Barik is good, he's a point tank unlike Ash who's an off tank or a main tank (MT), the reason new players, silvers, and golds think Barik is bad is because they're missing out on the actual kit that is hidden in his cards

Fortify: play the champion as intended by the designer, have a shorter cooldown, a bigger shield, and you keep the hitscan weapon that can land headshots, deals 500 up close, always deals either 100 or 250 (375 on headshot) at sniper range depending on luck and maybe on how centered your crosshair was on the enemy.

Tinkerin: On small maps, deal huge damage at mid range to the enemy support or backline damage, community calls it fat Cassie, your weapon is a projectile with damage falloff at range

Tinkerin' Projectiles are blocked by your turrets. Normal Blunderbuss fires through them normally

also used to break down Fernando shield faster with wrecker 3:

Hitscan 500 * 1.9 = 950/s damage to Nando shield

Tinkerin 600 * 1.9 = 1140/s, huge game changer

Forge Fire: throw the game unless you're only playing vs noobs or only hitscan, a meme build, was good on console due to the same reasons terminus was good if you know what I'm saying...

Forge Fire: lose dome shield, you now can have up to 4 turrets and you can only win if you were already winning without relying on them, source of a known copy pasta on the official palacord.

Against blasters (especially spammers) your turrets can't be of any use so you run a build without turret cards and you also place your turrets away from the point like behind it or to the sides, this is why ForgeFire is a throw pick! don't play it! it's now deleted from viability as it was a console only talent...

Brave and bold 4 makes your HP 4000 and this is a must, you can't play Barik without this.

Bowling ball gives rocket boots its main use: gain enough shield to live through another hit while retreating to safety

Failsafe 3 (minimum and maximum is 3) is a must, it's the only reason Barik can survive for so long.

Fuel Efficiency: this card is a must on certain maps, even on 1 point it's really great! don't judge before trying it!

What else? from there you have a few points you can use, and this is the source of his build variety.

Your loadout depends on existence of enemy blasters, spam blasters, vs no blasters at all.

Without blasters it's up to you to choose 1 turret heal card or the other, or just both, usually vs Fernando I keep the repair card to annoy him more and keep the turret on the side so he can't burn me and the turret at the same time, dance!.

Against spammers you'd run a CDR (cooldown reduction) build using One Man's Scarp.

Rejuv is your best friend.

Wrecker vs Nando and Torvald, not worth it for the rest imho.

Tinkerin enjoyers like Chronos.

Dying a lot? master riding.

Haven over Veteran, sometimes mix the two if it's a meme elo lobby....

Resilience vs cc.