Stat Priority
The Stat priority for Helena is as follows:
- Item level / Strength
- Haste
- Spirit
- Expertise
- Critical Strike
Item level is king in Fellowship as your main stat has the greatest effect on your damage and survivability.
Haste decreases the global cooldown and your Shields Up, synergising extremely well with your Veteran of War passive.
Spirit decreases the cooldown of your Ultimate slightly but more importantly gives you the chance to gain double CDR gained from Veteran of War.
Expertise increases how much damage you do and the size of absorbs you get.
Critical Strike only benefits your damage since you don’t have any self healing.
One thing to note about stats on Helena is that due to how strong diminishing returns are, once you hit roughly 20% of your ideal stats, it’s much more beneficial to start looking to boost others since it makes your Toughness more effective with each 1% of any given stat.
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
Martial Initiative is our best Master Trait, especially when playing with the Blessing Of The Commander - II (Emerald Gem capstone). Visions Of Grandeur with heavy Spirit / Sapphire Gems is also viable but timing dependent in higher keys. The other Traits aren't super useful defensively but can contribute a lot of damage.
Heroic Traits
Inspired Allegiance is the best Heroic Trait by far, especially when combined with Martial Initiative. After that, Kindling and stat boosts are your best bet. Haste is generally great on Helena but if you are deep into DR then it can be worse than certain other traits.
Defensive Traits
Treasure Hunter's Delight and King Of The Hill are the best Defensive Traits for tanks. Treasure Hunter's Delight in particular can be combined with low cooldown Relics to give you more cooldowns to fill your gaps. After that, you want to prioritize things that give you damage reduction over things that give you max HP.
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 |
Helena Gem Priority
The early game Gem priority for Helena is the following:
Topaz > Diamond > Emerald > Ruby > Sapphire > Amethyst
Later on you'll ideally be putting all your eggs into the Emerald and Topaz baskets, netting yourself as much Expertise and Haste as possible. Once you've reached gem cap for Emerald (2,640) and reached Feline Grace - II for Topaz, you can put your final gem in Amethyst for a nice little damage boost.
This end-game gem set-up is shown below (mouse over the icons for information about each ability):
It's worth noting that there are multiple viable end-game gem builds for Helena including a Spirit (Sapphire) build and maxing out Topaz instead of Emerald.
You can use Method's Gem Calculator to play around with different configurations and create your own.