Guardian (Nature / Defense) Build Guide

Physical sword and board tank build with pet support using Guardian (Nature / Defense)

Introduction

Ajax, the Iron Wall
Mastery: Guardian (Nature / Defense)
Build: Physical Sword and Board with Pet Support



The guardian combines the Defense and Nature masteries. Defenese provide shield buffs, defensive abilities and shield attacks. Nature is a support mastery providing pet support, buffs and debuffs.

If you're interesting in a more traditional physical tank and spank warrior with superior damage options then I'd suggest a Conqueror (Warfare / Defense).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1741575491

Pros:

• Good survivability with high health via Heart of Oak, Rally for quick heal, good armour
  
• Pets provide extra support and help with aggro
  
• Easy to heal pets via Rally
  
• Strong debuff in Plague
  
• Colossus Form for anti-boss and Refresh to help cut its cooldown
  
• Decent AOEs (Batter and Shield Charge)

Cons:

• No spammable LMB
  
• AOEs (Batter and Shield Charge) have limited targets and hit box
  
• Multiple ranged enemies can be annoying
  
• Lack of ranged options besides Shield Charge and Plague
  
• Your pets won't be as good as a pet build and your damage won't be as good as a more offensive build

Defense Mastery

Batter


Batter will server as your primary skill attack. It's on a cooldown so it's not something you can spam so you'll be using auto-attack when it or shield charge is on cooldown. With a point in Rend Armour you'll be able to hit three targets in a 160 degree arc. Decent for dealing with groups but remember that it has its limitations. Max out Batter to buff the skill and Rend Armour to reduce armour on enemies.


Concussive Blow


Adds a chance to stun with axe and mace. Obviously, if you're not using an axe or mace as your one hander the skill is useless. If you're are using one then the stun can be useful. I didn't invest in the skill on my guardian, but have it on my conqueror. Skill isn't mandatory, more nice to have.


Battle Awareness


Aura that buffs armour and defensive ability. I had it maxxed when I cleared legendary with my Guardian but it's not really a required skill. You'll want at least one point in it through for the synergy skills which are more useful imo. Iron Will gives you the all the secondary resistances you'll need and Focus gives you extra passive shiled block chance.


Armour Handling


Reduces str requirement letting you equip good gear faster and gives you extra armour absorption. Worth picking up.


Rally


Provide an emergency heal on top of your potions. Extra good in this build as it provides an easy way to group heal your wolves and its cooldown can be reset with Refresh. Rally needs to be maxxed long term if you decide to use it; it's only useful if it provides a big heal. Drop additional points into rally when you feel the heal is lacking.


Quick Recovery


Good one point ability. Gives a nice boost to absorption and block for a limited time. Good when fighting crowds.


Shield Charge


Charges an enemy. Drop one point into the base skill and pump up its synergy skill Disruption first.
Good way to get into melee range of casters and archers quickly, hits multiple targets, short stun and skill disruption. You can drop more points into shield charge when you have free points.


Shield Smash, Disable and Pulverise


This trio of passive skills should be maxxed out. When attacking with a shield equipped, you'll get the chance to trigger their effects (reduced defensive ability, slower attack and 3 target reduced OA / skill disruption respectively) and do some extra damage.


Colossus Form


Grow to a large size and provides you with some substantial buffs. Great one point wonder anti-boss skill. Downside is the long cooldown, the large size makes you harder to navigate and you can't enter caves and such. Refresh can help with the cooldown.

Nature Mastery

Call of the Wild


Wolves primarily play a support role in the build, supplementing your damage rather than supplanting it. The summon limit is increased to two at 7/16 and three at 18/16. You'll want min +2 to nature for the extra wolf. The wolves will dish out some physical damage and buff you with Strength of the Pack. Maul will add some more damage but other skills take priority. Survival Instinct is useful for making a wounded wolf extra tanky preventing them from getting burned down too fast.


Regrowth


Regrowth gives you a way to heal wolves besides Rally. Useful for healing if only one pet needs it. Not as big of a priority as Rally can be used to keep wolves up when needed. Accelerated Growth cools down Regrowth faster, allowing you to spam it more often. If you have put some points into the base skill this it's worth dropping some points here. With multiple wolves in close range, Dissemination can help spread around some heals. It's not as important as other skills so one point backed by +skill items is usually fine.


Heart of Oak


Gives a speed buff on the first point, maxxed out it gives a huge boost to health for you and your pets. It doesn't matter as much for the pets as their health pools get huge buffs elsewhere but this can help give you an enormous health pool. Tranquility of Water will give a chance to get discount energy cost, Permanence of Stone will give you and your pets elemental buffs. Not as important as other skills, max out the base skill and drop a single point into the synergies and buff with +skill items.


Plague


Cast on a monster and it will spread to nearby targets. Does okay damage but is primarily used for it's synergy skills which both apply fantastic debuffs. Fatigue reduces dmg dealth, speed and chance of health reduction. Susceptibility reduces resistances for physical, elemental and poison.


Sylvan Nymph


Nymph is the second pet in the nature tree. Ranged attacker with bow. Investing enough points into her would mean taking points away from Defense mastery so I would suggest skipping her.


Refresh


Refresh cuts cooldowns. Worth dropping considerable points into the skill so that you can cut Colossus' long cooldown a bit, cast two wolves in quick sequence and refresh rally. Shorter cooldown on Colossus means you can it more often in normal fights rather than trying to save the cooldown for just bosses. In tough boss fights where two wolves die quickly, you can wolf, refresh, wolf again to get two wolves back out immediately. Refresh can also help you do several quick rallies in fights where you pets take a lot of damage quickly. If you have enough recharge you can use Colossus form fairly often.


Briar Ward

Briar Ward creates a protective shield of plants around you. With Sanctuary you'll get a big chunk of damage absorption, Stinging Nettle does some retaliation and should be skipped minus the point you need to unlock Sanctuary.

This is more useful for squishy casters and builds that need to stay in place as they need the protection more and Sanctuary only applies in the small area where the Briar Ward is. Not something you really need imo. If you do go for it really all you need is Sanctuary for the damage absorption and only really useful for fights where you don't need to move around much.

Stats

So what should you be dropping your attributes into?

Health: You get extra health from Heart of Oak so dropping some points (like bonus attributes from doing quests) can be good to make you more meaty.

Mana: Honestly, you can just buy mana potions. There's no real reason to put points into mana.

Strength: Primary stat so you can equip good warrior armour and hit people hard with your 1 hander. 500+ at min, ~600-650 would be better.

Intellect: Not required.

Dexterity: Your secondary stat. You need enough to equip your gear at a min and enough so you can hit things and avoid getting crit. ~400-450 should be fine.

Equipment

As you'll be in the thick of things you'll need to keep your resists up. This can be a bit of a pain in legendary.

You'll want +2 to nature skills for the extra wolf at a min. Preferably you'll have +4 all skills so you can max out ultimate levels on all your vital skills.

Recharge can let you cast Refresh and Colossus form faster.

You can get some +pet buffs but this should come after stacking up your resistances and skills.

You'll burn through your mana fairly quickly using shield attacks, healing, summoning and the like. Pots are cheap and you should just carry multiple stacks of them instead of worrying about getting mana or regen gear. Health is more useful as it will get furthered buffed by your Heart of Oak passive buff making you more tanky.

When leveling a green weapon with a good prefix/suffix and socketed with a charm/relic is usually much better than any epics/legendaries you have found.

Use whatever good all around shield you have. If you have another shield(s) with good buffs to a certain resistance(s) then you can swap for certain bosses and fights.

Leveling

Defense is pretty nice but a little slow at the start. I'd suggest going with Nature at start. Wolves are pretty good in early normal. At lvl 2 drop one point into Nature Mastery and pick up Regrowth and Call of the Wild. Drop points into Call of the Wild until you max it out. Once that's done level Nature Mastery until you can pick up Heart of Oak and Maul.

At lvl 8 switch over to Defense. Drop a point into Batter for your RMB attack, Battle Awareness and Armour Handling. For the time being leave them at one point and level up your mastery for more stats. Level up Nature Mastery up to Strength of the Pack as that's a great buff then work up Defense up to Colossus Form.

[mobmh2]

Earthbind borders on being extremely OP, as if nature wasnt already. It alone almost justifies taking Nature as an adjunct to warfare, defense, marksman, and any other melee/ranged build. It takes the "chase down annoying archers and staff wielders" out of the equation. If your a ranged fighter (dream staff wielder or a more traditional marksman... or even warfare just going two throwing weapons) combining Earthbind and sanctuary makes you an armored turret.

[chris.ferrantegerard]

@tehdoktur As for the new skills:
Unyielding Phalanx - Doesn't actually count as a pet so no bonus from pet bonuses and are completely stationary melee spawns. It does pretty decent damage however and can be quite useful when well positioned (ie choke points)
Perfect Block - Not really my thing, absorption is god tier but doesn't last very long so I find it a little tricky to time it right. With capped CDR through it can be quite good from my understanding through, some people really like the skill.
Earthbind - Fantastic CC ability to immobilize enemies, 360 degrees and long range and DA debuff will let you and your wolves kill enemies faster
Sylvan Protection - Never bother using, inferior to Earthbind imo, range is narrow and casted by your pet so you can't control it.

[chris.ferrantegerard]

@tehdoktur Have too many new classes ongoing lol, don't have time to play most of my old builds. Wasn't one of my favourite either/ If I make a new Guardian, I'll probably build him around capped CDR for a 100% Colossus Form meme build, would be more interesting.

For Shield Charge, you want at least one point in the base skill as a charge skill is great for attacking ranged targets; one point will be fine but I think the synergy is worth maxxing for disruption and extra targets hit. Batter serves as your bread and butter AOE melee attack and you will use pretty much whenever its off cooldown. It's still pretty effective without too much investment so if required you could probably move a few points out but I find I used a lot of it.

[tehdoktur]

chris.f, first off as always thanks for giving feedback on these guides you do

Have you ever tried this now that the trees go to 40 with the new powers?

If I wanted to drop Shield Charge or Batter to free up points, I only prefer so many active powers and plague seems like it has to get the coveted RMB, which would you drop or reduce? Or do you think they're both too corner stone in fights with this class and I should look elsewhere? Could I maybe just drop a few from each? (I'm thinking I'd like to free up about 10-12 points total)