Guard

Fast, strong, and efficient. But great strength comes at a great cost.

* Knockback resistance

**Guard** is a prison guard specializing in close-range prolonged combat. He is armed with a tactical short ax and dressed in a khaki long sleeve prison guard uniform with a black tie, black armored vest with shoulder pads, black pants, and a black prison guard's helmet.

He can be unlocked for 7,000 coins after reaching bus level 9.

## Functionality

### Basics

Guard is a **damager***,* meaning he will attack enemies and the barricade at close range while excelling at inflicting large amounts of raw damage to high health targets.

Guard is a strong melee unit. He has high health, good damage, and fast movement speed. His courage cost is somewhat high but his preparation time is only moderate. He swings his hammer like axe as his regular attack, either overhead or from the side, and delivers a kick on critical hits. Both his normal attack and crit are slow to land.

Sometime after dying, Guard will turn into Undead.

### Perks and abilities

Guard has 90% resistance to bullet damage and slight resistance to knockback.

Similar to Builder, his critical hit knocks enemies back.

At level 13, unlocking Guard's special ability grants him max Agility on his attack roll, meaning he won't have a random attack delay between hits. This ability does not grant the benefit from having instant targetting too, which means he still needs high Agility to not be randomly pausing while changing targets.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

Stats wise, Guard can be considered to be one of the strongest melee unit in the game as he has very good damage, a decent health, bullet resistance, and fast movement speed. Additionally, he knocks enemies back on critical hits, which comes out slightly quicker than his normal attacks. In practice though, he suffers from slow attack speed which hinders his potential, and bullet resistance is not very useful for most missions, especially considering that Guard is bound to be unlocked at a point where marauders are no longer a big threat, especially with Grenader being available. It may be a better idea to keep using Builder instead of Guard in missions where they are both relevant, as the former costs less courage and has faster crits. In late game, Guard doesn’t seems to be any better than other damagers while facing high damage, high health and insta-kill enemies, despite his faster than average speed and full aggro with special ability unlocked.

### Skirmish

In League, Guard is an alright pick thanks to his high health, bullet resistance, high damage, and fast movement speed. While his movement speed allows him to reach enemy units faster, it could also lead him to a quick death, such as dying from Mechanic's special blow, Carol's lightning-fast attack or Rogue’s stun attack. Against quicker enemy melee units, his slow attack speed usually means he will take the first hit, putting him in a less favorable position as he loses a lot of health that could have gone to absorbing enemy fire instead. It doesn't help that his special ability doesn't helps to solve this issue entirely. Not to mention that with the abundance of Tactical sets, Guard’s health pool and speed evaporates just as fast as other damagers such as Turbo, who used to be compared with him most of the time. When compared to Rogue with his special ability unlocked, Guard is essentially less preferable in almost every aspect against him in both main game and Skirmish due to having higher cost, lower damage, impractical and inefficient team synergy (see below) and a negligible difference on health pool. Should the player has access to Rogue, it is heavily advised to replace Guard with him.

### Item Sets

Among all damagers, Guard is the only "natural", being able to get a great use out of both Gentleman and Surgery. Interestingly enough, it's valid for him to use a +% crit. chance book with both of these sets, since he has relatively high health. However, if you want to properly capitalize on his knockback then the best option becomes Gambling, since it allows him to land kicks non-stop, which are also faster than his regular attacks.

Like most damagers, Guard gets most use out of prep. time watches, with agility bonuses acquired as secondary buffs. He can receive a significant boost from percentage bonuses, but only when he's close to being maxed out. At low-to-mid levels, flat buffs are more preferable.

## Skins and Synergies

Guard is a part of the Jailers team.

 Team

Right now, Guard stands at a weird spot in the Jailers synergy. On one hand, he isn't the best option for activating the 2/2 power, since it's oriented towards slower missions during which damagers aren't very helpful. On another, he is the only unit who actually gets something out of the 3/3 synergy. When trying to turn Guard into a bulkier Jailer, it's recommended to bring his 15-courage colleague anyway, with either Gunslinger or Sniper Polina tagging along.

## Trivia

* Guard is one of the five Jailers, the others being Gunslinger, Sniper Polina, Willy, and Jailer.
* Before update 3.3.2, Guard's special ability used to be him gaining 45 SP (Shield Points), which is identical to the current Soldier's.
* Guard is one of 3 base-game characters that do not have skins, the others being Lionheart and Firefighter.

 Humans
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