Guardian

Default skin

* Statistics

Guardian is a high health attacker mech, unlocked after Shadow. Guardians ability 'System Crash' is a highly effective shutdown ability, putting the effected enemy mechs' weapons and abilities on cooldown, as well as neutralizing any placed objects like Cheetahs mines, stop mechs like Surge from dashing into you and cleanses any status on your teammates. Because of this powerful shutdown ability, combined with guardians high health, most encounters go in guardians favour. This combined with his high energy capacity makes him a favorite among many players.

## Upsides

Guardians ability to neutralize almost everything, his high healthpool and high energy capacity allows him to destroy almost anything that comes too close. Guardian can almost be seen as a hybrid between an attacker and a tank, having almost as much health as an Ares. Its powerful ability allows you to counter any mech, even those normally hard to counter, like Panther and Shadow. His cone shaped ability allows you to crash several mechs at the same time.

## Downsides

Even though guardian can dominate any mech in a close quarter battle, his low speed and limited range ability make guardian considerably weaker past 30 meters. Long range weapons can easily take down a guardian, while he struggles to even move up. His ability also has the highest cooldown of any mech in the game, meaning the window in which he can be countered is unusually high. Even though Guardian can shut down any mech and weapon, weapons that have already started firing will keep firing, so a welltimed barage of missile racks can still take down Guardian. Currently the projectiles from missile racks become invisible when the shooter becomes crashed, but this is likely a glitch and might get patched later.

## Strategy

### Using:

while using Guardian, it is important to have mechs come to you. The general playtyle used by guardian players is a midline playstyle that punishes players that come too close. Hiding behind cover to lure mechs towards you, crashing them and then finishing them off is a highly effective way to play guardian, but frontline and backline are also possibilities when using this mech.

### Countering:

Even though Guardian is extremely powerfull close range, he can still be countered. Waiting for the ability to be on cooldown is your best bet when trying to fight guardian, since this gives a big window in which he is relatively vulnerable. But even though in this situation you wont be helpless, outdamaging a Guardian can still be problematic, since his high health and high energy makes him an effective brawler. Countering from long range is most likely your best option when fighting a guardian.

## Builds

* Carbines: Massive close range DPS. Carbines synergize quite well with Guardian, since his ability gives enough time to excuse the high exposure time from carbines.
* Missile racks: A very popular build early game. Its an easy fit for guardian, since missile racks force you into a specific playstyle, that Guardian already profits from anyways.
* Railguns: Guardians weakness is long range, so why not use weapons that are strong at every range to lessen that weakness
* Rocket mortars: Just a normal Rocket mortar build, nothing special to say
* Disc launchers: a strong option for any mech,especially guardian because his height makes back shots easier
* EM rifles: The best weapon in the game, and a stronger railgun.