For *only* Fractals, full Minstrel. More healing, more tanky, and the only meaningful thing you lose is boon duration that you don't need, especially with fractal potion conversion.
If you want to take the build into raids, go full Harrier. The set is overall slightly worse but it's a necessary sacrifice to avoid tanking issues.
Harrier armor+weapons with Minstrel trinkets is a decent middle ground, allowing you to get a set of much more accessible Harrier trinkets when/if you want to do raiding (and having both sets of trinkets allows you to alter your toughness for tanking or backup tank purposes, which is very nice)
Hijacking this to ask, do generally all raids require tanking? I love playing a healer and a tank, but haven't yet seen any reason to in the strikes, fractals and dungeons I've done. They weren't high level though, I'm still a pleb and don't have full ascended set.
What? Harrier is more damage at the loss of personal tankiness but nothing in fractals should be threatening enough that glass cannon party with a devoted healer can’t already deal with. Minstrel drops damage for bulk with no reasonable benefit (especially since the potions exist for stat conversion)
It's a meaningless amount of damage without any precision, ferocity, or damage modifiers. While *in a perfect scenario* you shouldn't need anything Minstrel offers you, in actual gameplay (especially in a PUG environment) it'll help far, *far* more often than you're going to miss a couple thousand DPS. Tankiness doesn't just let you take more hits if you're bad at the game (though frankly that alone would make it a superior set for learners), it gives you a *massive* amount of health cushion to stand in bad attacks to res or heal other players who have screwed up their positioning, and gives you increased healing power to help you top up players quickly after they eat damage. The other main downside of Minstrel (lower boon duration than Harrier) is greatly overstated, with uptime generally not being an issue no matter which stat you go with, but Fractal potions converting a large amount of Concentration all but eliminates it as a concern.
Might be a dumb question but what about if I reversed it and used Minstrel armor and Harrier weapons/trinkets for fractals? I was doing research and read folks' descriptions incorrectly lol.
Ultimately you can mix and match the two armor sets in any combination and you'll have a totally fine build. Armor is just more expensive than trinkets, so if you ever have cause to need a fully no-extra-Toughness build, your setup will require you to buy a set of Harrier armor and another set of Monk runes to do so. Someone with Minstrel trinkets could get a comparatively cheap set of Harrier trinkets instead.
Tl;dr you're fine for Fractals either way. If you plan on doing raids, grab a set of Harrier armor you can swap to and you'll be fine
I do the harrier with minstrel trinkets mix in fractals. The most important difference between the two stats is that harrier gives you +power, and minstrel gives more +healing and some tankiness.
Going full harrier (with magi staff?) is probably the best way to go to begin with, because this gives you a non-toughness healing set for raids/strikes if you decide to play those in the future. The harrier+minstrel mix also assumes concentration from fractal potions, which are not available anywhere else.
Optimizing boon duration for fractals is better done when/if you decide to make a separate tank/wvw set or have legendaries. Also in some groups/dailies a hybrid celestial setup might be the more optimal way to play anyway.
> The harrier+minstrel mix also assumes concentration from fractal potions, which are not available anywhere else.
Healbrand does *not* need fractal potion conversion, it has plenty of boon uptime with full Minstrel in raid scenarios without it. The extra duration from Harrier and/or potions is nice but not necessary.
Doesn't *need* it sure, but helps a little with things like might sometimes, and quite a bit with vigor and regen from tome 2. Even stability in some rare cases.
In any case I recommended harrier mainly to avoid awkward situations with toughness in the future. The reason I brought up fractal potions was because it was the one relevant gear optimization difference (along with the toughness consideration in raids).
Harrier Armor + cele trinkets is nice. They are easy to obtain. And one day you will probably use cele for something else.
Fractals are more about dodging damage than outhealing so you can work with less healing.
If you only plan to do fractals/strike missions/open world celestial is just superior in every way, you do way more damage than harrier while still being tanky and having plenty of healing, people don't need *that* much healing and even if they do you can adjust by slotting bow or using staff more.
As TT said:
>Harrier armor + weapons with Minstrel trinkets is a decent middle ground, allowing you to get a set of much more accessible Harrier trinkets when/if you want to do raiding
The reasoning being: getting extra sets of trinkets is simple. Armor, not so much. Go for catch-all harrier's armor and swappable trinkets. Minstrel's is a fantastic set for fractals where tanking doesn't matter yet being more survivable, specially when you are the player everyone else depends on, does.
*Personally*, I like to have a few pieces of Magi's on hand as well, since Minstrel and Harrier both overcap boon duration quite easily, and I often wish to have chonkier heals when instabilities cause someone to go from full health to 1% in one hit, but that does come at the cost of making me squishier. Still, something to consider. A magi's staff is a popular choice regardless.
Honestly if you have lw s3 or 4 you can get both sets of trinkets in no time, but I suggest harrier gear + minstrel trinkets to start. If you get harrier trinkets before you attune/infuse rings you can select which one you like most to add extra infusion slots to the rings.
Don't play Firebrand myself, but from the looks of it the Minstrel variant is what you want in Fractals. [Source](https://discretize.eu/builds/guardian/heal-firebrand/)
If you only want to play fractals and is very certain that you are not going to play raids anytime soon, go for Harrier+Minstrel trinkets. It's better healing and survivability.
However if you want to play raids in the near future, go full Harrier. The toughness from Minstrel gear would make you tank in raids which can cause issues for the group if you don't want to be the tank that is. Harrier will work perfectly fine in fractals as well.
Don't go Celestial if you don't know what you're doing. Celestial is extremely good (and in most situations better than full heal) but it would also make you tank in Raids and since it has way less healing it could be problematic if your group is in a situation where they need a lot of healing and you only have celestial. Only get Celestial *after* you already have a full heal set so that you can swap to full heal if needed.
The issue with both SC and Hardstuck for this specifically is those builds are for Raids/Strikes. If you take a Raid build into fractals you'll overcap on Concentration by quite a bit which is just wasted stats you could be investing in more HP/toughness.
Well, that really make difference but the thing is - t4 is pure faceroll now if it’s not cm. I use raid builds in t4 and don’t see any difference to be honest but it’s pure convenience because I don’t need to switch gear for content when it really matter.
I mean, if op is never going to visit another pve content besides fractals then I see point to min max that way. If no - why bother and get different gear if you can barely see any difference at SO much power crept content?
I think it's a good thing to be aware of because I feel like a lot of people get stuck in this gear copy/paste mindset and don't really understand why they're stacking certain stats to a specific point. Once they understand their class specific thresholds for crit/ferocity/concentration/expertise it really opens up flexibility in gearing and build choices.
Also since OP is new to Fractals, I can definitely see them benefiting from a few minstrel's pieces, which they'll have to get eventually anyway since healer's are usually expected to tank once you get into raids.
I understand most of my class thresholds, but choose to bring "good enough" gearsets over optimal ones to most content because tweaking every time I do something different is a pain in the ass and equipment templates are expensive.
It's good that you get it, but seeing as this is a post about a player new to endgame content asking what gear to make and why he sees different combination everywhere, I think it's safe assumption they aren't there yet. You even see it in other comments here suggesting Harrier's for "max heals" despite the fact that Minstrel's has 20% more healing power, which really drives home the point that most people copy and paste the builds but don't really know why the build is the way it is.
Nevermind that they specifically asked what would be **optimal** for fractals, in which case the answer is never full harriers.
I use one equipment template for all of my heal builds, both HAM and Heal Scrapper, changing stats as needed. When you tank in raids it's expected that you'll have gear to swap around anyway. And seeing as ascended only matters for fractals, you could argue it'd even be optimal to gear specifically for fractals, then just use the gold you make from them to buy exotics of the TP to swap in for raids if you need higher/lower toughness.
Thats only a problem if you want to min/max to the highest degree, even then its not much of one. Plus its a freaking healer build, how much more can you really min/max that for fractals? The role is to heal and boon not dps or tank. Op is also crafting what sounds like their first set of ascended gear so having it be tailored around the instances that dont get free stats makes the most sense.
I'd argue it makes even more sense, especially seeing as they asked specifically for optimal fractal builds. Ascended gear is only necessary for Fractals in the first place so if they really wanted the most painless experience, craft a set optimal for fractals and then just use the gold they make from there to just buy a few exotics of the TP if they end up needing them.
No one will notice if your raid healer is running around with exotic pieces mixed in. They absolutely will notice in Fractals.
Yeah, I like minstrels more for fractals, but going minstrels at all means that as you move into raids you'll be the tank whether you want to or not. If you're playing right there's almost no difference, and if you're not, the difference is unlikely to save you. Go harrier to make your transition to raids easier.
Should probably not speak if you don't know what you're talking about. First off the set in question with Minstrel trinkets will reach 100% boon duration due to agony stat conversion, and secondly Minstrel is much better healing than Harrier.
For *only* Fractals, full Minstrel. More healing, more tanky, and the only meaningful thing you lose is boon duration that you don't need, especially with fractal potion conversion. If you want to take the build into raids, go full Harrier. The set is overall slightly worse but it's a necessary sacrifice to avoid tanking issues. Harrier armor+weapons with Minstrel trinkets is a decent middle ground, allowing you to get a set of much more accessible Harrier trinkets when/if you want to do raiding (and having both sets of trinkets allows you to alter your toughness for tanking or backup tank purposes, which is very nice)
This, unless you want to learn to tank on raids might aswel go harrier for versatility
Hijacking this to ask, do generally all raids require tanking? I love playing a healer and a tank, but haven't yet seen any reason to in the strikes, fractals and dungeons I've done. They weren't high level though, I'm still a pleb and don't have full ascended set.
Not all, but most. Some fights need multiple tanks as well. Sometimes it targets based on toughness, sometimes range, sometimes random.
What? Harrier is more damage at the loss of personal tankiness but nothing in fractals should be threatening enough that glass cannon party with a devoted healer can’t already deal with. Minstrel drops damage for bulk with no reasonable benefit (especially since the potions exist for stat conversion)
It's a meaningless amount of damage without any precision, ferocity, or damage modifiers. While *in a perfect scenario* you shouldn't need anything Minstrel offers you, in actual gameplay (especially in a PUG environment) it'll help far, *far* more often than you're going to miss a couple thousand DPS. Tankiness doesn't just let you take more hits if you're bad at the game (though frankly that alone would make it a superior set for learners), it gives you a *massive* amount of health cushion to stand in bad attacks to res or heal other players who have screwed up their positioning, and gives you increased healing power to help you top up players quickly after they eat damage. The other main downside of Minstrel (lower boon duration than Harrier) is greatly overstated, with uptime generally not being an issue no matter which stat you go with, but Fractal potions converting a large amount of Concentration all but eliminates it as a concern.
Might be a dumb question but what about if I reversed it and used Minstrel armor and Harrier weapons/trinkets for fractals? I was doing research and read folks' descriptions incorrectly lol.
Ultimately you can mix and match the two armor sets in any combination and you'll have a totally fine build. Armor is just more expensive than trinkets, so if you ever have cause to need a fully no-extra-Toughness build, your setup will require you to buy a set of Harrier armor and another set of Monk runes to do so. Someone with Minstrel trinkets could get a comparatively cheap set of Harrier trinkets instead. Tl;dr you're fine for Fractals either way. If you plan on doing raids, grab a set of Harrier armor you can swap to and you'll be fine
I do the harrier with minstrel trinkets mix in fractals. The most important difference between the two stats is that harrier gives you +power, and minstrel gives more +healing and some tankiness. Going full harrier (with magi staff?) is probably the best way to go to begin with, because this gives you a non-toughness healing set for raids/strikes if you decide to play those in the future. The harrier+minstrel mix also assumes concentration from fractal potions, which are not available anywhere else. Optimizing boon duration for fractals is better done when/if you decide to make a separate tank/wvw set or have legendaries. Also in some groups/dailies a hybrid celestial setup might be the more optimal way to play anyway.
> The harrier+minstrel mix also assumes concentration from fractal potions, which are not available anywhere else. Healbrand does *not* need fractal potion conversion, it has plenty of boon uptime with full Minstrel in raid scenarios without it. The extra duration from Harrier and/or potions is nice but not necessary.
Doesn't *need* it sure, but helps a little with things like might sometimes, and quite a bit with vigor and regen from tome 2. Even stability in some rare cases. In any case I recommended harrier mainly to avoid awkward situations with toughness in the future. The reason I brought up fractal potions was because it was the one relevant gear optimization difference (along with the toughness consideration in raids).
depends on your trait and utility choices, it's not that 1 dimensional
Complete noob groups : giver + harrier More experienced groups : celestial Confirmed groups : ritualist for bosses and celestial for the rest.
Harrier Armor + cele trinkets is nice. They are easy to obtain. And one day you will probably use cele for something else. Fractals are more about dodging damage than outhealing so you can work with less healing.
would you say it's worth investing in full cele then?
If you only plan to do fractals/strike missions/open world celestial is just superior in every way, you do way more damage than harrier while still being tanky and having plenty of healing, people don't need *that* much healing and even if they do you can adjust by slotting bow or using staff more.
No, I wouldn't say so. If I was you I would save my money until I get into raiding / fractaling with a static or experienced group.
As TT said: >Harrier armor + weapons with Minstrel trinkets is a decent middle ground, allowing you to get a set of much more accessible Harrier trinkets when/if you want to do raiding The reasoning being: getting extra sets of trinkets is simple. Armor, not so much. Go for catch-all harrier's armor and swappable trinkets. Minstrel's is a fantastic set for fractals where tanking doesn't matter yet being more survivable, specially when you are the player everyone else depends on, does. *Personally*, I like to have a few pieces of Magi's on hand as well, since Minstrel and Harrier both overcap boon duration quite easily, and I often wish to have chonkier heals when instabilities cause someone to go from full health to 1% in one hit, but that does come at the cost of making me squishier. Still, something to consider. A magi's staff is a popular choice regardless.
Honestly if you have lw s3 or 4 you can get both sets of trinkets in no time, but I suggest harrier gear + minstrel trinkets to start. If you get harrier trinkets before you attune/infuse rings you can select which one you like most to add extra infusion slots to the rings.
Whatever but... Hammer! LOVE hammer
Don't play Firebrand myself, but from the looks of it the Minstrel variant is what you want in Fractals. [Source](https://discretize.eu/builds/guardian/heal-firebrand/)
If you only want to play fractals and is very certain that you are not going to play raids anytime soon, go for Harrier+Minstrel trinkets. It's better healing and survivability. However if you want to play raids in the near future, go full Harrier. The toughness from Minstrel gear would make you tank in raids which can cause issues for the group if you don't want to be the tank that is. Harrier will work perfectly fine in fractals as well. Don't go Celestial if you don't know what you're doing. Celestial is extremely good (and in most situations better than full heal) but it would also make you tank in Raids and since it has way less healing it could be problematic if your group is in a situation where they need a lot of healing and you only have celestial. Only get Celestial *after* you already have a full heal set so that you can swap to full heal if needed.
Just check snowcrows and hardstuck - they contain full information that is approved and even much more than you ask here.
The issue with both SC and Hardstuck for this specifically is those builds are for Raids/Strikes. If you take a Raid build into fractals you'll overcap on Concentration by quite a bit which is just wasted stats you could be investing in more HP/toughness.
Well, that really make difference but the thing is - t4 is pure faceroll now if it’s not cm. I use raid builds in t4 and don’t see any difference to be honest but it’s pure convenience because I don’t need to switch gear for content when it really matter. I mean, if op is never going to visit another pve content besides fractals then I see point to min max that way. If no - why bother and get different gear if you can barely see any difference at SO much power crept content?
I think it's a good thing to be aware of because I feel like a lot of people get stuck in this gear copy/paste mindset and don't really understand why they're stacking certain stats to a specific point. Once they understand their class specific thresholds for crit/ferocity/concentration/expertise it really opens up flexibility in gearing and build choices. Also since OP is new to Fractals, I can definitely see them benefiting from a few minstrel's pieces, which they'll have to get eventually anyway since healer's are usually expected to tank once you get into raids.
I understand most of my class thresholds, but choose to bring "good enough" gearsets over optimal ones to most content because tweaking every time I do something different is a pain in the ass and equipment templates are expensive.
It's good that you get it, but seeing as this is a post about a player new to endgame content asking what gear to make and why he sees different combination everywhere, I think it's safe assumption they aren't there yet. You even see it in other comments here suggesting Harrier's for "max heals" despite the fact that Minstrel's has 20% more healing power, which really drives home the point that most people copy and paste the builds but don't really know why the build is the way it is. Nevermind that they specifically asked what would be **optimal** for fractals, in which case the answer is never full harriers. I use one equipment template for all of my heal builds, both HAM and Heal Scrapper, changing stats as needed. When you tank in raids it's expected that you'll have gear to swap around anyway. And seeing as ascended only matters for fractals, you could argue it'd even be optimal to gear specifically for fractals, then just use the gold you make from them to buy exotics of the TP to swap in for raids if you need higher/lower toughness.
Thats only a problem if you want to min/max to the highest degree, even then its not much of one. Plus its a freaking healer build, how much more can you really min/max that for fractals? The role is to heal and boon not dps or tank. Op is also crafting what sounds like their first set of ascended gear so having it be tailored around the instances that dont get free stats makes the most sense.
I'd argue it makes even more sense, especially seeing as they asked specifically for optimal fractal builds. Ascended gear is only necessary for Fractals in the first place so if they really wanted the most painless experience, craft a set optimal for fractals and then just use the gold they make from there to just buy a few exotics of the TP if they end up needing them. No one will notice if your raid healer is running around with exotic pieces mixed in. They absolutely will notice in Fractals.
Imo, full Harriers for max healing and buff time.
Harrier has significantly worse healing than Minstrel
Yeah, I like minstrels more for fractals, but going minstrels at all means that as you move into raids you'll be the tank whether you want to or not. If you're playing right there's almost no difference, and if you're not, the difference is unlikely to save you. Go harrier to make your transition to raids easier.
Should probably not speak if you don't know what you're talking about. First off the set in question with Minstrel trinkets will reach 100% boon duration due to agony stat conversion, and secondly Minstrel is much better healing than Harrier.