Fellowship Xavian Hero Tank Guide

Xavier is a Strength-based Tank that excels in healing and party support. By using his Aura of Solace to redirect damage from party members to him, and his powerful targeted Brilliant Flash, he can not only protect the party, but sustain them with healing as well.

This guide will teach you the basics of playing Xavian in Fellowship, how to use his 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

• Xavian’s Abilities
• Xavian’s Brilliant Flash Mechanic
• Shining Halo Mechanic
• How to Play Xavian — Basic Ability Guide
• Xavian Talents and Build Progression
• How to Tank as Xavian
• Gearing and Stat Priority
• Legendaries and Legendary Builds
• Gems and Set Builds

Xavian’s Abilities

Xavian’s abilities scale off his main-stat, Strength. The below damage is based on 1,000 Strength. Instant abilities can be used during the Global Cooldown.

Ability/Icon	Name	Cast / Recast	Range / Radius	Effect
	Sun Strike	GCD	↔ 5yd	Strike your target, dealing 1,440 – 1,760 physical damage to it as well as striking enemies near your target with 30% of the power. Sun Strike applies Sunstruck to your main target for 20 seconds, stacking up to 10 times. SUNSTRUCK your next Omnistrike consumes all stacks of Sunstruck on all targets hit, replenishing 100 Mana plus an additional 50 Mana for each stack beyond the first that is consumed. SWIFT REPRIEVAL Sun Strike has a 15% chance to grant you 1 stack of Swift Reprieval, causing Brilliant Flare to turn into Brilliant Flash.
	Blinding Slash	GCD 6s	↔ 5yd	Your sword is infused with the light of sun power as you slash at target enemy, dealing 1,269 – 1,551 physical damage to them and other enemies near it. BLIND You apply 1 stack of Blind to enemies hit by Blinding Slash for up to 8 seconds, causing their Auto Attacks to have an additional +20% chance to be Parried by you. Each time you Parry an enemy, 1 stack of Blind is consumed on that enemy. SWIFT REPRIEVAL Blinding Slash has a 15% chance to grant you 1 stack of Swift Reprieval, causing Brilliant Flare to turn into Brilliant Flash.
	Omnistrike	GCD 18s	↻ 8yd	Swing your sword in a large arc around you, dealing 2,538 – 3,102 physical damage to all enemies around you. Generates 4 Spirit Points. SWIFT REPRIEVAL Omnistrike has a 30% chance to grant you 1 stack of Swift Reprieval, causing Brilliant Flare to turn into Brilliant Flash.
	Brilliant Flare	1.5s Cast	↔ 30yd	Heal target ally for 12,510 – 15,290 health. BRILLIANT FLASH When you have a charge of Swift Reprieval or Omega Reprieval your Brilliant Flare turns into Brilliant Flash.
	Brilliant Flash	GCD	↔ 30yd	Instantly heal target ally for 12,510 – 15,290 health or deal 2,511 – 3,069 damage to target enemy. When you target an enemy with Brilliant Flash, you also heal yourself for 12,510 – 15,290 health. In all situations, Brilliant Flash heals you for 20% more than others.
	Solar Blades	Instant 9s	↔ 30yd ↻ 8yd	Conjure blades of pure sunlight to fall from above upon your target, dealing 1,674 – 2,046 magical damage to it and other enemies within a 700 radius. The main target takes 100% more damage from Solar Blades. SWIFT REPRIEVAL Solar Blades has a 100% chance to grant you 1 stack of Swift Reprieval, causing Brilliant Flare to turn into Brilliant Flash.
	Shining Halo	Instant 30s	↻ 10yd	Sunlight envelopes the ground at your feet, burning enemies within its area for 288 – 352 magical damage every 1.5 seconds over 12 seconds. You take 20% reduced damage while standing in your Shining Halo. BRILLIANCE While Shining Halo is active, each Brilliant Flash you cast extends the duration of it by 2 seconds.
	Sky Crash	Instant 60s (2)	↔ 30yd ↻ 8yd	Instantly ascend to the skies in a beam of light and crash down at the targeted location, dealing 558 – 682 magical damage to enemies in the area.
	Taunt	Instant 8s	↔ 40yd	Taunt the target, forcing it to attack you for 6 seconds. Taunt also sets your threat to the highest on the target.
	Stagger	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.
	Solar Shield	Instant 15s	↔ 30yd	Instantly shield the target, absorbing up to 38,330 damage. The shield lasts for up to 8 seconds. While Solar Shield is active, the target takes 20% reduced damage.
	Omega Reprieval	Instant 60s	Self	Instantly gain 2 stacks of Omega Reprieval, causing your Brilliant Flare to turn into Brilliant Flash with added enhancements when used to consume the 2 stacks. Brilliant Flash: Enhanced Your Brilliant Flash has 50% increased power on your Main Target. When cast on a friendly target, Brilliant Flash is also casted on all party members within a large range of that ally. When cast on an enemy, Brilliant Flash is also casted on all enemies within a large range of that enemy. Brilliant Flash consumes 1 stack of Omega Reprieval.
	Ruptured Dawn	Instant 120s	↑ 20yd	Rupture the ground in front of you, dealing 702 – 858 magical damage to all enemies in a cone in front of you, Stunning them for 2 seconds and Pulling them to you.
	Aura of Solace	Instant 3s	Self	Burns all enemies within a large radius for 342 – 418 magical damage every 1.5 seconds while active and increases your Parry chance by +8% Aura of Solace causes 10% of all damage taken by nearby allies to be redirected to you. Costs 10 Mana every 1.5 seconds while active.
	Decree of the Sun	Instant SPIRIT ABILITY	Self	Envelope yourself in solar power, making you Immune to all damage for 3 seconds, ending with an explosion of light that deals 5,787 – 7,073 magical damage to nearby enemies. Once the immunity fades, you take 50% reduced damage for another 5 seconds. During Decree of the Sun you radiate solar magic in the area, healing nearby players for 2,556 – 3,124 every second. Spirit Ability When you activate your Spirit ability you gain Spirit of Heroism, granting +30% haste for 20 seconds.

Xavian’s Brilliant Flash

Xavian’s Brilliant Flash is his unique class feature. By default, Brilliant Flare is a decent single target heal with a long cast-time and a high mana cost, but with stacks of Swift Reprieval, a builder-spender mechanic, Brilliant Flare turns into Brilliant Flash, a powerful GCD spell with no cast time that can do strong damage or heal an ally, and also himself at the same time.

Stacks of Swift Reprieval are obtained through rotating through Xavian’s offensive attacks, with Solar Blades offering a guaranteed stack and melee GCDs Sun Strike / Blinding Slash / Omnistrike generating stacks at 15% / 15% / 30% each respectively.

You can hold up to three stacks simultaneously, indicated by the buff bar and Xavian’s unique buff UI. These stacks do not expire.

In addition to attacking, you can also use the Omega Reprieval cooldown to grant two stacks of Omega Repreival, allowing you to cast an enhanced version of Brilliant Flash which damages all enemies or heals all allies in addition to its ordinary effects. These stacks are seperate to the three stacks of Swift Reprieval, meaning you won’t waste any stacks (overcapping) when casting Omega Reprieval.

All five stacks can be seen on the buff UI as well. Omega Reprieval stacks are cast first, and expire in 12 seconds after the buff is cast. Omega Reprieval stacks can stack infinitely, despite the UI only showing 2.

Lastly, any over-healing given by Brilliant Flare / Brilliant Flash is dealt as additional damage to nearby enemies. This damage shows as ‘Solaris’ damage in the DPS meter.

Shining Halo Mechanic – Brilliance

Shining Halo is Xavian’s defensive mechanic and worth highlighting as it may go unnoticed at first.

Shining Halo deals damage to enemies and grants reduces damage taken by 20% when Xavian is standing inside of it, as well as additional effects with talents. When cast, the Brilliance Bar appears on the UI. The bar shows the remaining time for the Shining Halo.

Shining Halo can be extended by 2 seconds with each Brilliant Flash cast while active. It’s important to keep this in mind, as keeping your GCD rolling and not wasting any potential flashes will bring Shining Halo up towards 100% uptime.

An effective way to manage Shining Halo is to save some stacks of Swift Reprieval before you cast Shining Halo, and then dump them when it’s back up. You can do this in-between pulls as enemies get close to dying, as well, as the stacks do not expire and you won’t lose any between packs of enemies.

How to Play Xavian — Basic Ability Guide and Priority

Xavian’s basic gameplay involves keeping important cooldowns rolling, while ensuring not to overcap on any stacks of Swift Reprieval by casting when Brilliant Flash when at three stacks. Some spells do have Mana to consider, but as talent points are acquired this becomes negligible.

At the start of the dungeon, keep Aura of Solace active pretty much 100% of the time. This is not possible as soon as you get the skill, but after some talents this won’t be a problem in the mid-game. Don’t forget to re-enable it if you die.

Initiate combat with Sky Crash as a dive, Solar Blades for a ranged attack, or a GCD like Omnistrike if mounted.

Keep Solar Blades, Omnistrike and Blinding Slash on cooldown at all times to generate Swift Reprieval stacks if you have less than three.

Omnistrike, Blinding Slash, and Brilliant Flash are your main GCDs and you will cast the rest of the spells in-between them, with Sun Strike being available as a filler spill if you have no other options.

Keep in mind Solar Blades is an instant and can be cast in between GCDs as well. Because it has a 100% chance to generate a Swift Repreival stack, often you’ll find yourself casting Brilliant Flash > Solar Blades > Brilliant Flash > Omnistrike if you’re at 3 stacks and it comes back.

For your first instant global cooldown in between GCDs, cast Omega Reprieval to start the cooldown and get the stacks of Omega Reprieval ready to cast. You can also do this pre-pull.

Before casting Brilliant Flash, place your Shining Halo to get the benefit of Brilliance extending Shining Halo.

Use Solar Shield instantly whenever it’s available on yourself to give yourself more Damage Resistance and give your healer some room. Of course, hold it for a few seconds if you’re expecting a large amount of damage incoming like a large pull or a tank buster. But not too long that you’d miss usages.

You can also use Ruptured Dawn to pull ranged mobs in a cone ahead of you, stun all enemies for 2 seconds and give yourself time, or as an interrupt against a group of casts.

Xavian’s Spirit Ability, Decree of the Sun, regenerates quickly through regular uses of Omnislash, so don’t be shy to pull a larger pull when it’s ready to be used, and try time it when getting low to give your other cooldowns time to regenerate. Be sure to use your additional cooldowns after the 5 second mitigation, not during.

Remember that Brilliant Flash and Solar Shield can be used on anyone in the party. In particular, Omega Reprieval’s area of effect healing is extremely powerful, so try to keep aware of your allies’ status and help out if things are looking bad.

Here is a rough priority list of Xavian’s abilities. Keep the GCD rolling while casting instants in-between. Remember to pay attention to the situation as things can change on the fly.

1. Omega Reprieval (Instant) – Keep on cooldown, even if you don’t need to cast right away (12s window for the buff). Can be pre-pull also, or saved for an upcoming emergency.
2. Solar Shield (Instant) – Keep on cooldown on yourself or an ally who needs it, unless specifically being saved for an upcoming tank buster.
3. Shining Halo (Instant) – If down, keep the buff active. Don’t recast if the pull is about to end, as you’ll waste it.
4. Brilliant Flash (GCD) – Cast before anything else if:
   • You’re at three stacks of Swift Reprieval
   • Omega Reprieval is up
   • You’re dying
   • To save someone else
   • If Shining Halo is about to expire and you can’t recast it yet
5. Solar Blades (Instant) – Generates Swift Reprieval + tons of damage.
6. Sky Crash (Instant) – Free damage. Save a charge for movement if needed.
7. Omnistrike (GCD) – Strongest Damaging GCD + generates Swift Reprieval.
8. Blinding Strike (GCD) – Area of Effect GCD + Mitigation through parry via blind stacks + generates Swift Reprieval.
9. Brilliant Flash (GCD) – Single target damage + Self sustain. Target the strongest enemy of the pack to burn them down faster than the rest.
10. Sun Strike (GCD) – Filler GCD. Use if everything else is on cooldown. Will eventually phase out with enough Haste. (Note: Does more damage than Blinding Strike against a single target, if you don’t need the bonus parry).
11. Brilliant Flare (1.5s Spell) – Heals a single target in a pinch if you have no stacks. Can come in clutch in extreme situations, but often better to just push for more stacks via GCDs.

Early Game Mana Management

In the early game, Xavian will struggle with mana, at least until you unlock the 5A talent. The best way to manage it is more carefully toggle your Aura of Solace if running low mid-pull, or only use it during tougher larger pulls and boss mechanics.

To generate mana, use Sun Strike at least once before casting Omnistrike, which will cause it to proc a mana regeneration effect. The more stacks you consume, the more mana you’ll generate also. You can also regenerate some mana by using Brilliant Flash and proccing a Spirit Refund, so keep everything rolling!

If running low, you may find yourself having to be more careful about using Solar Shield.

Xavian Talents and Build Progression

Below is the build we recommend for Xavian that focuses on buffing Brilliant Flash and generating as many free GCDs as possible, causing more damage, more mitigation, and even more healing.

Quick Reference Talent Table

Talent Picks

Sun’s Touch (1A) makes every cast of Brilliant Flash give enemies a Damage over Time (or allies a heal over time) and an additional heal over time on yourself from the self-heal component.

Rising Sun (2C) is a high-value one-pointer that causes Omnistrike to reset Solar Blades 50% of the time. Be sure to cast Cast Solar Blades first when you have this talent instead of opening with Omnistrike. Additionally, if Solar Blades is only at a ~1-2 second cooldown as Omnistrike becomes ready, consider doing a different GCD first, casting Solar Blades when it’s back, then using Omnistrike.

Celestial Favor (3B) reduces the cooldown of Omega Reprieval significantly – 3 seconds for every Brilliant Flash you cast, including the ones generated by Omega Reprieval itself. When combined with other generating talents, you’ll be casting regularly.

Hallowed Shield (4C) has great value for a single point. Xavian has a high parry rate through his Aura and other talents, which will in turn make Solar Shield more effective every cast.

Vanguard of Vengeance (5A) is a must pick. This talent will single-handedly remove all mana issues, increase your damage through counter-attacks, increase your tankiness through extra parry. This will also allow you to keep Aura of Solace up permanently without a problem.

Golden Hour (5C) when taken later and stacked with Rising Sun + Celestial Favor will give you more Reprieval stacks than you’ll know what to do with.

Shifting Spectrum (6C) will help keep you alive during larger pulls when the game gets more difficult in Paragon and higher.

Other Noteworthy Talents

Solar Burn (1C) is an offensive pick that will do a lot of damage, especially when combined with the legendary necklace.

Light’s Oath (2B) is an offensive 1-point pick that can be swapped in for a defensive 1-point. With enough Haste and Reprieval generation, it’s not hard to make every Shining Halo deal the extra 100% damage. Drop Shining Spectrum if you’re not having trouble with tankiness.

Imposing Presence (3A) is an attack-speed reducing 2-point talent, which will greatly enhance survivability in large pulls against auto attacks, as well as give a movement slow for kiting. This can be taken in place of one-pointers and can be more powerful than them, but doesn’t stack with Darkfrost which is the current best weapon for Xavian.

Invictus (5B) scales very well. In the late game, as secondary stats become plentiful, this may become a priority pick, particularly with the appropriate legendary.

Remember to change out any offensive or defensive talents as needed if you feel like you’re having trouble surviving. When it comes to tanking, if being more defensive lets you get through a dungeon with one less overall pull, it’s better than doing more damage.

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

Tanking as Xavian

Rather than managing meters and long cooldowns, Xavian tanks with raw overpowering numbers, parries, self-healing and quick-cooldown mitigations.

To effectively tank as Xavian, you want to aggressively cast your GCDs and cooldowns to keep your sustain going. Earlier in the game, you may find mana to be an issue. But as your stats grow, and with the above talent choices, it should become less of a problem. Use Sun Strike and Omnistrike to regenerate your mana, so you can keep casting. Using stacks of Repireval will also regenerate mana.

Don’t neglect your Shining Halo and keep it up as long as possible through cooldown management and Brilliant Flash, as the 20% mitigation is one of your few mitigations and can be kept with 100% uptime if managed well.

Xavian’s best strength over the other tanks as well is his support capabilities. Catching emergency heals in boss fights, AoE damage situations, or party mistakes, can relieve your healer, and even save runs. Sometimes giving the healer room to play will allow them to deal more damage than you would yourself through a single cast.

Gearing and Stat Priority

Substats have the following effect for Xavian:

• Critical Strike – Chance for damage and healing effects to crit, doubling their effect.
• Expertise – Increases all damage, healing and absorption effects triggered by Xavian.
• Haste – Decreases cooldowns of Omnislash, Solar Blades, Blinding Slash, and Solar Shield. Increases GCD speed, and the tick rate of damage and healing effects.
• Spirit – Increases the chance for a Spirit Refund. When casting a spell with Mana, refund the Mana cost of that ability and increase your Spirit Ability charge by 1.

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 sub-stats, we need to consider the following.

Critical Strike increases Xavian’s damage, and critical healing chance for every Brilliant Flash.

Expertise also increases his damage, healing, and shield effectiveness.

Haste does everything for Xavian. Reducing cooldowns means more Reprieval stacks, more mitigation from shields, faster GCDs means more casts and faster Omega Reprieval cooldown and more resets of GCDs. All of this has a compounding effect. Ultimately, the only limit on Haste is how fast you can hit your GCDs and Instants effectively.

Spirit helps with Mana management, and that’s it. Mana is solved through a talent instead.

Gearing Priority:

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

Substat Priorities:

1. Haste
2. Crit
3. Expertise
4. Even more of everything else
5. Spirit

It’s worth noting that secondary stats on gear have diminishing returns. Spirit in particular has double-diminishing returns so it’s best to cap out around 20%.

Best Xavian Weapon

Darkfrost Drakecarver gives a 30-second single-target icicle attack that stuns an enemy for 3 seconds, who then explodes to deal frost damage and a 65% move speed + 40% attack speed slow to all enemies around them. This adds an entire new mitigation method to Xavian’s kit, another method for interrupting, and is easily the best weapon to pick.

Sahril’s Greatsword gives another shield cooldown which explodes for extra damage, but is on a 90-second cooldown. It also doesn’t stack with Solar Shield, which by late game will be casted regularly. Still a strong pick.

Fated Dawnrender cleaves enemies for significant damage and gives 200% Cooldown Reduction for 6 seconds. This will effectively reset most of Xavian’s cooldowns, but some of the effect will be wasted by simply not being able to GCD fast enough, and the other weapons are a better as it gives more options instead of buffing his existing ones.

It is worth using ingots to reroll other weapons for Darkfrost Drakecarver. An arcane ingot on any other weapon will guarantee you get Darkfrost. (As there are only 4 weapons for tanks at the moment.)

Click here for more details on Weapons and Weapon Traits

Best Xavian Relics

As with most tanks, the new Obsidian Sigil in Season 2 will be the best in slot, granting 30% Damage Reduction on yourself for 9 seconds.

Next up is Saltwash Elixir, granting an emergency 40% HP heal for yourself.

Grimoire of Resurrection is good to keep on the tank as if you’re least likely to die (and if you do, it’s probably a wipe anyway), so you’ll have the most chance to use it.

Ancient Wardstone will be extra utility to do pulls with excessive debuffs.

Any of the routing relics in last, or in special scenarios where special routing will save more time than the other relics.

Click here for more details on Relics

Xavian Legendaries and Xavian Legendary Builds

See below for a list of Xavian’s Legendaries, their effects, and our recommended builds.

Xavian Legendary Builds

Sandworn Sabatons of the Fortress

These boots stack up Solar Shield to be even stronger, and throw in a clutch effect to ‘boot’. 20% DR stacked with an additional 20% from Shining Halo is already strong enough, but may see use for enabling extremely large pulls or end game, high level Eternal.

Stacked with the additional effects from Invictus, these boots enable a powerful build that does rely on all three capstones in Row 5.

Guilded Cloak of the Sunlit Kingdom

This build enables heavier amounts of support healing for Xavian through even more Omega Reprieval stacks being generated over time. Unfortunately, it lacks the important Damage Resistance that the other two legendaries provide, which tanks need.

Runed Amulet of the Horizon

With all the haste bonuses, even though the 20% damage reduction you get from enemies hit by Solar Blades lasts 5 seconds, it should easily be enabled for full uptime.

Swap in Solar Burn for extra DPS to push faster, until you need to swap back to the core build for more tankiness and survivability again. Despite what the tooltip shows, the extra burn doesn’t overwrite and you’ll get the full value out of every Solar Blades cast.

Xavian Set Bonuses

Dark Prophecy (Abilities have a chance to increase haste by 25% for 20 seconds) is simply the best two-piece set for Xavian, enabling even more haste, more GCDs, CDR, damage reduction, etc.

Other sets have value, but there isn’t much reason to chase them any more than you would normally grind upwards through Eternal.

We recommend keeping Dark Prophecy, with the remaining slots being 35% empowered gems.

Xavian Gem Priority and Build

Be sure to look at our gems guide to get an understanding of gems in Fellowship first.

As a general guideline, here is a priority list for gem upgrades for Xavian:

1. Topaz
2. Emerald
3. Sapphire
4. Ruby
5. Amethyst
6. Diamond

As you start stacking more gems and materials for fusion and re-rolling, you can start building towards best in slot. Assuming full 35% essence sockets + 100% essence from the legendary, you will be able to use either:

• 10 / 9
• 10 / 6 / 6
• 10 / 6 / 3 + 1x 2 Piece Set

As detailed above, the haste set bonus is great for Xavian so gems will be prioritized alongside this set. This is the full breakdown of gems using Fellowsguide’s Gem Tool.

Aim as far as you can into the Topaz track as Xavian gets so much strength out of Haste. Blessings of the Commander – I will give some extra Cooldown Reduction on all of his abilities without going overboard in Emerald, and Resonating Soul will help survivability across the board, particularly when stacked with Shifting Spectrum, giving Xavian more time to heal himself up.

Changelog

Feb 21st

• Created Guide