Healing Barbarian: Worst build attempt

[Odd Hermit]

For fun I wanted to try making the worst build I could think of. I may actually try soloing PotD with it for a little while just to see how painful it is.

 

Role: Be as useless as possible to a party and reasonably inept on his own.

 

Race: Nature Godlike (I debated Mountain Dwarf, but they get to wear helmets)

 

Class: Barbarian

 

Attributes:

• Mig 3
• Con 18
• Dex 16
• Per 3
• Int 19
• Res 19(+1 Culture)

Culture: Aedyr - Slave (+Athletics, Survival)

 

Skills: Everything into Athletics, @ level 16 put remaining into a bit of stealth(3) and survival(5). 

 

Abilities:

 

1 Barbaric Yell

3 Savage Defiance

5 Bloodlust

7 Blood Thirst

9 Vengeful Defeat

11 Thick Skinned

13 Heart of Fury

15 Brute Force

Talents:

 

2 Novice's Suffering

4 Arms Bearer

6 Quick Switch

8 Gunner

10 Wound Binding

12 Shot on the Run

14 Bloody Slaughter

16 Bear's Fortitude

 

___

 

So, to explain some of these choices:

 

Barbarian is chosen because they have a fair number of abilities that are limited to purely damage output/weapon based attacks. They have no spells, which is super important for making a useless character since we don't want useful buffs, debuffs, summons, anything. They also don't have Lore, Mechanics, or Stealth. This character can't use a Scroll or Trap, or even scout things.

 

He can heal himself for a lot with the Second Wind but it's pretty redundant with Barbarian's existing self healing.

 

Nature Godlike was chosen because it has a nice anti-synergy with a high con, high-ish res character. And they can't wear helms, as I mentioned, making them kind of like a worse Human.

 

Attributes were chosen pretty much to make damage output as bad as possible. Has high Int, but his Carnage will do so little it's not a big deal and of course with 3 perception and no +accuracy talents/abilities he can't hit the broadside of a barn anyway and is unlikely to even interrupt when he does.

 

I stayed away from movement increasing stuff for the most part, just to avoid making the character good for kiting tactics like dragging one group of enemies to another.

 

I grabbed some ranged weapon talents but this character can't do much with them. He could do some quick gun swapping, but guns with 3 might and perception aren't going to do much. He can punch people a bit harder, but he's no monk and that forgoes any enchantment help.

 

The result of minimizing offensive capability has resulted in more durability than I'd like, Still, defenses are mediocre, Barbarians have low base resolve and I didn't take enough deflection talents to make this character a great avoidance tank. HP is high and he can self heal, but shouldn't be particularly good at tanking and of course has very limited ability to punish disengagement.

[Heijoushin]

Obsidian has mentioned in several interviews that one of their design goals with the attributes system was to make almost any build viable. Is this a challenge to that design goal?

 

Actually, your healing barb could still be a good tank. I mean, someone must hold the front line. I personally think an ineffective and fragile class would be a lot more useless. 

[Blunderboss]

Obsidian has mentioned in several interviews that one of their design goals with the attributes system was to make almost any build viable. Is this a challenge to that design goal?

 

Actually, your healing barb could still be a good tank. I mean, someone must hold the front line. I personally think an ineffective and fragile class would be a lot more useless. 

I agree , if you really want useless character u must make melee who is squishy as fck , then try to flank someone and eat 25 most random disengagement attacks ( even if those enemies are attacking ur tank lol ) 

Barbarian with Maxed Con and Resolve would probably make quite decent tank 

Edited March 25, 2016 by Blunderboss

[Heijoushin]

Yeah, for example: roleplay a weak & cowardly rogue. Then hide behind the other characters during combat (^_^)

[Odd Hermit]

Obsidian has mentioned in several interviews that one of their design goals with the attributes system was to make almost any build viable. Is this a challenge to that design goal?

 

Actually, your healing barb could still be a good tank. I mean, someone must hold the front line. I personally think an ineffective and fragile class would be a lot more useless. 

 

It is somewhat a challenge to that design goal, though the talent selection part is a little unfair since talents are better off with good variety and you can't have every talent be useful to all builds without dramatically limiting our options.

 

If I were to make a "worst character build challenge" I'd probably try to make some sort of rule about talent choices. Race, Class, Abilities, Skills, etc. all fair game though.

 

I don't think he would make a good tank, and the role of tank has gotten more demanding. This character doesn't have bonus engagements, poor reflex save, and has no additional utility like Paladins/Chanters, and can't hard CC targets like a fighter or monk tank might.

 

Making an ineffective and fragile class seems more difficult, because the build is supposed to bad, I don't think it's fair to assume the player using it will also use it poorly. It's meant to be a build that even an experienced player would have trouble making good use of.

 

To make a very fragile character you will end up with more offensive power and in the right hands that is more useful than a durable character right now IMO.

 

But I'd like to see someone try going for both a fragile and terrible damage character - I still find that even a terribly built caster will have some use. It'd have to be rogue, but rogues get 2 mechanics, high base accuracy, a significant damage boost, and don't have so many poor ability choices to pick from.

[hilfazer]

You don't have to spend all attribute points.

[Odd Hermit]

You don't have to spend all attribute points.

 

Too easy/obvious to just make a character with minimized attributes and isn't really in the spirit of the challenge.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Odd Hermit

[hilfazer]

 

You don't have to spend all attribute points.

 

Too easy/obvious to just make a character with minimized attributes and isn't really in the spirit of the challenge.

 

 

Why? He would "Be as useless as possible to a party" with all stats dumped.

 

Some players are doing exactly this.