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.

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	↔ 5yd ↻ 5yd	Deals 242% Strength physical damage to your target and 49% Strength physical damage to other enemies near your target. Shield Slam generates 25% 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. 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 2000% 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 70% DR
• 75% to 50% gives 50% DR
• 50% to 25% gives 30% DR
• 25% to 0% gives 10% 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, and every 1% of Spirit gives a 0.5% 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 + 25% Toughness
3. Hold the Line – Reset Shield Slam, increase your Toughness and go again.
4. Sweeping Strike – DPS Button. Press if you’re good on health + Toughness. If you’re dying, skip it.
5. Shield Throw – CDR for Shockwave
6. 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.
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.

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 2 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 70% 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 the time it expires, 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. Like Bash, cast Grand Melee when an enemy ability is coming up. Keep in mind that it is a GCD, though. 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. 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 until you unlock legendaries that are more build-defining.

Sword & Board (1C) early will give you some nice sustain. Shield Mastery (1B) is strong, but it scales better with higher amounts of Toughness, so Reinforced Steel (1A) and Guarded Veteran (1B) are solid passive defense instead. High Command (4A) will reduce the cooldown of Hold the Line and give you more casts of Shield Slam.

Depending on the rows you have unlocked, Front Line Defender (6A) and Master of War (6B) are solid one-point talents, making your Toughness stronger and your Grand Melee more frequent, both easy wins.

Generally, the Row 5 talents are too expensive for what value they offer, so they currently get passed over for the cheaper alternatives.

From here, you can take offensive talents based on any legendaries you get.

Here is our recommended talent progression for Helena, focusing on early defense and a Shockwave build.

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 – Increases attack speed, casting speed and the tick rate of damage and healing effects.
• Spirit – Increases the rate you charge your spirit ability. Every 1% of Spirit gives 0.5% chance to double the cooldown reduction effect of Veteran of War.

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, often proccing when you don’t need it.

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
6. Haste
7. Expertise
8. Spirit
9. Crit

Wishlist Fellowship

If you enjoyed your time with Fellowship during the open beta, or if you’re at all interested in playing, be sure to wishlist the game on Steam. The game launches into Early Access on October 16th.