Guardian's Ultimate Guide ( Part 1 )

Hi Everyone,
In this post I will explain what i have learned about the newest ship , the goal of this post is to help players know how to play the ship , how to play with guardian teammates, and finally the best way to play against the ship.
The post will be devided into 4 parts :
1) my personal opinion on the ship and the different teal item and some suggestions
2) setups suitable for the ship
3) different tactics for playing the ship
4) How to play with guardian teammates
P.S. I played about 1.3k battles with the guardian before writing this overview to able to understand the ship as good as possible.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Part 1) Guardian and its teal items:
The ship itself got good hp ( around 18k hp with 1 t5E big shield , and 1 t5E small shield / around 15.5k hp with 1 t5E big shield and 1 bandage) which allows it to get close and play aggressively, however the ship got low fire power and since it doesn't have any yellow slots ( i.e. no possibility for speed items) the damage potential of the ship is even less than that of speeder ( because u simply waste more time trying to reach the enemy if they are moving). Now since this ship is meant to be a defensive ship it shouldn't be easy to destroy it since it's supposed to be kind of a sponge, absorbing the damge and giving teammates more chance to concentrate more on applying damage while caring less about being targeted. Now, putting that in mind i will briefly explain the purpose of each teal item:
1) Cleanse Pulse:
It reduces the duration of fire ,stun, frost on teammates only ( all teammates within the range of the pulse) .
The Cons: While the idea itself is awesome, but:
a- when the guardian is the only ship remaining, this means that u basically have a useless item, which is an issue for combat ships.
b- teammates needs to be within range ,, and since the ship isnt meant to be a fast boat, its hard to actually use this item to its max potentials- because it doesnt have a yellow slot like fixer for example, which allows them to move between teammates - ( although the ship is fast compared to other big boats) .
c- usually area healing items ( same apply for this item) make the team more vulnerable to area dmg weapons like torps, fbs , mortars ,, etc. Meaning ,, while players might try to get close to the guardian or defender to debuff the dmg ,,, but it also becomes easier to hit them and deal more dmg while they are clustered.
Suggestions:
a) i would prefer a teal item that works like the healing bolt ,,, that totally removes fire,, stun and freeze on teammates. Such an item would also work over distance which makes it more useful for a ship without a nitro or overboost.
b) make it affect the user itself by certain percentage like the repair pluse, or once its activated, it makes the user invulnerable for a couple of secs against fire, stun and freeze.
Conclusion: i dont recommend using this item at the moment.

2) Defense Aura :
It redirects 50% of the dmg to the user at a reduced rate ( they dont stack).
The Cons: although such an item would work very good in things like tournaments but:
a) using it on a defender for example wouldn't be smart since the defender's hp drains already very fast
b) aside from the fact that u need to get close to teammates and the issue of having multiple players clustered at some area, u still need high a lvl of coordination between teammates to be able to utilise such an item, where the fixer concentrates on healing the user and the teammates stay together (but not too close) to get the dmg debuff and always keep an eye on other teammates. Similar scenarios happen in very small situations.
c) similar to the cleanse pulse, its useless when the guardian is the only ship remaining
Suggestions:
a)make it simply ruduce the dmg on teammates and the user ( at a reduced rate)by a certain percentage for certain amount of time
Conclusion: i dont recommend this item atm.

3) Bolster Armor:
It reduces the dmg taken by the ship by a certain percentage for a certain duration.
Cons: good and practical item but:
a) item isnt worthy 2 slot points and dosnt really help that much with absorbing dmg from multiple enemies which should be the main purpose of this ship.
Suggestions:
a) make it a 1 slot point item and to balance that u could reduce the amount of damage reduction on it. This would also allow the defender to use this item , and would be a small buff to that sad ship .
Conclusion: item is useful to some extent

4) Defense Wall:
Half shiled that blocks dmg on one side with a good amount of hp ( about 4.2k hp for t5E)
Cons: the wall is probably the only reason why many players are using this ship, but:
a) the wall doesnt block ,, freeze, stun ,torps and its not that easy to block mortars, fbs and grenades with it, u basically block direct dmg weapons with it and only from 1 side since its a half shield.
Suggestions:
a) increase the transaparity of the wall
b) allow the wall to block freeze as well and i will explain why in a later part.
c) dont nerf the wall . Comparing it to tesla shield is absurd ,, the ship is slow compared to the ships that use tesla shields ( which depend on the hit and hide style unlike this ship) ,, and got 2 weapons, not to mention that its only 1/2 a shield. any major changes to the wall are unnecessary in my opinion.
Conclusion: i will make it short , this item is probably the only reason to play this ship

Now as u can see the Guardian is definitely the best defensive ship in the game atm thanks to the wall, and at the moment the guardian is filling the role that originally the defender was supposed to fill, however depending on the reasons mentioned above using 2 walls on the guardian is currently the best available option, something which i am not totally a fan of , since i am wasting 1 slot by using only 2 teal items with 2 slot points each, instead of 3 teal items with 4 slot points in total( i.e. 7 items in total instead of 8).
My suggestion to solve that issue is to decrease the cd of the wall ( maybe to around 10 secs instead of 12) . yup, you heard me right , and by doing that using 2 walls would be useless since it already got a good hp and add to that some tweaks to the other items , i think that would solve the issue of the unused slot and we should start seeing the players using the ship to its full potentials as desired. People need to remember that even if the ship is hard to destroy , it has low damage abilities. u cant guard or defend with a ship thats fragile and could be easily destroyed. Anyways that doesnt mean the ship is op in general , the ship is only op if the opponent relies heavily on cannons and direct wepaons, and to be honest i think that keeping the walls as strong as they are atm will help moving the scene from the usual cannon - flare gun meta we have been seeing for a long time now and this paves the way for new setups and allows for variety and different playing styles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Part 2) Setups Suitable for the Guardian :
https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/guardians-ultimate-guide-part-2.24316

 

Amazing ! Thx

 

I am totally agree about the Boster Armor. I was planning to make that statement myself. Currently, 3 of the 4 teal items are useless at the moment . Fix the armor so it can be on a defender. The wall on a defender is too much.

 

@TheAntiSnipe put this on your mother thread or whatever you call it.

 

The source of my Guardian problems is that I don't like Shield Wall having 100% uptime. It's not a problem with Tesla Shield because you can choose to use a 20s cooldown railgun on it or just chew through the HP, but shield wall is immune to railgun and has way more HP so it's not really possible to coordinate with randoms to take it down. So currently the single best counter to shield wall is to pretend the Guardian doesn't exist and find some other angle to attack from, which doesn't sound like good game design.

Here's a bunch of different changes I think could make Guardian more fun to play and more fun to play against:

• Make the shield wall last 4 seconds instead of 8 (the shield wall stays beefy and invincible but has the tradeoff of lasting a very short amount of time, so you need to strategically use it while pushing the enemy)
• Give Guardian 5 Teal slot points instead of 4, and make shield wall cost 3 instead of 2 (kind of a lame bandaid fix)
• Make the wall disappear if the Guardian takes a certain amount of damage (adds counterplay to the wall, can synergize with Bolster Armor really well)
• Double the range of Defense Aura and Cleanse Pulse from 7 to 14 (makes it more viable on slow Guardian, incentivizes people to use things other than the wall)

 

It has three...

 

I meant slot points, fixed

 

Great stuff here. Just not a fan of this color.

 

Bolster Armour is trash as it's currently constructed. 6 seconds long. With 14 seconds cool down. Use it and enjoy instant death.

 

Nice write up!

I unfortunately ended up with Legendary Bolster armor and haven't really used it. I have seen the effectiveness of the dual wall. The obvious thing to do is get inside the wall, BUT as a shooter this is not an option. The Guardian moves 0.01 faster than the shooter so you can't gain ground on it. Torps are the only weapon a shooter can carry to dmg the guardian since I can say first hand that my Leg lvl 30 Ex Canon, or my maxed out epic flare will not even take down an Uncommon wall. I say BOO to reducing the CD. The Wall is OP as it is already when compared to the other Teal items.

 

As a shooter. The thing to do is call the Guardian as the target. Have 3 friends fire around same time wall goes down and pop goes the Guardian quickly

 

And for anyone suggesting any nerfs. To wall. Remember. This is the only Teal item that works semi well.

The other teal items sound nice in description...but aren't ready for prime time. It's not like we are seeing more than 1 player even hit 5k in this boat? Only 1 person has done it.
Reality the boat and how to play it for the majority of the bay is a learning curve. How to play against it. And how to play with one on your team. Spend some time in the boat...all u shooters. Custom matches. Arm a uncommon and a common shield wall. And then have a friend fire at it. Learn what it does and doesn't do. Then u will know how to defeat it.

 

I did not suggest any nerfing, just that in my opinion it doesn't currently need a buff. Running two high strength shields you are able to have a shield in front of you at all times currently.

Of course this is how to do it. Whether your team cooperates or not is another thing...

 

I added part 2, the links to the remaining parts will be added to this article.
The forum only allows for 10k characters per thread so i have to create a new article for each part