With Briarheart you really want to maximize your crit chance or the amount of hits that you can do. So it is ideally paired with sets that support multi-hit abilities like jabs or (fast ticking) DoTs in your build - if your goal is to maximize the heal value. Overall it is very content dependent what you choose, but it is still a viable set just for the WD proc. It can still be strong on setups with high synergy, but hasn't been very universally useful for a long time. The heal scales off of resources, but the returns aren't really high enough to prioritize that. The proc is still nicely controllable on a backbar set with cloak or critrush and such, and it has decent enough uptime to still be considered sometimes.

In PvP for example, it is mostly outclassed by Rallying Cry (conceptually similar). But you can technically backbar both with a 4-4 split if you dual wield on the backbar (quite decent for glyph uptimes through blade cloak anyway), giving you enough room for a 3 piece or a mythic/monster/arena combo on the frontbar. Still harder to proc than alchemist for the same job, but it can work.

If you need more help you might want to provide more context regarding your goals and playstyle.

Thank you for the replies! Is Hexos Ward craftable?

In pvp briar is just power crept out of existence.

• The heals are worthless because they are halved
• The heals being based on max stats which are inefficient and useless because of how much free regen there is in the game, nobody needs capacity sustain with perfect regen.
• The WD is only 450 and has a 2/3 uptime at best....likely closer to 50% uptime due to the crit proc requirement and one bar nature. Compared to the other top dps sets like stuhns or ET offering nearly 900wd worth in % damage done while being 100% uptime............Not that these should have a downtime, but more so that briar should just have no cooldown which incentivizes people building into the playstyle the set gives access to.
• The 2-4 pieces are just highly inefficient. Max stats like I said above only provide 50% of the damage that a WD line provides post buffs. Then the crit chance 2-4 pieces just pale in comparison in terms of effective damage output.

I was running with New Moon acolyte and Shattered Fate. That gave to a nice amount of penetration and a decent amount of damage to boot. It just seems like the crit damage chance was never high enough.

Briarheart is a starter PvE set, so a good one to pair it with is Order's Wrath.

You don't need much more than 30% crit chance to benefit from Briarheart, but DPS typically want closer to 40-50% anyway. Order's Wrath is something you can use until you find a set to replace Briarheart, then after that you can replace Order's Wrath.

If you're looking for some survivability, Iceheart is a good monster set to aim for, and not too difficult to get.