Stat Priority
The Stat priority for Meiko is as follows:
- Agility
- Expertise = Crit
- Spirit
- Haste
Item level is king in Fellowship as main stat has the greatest effect on your damage and survivability.
Spirit increases the chance of refunding Earthfall and Stormfall charges spent. When you get a refund, you gain Spirit Armour, increasing your Armour by 50% for 12 seconds.
Haste: With Meiko your GCD isn’t hasted, so the only thing Haste does for us is reduce the CD on Stone Shield and cast time of Earthfist Barrage. It is by far our worst stat, but you also don't want absolutely 0.
Critical Strike can be valuable on Meiko as the more damage you do equals the more healing you do. However, the healing is only based on your damage so you don’t triple dip. You’ll still heal more since you’ll be doing more damage, but you won’t crit the heals in combination of your damaging abilities.
Expertise increases your damage and healing. Most notably, the Peacefield talent double dips with expertise and crit.
There are multiple stat thresholds that you’ll ideally aim for on Meiko if you have the luxury of swapping gear around. 20% spirit grants you very high uptime of Spirit armour making you significantly more durable.
Another thing to note is that all of your secondary stats increase the total health of your Stone Shield by 2% per 1% of each stat. It’s not overly important but you’ll want to avoid diminishing returns on stats as much as possible.
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 one of three Master Traits that can be considered the best. The large amounts of synergy it has with multiple aspects of our kit and best gear make this a very powerful trait to have. On the other hand, with the buffs to Emerald Judgement in the new season, it's also very powerful. It provides an additional CC and a good amount of overall damage. And lastly, Diamond Strike is very strong in it's new form with the new Harmonious Soul from white gems. Pairing these and Kindling makes a potent combo, alongside the fact Meiko can trigger it with both her damage and healing, and it's much better. It does a ton of boss damage and it's healing isn't anything to laugh at.
Visions Of Grandeur is also notable, however as it doesn't directly interact with our defensive capability, it's a Trait I would relegate to the lower end content or farming.
Heroic Traits
Inspired Allegiance is easily the best Heroic Trait available. The additional Cooldown Reduction, alongside the stat procs for yourself and your team can be incredibly impactful. After that Kindling is our best single target dps option, with Seized Opportunity being a powerful defensive option.
Defensive Traits
With the removal of Treasure Hunter's Delight our options have freed up slightly. However, there were new defensive weapon traits added which are very powerful. Ancestral Intervention is a cheat death effect on a 5 minute cooldown at max rank. Cheat death effects are always desirable as they improve run consistency drastically. After that it's mostly a case of personal preference or choosing what fits for specific scenarios. Meiko is typically better on bosses than trash packs so aim to take traits that aid you there more, like First Man Standing and Iron Spikes.
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 |
Meiko Gem Priority
The early game Gem priority for Meiko is the following:
Emerald > Amethyst > Topaz > Ruby > Diamond > Sapphire.
The Cooldown reduction from Blessing Of The Commander - II is extremely powerful and worth rushing ASAP. After that you'll ideally push for Sealed Fate - II (Amethyst 6) since that node is extremely over-budget for the benefits you gain.
The full BIS setup in my opinion uses no set bonuses and 35% sockets in every piece of your gear, going 10 Emerald, 6 Amethyst and 6 Topaz. If you don't have full 35% you can go 10 Emerald, 6 Amethyst and 3 Ruby and use a set bonus.
You can use Method's Gem Calculator to play around with different configurations and create your own.
A small note before moving on, is that although Meiko utilizes haste so poorly, the topaz gem tree provides so much raw stat gain that it's worthwhile defensively just for the stone shield HP increase you get.