Fellowship Tariq Hero Guide

This guide has been updated for Fellowship’s Season 3.

Tariq is a Strength-based melee DPS that uses his power to calls upon lightning to enhance his attacks. He generates Fury, using it to unleash devastating blows to obliterate his enemies.

This guide will teach you the basics of playing Tariq in Fellowship, how to use his abilities, and which talents to use for the best build.

Other Hero Guides

In the event you were looking for a different character guide for Fellowship, please use one of the buttons below to find what you’re looking for.

Strengths

Versatile in both single-target and AoE damage.
Scales well Mid to Late-Game.
Has a lower Kick/Interrupt CD than his ranged DPS counterparts.

Weaknesses

Requires more thought on positioning than his ranged DPS counterparts.
Can easily lose DPS if his Fury and related CDs aren’t well managed.
Requires higher APM than other DPS characters.

Season 3 Changes

Tariq was one of the heroes most heavily affected by Season 3. His Swing Timer has been removed for now, and his abilities have been adjusted to compensate. In addition, he no longer gains his unique resource, Fury, from taking and dealing damage. This greatly decreases the complexity of Tariq, making him much friendlier to players who may be new to playing Melee DPS.

Ability Changes

Many of Tariq’s abilities has been changed and adjusted to accommodate no longer having a Swing Timer. He’s also seeing some buffs to the reach of his melee abilities and to his utility skill, Intimidating Roar.

Heavy Strike and Face Breaker gained a cooldown of 8 and 6 seconds, respectively. Inversely, Wild Swing has lost its 9-second cooldown. All 3 abilities now generate Fury and triggers Global Cooldown.
Chain Lightning now generates 1.2 Fury per hit.
Leap Smash no longer generates Fury and deals less damage.
Skull Crusher‘s Fury cost has been reduced by half, but now triggers a shorter Global Cooldown.
Hammer Storm has been adjusted, now having the old Kill Em All talent at baseline: 1.5 seconds of channel time and spins 3 times, with each spin dealing more damage than the last.
Focused Wrath sees an adjustment to its damage bonus to compensate for the increased value of our Fury resource.
Intimidate no longer causes affected enemies to run around while feared, but now causes them to cower in place. It also now affects up to 40 enemies, had its cooldown reduced by 30 seconds, and now takes 3000% of our Strength stat to break the effect on affected targets.

Talent Changes

Along with the other heroes in the roster, Tariq no longer has defensive talents. Defensive perks have been moved to Necklace Traits, giving us additional customization options. He has also lost Concatenation alongside his Swing Timer.

His new talents include Ace of Spades, The Motherload, Killing in the Name, and Sledgehammer.

Ace of Spades and The Motherload are new talents to support Tariq’s Lightning build. Sledgehammer looks to be a new talent for Schism users, and Killing in the Name seems to support any build that uses the Executioner’s Unsanitary legendary.

Talents that have changed include Left Hand Path, Square Hammer, High Road, Pneuma, and Kill Em All.

Left Hand Path has been reworked, now only increasing the Critical Strike of Tariq’s Face Breaker by +40%.
Square Hammer has also been reworked. It now reduces the Cooldown of our Thunder Call by 1 second per Square Hammer stack gained as well as granting us +5% Expertise for 4 seconds.
High Road grants our Leap Smash the ability to generate Fury upon dealing damage to an enemy with it. It still has the previous effect of reducing the cooldown of our Leap Smash, but with a slightly lesser effect.
Pneuma is no longer a defensive talent, granting us 50 Spirit points at the beginning of the dungeon as well as allowing our Culling Strike to generate 1 Spirit Point.

Legendary Changes

Tariqs rejoice! His old legendary necklace, Bloodied Brass Pendant, has been removed from the game for Season 3. In its place comes a new legendary that synergizes with Tariq’s Lightning build. In addition, his legendary boots have been moved to the Wrist slot. His legendary cloak has been buffed as well.

Executioner’s Unsanitary Bands now cause his next Culling Strike to be free and deal damage as if 30 Fury were spent. While this number is technically lower than last season’s, the overall changes made to Tariq make it a buff.
Drape of the Slayer King got a minor buff, enemies hit by Leap Smash now take 20% more damage from Tariq for 6 seconds. This is a 5% damage increase and a 2-second increase in its duration from the previous season.
Loop of the Thundering Vortex is Tariq’s newest legendary. Worn in the Ring slot, this legendary grants a stack of Thundering Vortex each time it bounces to an enemy. At 20 stacks, your next Chain Lightning deals +100% damage, and the stacks are consumed.

Tariq’s Abilities

Name	Cast / Recast	Range / Radius	Effect
Heavy Strike	GCD 8.0s	↔ 10yd	Heavy Strike deals heavy damage to a single target and explodes outwards, dealing 20% of the initial strike damage to all enemies near the target. Thunder Call Heavy Strike causes lightning to shock all nearby enemies with damage equal to 35% of the power of Heavy Strike’s single-target strike. Generates 12 Fury.
Wild Swing	GCD	↔ 10yd	Swing your hammer in a wide arc toward target enemy dealing 1,170 – 1,430 physical damage to it and any nearby enemies. Recklessness – Enemies have an increased chance to Dodge Wild Swing. – Wild Swing cannot Critically Strike. – Damage of Wild Swing is increased by an amount equal to your Critical Strike chance percentage. Generates 3 Fury.
Face Breaker	GCD 6.0s	↔ 10yd	Instantly attack the target enemy, dealing 4,203 – 5,137 physical damage. Deals 50% of its initial hit damage to enemies near your target. Generates 7 Fury.
Skull Crusher	1.0s GCD	↔ 10yd	Instantly deal 6,696 – 8,184 physical damage to target enemy. Thunder Call Skull Crusher beckons a thunderbolt to strike the target from above, dealing damage equal to 35% of the power of Skull Crusher’s direct damage strike. Skull Crusher triggers a shortened Global Cooldown. Costs 25 Fury.
Hammer Storm	Instant	Self	Spin with your Hammer up to 3 times over 1.5 seconds, dealing 35% more damage with each consecutive spin while channeling. Hammer Storm deals +35% more damage with each spin. Thunder Call Hammer Storm causes lightning to flow through Tariq out into all enemies his Hammer Storm deals damage to, dealing an additional damage equal to 35% of the power of Hammer Storm’s direct damage strike to each target.
Leap Smash	Instant 30.0s	↔ 30yd	Instantly Leap to target area and smash the ground, dealing 3,591 – 4,389 physical damage to all nearby enemies. Can be used during Global Cooldown.
Pummel	Instant 16.0s	↔ 10yd	Instantly interrupt target enemy’s spell cast, and silence them for 4 seconds. Can be used during Global Cooldown.
Thunder Call	Instant 45.0s	Self	Call on Thunder to charge your hammer with immense power, enhancing your abilities for 20 seconds. Can be used during Global Cooldown.
Chain Lightning	GCD 8.0s	↔ 30yd	Conjure an arc of lightning onto target enemy that chains between you and other enemies until it has dealt damage a total of 6 times. Each hit of Chain Lightning deals 810 – 990 lightning damage. Chain Lightning does not deal damage to you. Thunder Call You can only cast Chain Lightning while Thunder Call is active. Generates 1.2 Fury per hit.
Culling Strike	Instant 6.0s	↔ 10yd	Instantly deal 2,772 – 3,388 physical damage to target enemy. Culling Strike spends up to 10 Fury, increasing the damage it deals by up to 400%. The more Fury it consumes, the higher the damage it deals. Execution Can only be used against enemies that have 30% or less health. Can be used during Global Cooldown.
Focused Wrath	Instant 90.0s	Self	Reduces the Fury cost of your next Skull Crusher or Hammer Storm by 52% and increases its damage by 10%. Can be used during Global Cooldown.
Intimidate	Instant 90.0s	Self	Instantly intimidate up to 40 enemies around you for 12 seconds. Intimidated enemies cower in place for the duration or until they take damage equal to 3000% of your Strength. Can be used during Global Cooldown.
Unbreakable Will	Instant 30.0s	Self	You take 40% reduced damage for 4 seconds. Can be used during Global Cooldown.
Raging Tempest	SPIRIT ABILITY	Self	Instantly Leap to target area and smash the ground, dealing 9,054 – 11,066 lightning damage to all nearby enemies.You also gain an Enhanced Thunder Call for 20 seconds that causes you to release Raging Currents at enemies over time. Raging Currents Strike a random nearby enemy every 1 seconds with lightning, dealing 1,386 – 1,694 lightning damage with each strike. Each time Raging Currents hits an enemy your Expertise is increased by 1%, stacking up to 20 times. *Spirit Ability* When you activate your Spirit ability you gain Spirit of Heroism, granting +30% haste for 20 seconds. Can be used during Global Cooldown.

How to Play Tariq — Basic Ability Guide

Fury Mechanic

Tariq’s unique resource is Fury. Fury is gained through the use of his Heavy Strike, Wild Swing, Face Breaker, and Chain Lightning abilities. Accumulated Fury is used to activate his Fury spending abilities: Hammer Storm, Skull Crusher, and Culling Strike. Tariq’s Fury caps at 100.

When in doubt, it is a good idea to use the Fury you have before it can overcap. The only time to be holding onto Fury is when you’re looking to pool your Fury resource into buffs, such as your Thunder Call, Focused Wrath, and your Spirit Ability, Raging Tempest.

Important Cooldowns

Notable cooldowns to manage include Thunder Call, Focused Wrath, Pummel, and Unbreakable Will.

While you have the Thunder Call buff active, your Heavy Strike, Skull Crusher, and Hammer Storm abilities deal Lightning damage.
Focused Wrath is a buff to two of our Fury spending abilities, Skull Crusher and Hammer Storm, causing them to deal more damage and cost less Fury.
Pummel is our kick ability and will be vital for interrupting potentially deadly casts our enemies cast.
Unbreakable Will is our defensive skill and is a survival tool. In some cases, unavoidable damage will occur. This is one of the best times to use Unbreakable Will.

When things get dicey, you can utilize your Intimidate to Fear up to 40 enemies within its radius. This skill can help you buy time for your party to stabilize. Don’t worry about breaking the Fear with damage, as those affected have a high tolerance to damage before breaking.

Using Raging Tempest will overwrite your Thundercall. If your Thundercall is off cooldown, it will be unable to be cast for the duration of Raging Tempest.

Tariq Talents and Build Progression

Talent Icon	Talent Name	Description
	Left Hand Path	Face Breaker’s critical strike chance is increased by +50%.
	Ride the Lightning	Your Thunder Call generates 30 Fury over its duration and grants you +5% Haste while it is active.
	Square Hammer	Your Heavy Strike grants you 1 stack of Square Hammer for 20 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Your next Skull Crusher or Hammer Storm consumes all stacks, reducing the cooldown of your Thunder Call by 1 second per stack. Each time you consume Square Hammer you are granted +5% Expertise for 4 seconds.
	High Road	When your Leap Smash ability does not hit an enemy, its cooldown is reduced by 10 seconds. When your Leap Smash hits at least 1 enemy, you gain 20 Fury.
	Blood & Thunder	Your Heavy Strike has a 20% chance to cast a free Chain Lightning at the target.
	Bloodline	You generate 1 Fury every 1 second and your Movement Speed is increased by 20%. You no longer lose Fury while out of combat.
	The Motherload	Your Chain Lightning gains power as it bounces to new enemies, causing it to deal +50% increased damage cumulatively with each unique enemy it hits other than your target. Your Chain Lightning deals 10% more damage.
	Mouth for War	When your Leap Smash ability deals damage, you are granted 1 charge of Focused Wrath.
	Thunderstruck	Your Chain Lightning bounces 2 additional times.
	Pneuma	You Start each Dungeon with 50 Spirit Points. Your Culling Strike generates 1 Spirit Point
	Sledgehammer	Your Skull Crusher direct damage deals 10% of the initial damage to enemies near your target.
	Far Beyond Driven	Each time you use Heavy Strike you gain 1 stack of Far Beyond Driven for 20 seconds, increasing your Spirit by +2%. Far Beyond Driven stacks up to 5 times.
	Kill ‘Em All	Your Offensive Abilities have a 8% chance to reset the cooldown of your Heavy Strike and grant you 2 stacks of Kill Em All for 8 seconds. While Kill Em All is active, your Heavy Strike has +60% Cooldown Acceleration. Your next Heavy Strike consumes 1 stack of Kill Em All, causing it to deal 150% more damage.
	Ace of Spades	Each time your Skull Crusher or Hammer Storm deal damage to an enemy, you have a chance (3.0 PPM) to cast a free Chain Lightning at them. Your Chain Lightning now has 2 charges.
	Schism	Your [Skull Crusher] has a 25% chance to make your next [Hammer Storm] deal +250% increased damage. Your [Hammer Storm] has a 25% chance to make your next [Skull Crusher] deal +250% increased damage.
	Them Bones	Your Skull Crusher has a 30% chance to have +100% increased critical strike chance. GRIEVOUS CRITICAL STRIKE Any critical strike chance you have beyond 100% causes a grievous critical strike. Grievous critical strikes increase the base damage of the hit by an amount equal to the overflowing critical strike chance.
	Crack the Sky	Your Lightning damage has +20% increased Critical Strike chance.
	Killing in the Name	Your Culling Strike has +35% increased Critical Strike chance.

Tariq has a few builds that he can utilize, but this guide will focus two of his most consistent and well-rounded talent builds: Lightning Build and Schism Build.

Lightning build is simpler to pick up and pilot. The build has a lower skill floor and comes more intuitively than the Schism build. The only things to worry about is making sure you’re not overcapping your Fury and that you’re executing your Builder and Spender rotations effectively. This build can be used at any stage of the game, whether you’re first starting out or gearing into Eternal.

With Schism build, your spender rotation changes from simply spending and unloading all the Fury you’ve accumulated to fishing for the right proc for the encounter your party is in. This is a late-game build that requires a minimum of 11 talent points.

This guide will refer to the talents by their name and the row/column that they are located in.

Lightning Build

Our core talents for our Lightning Build are Blood & Thunder, Thunderstruck, Crack the Sky, and Ace of Spades.

Talent Points at the 7, 9, 11, and 13 Milestones

Once we get the Fateful Basher weapon, we should be switching from Square Hammer and Bloodline to Kill Em All.

Square Hammer reduces the cooldown of our Thunder Call each time we consume stacks accumulated from using our Heavy Strike. This is extremely nice to have until we obtain our Fateful Basher weapon.
Blood & Thunder has a chance to cast a free Chain Lightning on our target when we use our Heavy Strike. This talent scales well with Haste, as Haste increases your PPM and lowers your global cooldown (GCD). The more Haste we have, the more often we’ll be able to proc Blood & Thunder with our Heavy Strike.
Thunderstruck increases the amount of times that your Chain Lightning bounces. This also affects the Chain Lightning that comes from Blood & Thunder.
Pneuma gives us a boost to our Spirit at the start of a dungeon, allowing us to use our Spirit Ability at an earlier point in the dungeon. This can enable your team to clear the dungeon faster and ensure that you and the other DPS’s Spirit Ability can be alternated without overlap or needing communication about who will use their Spirit Ability first/second.
Ace of Spades gives us a second charge of our Chain Lightning and has a chance to give us a free cast of Chain Lightning when using Skull Crusher and Hammer Storm.
Crack the Sky increases the Critical Strike chance of your lightning damage, meaning that it’ll increase our DPS while Thunder Call is active.
Bloodline is nice to have, but not required. It gives us passive Fury generation, prevents out-of-combat Fury loss, and grants us a movement speed boost. It’s the first talent we should drop if we’re looking at other talent options.

Quick Reference Talent Table

Below is a table containing the talents to take as you level up with Tariq. You may also check them out on Fellowsguide.

Talent Points Total	Talent Tree (Row + Column)
2 Points	1c
3 Points	1c, 2a
4 Points	1c, 2a, 2b
5 Points	1c, 2a, 3c
6 Points	1c, 2a, 2b, 3c
7 Points	1c, 2a, 3a, 3c
8 Points	1c, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3c
9 Points	1c, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3c, 4a
10 Points	1c, 2a, 3a, 3c, 5b
11 Points	1c, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3c, 5b
12 Points	1c, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3c, 4a, 5b
13 Points	1c, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3c, 4a, 5b, 6b
14 Points	1c, 2a, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3c, 4a, 5b, 6b

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

Lightning Build Ability Rotations

Tariq’s rotation cycles between building his Fury and spending it.

Please keep in mind that these rotations may change based on your talents and if you have a legendary equipped. These rotations are based on the talent build mentioned above.

Builder

This Builder rotation is going to focus on building up our Fury resource so that we can cycle to our Spender rotation. Below is our ability priority.

Leap Smash if you have the High Road talent.
Thunder Call
Chain Lightning
Heavy Strike
Culling Strike if available and you have at least 10 Fury.
Face Breaker
Wild Swing
Repeat 3-6 until you have enough Fury that doing another Fury Builder rotation would overcap your Fury.

Prioritize casting Chain Lightning and Heavy Strike off cooldown. Avoid using Thunder Call near the end of a pack to avoid losing DPS on the next pull.

Typically, it is best to use your off-GCD abilities whenever they are available. However, there will be situations where it’s better to hold onto these abilities instead of using them if using them would overcap your Fury.

Spender

Once you have enough Fury built up to cast your Fury spenders, transition into your Spender rotation.

Raging Tempest/Thunder Call if you’re doing a big pull or on a boss. See Boss rotation below for additional information.
Groups 3+: Hammer Storm. Single Target: Skull Crusher.
Focused Wrath
Groups 3+: Hammer Storm x2. Single Target: Skull Crusher x4.
Additional Hammer Storm/Skull Crusher if above 50 Fury.
Culling Strike on priority target.
Repeat 6 until you run out of Fury, using Leap Smash off CD to enhance our spenders via Mouth For War and/or if you have the legendary cloak, Drape of the Slayer King.

Depending on how many enemies we are facing, we will either use Hammer Storm (3+) or Skull Crusher (1-2). Using Hammer Storm on less than 3 targets will do less damage than Skull Crusher would.

Use your Fury spenders until you are below the threshold required to cast it. Avoid using other abilities while you’re channeling Hammer Storm to reduce DPS loss as any ability will cancel the channel.

If the enemies are still alive, cycle back to the beginning of the Builder Rotation.

Boss Rotation

When we go into boss, we should look to have our Thundercall and Spirit Ability, Raging Tempest, available for use. We want to open with Thundercall then use Raging Tempest once Thundercall ends to maximize our DPS. Thundercall should be up again by the time Raging Tempest ends, allowing us to enhance our abilities for a total of 60 seconds (1 minute).

1st Thundercall -> Raging Tempest -> 2nd Thundercall

Follow the usual Builder/Spender rotations while focusing your buff uptime.

Drape of the Slayer King & Fateful Basher Rotations

When using the legendary cape, Drape of the Slayer King, your rotations will look a little different. By this point, you may also have the Fateful Basher weapon. If you have the Visions of Grandeur Hero Trait, your rotations may look like this:

Focused Wrath before combat begins (up to 10s before).
Thundercall/Raging Tempest.
Chain Lightning.
Fated Strike.
Leap Smash into Spender Rotation.

Leap Smash refreshes the Focused Wrath buff and adds a stack to the buff, allowing us to start the fight with a lower cooldown for Focused Wrath. With the Drape of the Slayer King legendary, we want to put as much of our resources into the 5 second window of the Leap Smash buff. You’ll want to pool your resources into your Leap Smash.

We want to be using Focused Wrath and Thundercall off cooldown. Leap Smash is a cooldown you should save to open into your Spender rotation. When possible, we want to pool both our Focused Wrath and Leap Smash into Raging Tempest.

Schism Build

This build feels best when you have 11 or more talent points to work with. The build gets better as you gain your milestone power spikes: more talent points, your first legendary, and gaining a Champion+ tier Fateful Basher weapon. This build is more late-game oriented than Lightning build.

Our core talents for our Schism build are Schism, Ride the Lightning, Mouth for War.

Schism is the core talent for this build. It changes how we play Tariq by switching up our Spender rotation from spamming the optimal ability for the size of the pull to fishing for the optimal Schism proc for the pull.

Schism Build Ability Rotations

Building and spending are a part of Tariq’s core gameplay and apply to both Schism and Lightning build. The only difference is that you are now going to look for the correct ability that you want buffed by your Schism talent proc.

How to Fish

Just like with the Lightning Build’s rotations, we would like to build to 100 Fury and avoid overcapping Fury. Schism has a 25% chance to proc

1 target: Fish with Hammer Storm [Enhance Skull Crusher]
2 targets: Spam Hammer Storm until Schism proc
3 targets: Fish with Skull Crusher [Enhance Hammer Storm]

Our timing for when we want to Leap Smash changes with the use of Schism, since we will want to use it just before we use our Schism-enhanced ability. We generally want our Schism proc when our Leap Smash is available. If Leap Smash won’t be up soon after you hit your Schism proc, it’s best to use the Schism-enhanced ability without Leap Smash.

If the encounter is going to end before your Leap Smash comes off cool-down, it’s a good idea to spam fish for the enhanced ability that would work best for the next encounter.

For larger groups of trash mobs, spam Skull Crusher to get that Schism-enhanced Hammer Storm ability.
For going into any single-target encounters, spam Hammer Storm to get the enhanced Skull Crusher ability.

Once you have the optimal Schism-enhanced ability, save that enhanced spender for the next pull/encounter and finish the current one with Culling Strikes.

Schism Spending Rotations

AoE (3+ Targets)

Most ideally, we will want to have the Legendary cloak, Drape of the Slayer King, equipped to increase our damage further when using Leap Smash and to have our Thundercall buff active when we go into our Schism-enhanced Hammer Storm.

Build to 100 Fury.
Skull Crusher to fish.
Build back to 100 Fury.
Leap Smash.
Enhanced Hammer Storm.

Single Target/Priority

This build especially shines when we are looking to deal priority damage to a single target within a larger pack of mobs.

Build to 100 Fury.
Hammer Storm to fish.
Build back to 100 Fury.
Leap Smash.
Enhanced Skull Crusher.

When there are only 2 targets in a pull, it’s best to spam Hammer Storm and use the Schism-enhanced Skull Crusher rather than to fish for a Hammer Storm.

Gearing and Stat Priority

Critical Strike – Chance for damage and healing effects to crit, doubling their effect.
Expertise – Increases all damage, healing and absorption effects done by Tariq.
Haste – Increases casting speed and the tick rate of damage and healing effects. It also reduces your global cooldown (GCD), allowing you to cast more frequently.
Spirit – Increases the rate you charge your spirit ability. Every 1% of Spirit gives 0.5% chance to refund Fury when using one of your Fury spenders.

Champion league is when you will want to be prioritizing obtaining gear that have the secondary stats you’re looking for. Legendaries and Champion+ tiered weapons that can be augmented at the Weapon Master. Legendaries will start appearing in the loot pool in Paragon+. Obtaining these will be another huge power boost for Tariq. Prior to that, item level is the main priority.

Higher item level is king, having greater effect on your damage and survivability than any secondary stat will on its own.

Spirit is the stat we want to stack the most of. Regardless of which talent build you choose, we’ll aim to use our Spirit Ability as much as possible throughout the dungeons. When you get a Spirit proc, it increases your Primary Stat (Strength) for a short duration.
Critical Strike is our second priority for secondary stats for Tariq in both builds. Both builds run some form of increased Critical Strike chance and/or damage.
Expertise increases all damage by a flat percent. Crit is calculated after the extra damage from Expertise is added, meaning that more Expertise will mean higher Crit damage. Expertise is tied with Critical Strike as our second priority for secondary stats in this build.
Haste helps reduce our Global Cooldown time. With the Swing Timer removed for this season, this stat isn’t as important to us.

It’s worth noting that secondary stats on gear have diminishing returns. While Spirit is our best secondary stat, diminishing returns make it less efficient to stack only these stats. Keeping this in mind, we should look to spread our secondary stats out.

Gearing Priority

Substat Priority
Legendary Item
Necklace Traits
Weapon Traits
Sockets & Gems
Completed Set Bonus

Substat Priorities

Spirit
Critical Strike
Expertise
Haste

Set Bonuses

Set bonuses on gear can be huge boosts to our power, but time-consuming to achieve. Below is a table of the best sets to farm for.

Set Bonus	Reasoning
Seal of the Heskyr: Increase your Gem Power by 25%. Non-Capstone Gear Set.	This set is arguably BiS for every hero in Fellowship. The increase to your overall gem power is a incredible power spike.
Drakheim’s Absolution: Grants you a buff when activating your Spirit Ability, increasing your Strength by 20% for 20 seconds. Capstone Gear Set.	This is a massive damage boost for the duration of Raging Tempest. Once you obtain this set, it is a good idea to pivot into Sapphire gems alongside your Amethysts.
Death’s Grasp: Grants +4% Spirit and +10% damage to low-health enemies. Non-Capstone Gear Set.	We want this set to further our spirit gain as we will want to increase the uptime of our Spirit Ability as we gain more Sapphire gem power.

Gems

When deciding which gems to use, we should refer to our priority stats.

Generalizing the gems:

Sapphires increases your Spirit and your stats while your Spirit Ability is active,
Emerald increases Expertise,
Rubies increases your Strength,
Amethyst increases Critical Strike,
Diamonds increase all stats slightly,
Topaz gems grant Haste.

Avoid rerolling Tier 1 gems; it’s more efficient to use your materials to reroll gems at Tier 2 or above. Legendary gear will always have a gem socket. Any Epic or higher-rarity Cloak, Wrist, or Ring will always have a socket.

Our gem priority is as follows:

Sapphire=Emerald
Ruby
Amethyst
Diamond
Topaz

Many heroes this season are benefiting greatly from maxing our Emerald and Sapphire gem power and Tariq is no different. Our goal is to have 1500 Emerald and Sapphire gem power.

Weapons

Weapons can drop from any dungeon, however only Rare or higher rarity weapons give us a weapon ability to use. Epic or higher weapons allow access to the weapon trait tree. In this section, we will discuss the best option for this build and go over all the other options available.

Fateful Basher is our best weapon choice for both builds since it lowers our important cooldowns: Thundercall, Focused Wrath, Chain Lightning, and Leap Smash abilities. It will also affect our defensive, Unbreakable Will, and our Intimidate cooldowns as well.

Below are the 4 different weapons available to Tariq.

Fateful Basher has some single-target damage with a cleave effect as well as some mobility by charging at your target if you cast this weapon at a range. It also applies a buff to you, increasing your 20% Expertise and granting 200% increased Cooldown Recovery for 6 seconds.
This weapon is easily BiS for Tariq, regardless of build, and is versatile in its use.
Keep in mind: Cooldown Recovery is not haste. Cooldown Recovery only affects the cooldown timers for any skill with a cooldown, including this weapon’s ability.
Wildstone Crusher is great for AoE damage and crowd control (CC). Its Earthbreaker ability can enable your group to make larger pulls with less risk and acts as another way to Stun an enemy that might be casting a deadly ability.
Sahril’s Reckoning is great for increasing your critical strike chance for 20 seconds, increasing your damage potential against multiple mobs. This weapon has a lot of potential if you can stack buff by hitting multiple enemies and synergizes with our build since we want juicy critical hits on our Lightning damage.
Void-Touched Hammer is a great choice for single-target damage, helping ensure that your target is taken down quickly.

Hero Traits

Formerly Weapon Traits, Hero Traits are tied to any piece of gear that drops, as well as any weapon of Epic or higher rarity. There are 3 categories of Hero Traits: Master, Defensive, and Heroic. You can choose 2 Defensive, 2 Heroic, and 1 Master trait per weapon.

For our weapon, ideally, our best defensive traits will roll to be in the center of the tree. Having our best defensive options in the center allows us to choose any Heroic and Master traits we please without having to compromise. It is much cheaper to buy and use Defender’s Godstones to reroll weapon defensive traits than to reroll the other traits.

The best practice when trying to obtain your BiS weapon traits is to focus first on your defensive traits so that rolling for your Heroic and Master traits is much cheaper and simpler, as you won’t be looking for the optimal traits to be in specific spots in the tree.

Defensive Traits

The Defensive Traits that we want to take will either increase our overall health pool and decrease damage taken. The best Defensive Traits include Heart of Stone and King of the Hill, with a honorable mention to First Man Standing and Treasure Hunter’s Delight.

Icon	Name	Description
	Heart of Stone	One of the best defensive talents to take since it increases our Stamina, which affects our max health. This is something that can be invaluable the higher you climb as it will give you and your healer breathing room if you get hit by an instance of high damage.
	King of the Hill	This trait is a great companion to Heart of Stone as it functions in tandem to prevent an instance of high damage from bringing you down. It doesn’t have a cooldown, so as long as you are above 80% health you will benefit from this talent.
	First Man Standing	Another option for adding survivability. It’s especially useful in any Odd Comps that do not have a Tank.
	Treasure Hunter’s Delight	This trait is not as ideal as the above two. It synergises well with the Sinbinding Stone relic that grants all party members 15% damage reduction as you will also gain an additional 20% damage reduction on use. While this damage reduction is conditional and dependent on your relic cooldowns, this can be an invaluable survival tool to cycle along with your Unbreakable Will ability.

Heroic Traits

Heroic Traits are weapon traits that increase your secondary stats and/or your primary stat. The Heroic Traits we want to take increase our primary stat or the secondary stats that we wish to prioritize. The best Heroic Traits to take include Vengeful Soul, Inspired Allegiance, Seized Opportunity, Hidden Power, and Navigator’s Intuition.

Icon	Name	Description
	Navigator’s Intuition	Increases your highest secondary stat by a flat amount. The amount gained can be a substantial increase, especially once you Empower the trait. The highest secondary stat is determined by the flat amount rather than the percentage shown in the Character Info screen.
	Vengeful Soul	This trait is one of our best options as it has a chance to increase our primary stat, Strength, whenever we land a Critical Strike. It also has a built-in HoT that triggers whenever you are put below 50% health.
	Hidden Power	This trait gives us a buff that increases our Strength. A solid choice for increasing our overall damage at 2.6 PPM.
	Hunter’s Focus	A decent way to increase our Haste stat without needing to change the way we play.

Master Traits

Master traits are traits that augment the weapon by enhancing its effects. The best Master Traits we can take depends on the weapon you use. If you choose to use Fateful Basher, the best Master Traits are Visions of Grandeur and Martial Initiative, with an honorable mention to Sapphire Aurastone. Since our DPS is closely tied to our cooldowns, we are always looking to reduce their cooldown timers.

Icon	Name	Description
	Visions of Grandeur	This weapon ability gains increased Spirit generation on hit and resets the cooldown of our weapon ability upon the use of our Spirit Ability. This is arguably a BiS Master Trait for Fateful Basher as it ensures that we can have our Leap Smash cd reduced to ~7 seconds and reduce the cooldown timers for our other important abilities such as Thundercall, Focused Wrath, and Unbreakable Will.
	Martial Initiative	When using your weapon ability, you gain a buff that increases your primary stat (Strength) by 10% and your damage reduction by 15%. The duration depends on your weapon ability’s cooldown and the trait’s level of empowerment. At the base value for Fateful Basher, this trait will last 14 seconds.
	Sapphire Aurastone	A decent option to use since this activates whenever we use our Spirit Ability. Not as high of a priority as getting Visions of Grandeur or Martial Initiative.

Necklace Traits

New to season 3 are Necklace traits. These are unlocked once you obtain a necklace that is Epic rarity or higher. To view and choose your necklace traits, visit the Shrine of Infusion.

The best Necklace traits give us a second chance at life when things go south. Generally, The Mountain is our top trait to pursue, with The Boar as our second-best. The Lake and The Gryphon can be good choices as well, but their optimal use depends on which dungeon you are entering.

Blessings

Blessings are new to Fellowship as of Season 3. They further augment your gear the same way that gems and traits do. The meta for what the best Blessings for Tariq are will emerge as the Season progresses. Below are some Blessings to consider focusing on:

The Mystic – our top choice as it synergizes with our Spirit-focused build.
The Philosopher – this blessing works best when you reach 50% or higher Spirit. This is a big boost to our Critical Strike, Haste, and Expertise when we are in our Spender phase.
The Trickster – increases our Critical Strike when we activate our Spenders.
The Subduer – an amazing utility option. This allows us to use our Intimidate ability more often, with the added bonus of increased damage to low health enemies.
The Herald – allows us to use our Spirit Ability earlier in dungeons. This is optimal to take if you are using the Pneuma talent.
The Sinister – increases the Critical Chance of our Chain Lightning and Heavy Strike abilities. A decent option to take if you are running Lightning build.

Tariq Legendaries

The best legendary to complement our Lightning build is the legendary Ring. The legendary Cloak is good for any build, as the damage buff will always activate when using Leap Smash. The legendary Wrist greatly increase the DPS of our Culling Strike when it procs.

Drape of the Slayer King (Back)
- Slayer’s Mosh
  Enemies that take damage from your Leap Smash ability take 20% more damage from you for 6 seconds.
Executioner’s Unsanitary Bands (Wrist)
- Executioner’s Grin
  Your Abilities have a 6% chance to grant you Executioner’s Grin for 8 seconds, causing your next Culling Strike to have no cost and deal damage as if it spent 30 Fury.
Loop of the Thundering Vortex (Ring)
- Each time your Chain Lightning bounces to an enemy, you gain 1 stack of Thundering Vortex. Once you have 20 stacks of Thundering Vortex your next Chain Lightning deals 100% more damage.

Changelog

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

For the information about the latest update to Tariq, check out the November 27th patch notes.