on the high ground and throw axes on your enemies and utilize high ground attack bonuses while at the same time having your enemies’ ranged attackers suffer penalties? By not jumping down, you make them waste their actions trying to get to you. The other benefit of granting disadvantage on opportunity attacks… you could just get an item (or mobility feat) that makes yourself completely immune to opportunity attacks if that is a core part of your strategy; though trying to disengage from enemies as a barbarian seems rather odd anyway. If you want to pick off a different enemy first just throw an axe (or the enemy your engaged with at them; problem solved.

The main issue I have with all the wild hearts is that their abilities are both very situational and weak at the same time and, by not being bonus actions, you lose out on one of the best features of barbarian - reckless attack. Meanwhile berserkers’ abilities are always useful in every situation, much stronger, and only take a bonus action to use.