I've got a 301 Water toon, currently using Starheart, Page, and Orb. Previously I was running with: Soothing mist Mending wave (or blessing of deep) Solace Riptide (for 2 solace) Bubble (cause tempest is the worst shield) Tsunami (which heals better than soothing mist in my opinion) I replaced soothing mist with high-tide (to activate on mending or blessing) and that seems to work better. So, there's no point in me using the Orb anymore. My question is: which would be more beneficial, and why? Strategist or Transformation?
Get rid of the Starheart. Keep your Page and Orb. For Water I would recommend replacing Starheart with the Eye of Gemini. Strategist/Transformation are ok but I don't think Water can take advantage of these two artifacts the way Nature/Electricity can.
Honestly, you should run both if possible. Your load out is very similar to mine. I run solace, riptide, high tide, blessing, flood of power, tsunami strikes. That’s 3 hots running simultaneously all the time or 6 hots running simultaneously after a reset by flood of power. So in my opinion, trans and strat are ideal for a load out running that many hots. I use Eye of Gemini as my third artifact because of flood of power. But if you don’t run a supercharge, it’s still a good artifact to have.
On test, the transformation/strategist combo was actually pretty awesome with water. It made you more or less invincible standing in a double solace (as long as you weren't one-shot).
The Orb is a really great artifact if you're running Flood of Power (which I do). With your load out, I think either the Transformation or the Strategist can replace it. If you're picking one, personally I lean towards the Transformation, because the increases average healing is, IMO, more noticeable than the dots from the Strategist.
Yes, I'm leaning towards transformation, instead of strategist, due to: 1, it's a very low chance that strat will proc considering a %25 crit rate anyway. 2, the HoT from strat only hits the person the crit/proc landed upon. 3, even if transformation is only at 160, it's still about a 10-11% increase in overall healing done (capabilities). From a previous comment: I prefer not to use Gemini, simply because I'm not using a SC. Yes, the stats are nice, but it's a wasted artifact imo if not using SC. Plus the added bonus of transformation being able to be used with dps role.