Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Tiger Heart barb is amazing

Just wanted to share my findings.

Not an obvious thing, but tiger barb is insane. It kinda lies on the surface but is concealed at the same time.
It all comes down to the Tiger's Bloodlust ability, which is:

Lash out to attack up to 3 enemies at once. They each take half the damage your weapon usually deals and start to Bleed.

Pretty simple, right? But what this ability does is it gives Cleave to the weapons that do not suppose to have it. How useful is that? I did some testing with different weapons and those are my results:

- Nature's Snare. Procs Entangle on every enemy you hit with this action. It can proc even if you miss. You can ensnare groups of enemies every turn, giving your allies advantage and restraining them, and adding 1d6 damage. Very good.

- Sparky Points. Procs 2 lightning charges from every enemy hit by the cleave. Then +1 (or 1d8) lightning damage is added both on the cleave and the bleeding it causes. Very, very good DPS.

- Shattered Flail. 1d6 healing procs from every enemy you hit with a cleave. On its own this is not very impressive, because the damage is pathetically low, but it shines differently, when combined with...

- Loviatar's Scourge. A necrotic 1d6 AOE procs on every enemy hit by a cleave, which results into a massacre. It deals a ton of damage to not only the enemies (or allies) you hit with a cleave, but also those that are just standing near. Just look at a combat log screenshot below to get a grasp of its potential:

The drawback is self damage - it can get pretty high at times. Here comes the Shattered Flail and the dual-wielder perk, which allows you to heal back all HP lost to the scourge. Or, if you want another lvl4 feat, the Glowing Shield and an Absolute's Amulet could work too.

- Gloves of Power. Bane procs on every enemy you hit with a cleave. A very potent debuff and it can be combined with any of the above mentioned weapons.

Just wanted to share those impressions on a seemingly not that useful subclass, which turned to be a blast in my playthrough.
I'd be happy to hear any other thoughts on building a barbarian, feel free to share.

Interesting. I tried the eagle? hawk? heart barbarian and I think she missed every bloody time I tried to use her jump attack. Tiger is sounding much more useful from what you say here!

sounds like this build is something of a glass cannon... maybe,
the natures snare idea = interesting

There is a similar combo with the Visions of the Absolute spear, which blinds on hit, however the DC is currently bugged and is a flat 8 rather than your spellcasting DC. So it almost never procs.

Did they change the tooltips on the spear? I don't recall there being any mention of it using your save DC previously - especially since not all classes even have a spell save DC in the first place.

Magic items that don't require attunement by a spellcaster almost always have fixed DCs, tied to the item itself rather than the user, and given that Larian are ducking out on attunement entirely, I'd expect that all effects that come from items and can be used by anyone regardless of class or casting ability should have their own fixed DCs.

That said, a DC of 8 IS far too low, regardless, especially since it's got such a specific niche. For weapon with an effect so incredibly specific, the DC should generally be a very hard one, since the item is tailor made for that single situation. For a spear that only works on eye tyrants - an already quite rare creature, comparatively, I'd expect a DC of at least 17.

The DC usage can be tracked through the combat log, and it seems to (pretend) to use your spellcasting DC, which in BG3 is INT by default for non-spellcasting classes. I guess it was done that way temporarily, but I am not sure.


The blinding effect is separate from the extra damage effect and works on every enemy, not multi-eyed creatures only! But even with this in mind 8 is just so low... I didn't do the math, but from my testings it seems to be less than 10% on average...

What makes you say that? O_o
Glass Cannon builds often meaning huge damage, while you have very low durability ... raging Barbarian is one of most durable things in this game.

I think it was a reference to the Loviathar's Scourge build. Rage makes you very tanky, but not tanky enough to take 3d6 Necrotic every turn

Upd: well, I forgot that it gets halved by resistance, but still, 3d6/2 is up to 9 damage each turn, which is substantial...

I dunno ...
You still have bonus action to heal, you mentioned absolute talisman that automaticly heals you if your HP gets too low, there are boots of aid and comfort adding any heal you receive +3 temp HP, while raging you still halves any incoming non-magical damage, and Barbarian have lots and lots and lots of HP ...

I mean yeah "up to 9dmg" may seem like a lot ... but somehow it dont to me in context of the rest.

+ whatever damage the bad guys are doing each round as well yes this build walks a fine line... at least sounds that way to me but I'll test it out later

If you are going to try it, I'd want to mention that the build seems to struggle with reach the first turn, when you need to spend your BA on rage. So having a Crusher's ring, a haste helm and a longstrider can help a lot. Maybe even a chain of liberation. The turns after you can use an enhanced jump (tiger heart adds 4.5m jump range) to keep up.