Overview: Baruuk is a “reluctant hero” that can take absurd amounts of punishment, able to disarm or knockout nearby enemies or summon the desert winds to destroy foes as a last resort. You can buy Baruuk from Little Duck in Fortuna.

Prime: Baruuk prime is now available from void relics, and boasts higher armour and shields than his normal variant.

Special: Baruuk begins to lose restraint whenever his abilities prevent damage – basically your first three abilities can trigger this as they disarming, dodge or tranquilise foes. He gains damage resistance based on how much restraint has been lost, and can use it to power Serene Storm.

Pros: Able to absorb massive amounts of damage, good crowd control abilities, can evade all direct frontal attacks, has an interesting exalted weapon.

Cons: Poor* killing power – you’ll rely on your weapons to deal damage until you can charge up Serene Storm (4.) *If you make good use of Lull (2) you can rack up your melee damage against sleeping targets or just use finisher attacks.

Powers: Elude (1) drains your energy to dodge incoming attacks in your frontal arc (range mods can extend this to completely cover you) provided that you don’t attack. If you do attack, you’ll be vulnerable for a short duration. Be aware, Elude (1) prevents most forms of energy recovery, meaning you can “run dry” if you rely on it. Between the passive “restraint” damage reduction and Desolate Hands (3) you probably don’t need to run this ability.

Lull (2) deploys a glyph that sedates nearby enemies that are aware of Baruuk, while also resetting their alertness levels. Great for building up a stealth kill bonus, and the Endless Lullaby augment will help by re-triggering Lull (2) when performing a finisher on a sleeping foe, inheriting the remaining duration of the original cast. This can be a great way to lose restraint, since the range is pretty good.

Desolate Hands (3) generates a ring of daggers that launch out to deal small amounts of damage and disarm nearby foes. Each active dagger provides damage reduction, and Baruuk can grant some (half of your maximum) daggers to allies by getting close to them.

Serene Storm (4) refills your restraint rather than costing energy, and puts you in a martial arts stance that acts as a new weapon with very good critical stats. Each attack will also generate an energy wave, dealing damage to foes in a column in front of you. The Reactive Storm augment will improve the status chance of your attacks and modify the base damage to match the weaknesses of the target you struck last. Consider using the Sacrificial set along with Corrupt Charge and Killing Blow for absolutely brutal heavy attacks.

Opinion: A very strange frame that feels like a parallel of Excalibur, able to absorb large amounts of damage but reliant on weaponry to retaliate. Useful when you expect to take a lot of incoming damage, and a good pick when facing tough enemies (i.e. Steel Path) since you can knock them out with Lull (2) for easy high damage finishers.