What are The Best Guardian Spirits in Nioh?

[₯ Laotian Commotion]

In your own personal opinions how would you rank the Guradian spirits in tersm of best to worse?

[Squerol]

Kato as primary guardian for close combat damage boost
Aya-Komori as secondary guardian to get damage from behind bonus (at high leveled guardian percentage bonus is not bad even if You pick him as secondary one)

[Pajonk]

For my build (Red Dragon Armor set with spear) I use Enko and Suzaku for boosting fire dmg - works really great IMO. Kara-Jishi is godly when use it with dual katanas: Windstorm deals HUUUUGE dmg with this one. ;) Paired Raiken it's good too.

[Kiekmgoan46]

Aya-Komori if u go full ninja.

[checkmate]

Most people don't read second page so here we go.

Kato has best generic base skills in the game
Genbu has strongest transform with 3000 might(Magic+Spirit build)
Aya-Komori is for ninja before ethreal set
Kara-Jishu for any build involving skill spam
Suzaku for Critical health damage build
Nine tail+Itokuri map-clear farming
Gyokuto+Itokuri for boss farm.

I mostly use Kato for first play-through, Genbu to cheese any boss with spirit stone spam, then Nine tail+Itokuri for all other playthrough,

[ScaryMan]

The PHOENIX (fire bird, dont know correct name) does wonders on Raven Tengu, one of two guardian talismans and it is out of KI and on fire for an easy kill.

You get a huge fire bonus. So, if you have a fire bonus on a weapon - paired with this bird - it will wreck most enemies. Also, when your guage is full you get a free second chance, if killed.

I use KATO and the Phoenix, its an excellent combo.

For Human BOSSES, the COW is by far the best for getting a knockdown and its the only thing that got me through the MARIA fight.

[Naryoril]

I really like Kato for the Ki regeneration, since i use heavy armor and have C agility. Kato helps to offset a big part of the heavy armor's drawbacks. I'm still on my first platyhrough though.

[Mazzle Dazzle]

There is a peacock spirit that Is really good. It has might and recovery so you can do a decent amount of face tanking. It can also change elements on the fly by activating the spirit again so you can create the yin yang status for massive debuffs by yourself and chose elements the enemy is weak against at will. If you run extration, and piladies it charges instantly too. The wave missions become trivial with that combo as well.
If you aren't running extration and piladies, you may want to run something with a better recharge like the spider, butterfly, or paired raiken. The damage buff sucks for those quick recharges though so you should probably couple it with a living weapon damage increase talisman.
Ultimately it depends on what you want.