Playstyle & Rotation Ardeos Fellowship Hero Guide

Playstyle Overview

Ardeos is a ranged spellcaster who utilizes powerful damage over time effects. He focuses on DoTs to increase his damage through Detonate, which costs his unique mechanic to use: Cinders.

With Ardeos it’s all about your Detonate windows, so you want to time your cooldowns and abilities to maximize the damage this deals. The rotation doesn’t really change much on a single target compared to AoE and the main difference is the timing of your cooldowns enabling you to either do a “big burn” or a “small burn”.

Understanding Ardeos: Embers & Detonate

Before we get into the actual rotations, we need to understand Detonate and Embers.

Ardeos generates Cinders, once you get 100 Cinders you get an Ember which can be spent on Detonate. Detonate deals damage based on your active DoTs. The more you have applied, the more damage Detonate deals. The damage contribution is only from Ardeos's abilities and not from any other damage over time effects like those from weapons. The remaining duration of your DoTs is irrelevant for the damage Detonate deals, and a common misconception is that Detonate consumes your dots, which it does not.

You generate Cinders with your Searing Blaze, Engulfing Flames, Fire Ball DoTs and Infernal Wave casts. Assuming you have Searing Blaze applied to targets, Infernal Wave is your only spammable way to generate Cinders.

It's important to note that Fire Ball is the only DoT that generates per tick so it's incredibly important for our generation in AOE.

There are multiple talents that either buff your DoT duration, increase their damage, or apply new DoTs, essentially providing more generated cinders for more Detonates. It’s all Detonate, always has been.

Rotation

Our rotation is very similar on both single target and AOE. We want to execute our combo and get as many damage over time effects onto the enemies before pressing Wildfire and casting Detonate as many times as possible in that window. Aim to get 4 cinders before every Wildfire damage window.

In-between Wildfire windows we'll want to be casting Infernal Wave as much as we can to generate Cinders and make sure to use Detonate to avoid overcapping resource.

As of Early Access Season 3, we will be getting 2 charges of Engulfing Flames as baseline. This means we'll be saving both charges for every Wildfire burn window.

On AoE you will be generating a lot more resources so remember not to overcap your Embers.

Wildfire Burn Window:

1. Fire Frogs
2. Apocalypse
3. Fire Ball
4. Engulfing Flames x2
5. Pyromania
6. Wildfire
7. Detonate spam

If Apocalypse isn’t available then you want to make sure you’ve applied Searing Blaze to as many targets as possible. You can do this while your Tank is setting up the pull or before your burn window.

In-between burn windows you’ll take time to refresh any near-expiring Searing Blaze debuffs on targets, and spam Infernal Wave as much as possible to generate Cinders ready to enter burn windows. Now that Apocalypse is a 45 second cooldown you'll have it for every burn window.

Incinerate (Ultimate) Burn:

With your Ultimate readily available you want to add it into the rotation just before Wildfire, so you've applied all your damage over time effects, then you use Incinerate to add further effect and extend all the current ones before using Wildfire and Detonte for big damage.

Chronoshift Combo:

Once we have an Asha's Chronoshift Spire weapon along with 4/4 Visions Of Grandeur we unlock an incredibly powerful combo for single target. This can be used in AOE situations as well but its primary power is on bosses or high priority enemies such as Shadowlords.

1. Fire Frogs
2. Apocalypse
3. Fire Ball
4. Engulfing Flames x2
5. Pyromania
6. Wildfire
7. Chronoshift
8. Engulfing Flames (x2 if possible)
9. Fire Ball
10. Incinerate
11. Chronoshift
12. Apocalypse
13. Engulfing Flames (x2 if possible)
14. Wildfire
15. Detonate spam

Gameplay Altering Talents

Reign Of Fire - Reign Of Fire gives us a chance to generate a charge of Fire Ball and significantly empower its next cast. Because of this we want to be at 0 charges of Fire Ball so when we get one of these charges we do not waste any cooldown reduction. These are common enough that I recommend using the effect as soon as it triggers to avoid over capping.

Rolling Flames - This talent gives a lot of cooldown reduction to Engulfing Flames. Because of this in AOE situations it's good practice to press Engulfing Flames as often as possible and never letting it reach 2 charges to avoid wasting the cooldown reduction. On single target this means we can get smaller burn windows inbetween Wildfire windows where you'll want to do 1 Engulfing Flames and a Fireball then use Detonate. Make sure you have 2 charges of Engulfing Flames and Fire Ball going into each Wildfire window still.

Defensives & Utility

Outside of your damaging abilities you have Flame Ward, which is a huge 40% damage reduction on a very short 30 second cooldown, and Fireflash, which is a single target disorient that incapacitates an enemy, useful for stopping dangerous mob casts and situationally useful for keeping enemies crowd controlled.

Let's start with a couple of helpful tips for Ardeos:

• ABC - Always Be Casting. This is a universal caster rule and the difference between an Ardeos who is always actively casting and one who is not is huge.

Interface Options

One of the most basic, but important things you can do in Fellowship is mark specific targets or locations. In the input settings you will notice you have the ability to keybind “Mark Unit” and “Mark location”. These can be exceptionally useful for designating targets to kill or important stack points on bosses.

Buffs and Debuffs

Buffs and Debuffs in Fellowship are extremely important, but unfortunately the base UI doesn’t place the display of these in a great location. As a result, I’d recommend moving them closer to the middle of your screen using the “EDIT HUD” feature in the game menu.

Here is my UI import from the Image shown if you just want to pick up and play:

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