Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Bear Heart Barbarian - Twohanded or Onehanded?

Currently the Berserker Barbarian with his bonus action is a lot stronger than the Bear Heart Barbarian (the rest of the Wildheart variants are ... kind of ok-ish/situational) because he gets no exhaustion, has a nice ranged Prone option and most damage received currently is physical. I presume that later on with higher levels enemies will deal a lot more magical damage, so the Bear Heart could shine as a kind of tank.

Lets assume someone would want to go Wildheart instead of Berserker. Would you go twohanded or onehanded + shield with a Bear Heart Barbarian?

The damage with twohanders, GWM and Relentless Attack is ridiculously high and easy to achieve, making fights a breeze. Do you think the shield will make a difference for defense and survival big enough to matter? I'm playing without Karmic Dice, so hits against high AC are less likely (and presumable more on the normal DnD level, I read), making a shield a lot more precious than in "normal" BG3. You also could forgo using Relentless Attack more often. But I have the feeling that the higher damage is a better "defense" than higher AC as dead enemies don't do damage.

I feel like going 1 handed with shield is really nerfing the Barbarian even more damage-wise than just going bear-heart. If the enemy can ignore you as a damage threat on the battlefield then you are failing as a tank. Why engage you at all?

Meanwhile a properly geared Berserker can do up to 120 damage per round with 4 attacks (not hasted) and with the Susser Greatsword can silence opponents and be resistant to physical damage. The best kind of tanking is killing your enemy quickly before they can do damage.

And you are right, with BearHeart - the extra elemental damage resistances have not panned out as being particularly useful on the battlefield. However, even long term your casters are the ones responsible for stopping AOE elemental attacks and any high damage directed Elemental attacks against you with Counterspell. So it doesn't have to be all you especially if you are soaking all the physical damage and rushing shit on the battlefield.

Well i saw in the new trailer that we can roll for stats .
I calculated out the hp of the lvl 5 rouge in the trailer and the only possible solution is to have 18 con and she picked up tough feat.

So thats mean in the 1.0 bear will be so much stronger with pole arm mastery amd rolled stats.
Dont worry berserker will be not the strongest.
There are only two S tier babrs wolf and bear.

This is all speculative based on zero evidence. I was working with what we currently have. So far the Tabletop tier-lists have not really panned out in bg3.

Like the Rogue which is consistently undervalued on those TT tier lists is in S tier class (subclass Thief) - just wrecks it in bg3. (at this point everyone starts complaining about stealth blah blah blah..)

The Barbarian Berserker gets undervalued because of the Exhaustion mechanic, which isn't in bg3.

The only reason i can find to even create Bearbarian is to play a tank ...
So, logicaly, i would pick 1h+Shield ... i mean, if my main focus is toughness, i want to do it properly, not stop halfway there ... and if my main focus is damage, i wouldnt play Bearbarian in the first place. :-/

//Offtopic:

I'm not sure, but don't npcs prioritize low ac targets? So equiping a shield on your barbarian would increase the chance that other party members get hit, which is generally not what you want.

In the playstation trailer around 57-58 sec there is a drow rouge lvl5 with 78 hp.
That is only possible if that rouge have 18 construction and thoughness feat aid cast from lvl 3 spell and drinking from auntie's well.
With the current point system this is impossible.

You have a sharp eye, haven't you? My main impression of the trailer was Shadowheart wearing an almost plate-like garment (so, sadly not showing much skin ), stupidly without a (visible) helmet, and a bad guy in a ridiculous spiky World of Warcraft boss armor. I should try to get better.

Jokes aside, if rolling for stats would be in, why would that make Bear Heart stronger? BTW the use of polearms would not suit me well, I'm more or less looking for arguments to not take a feat at lvl 4 because I want to play as wood elf, a shitty choice for Strength based classes. Rolling for stats could generally help here, of course.




That's interesting, what would be better for damage dealing in your opinion?

I have only experience with BG3 EA, the Barbarian is possibly at least the easiest way to always get big numbers throughout even long fights. He is weakest in the first turn where Fighter and Paladin can shine better, but on the longer run? GWM Beastmaster Ranger may be better but that's mainly because of his boar being a little Barbarian, and it's quite op. Thief Rogue I cannot access, I don't like the Rogue class and never played one or had Astarion in my party after lvl3.




If that would be the case, the whole concept of a tank would be shattered, or at least reduced to classes with a taunt ability. The Barbarian could then tank best, without armor and with a twohander, a bit strange, but why not.

Let me explain here how can the Bear Barbarian effective here.
The bear Barbarian raging gives him an extra healing 1d8+construction modifier/round( well this is Larian's home brew).
The polarm mastery gives him an extra hit as a bonus action+ a free opportunity attack as a reaction if they are try to enter in your reach..
Also polarms have 1d10 dmg and its really good with savage attacks . + They have an extra reach . So enemy will not want to go away from you .An every turn you can heal your self 1d8+5 so that can be calculated as 12-26 hp bonus to your maximum hp that's insane.

Also it isnt confirmed and i still think we will get just 12 lvl.
But others on YouTube ect.... Pointed out that we will reach lvl 8 in the end of act 1. And Larian sayed act 2 and 3 will be longer. So the asume we will get at least 2 more time the same amount of experience like in act 1.
And thats enough to lvl up to 14.
At lvl 14:
Bear. While you're raging, any creature within 5 feet of you that's hostile to you has disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than you or another character with this feature. An enemy is immune to this effect if it can't see or hear you or if it can't be frightened.
Btw if you have to high ac the enemys are usly targeting someone else.
Bear is the best almost immortal and a realy good tank.
And it isnt so far away from berserker with polarm mastery.

In my experience as a dm the last person standing was always thea bear barbarian.
And you can kind a see that in the game every encounter what we a facing in act 1 the last enemy that dont want to die is always the barbarian expecialy those two duregars.

I had the same idea before t it have some flaws.
I i got destroyed but a cupple of enemys.

All paladins can literally one soot this build. Minthara for sure 6d8 radiant damage pff..... Ketheric for sure as hell.
And when your barbarian get one shooted then you are doing something wrong.
Second thing the idea of sussur great sword i like .
But if you dont have the initiative than its pointles.
I had a bug report about this. If your enemy have the initiative and you are hitting the emeny successful as soon as he started his second round he is loosing the silent status.
I mean wt... What's the point of this weapon.

Well i liked the idea to use sussur but 1 flaw here is the 2d6 wepon damage.We will have half orc and savage attack d12 and d10 wepon damage becomes much more better . Also not taking medium helmet is a death sentence in this game expecialy for barbarian's.
Of course everyone can say i saw on YouTube this and that yes i know. But to shove and use sneak in this game is broken.
And in this way even a wizard can kill everyone with one crossbow.

Polearm Mastery sounds amazing. On the other hand my experience from the EA is more in the direction Blackheifer pointed at. My easiests fights ever I had with my half elf GWM Berserker Barbarian in the party. The question perhaps is how easy it will be to protect against elemental damage with potions in the few real fights to come? I never ever used potions except for healing in the combat since EA release, but there seem to be some against all kinds of damage.

I also have to see how playing without the weighted dices will go. I did disable it just some weeks ago. It changes gameplay considerably, so any advice given should mention wether weighted dices are on or off. I have not that much experience (only three campaigns), but what I can say is that it sometimes can be a bit annoying (or funny) to miss in a turn completely with all attacks with all chars . Not quite surprisingly it seems that having more attacks is better than having few big boom attacks (like Paladins or casters), and having high AC armor is more important. The player can deal with the "fast and easy to hit"-combat with weighted dices much better than the AI, so playing without helps the AI more than the player.

Well it depends what we will get. If we are getting multi class.
Then my fellow barbarian paladin fans we will have the strongest combination oth both worlds. 3 lvl berserker an oath of ancients. Resistant to everything at lvl 7 paladin 3 lvl berserker. Always advantage 3 attacks. Heals and divine smite.
But kind a to broken for my taste.