Ardeos Stats, Traits & Gems - Fellowship Guide

Stat Priority

The Stat priority for Ardeos is as follows:

Item level / Intellect
Haste
Crit
Expertise
Spirit

Item level is king in Fellowship as main stat has the greatest effect on your damage, healing and survivability.

Haste lowers your cooldowns, GCDs, and makes your casts shorter. More importantly it increases the tick rate of your DoTs, increasing the rate you generate Cinders.

Critical Strike has the chance to double the damage of your abilities and DoT ticks. This is great as it also increases the spawn rate of your Fire Frogs for more Dots which is more Detonate damage.

Expertise is a simple stat that increases our damage and healing.

Spirit decreases the cooldown of your ultimate and gives you a chance to refund any Cinders spent on Detonate. This stat scales horribly for us.

Weapon Traits

Due to the random nature of Weapon Traits, it can be a game of cat and mouse trying to get the ideal weapon tree. You have two offensive rows, two defensive rows, and a major capstone, with multiple options in each row for different pathing up the tree. With that in mind, you can start to see how gaining access to a "BiS" set-up might prove tricky. Don't be afraid to use some materials to reroll Traits if you need to.

Below I'll separate and list the ideal weapon traits for each type.

Master Traits

For master traits this season we will have a few options each can be incredibly powerful. Emerald Judgement is looking especially powerful now if you have First Strike 2 from the Emerald gem track. Amethyst Splinters will still be powerful although reduced from last season due to the Amethyst gem track nerf.

For specific weapons Visions Of Grandeur will still be very powerful with Asha’s Chronoshift, especially with our new ability to stack Engulfing Flames and Brave Machinations will be prevalent with Icicles weapon and a frog build.

Heroic Traits

Heroic Traits are fairly simple thankfully as our choices don't change no matter which weapon we use. Inspired Allegiance is very strong for group damage and weapon cooldown reduction is very powerful. Kindling will provide us a decent boost in single target and Vengeful Soul is a nice option that works in all scenarios.

Defensive Traits

King Of The Hill remains an incredibly powerful trait in pre-season 2 but our second trait now has a lot of flexibility. Heart Of Stone and Against All Odds are consistently strong where Ancestral Intervention and First Man Standing look to be situationally very powerful.

Gems & Gem Builds

The Gem System in Fellowship is fairly unique. You can obtain powerful gems to attach to sockets in your gear, which gives you Gem Power that enables different Gem Bonuses. There are multiple Gem sizes that provide you with more Gem Power. You can combine 3 of the same gem type and size using Gem Fusion (Master Craftsman Braggi NPC) to create a gem of the next size up.

It’s worth noting that some socketed gear can additionally drop with a 35% gem power increase (100% for a Legendary). This makes it so you’ll want to prioritize socketing higher quality gems into these items. For example, Legendaries come with a 100% increased gem power socket, making it ideal for your larger gems.

Gem Types & Bonuses

The Gem types each follow a pattern of the type of bonus they provide, a simplification of the Gems is shown in the table below.

Gem Type	Gem Bonus
Ruby	Main Stat / Boss Combat Buffs
Amethyst	Critical Strike
Topaz	Haste
Emerald	Expertise
Sapphire	Stats during Ultimate Ability
Diamond	All Secondary Stats

Ardeos Gem Priority

The early game Gem priority for Ardeos is the following:

Topaz > Amethyst > Ruby > Emeralds > Diamond > Sapphire

I'd recommend getting at least to Might of the Minotaur - II (node 6) in the Ruby column, before spreading out your gem power into Topaz, Amethyst and Emerald. Generally in maxed out gear Topaz 10 is likely our best option with Ruby 6, Amethyst 6 or Emerald 6 as the other tracks we want to take.

As the cooldown from Blessing Of The Commander - II (Emerald 10) is also applied to all spells (except for your interrupt), it is a good utility and defensive option that's worth considering.

Below is what I consider our BIS setup at endgame. This setup provides optimal damage while combining extra survivability and boss damage from Ruby. We can move one tier 2 Topaz into Tier 2 Emerald for dungeons such as Empyrean Sands where First Strike gains significant value.

Ruby