I was inspired recently to try out a new character once I returned to Deadfire. A barbarian/druid. It sounds cool, but I don't know how to play it effectively. Mixing full casters with non-casters is tricky.

I've been thinking about going Shifter/Corpse Eater. It's kind of thematic, what with eating corpses in animal form, but I don't know how effective it'd be. I'm not married to the idea, either. Has anyone played a barbarian/druid and made the combination work?

I have played furyshaper/ancient, berserker/ ancient  and corpse eater/ancient and they all are really fun to play. 

Because blood thirst triggers with dot spells (plague of insects, infestetation of maggots, insect swarm) you will have a lot of time with zero recovery and also good healing spells( moonwell etc) and storm spells which helps the squishiness of barbarians. Spirit frenzy also lowers fortitude which helps you to land your spells. 

Stag garnage (community patch) and barbarian carnage stacks which is also nice or you could go melee with whispers of the endless path and use taste of hunt aoe dot.

This is all borrowed from @Boeroer  posts so credit where it belongs.

 

 

Edited April 17, 20214 yr by Dalzar

Thematically Corpse Eater/Shifter is cool, unfortunately Corpse Eater is one of the least effective subclasses because in a lot of fights (without kith/beasts/wilder) he's just worse than a vanilla Barb. 

Barbarian/Caster is often a good mix because you'll get the action speed buff of Frenzy which helps with the casting times and the dmg (more might and in case of Berserker more PEN). Then there's also Spiritshift of course. 

You can play a Barbarian/Druid in many different ways. Think about Berserker/Fury who spams elemental spells with up to +4 PEN or Furyshaper/Ancient who terrifies, staggers and weakens enemies while using raw DoTs. Or a melee Shifter variant like you said.

Generally speaking I think the Berserker/Shifter is a better combo - but you can make the Corpse Eater/Shifter work well imo if you concentrate on the Barbarian passives and don't "waste" Rage points on usually cheap Barbarian actives that would be cheap normally but as a Corpse Eater have their price doubled. I would do something like a "on kill" build I guess.

Frenzy is kind of mandatory, but I would go the Blood Storm route because at least its duration can be extended with kills. I would use Barbaric Smash as "finisher" only - in order to get the Rage back on kill. Bloodlust, Bloody Slaughter and Blood Thirst are your friends. Nature's Terror, cast before shifting, is great imo. 

 

 

I figured Corpse Eater might be more trouble than it's worth. It feels fiddly. I'm not married to the subclass, so I might do something else instead. Both the Furyshaper/Ancient CC/DoT machine and a Berserker/Shifter sound interesting.

I played an Berserker/Ancient with the Stag form with the Community Patch which turns the absolutely lame Stag AoE attack into a weaker form of Barb's Carnage - and they both stack. It's cool but not too powerful.

Casting some DoTs before shifting, then running around as Stag dealing good melee dmg with dual Carnage. Using Taste of the Hunt and Stalwart Defiance to counter the Berseker's self dmg.

It was fun.

Berserker/Fury is also fun as nuker - but needs some healing support from the party because Stalwart Defiance sometimes isn't enough and Furies can't use Rejuvenation spells (Taste of the Hunt works though). Taking some of the elemental PEN talents, Berserker Frenzy and the Fury passive and you can cast elemental spells with +4 PEN which is great. You can even grab Deltro's Cage and Lord Darryn's Voulge and give your Storm spells some real Power Level boost on top of the PEN bonus. And melee is also good just with the Voulge + Carnage.  

Looks like I've got quite a few options. I'll have to consider which one I'll take, but I'm leaning towards a Furyshaper/Ancient. I've played a ranger and a ranged chanter most recently so I'll make a melee character this time.