Stat Priority
The Stat priority for Helena is as follows:
- Item level / Strength
- Haste
- Spirit
- Expertise
- Critical Strike
For the most part, item level is king in Fellowship as a tank, as your mainstat and armour has the greatest effect on your damage and survivability. However, in Season 3 there is much more nuance because of the new upgrade system "Tempering". Regardless, here's what stats do for Helena.
Haste decreases the global cooldown and the CD of 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 mostly benefits your damage since our self healing is minor, but it can make your absorbs crit to effectively have double effectiveness.
Item Modifiers
With all the new gearing systems and changes in Early Access Season 3, it can be hard to determine and acquire a perfectly "BiS" set-up. Gear is one of the most important things involved in empowering our Hero to be and feel as strong as possible, and as a result we want to be making the best and most informed decisions possible right off the bat.
In Season 3 our gear can now proc modifiers that further bolster it in different ways. You're limited to 35 different gear modifiers per Hero + 5 weapon traits. How you gain additional ranks of these modifiers is essentially just proccing the same one multiple times across gear, which can be done through the new crafting systems.
One type of these modifiers are traits that augment you to varying degrees. If you're familiar with the weapon trait system from Season 1 and 2, those traits are a part of this now (as well as your weapon). Then we also have Blessings, Bonus Stats and Gem Power modifiers. They all do different things but are quite self explanatory; Blessings are ability effects, Bonus stats are additional stats, and Gem Power modifiers provide +100 Gem Essence of a specific Gem type.
With all of that in mind, below is a very powerful set-up that will get you through even the hardest of content!
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 very strong. Emerald Judgement is also very potent, providing a large amount of overall damage and an additional form of AoE CC that procs very often.
Inspired Allegiance is the best Heroic Trait by far, especially when combined with Martial Initiative Or a Darkfrost Arms weapon. After that, stat boosts or Kindling is your best bet. Haste is generally great on Helena and provides a lot of value, but if you are deep into Diminishing Returns, then opting for Kindling for ST damage or Willfull momentum can be better.
Iron Spikes is the best Defensive Trait for Helena. It provides a large amount of armour, does good damage on its own, and also feeds into our Gleaming Shield damage. It's very powerful. Treasure Hunter's Delight is back this season and naturally has a large amount of value for us as tanks. It's not the best at lower ranks, but at the highest ranks it's definitely worth it over other options. After Iron Spikes it's mostly a case of personal preference. King Of The Hill will provide more overall DR than any other trait, so if you can't get your hands on a high rank Treasure Hunter's or just simply prefer to use utility relics to help your team, then King Of The Hill is the best option and what I recommend.
Blessings
The Subduer is highly recommended. It's a very strong CDR tool that affects Grand Melee specifically and interacts with your Major abilities. It also has a very powerful damage done increase. Having The Monarch in combination with The Subduer makes the CD of Grand Melee get reduced massively, which is perfect for groups and environments you might struggle to play uses for, or cases where you simply want the lower cooldown.
Depending on your Spirit, The Philosopher is an extremely powerful Blessing. You gain Haste, expertise and critical strike based on how much spirit % you have, every time you press Iron Wall or Hold The Line. It has a ridiculously high uptime in end-game set-ups.
The Wayfarer is an extremely large amount of haste with a very large amount of uptime. Definitely recommend trying to grab this if you have the freedom to!
There are plenty of other blessings that are decent but they aren't a part of what I recommend in a "BiS set-up". Feel free to read through them and play around with things!
Necklace Traits
With Early Access Season 3 comes the introduction of Necklace Trait Trees. The traits attached are all purely defensive, and require your neck to be of purple rarity to unlock. Once you've acquired the appropriate rarity necklace, you're then met with a 2 row tree with 4 nodes to choose from.
I've gone ahead and listed the best Neck Traits for Helena below.
The Oak is the single biggest flat DR amount available to us as tanks for physical damage reduction. It's extremely powerful, and actually feeds into a large amount of damage from our Gleaming Shield talent too. A must have.
The next best trait is The Dragon. This provides a huge absorb every single time you press Shields Up. It is a game changer for dealing with dangerous tank busters and even just has a crazy amount of value overall.
The Mountain, The Stag and The Viper are all okay, but aren't as good as the S tier traits listed.
Getting a strong Necklace is one of the biggest defensive gains there are for us as tanks and are a complete game changer once acquired. Make sure you're rerolling your traits if necessary and upgrading low rarity necks with materials if you're lacking a Necklace early on!
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 compared to previous seasons, 35% gem power increases on sockets no longer exist and the amount of sockets available to get on gear has been largely reduced. But you can still get large amounts of gem power through gear modifiers and even a new set bonus.
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:
Emerald > Sapphire > Diamond > Amethyst > Topaz > Ruby
With a lot of Gem Power being tied to gear modifiers now, it'll be a little harder to target gem power for specific tracks early on, but you'll want to prioritize aiming for this set-up:
- 10 Emerald, 10 Sapphire
This end-game gem set-up is shown below (mouse over the icons for information about each ability):
Seal of the Heskyr (+25% Bonus)
It's worth noting that there are multiple viable end-game gem builds for Helena including a set-up involving 6 Sapphire, 6 Emerald, 6 Amethyst and either 6 Ruby or 6 Diamond.
Fortunately, due to the new modifier systems and the introduction of the Seal Of The Heskyr set bonus, Gem power is actually slightly higher than previously in BiS set-ups, allowing us to easily opt for a 10, 10 set-up with only 400 additional gem power needed as modifiers to complete our gem set-up.
You can use Method's Gem Calculator to play around with different configurations and create your own.