Bark Vader

Bark Vader is the Tier 3 Forest boss in Megabonk, and he’s one of the hardest encounters in the game. He’s notorious for removing your weapons, healing through shield mechanics, and forcing players to juggle pylons while under constant pressure. Beating him takes planning, strong execution, and a willingness to adapt.

General Strategy

Phases

At the start of the fight, the player's weapons will be locked from right to left until only the starter is left. Bark Vader has two phases, a DPS and a pylon phase. The pylon phase activates at every 25% health threshold, where he'll become immune to damage, gradually heal, and the player needs to to charge three pylons to deactivate them and make the boss vulnerable again. After each completed phase, the following happens:

One weapon unlocks (from left to right)
Orbs spawn more frequently
Bark Vader gains armor
Bark Vader gains attack damage

Attacks

Zone damage - deals chip damage (about 2) each second. Unavoidable.
Trailing roots - small AOE zones that will trail the player, keep moving or stay airborne.
Tracking roots - a single large AOE zone that will explode where the player will be if they maintain their current trajectory, switch direction.
Cone roots - three lines of small AOE zones that originate from Bark Vader, move away and either in between on outside of them, or jump over them.
Blue orbs - very high speed, but pause after each move. Inflicts freeze on the player. Get them to hit the ground, hide behind a pillar, or keep moving.
Red orbs - acceleration based instead of a constant speed, but track the player directly and constantly. Inflicts a red debuff that stops all healing and regeneration for 5s. Get them to hit the ground, hide behind a pillar, or keep moving. Highest priority to avoid.
Yellow orbs - high speed, but spawn high and move in an arc directly at the player. Inflicts poison for 5s. Maintain some distance from the boss so you're not right underneath them, keep moving and they'll hit the ground.
Spawn adds - behave like the normal Forest bosses, but with low health. If you made it this far, they'll probably die incidentally.

Hints and tips

No matter what build you run, the boss is a health sponge and the invulnerability windows make this fight more about survival than particular offensive builds.
The weapon lockout means that some characters (Amog, Vlad) will have a much tougher time dealing damage to the boss. Try to stack alternative damage through items for these characters, like Moldy Cheese, Cursed Doll, and Thunder Mitts.
Consider resetting your run until your weapons are in the order you want them unlocked, especially on the more challenging characters.
Consider Aegis if you plan on targeting the boss on your run, as it will take pressure off during pylon phases. You'll still want to dodge roots so you're not knocked out of the pylon's area too easily, but the blocks can let you focus on doing that while eating the orbs if needed.
While invulnerable, lifesteal and on-hit healing (Demonic blade, Slurp Gloves) do not work, and the adds spawn too rarely and with too little health to be a consistent source of healing. Regeneration or shield will be needed to recover health, and pairing with armor or evasion to reduce the burden will help.
All attacks are dodge-able with constant movement, so enough movement speed can be an alternate form of defense.
The pylons do not count as charge shrines, thus Beacon will not spawn healing zones, and Wrench will not speed up their completion.
When going for pylons, try to clear any active red and blue orbs before jumping up to the platform by ducking behind a pillar. Attempting to dodge the orbs and the roots at the same time in the pylon's area is very difficult.
While each pylon can be reached with base movement, try to get 3-4 jumps with 1-2 extra jump height modifiers so you can get directly to them. Running to them will take much longer and allow the boss to heal more.