Barrier build is an alternative defense accumulation from lifesteal and health regen. The benefit to barrier is you can utilize Max Health, Low Health enchantments, and avoids healing reduction like plague. The downside is barrier has less sustain than the alternative lifesteal.
Unlike lifesteal or Regen, barrier only brings your barrier to a %, and does not further accumulate. So if your enchantment gives 25% barrier on kill, killing more enemies will only keep the barrier at 25%. Its only valuable if you continue to take damage to refill it.
There are 4 primary enchantments for barrier.
Gain x% Barrier on Kill-
This is the most reliable refill to the barrier, as it supports fighting groups.
Gain x% Barrier when consuming food-
This is good on boss fights, as it’s a non-combat barrier regain. If you run a low health or on barrier gems/enchantments, this is necessary.
Increased Barrier gain by x%-
This is only worth getting if you have at least 2 barrier enchantments.
Gain x% barrier on parry-
This is a great barrier sustain, especially if you don’t run a shield. But half of the bosses have a lot of attacks that can’t be parried. And other parry enchantments are mediocre, making it not worth investing in late game.
Gain x% barrier on damage dodged-
This would be really good if the qualification for damage dodged wasn’t so vague. The only way to get this to trigger is to have a the dodge iframes actively avoid damage which is hard to do. I also cannot get this enchantment to trigger with AOEs, missiles/spells, or charge attacks.
The only reason barrier feels like it has an issue is that lifesteal is so good. Barrier lakes sustain even though there are multiple enchantments, lifesteal has way more synergy with other enchantments and encounters.
I recommend barrier given something like “gain barrier on status” or “gain barrier on stagger”, as a way to maintain barrier on boss fights that don’t rely on eating or parrying.
I’d also rework the Barrier on dodge attack to be dodging near an enemy gives x% barrier.
