RomanL
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13 Min read Through their connection to nature and its beasts, Wild Heart Barbarians are able to harness the powers of different animals to enter their rage.
Their high melee damage and front-line potential, coupled with their high Constitution and Armor Class (AC), will make them a terror on any battlefield.
With access to many different Bestial Hearts, changing the way their Rage manifests itself, there’s a lot of customization for this class.
This Wildheart Barbarian build guide will go until Level 6 and will be updated as I reach higher levels.
Find out where the Barbarian ranks in our Baldur’s Gate 3 class tier list.
Wild Heart Barbarians are able to alter and/or gain new abilities during their Rage. For example, if you choose Bear Heart as your Bestial Heart, then you gain access to Unrelenting Ferocity and Resistance to all damage except Psychic damage during your Rage.’
At Level 3, you can choose from 5 different Bestial Hearts. You’re able to change your Bestial Heart at any time you level up or through Withers. All these different options allow Wild Heart Barbarians to play however you’d like, with almost limitless potential.
Unlike the Berserker subclass, Wild Heart Barbarians don’t get the Bonus Actions Frenzied Strike or Enraged Throw. This can make their damage feel weaker when compared to other subclasses.
Even though they can oftentimes feel weaker than the Berserker subclass, they also lack the supportive capabilities of Wild Magic Barbarians with their Bolstering Magic abilities. However, they do gain access to Speak with Animals. Overall, Barbarians don’t have much out-of-combat utility, as their Charisma and Intelligence are low.
The best Wild Heart Barbarian race is any that increases their survivability and tankiness.
I recommend choosing either a Half-orc or Gold Dwarf. As a Half-Orc, you gain access to the race traits Relentless Endurance and Savage Attacks. Relentless Endurance makes it so that when you’re reduced to 0 hit points, you can drop to 1 hit point instead.
This effect is not valid if your character is pushed into a chasm or somewhere that renders their body unrecoverable. This can turn the tides of many battles, as you’re able to retreat and heal up instead of dying outright.
Savage Attacks triggers when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack. It lets you roll one of the weapon’s damage dice one more time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit. This can help with raw melee damage output, which you’ll be doing a lot as a Barbarian.
If you’d like to be more tanky, choosing Gold Dwarf is the better option. Their sub-race trait, Dwarven Toughness, gives you an additional 1 HP every time you level up. Dwarven Resilience gives them an advantage on saving throws against Poison, and you have resistance against Poison damage. Both of these races are equally good, so just choose depending on which one you like more.
Choosing a Zariel Tiefling as your race is a solid choice due to their trait, Hellish Resistance, lowering the damage taken from fire damage. However, Legacy of Avernus: Searing Smite and Legacy of Avernus: Branding Smite are both considered spells, so you can’t use them while enraged.
While this is a drawback, it does provide you with higher damage abilities to use if you don’t have any charges of Rage left. No matter what race you pick, choose to have a +2 in Strength and +1 in Constitution in your Ability Points.
As a Barbarian, Strength is your most important ability by far. It allows you to hit enemies more often and for more damage, which allows your Rage to continue. Your second most important Ability Score is Constitution.
This will help with your tankiness, as you’re unable to wear Heavy Armor. Barbarians gain access to Unarmored Defense, which adds their Constitution Modifier to their Armour Class if they’re not wearing armor. It’s up to you on if you’d like to make use of this passive, as some people enjoy putting their Barbarians in Medium Armor and gear.
Either way, it’s important for you to have at least 14 Dexterity, since it’ll add a +2 to your AC if you’re wearing Medium Armor and help you hit enemies more often. Your Ability Points should look something like this.
The best Barbarian backgrounds provide Strength skills for your character.
When choosing your skills, selecting anything with Strength or Wisdom/Dexterity will be optimal. I recommend choosing Survival, Insight, Athletics, or Perception.
At Level 1, you’re going to gain access to a Barbarian’s main ability: Rage. This Bonus Action is a Barbarian’s bread and butter and will be the main thing you focus on doing during combat.
Rage gives you a +2 extra damage with any melee weapons you wield, an Advantage on Strength Checks and Saving Throws, and resistance to Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing Damage. An important note about Rage is in order to keep it going, you must attack an enemy or be damaged each turn. Otherwise, your Rage will end early.
Once you reach Level 2, you’ll gain Reckless Attack and Danger Sense. Reckless Attack gives you Advantage on Attack Rolls until your next turn, but enemies also have Advantage against you. However, due to your high Constitution and defense from Rage, this ability lets you rip and tear through enemies very easily.
Danger Sense gives you Advantage on Dexterity Saving Throws against traps, spells, and surfaces if you aren’t blinded or incapacitated. This will help with exploration, as you’ll be able to find traps easier.
You’re able to choose your sub-class at Level 3. For Wild Heart Barbarians, you’ll be able to choose your Bestial Heart.
Whenever you Level Up, you’re able to either keep your current Bestial Heart or swap it out for a different one. I recommend choosing from Eagle Heart, Elk Heart, or Bear Heart. Eagle and Elk Heart both help with Movement Speed, which is great if you chose a race that has a low base Movement Speed. You’ll also always be in melee range, which is where any Barbarian thrives.
Primal Stampede and Diving Strike are also very strong abilities, as you’ll be able to knock difficult enemies prone. While Bear Heart doesn’t help your Movement Speed, it’ll make you a lot more tanky. You gain Resistance to all damage except for psychic and are able to heal yourself. I recommend choosing whichever seems most interesting to you or what would help your team comp the most.
When choosing your Feat at Level 4, I recommend picking Ability Improvement. This will allow you to bring your Strength to 18 and Constitution to 17. It’s not really worth choosing any other Feat at this point, as raising your Ability Points will boost your overall power considerably.
At Level 5 you gain Fast Movement and Extra Attack. Fast Movement increases your Movement Speed by 5 while not wearing Heavy Armour.
This lets you gap close very quickly, especially if you chose Elk or Eagle Heart, and run down any enemies in your way. Extra Attack lets you make a second weapon attack, allowing you to finish enemies off easier or just boosting your general damage output.
Once you reach Level 6, you’ll be able to choose an Aspect of the Beast.
I recommend picking Aspect of the Bear, as having a higher carrying capacity and Advantage on Strength Checks is extremely important when exploring. You could also pick Aspect of the Eagle if you’re playing a character who doesn’t have Darkvision.
Level 7 grants you with the Passive Feature, Feral Instinct, granting you a +3 to Initiative. Additionally, you can’t be Surprised.
Reaching Level 8 provides you with Land’s Stride: Difficult Terrain. This ability means that you are no longer slowed by Difficult Terrain such as Mud or Webs. You also gain another feat. I would recommend taking Ability Improvement to increase your Strength to 18, Savage Attacker, Sentinel, or Tough.
Once you reach Level 9, you gain Brutal Critical. This Passive Ability causes you to roll an extra damage die upon a Critical Hit.
Reaching Level 10 allows you to pick another Animal Aspect in addition to the Aspect chosen at Level 6. I would recommend taking Tiger or Wolverine for extra damage, or Elk for Movement Speed. Stallion is also a solid choice for anyone who might need a little extra hp during their battles.
From what I’ve played so far, the best early weapon for a Wild Heart Barbarian is Commander Zhalk’s Everburn Blade. You get this sword by killing Commander Zhalk on the Nautiloid. It deals both Slashing and Fire Damage and has very high DPS.
If you weren’t able to get this sword, then I’d recommend picking any two-handed weapon with a bonus.
The best Medium Armor is a Githyanki Half Plate or Scale Mail. Both of these are very good Medium Armor options, and you’re able to find both easily. You can find a Githyanki Half Plate by killing the Githyanki Patrol in Act 1 or “stealing” Lae’zel’s.
Scale Mail can be found on corpses and is also sold by traders.
If you decide to take advantage of Unarmored Defense, then I recommend wearing the Bloodguzzler Garb since it provides you with +1 bonus damage with melee weapons for one turn, provided you take damage. You can obtain it after defeating the Bulette in the Underdark.
Reaching Acts 2 and 3 grants you even more equipment to choose from, however. Here are some of the items that I have found useful in my gameplay:
The Mighty Cloth provides the wearer with Bull’s Strength, an ability that doubles your Carrying Capacity and grants you an advantage on Strength Checks. Additionally, the clothes grant you +2 Strength (max 20), you can’t be pushed, and you have an advantage on Saving Throws against any restraining effects.
The Enraging Heart Garb gives you 2 turns of Wrath (+1 bonus to melee damage) while Raging. This increases your overall damage output.
Finally, the Bonespike Garb grants your character with 15 temporary hit points upon entering Rage. It also reduces all damage by 2 and if the wearer is hit by a melee attack, the attacker takes 3 Piercing damage as well.
Horns of the Berserker grant the wearer a +2 bonus to Attack Rolls against any creatures that have already taken damage during that turn. Additionally, melee and unarmed attacks deal 2 Necrotic damage, granted you don’t have full health. However, not dealing any damage during your turn causes you to take 1-4 Necrotic damage at the end.
This effect is overall useful for just dealing extra damage as Barbarians are looking to constantly be dealing damage. The Bonespike Helmet makes it so that whenever you enter Rage, enemies within 3m have to succeed a Wisdom Saving Throw, or they take 2-8 Psychic damage.
Even if they succeed the Saving Throw, they still take half damage. Additionally, you gain +2 to Intimidation and the ability, Menacing Attack. This allows you to make an attack against an enemy and possibly Frighten them.
Granting you with an additional 1-4 Necrotic damage with weapon attacks and a +1 to your Strength Saving Throws, Dark Justiciar Gauntlets are a solid choice for helping you deal just a little extra damage on your attacks.
The same is true for the Fleshmelter Cloak which deals 1-4 Acid damage to anyone who deals melee damage to you. This effect stacked with the 3 Piercing damage from the Bonespike Garb is really useful for allowing you to trade damage with attackers.
The Caustic Band is a ring that makes your weapon attacks deal an extra 2 Acid damage which can also stack with the Necrotic damage from the Dark Justiciar Gauntlets or Horns of the Berserker, allowing you to deal a lot of extra damage in just one attack.
Killer’s Sweetheart is a ring that makes it so that when you kill a creature, you can use a Reaction to cause your next attack to be a Critical Hit. However, this can only be used once per Long Rest. The necklace, Periapt of Wound Closure, is really useful for granting the wearer additional survivability as it causes you to stabilize once you’re downed.
In addition, any healing abilities that are used on the wearer of this amulet will be automatically maximised. This means that upon using a Potion of Superior Healing, you will automatically be healed by 40, and Mass Cure Wounds will always heal for 28.
Nyrulna is a Trident that deals 1d8 (1d6)+7 Piercing damage as well as an additional 1d6 Thunder Damage. This damage does stack with other damage sources such as the Caustic Band or Dark Justiciar Gauntlets. This weapon cannot be forcefully dropped, and when thrown, it will automatically return to your hand, allowing you to deal damage from even farther away.
If the weapon is thrown, it creates a 6m blast around its target location, dealing 3-12 Thunder damage in an AoE. You also can’t take fall damage and gain +3m to your Movement Speed and your jump distance while it’s equipped. The weapon comes with a toggleable glow effect which can be used to illuminate dark places up to 6m.
Finally, equipping it grants the wielder with the Weapon Action, Zephyr Flash, and the Spell, Zephyr Break. Zephyr Flash essentially acts as a stronger version of Rush Attack, blasting enemies out of your way, dealing 6d8 Thunder damage and potentially inflicting Bleeding for 3 turns, causing enemies to take 2 Slashing damage at the beginning of each turn and granting them a disadvantage on Constitution Saving Throws.
Zephyr Break is a stronger variant of the Evocation Spell, Gust of Wind. It deals 6d6 Thunder damage, clears any clouds (such as fog or steam), pushes units back 5m and possibly inflicts Off Balance for 2 turns, giving anyone affected a disadvantage on Strength and Dexterity Checks. This effect also grants Attack Rolls against them an advantage.
Wildheart Barbarians are a solid choice for anyone looking for high-damage output and a reliable frontline. They offer more versatility and customization to the class than is normally available for the Barbarian class.
Check back soon for higher levels of this Wildheart Barbarian build guide!
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