Fellowship Helena Hero Tank Guide

Helena is a Strength-based Tank that has great damage resistance and even greater crowd control. By rotating through your cooldowns with Veteran of War attacks efficiently you’ll keep your Shields Up and your Toughness high.

This guide will teach you the basics of playing Helena in Fellowship, how to use her abilities, and which talents to use for the best build. If you are looking for tank-specific advice, check out our Tanking Guide for Fellowship.

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Table of Contents

• Helena’s Abilities
• Toughness Mechanic
• Veteran of War Mechanic
• How to Play Helena — Basic Ability Guide
• Helena Talents and Build Progression
• Gearing and Stat Priority

Helena’s Abilities

Ability/Icon	Name	Cast / Recast	Range / Radius	Effect
	Measured Strike	GCD	↔ 5yd ↻ 5yd	Strike target enemy, dealing 46% Strength physical damage to them and nearby enemies. Veteran of War Reduces the cooldown of Shield Slam and Shield Throw by 1.5 seconds.
	Power Strike	GCD 6.0s	↔ 5yd	Perform a heavy strike, dealing 227% Strength physical damage to the target. Veteran of War Reduces the cooldown of Shield Slam and Shield Throw by 1.5 seconds.
	Shield Slam	GCD 7.5s (2)	↔ 5yd ↻ 5yd	Deals 242% Strength physical damage to your target and 49% Strength physical damage to other enemies near your target. Shield Slam gains Cooldown Reduction equal to your Haste. Shield Slam generates 20% Toughness. Veteran of War Reduces the cooldown of Shockwave by 3.0 seconds.
	Shield Throw	GCD 21.0s	↔ 30yd ↔ 5yd	Throw your shield at target enemy dealing 242% Strength physical damage. The shield bounces up to 5 additional nearby enemies. Veteran of War Reduces the cooldown of Shockwave by 3.0 seconds.
	Shockwave	GCD 30.0s	Self ↻ 10yd	Slam sword and shield together, creating a forceful explosion, dealing 248% Strength physical damage to enemies in a large radius. Enemies that take damage from Shockwave have reduced movement speed for 5 seconds, starting at 90% and diminishing by 10% every 0.5 seconds. Veteran of War Reduces the cooldown of Shields Up by 6 seconds.
	Charge	GCD 20.0s	↔ 30yd	Charge at target enemy, dealing 234% Strength physical damage and Stunning them for 2 seconds. Veteran of War Reduces the cooldown of Shield Slam, Shield Throw, Shields Up, and Shockwave by 6 seconds.
	Shields Up	Instant 30s (2)	Self	Raise your shield, increasing your Toughness by 60% and increasing your Block chance by 25% for 12 seconds. Shields Up gains Cooldown Reduction equal to your Haste. Each time you successfully block an attack, you generate 3% Toughness.
	Taunt	Instant 8s	↔ 30yd	Taunt the target, forcing it to attack you for 6 seconds. Taunt also sets your threat to the highest on the target.
	Bash	Instant 12s	↔ 5yd	Interrupt the target’s spellcasting and prevent it from casting for 4 seconds. Must interrupt a spell, or it will have no effect.
	Sweeping Strike	GCD 30s	↔ 5yd ↻ 5yd	Deals 243% Strength physical damage to your target and other nearby enemies. Enemies hit by Sweeping Strike bleed for 39% Strength physical damage every 1.5 seconds for 12 seconds.
	Iron Wall	Instant 90s	Self	Your Toughness cannot be reduced for 12 seconds.
	Grand Melee	GCD 120s	Self ↻ 20yd	For the next 10 seconds, Incite all enemies in a large radius around you, forcing them to only use Auto Attacks and only attack you. All allies within the radius of Grand Melee take 20% reduced magic damage while it is active.
	Hold the Line	Instant 30s	Self	Instantly resets the cooldown of your Shield Slam ability and causes your next Shield Slam within 12 seconds to be Empowered. Empowered Shield Slam Your next Shield Slam applies a barrier on you, absorbing up to 2387% Strength damage taken. The barrier lasts for 8 seconds.
	Siegebreaker	Instant SPIRIT ABILITY	Self	For the next 20 seconds, the cooldown reduction granted by your Veteran of War is doubled. While Siegebreaker is active, you take 25% reduced damage and your Shield Slam, Shield Throw and Shockwave abilities deal 25% increased damage. Spirit Ability When you activate your Spirit ability you gain Spirit of Heroism, granting +30% haste for 20 seconds.

Toughness Mechanic

Toughness is Helena’s unique class feature, displayed as a bar on the right of the character.

Your total Toughness has a cap equal to 700% of your Strength, then every 1% of each secondary statistic increases the final amount by 2%.

The more Toughness you have, the less damage Helena takes, determined by which notch of the Toughness bar is filled up to.

Each notch of the bar shows a quarter of your Toughness, and gives a set amount of Damage Resistance (DR):

• 75%+ gives 35% DR
• 75% to 50% gives 25% DR
• 50% to 25% gives 15% DR
• 25% to 0% gives 5% DR

You lose 1 point of Toughness for each pre-Toughness damage point taken. It is worth noting that barriers do NOT prevent Toughness from dropping.

Managing your Toughness during pulls and bosses is key when playing Helena.

Veteran of War Mechanic and Helena’s Rotation

Many of Helena’s basic abilities have a Veteran of War effect, which lowers the cooldown of other abilities. The goal of these cooldowns is to reduce the cooldown of Shields Up as often as possible. To do this, you’ll cast Shockwave and reduce its cooldown through Shield Throw and Shield Slam.

Haste reduces Helena’s ability cooldowns, Spirit gives a chance for Veteran of War to trigger twice. Due to this randomness there is no set rotation, but instead a rough priority system.

1. Shockwave – CDR for Shields Up + Strong Damage.
2. Shield Slam – CDR for Shockwave + 20% Toughness.
3. Hold the Line – Reset Shield Slam, increase your Toughness and go again.
4. Shield Throw – CDR for Shockwave.
5. Charge – CDR for Shockwave, Shield Slam, Shield Throw AND Shields Up. Ideally used when as many of these abilities are on cooldown as possible, but not mandatory. It can also be used to CC enemy casts or to get between packs. It should not be held for too long, though.
6. Sweeping Strike – DPS Button. Can press earlier if you’re good on health + Toughness. If you’re dying, skip it.
7. Power Strike – CDR Shield Slam and Shield Throw. With the Sword and Board talent, Empowered Shield Slam will be a bonus.
8. Measured Strike – Filler GCD. Not often used. Better than Power Strike at 5+ targets (if ignoring priority damage and talents)

How to Play Helena — Basic Ability Guide

As Helena, your objective is to keep your Toughness as high as possible as consistently as you can. To do this, you will be using Shields Up as frequently as you can through managing your defensive cooldowns and Veteran of War rotation. These abilities will keep your Toughness high, so the more consistent your rotation is, the tankier you are.

You will want to use Shields Up after your first GCD (It’s usable off the global cooldown), and then thereafter when:

• You have less than 40% toughness.
• Your block chance buff has expired.
• You’re approaching two charges, you have missing Toughness, and you’re about to use Shockwave or Charge.

After you start the pull, you’ll follow the general rotation as outlined above, while spreading your defensive cooldowns out as often as you can.

If the Shields Up block effect is still active, Shield Slams are a good way to keep your toughness topped up over a fight. Immediately after using your Shield Slam, consider your Toughness level and damage you’re taking and use Hold the Line to reset its cooldown instantly if you won’t overcap, or in urgent need of an additional barrier over your HP.

Hold the Line‘s cooldown is short, and can be reduced further through talents, so use it early and use it often.

Iron Wall prevents your Toughness from dropping. In effect, this is 35% DR for 12 seconds. Generally, use it after you’re out of Shields Up charges to buy yourself some time to get them back. You don’t need to be at 100% Toughness to use it, but ideally, you want to be above ~60% so you can be brought above the 75% threshold through blocks or your next Shield Slam. You want to be at 100% Toughness by a few seconds in, so plan accordingly.

Grand Melee is your other long defensive cooldown. This ability is a very powerful AoE lockdown and CC. Incite will stop casters, bleed auto-attacks, un-kickable abilities, and pretty much any non-boss mechanic for 10 seconds. Enemies will still be hitting you, so make sure you keep managing your Toughness during large pulls.

Not all casts of Grand Melee are made equal. Because enemies are still attacking you, it’s best used on packs of enemies with abilities worth stopping. Also, watch your positioning, as it has a very large 20-yard radius. If you’re standing out of position, you will pull an extra unwanted pack.

Bosses can’t be affected by Grand Melee, but it still applies a 20% Magical DR to all allies, so it’s still useful to cast on Boss AoEs or soak mechanics.

Siegebreaker is Helena’s Spirit Ability. Other than increasing your damage, using it will reduce the damage you take pre-Toughness, give you a 30% haste and cause Veteran of War to double proc every hit for 20 seconds. The increased attack rate and double CDR will manage your Toughness, similar to Iron Wall.

Helena Talents Build Progression

As Helena, it’s best to focus on your defensive talents. In particular, pushing for Toughness management as especially in the early game it is difficult to keep high. The following is our recommended Gleaming Shield build that focuses on Toughness management and a little bit of offense later on.

Quick Reference Talent Table

Talent Points Total	Talent Tree (Row + Column
2 Points	1B
3 Points	1B + 2B
4 Points	1B + 2B + 2A
5 Points	1B + 2B + 2A + 4A
6 Points	1B + 2B + 2A + 4A + 6A
7 Points (Contender)	1B + 2B + 2A + 4A + 6A + 6C
8 Points	1B + 2B + 2A + 4A + 6A + 1A
9 Points (Adept)	1B + 2B + 2A + 4A + 6A + 5C
10 Points	1B + 2B + 2A + 4A + 6A + 5C + 4B
11 Points (Champion)	2B + 2A + 4A + 6A + 5C + 5A + 4B
12 Points	2B + 2A + 4A + 6A + 5C + 5A + 4B + 6C
13 Points (Paragon)	2B + 2A + 4A + 6A + 5C + 5A + 4B + 1B

Shield Mastery (1B) is strong, and scales even better later with Toughness.

Guarded Veteran (1B) and Reinforced Steel (1A) are solid 1 point defensive talents to improve your block % and armor. If dropping one point to take something else, drop Reinforced Steel first.

High Command (4A) will reduce the cooldown of Hold the Line and give you more casts of Shield Slam.

Front Line Defender (6A) is another great one-point talent, making your Toughness stronger across the board.

Generally, the Row 5 talents are too expensive to take early as many of the cheaper talents are more effective for their cost. As you get more talent points, you’ll pick them up though.

Gleaming Shield (5C) will give you extra block and generally make keeping you alive easier. By the mid-game you’ll be able to cast Shields Up more often and get more value out of it.

Second Wind (5A) is picked up later again so it procs more often. The strength bonus isn’t just more damage but also more tankiness as it increases your Toughness bar as well. Try to generate Toughness through abilities during the window.

Magic Ward (4B) is good for Helena as most magic damage is from bosses and bosses are her weak-point.

Other Noteworthy Talents

Aftershock (3A) and Greater Shockwave (6C) are some of your most offensive talents, particularly when combined with the legendary boots. The above build is intentionally defensive, but if you have room, you can switch to these.

Master of War (6B) is a very strong and popular 1-point talent, but it does nothing if you don’t use the extra casts of Grand Melee. We haven’t recommended it specifically in this build because of this, but if your route is more effective with the grand melee timings, this is stronger than other 1-pointers.

Martial Command (5B) is awkward, there’s not a lot of instances where party-wide DR during a specific spirit window is useful. However, swap to this whenever you’re doing the Shadow Lord curse and your healers will love you. Save Siegebreaker for each lord and it will make the dungeon a lot more comfortable.

Remember to not take talent trees as is and adjust for any legendary or weapon trees you get, or content you are doing.

Gearing and Stat Priority

Substats have the following effect for Helena:

• Critical Strike – Chance for damage and healing effects to crit, doubling their effect.
• Expertise – Increases all damage, healing and absorption effects triggered by Helena.
• Haste – Decreases cooldowns, increases attack speed and GCD speed, and the tick rate of damage and healing effects.
• Spirit – Increases the rate you charge your spirit ability. Every % of Spirit gives a chance to double the cooldown reduction effect of Veteran of War.

The formula for Spirit effects is Spirit% / (1 + Spirit%). 20% Spirit = 0.2/1.2 = 16.667% chance.

Item level is king and will have the greatest effect on your damage and survivability. However, when choosing substats we need to consider the following.

Critical Strike only benefits Helena’s damage, as she has no healing or any abilities that procs off of a Critical.

Expertise increases her damage and absorption from Empowered Shield Slam. It doesn’t have any bonus effect on Toughness.

Haste decreases the cooldowns of every GCD attack AND Shields Up. Because Veteran of War CDR is flat, this makes Haste even stronger.

Spirit increases the frequency of her ultimate slightly and offers the chance to double Veteran of War CDR. Double reduction can result in 12 seconds off Shields Up or 6/12 seconds off Shockwave, which reduces the amount of filler GCDs you need to do. However, it is unpredictable and unreliable. Sometimes it will proc when you don’t need it, such as only a few seconds left on a cooldown.

All substats increase the total cap of Toughness by 2% per 1% of each stat.

Gearing Priority

1. Weapon Tree
2. Legendary Item
3. Item Level on pieces that give Armor
4. Completed Set Bonus
5. Item level on other pieces

Substat Prioirty

1. Haste
2. Spirit (20%)
3. Expertise
4. Crit

It’s worth noting that secondary stats on gear have diminishing returns. Because Toughness scales with each % of substat, it’s worth going a little bit wide when it’s ‘cheap’.

Changelog

For a full list of Open Beta -> Early Access updates, please see our post documenting all changes.