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Basic Trope: A character with high defense but low attack.

  • Straight: Barry can take a huge amount of punishment from his enemies, but his attacks are very weak.
  • Exaggerated: Barry is basically stupidly invulnerable, to the point where he can survive a huge onslaught of missiles, but even his strongest attacks can't even break a glass wall.
  • Downplayed:
    • Barry is a defensive-leaning Jack of All Stats: his defense is pretty strong, and while his offense is nothing special, it's still strong enough to wear down the enemy given enough time.
    • Barry is nigh-invulnerable, but has merely above-average fighting skills in comparison to his companions, making him a downplayed version of Lightning Bruiser or Mighty Glacier as well.
  • Justified:
    • Barry practices a combat discipline that is more concerned with keeping its practitioners alive than attacking opponents.
    • Barry is a Made of Iron Gentle Giant who doesn't like to hurt people, so he isn't very good at it.
    • As a magic user, he can only use ones which creates deflector shields.
    • Barry uses a shield in battle, which increases his defense but prevents him from wielding a stronger weapon.
    • Barry serves to defend the archers and mages that are responsible for attacking their enemies.
    • Barry cares more about stalling the enemy and wearing them out, or delaying them from hurting his teammates.
    • Barry wears a suit of Powered Armor that has no weapons due to its powerful shields taking the entire power output from its reactor.
  • Inverted: Glass Cannon
  • Subverted: The preternaturally resilient Barry absorbs his enemies' attacks and never hits back, making them think that he can't; but when he's pushed too far, they find out that he can dish out the pain just fine, he just doesn't like to unless he has no choice.
  • Double Subverted: It turns out that Barry's enemies are just as tough as he is, and shrug off even his strongest attacks.
  • Parodied:
  • Zig Zagged: Barry can make full use of his high defense to attack enemies; his attack is his Dump Stat, since he only rely on his Shield Bash to crush enemies.
  • Averted: Barry (and everyone else) are either the Jack of All Stats, Fragile Speedster, Lightning Bruiser, etc. but not the Stone Wall.
  • Enforced: The censors won't let the creators show death or serious injury, so no one's attacks are strong enough to cause them.
  • Lampshaded: "DIE! DIE! DIE ALREADY!... God, why won't you die?"
  • Invoked: Barry skips classes on attacking in favor of mastering defence.
  • Exploited:
    • Barry uses his sheer toughness to distract the enemy, so the rest of his team can get into the secret facility.
    • Barry goes in first to draw out the enemy, allowing Tom to take them out without endangering himself.
  • Defied:
  • Discussed: "Good luck killing Barry. That guy may as well be Made of Iron."
  • Deconstructed: The protagonists are Barry, Jack, Chim-Chim the Talking Ape, Richard, and Rin, but no one of real offensive capability. None of them die, but Emperor Evulz dismisses them and goes on to conquer the world without singling them out for punishment. Nothing he can do can hurt them, but they can't really affect his campaign of conquest in any meaningful way.
  • Reconstructed: Sure they can. With them guarding a critical chokepoint to the last free city, Emperor Evulz's supply train eventually wears thin and forces him to retreat, giving the forces of good time to regroup and reorganize.
  • Played For Laughs: Barry is The Comically Serious as applied to combat. He tanks some very stupid attacks while scheduling when his attacks will finally defeat the enemy.
  • Played For Drama: Barry confronts enemies that are able to pierce his considerable defence. He struggles to remain relevant in a fight while he designs a technique or armour that prevents defence-penetrating effects.
  • Untwisted: Barry is in a fighting film, game or series where the target audience expects characters to wear little armour to expose more of their figure and wield improbably large weapons because they are more impressive and can be more detailed than normal. Barry defies expectation by being equipped normally.

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