+1

A good guardian always goes for captures and defends. Although I would prefer a FF or BTB than a rigadoon, pretty good.

Skimmed through it a bit, not bad. I'll add a few points here that you can either agree or disagree with - this is just how I play Guardian and I like to think I'm decent at it at best.

The main balance that I find to be both economic and maximizing when weapon-hunting is going for ASI High UVs on your sword lines. This justifies using a single speed trinket in order to hit ASI Max (without wasted money on additional UVs like ASI VH would force) while also giving you a free slot to use a Penta-Heart Pendant as well for the free +6 health. If you decide to forego that and want to use ASI VH weapons anyway, by all means do so - ASI Ultra with 2 penta-trinkets is nigh unnoticeable for your average Guardian, and you'll still tank a ton of damage either way. This suggestion is just for those guardians who wish to have that fraction of a second bonus for attacks, or want to save themselves a pretty penny when making their guardian set.

As for armors, if you go with Skolver or Vog, it's important to keep in mind that status UVs on your armor sets are likely going to be more helpful than damage resists, if only because a truly annoying guardian is going to be able to stay on a point regardless of what's on the field, be they bombs or Polaris shots. An important thing to keep in mind here is that with a guardian module, you get a medium resistance to most, if not all, status effects - so your armors only need to have a High + Med resist between the two (Maximum and Low works as well) pieces in the status of your choice to walk through a particular bomb. For example, say you want to be a stunwalker (able to walk through a Stagger Storm haze). You'd have to invest in a Stun High armor + a Stun med armor of some kind in order to become immune to all stun weapons that inflict a "minor" stun status.

As for playstyle, the only thing I'd recommend is that sometimes offense is the best defense - don't hide behind your shield more than you need to, and don't be afraid to push back a bit if a striker gets into your comfort zone. Your average striker's gonna bank on you either turtling up in your shield or you not having a reliable way of dealing with someone faster than yourself, so if you can predict which angle they're going to attack from, you've already won half the battle.

Nice job, Gold!

Guardian as a class and a psycology lends itself to supporting and protecting your teammates. Annoyingly, because of OOO's shield mechanic that they should change, trying to shield more than one other person usually results in none of them getting much protection. This is especially true in Tier 3 because of the many different sources of AoE damage. My point: don't try to protect your entire team at once. You'll probably end up doing virtually nothing for them, and getting a broken shield which will get you killed extremely quickly. I play guardian in T2 and striker in T3, because the shield in T3 is so weak. Also, it heals very slowly compared to how much health you have.

It's not bad, but it's not "great".

Adding onto what Pauling stated:

•Whether this sounds odd or not, it's smart, if you ask me, atleast, to bring a gun such as a Valiance or an Argent. Both are good guns for quick, ranged damage when the target is too far away to hit with a sword (I personally run with either FF/AP/GF/Storm or FF/Val/GF/Storm as a guard). A storm is nice to have as well in close-up combat, assuming you can shield cancel. Switching between say, a Toothpick and a Storm until they get shocked, and progressively getting closer. When they get shocked, do whatever to kill them (I use that tactic, and then tend to finish with a GF).

•Against Strikers, use their boost to your advantage. More or less what I said above, get closer each time they run out of boost, most strikers either run away or try to gun you down.
•Against Recons, now are a bit tougher, due to their buff/(bug?). However, it's still a more or less easy concept. You can either 1) Do what you do with strikers, and wait until their cloak breaks, or 2) Figure out where they are as you would with any other class. This is when say, an AP or Sent helps, as there are many bullets to fire in one clip, hence making it 'easier' to find the recon.
•Against other guardians, what I tend to do is shield cancel with my Toothpick. Once their shield breaks, Toothpick em, GF em, do whatever it takes (a bit broad, I know).

•Gunners - At the start, you had a bit of problems with Blue. I'm not gonna nag on you about that, as Blue is one Hell of a gunner. Anyway, to the point - Gunners, most of the time, are strikers, and tend to either be predictable or rat like, having no designated pattern. The predictable ones aren't too much of a threat, but the rat-like ones are a real pain sometimes. For these, just treat them like a striker, wait until their boost is out to go up and attack them. Better yet, beat them at their own game with your own pair of guns.

•Bombers (Not much of a threat anymore due to the RSS patch, so I'n skipping this one. Sorry, fellow pre-RSS patch fans).

•Swordies (Stated above, mixed with strikers)

•Are you a GUARDian or an ATTACKian? This all depends on what you do. Guardians are the ones who normally sit around at a capture point, guarding it. They still rack up damage and defends, but not as much damage, and normally not too many caps. I'm personally an "Attackian". These are the essential tanks, more or less trying to stop people from getting out of their base. Most of the time, it's either DA/GFing a lot, or just stalling them with something such as a Toothpick or a Brandish. Attackians also tend to cap anything nearby, or instead of canping, just searching for people to kill. They normally get either a good bit of caps, a good bit of damage, and not so many defends, or a good bit of damage and very little caps/damage. So, in a sense, Attackians are team players, but they're not really "team" players, just more of a support. I average about 16-19k on good "Attackian" days, sometimes more. It's more of a fun play style, if you ask me.

Overall though, you got some of the basics to be shown down. Sorry if I upstaged your thread a little, just got a bit bored with nothing to do.

-Foot

Stun and shock bombs
Skolver
Autotarget
Flourish and GF
Good shield cancel

I remember timbalero, whenever you tried to break his shield, he stoped you with shield cancel, and throw you a 3 hit combo with FF and AT, most players got killed with that old strategy.

@Pauling; A guard can have high damage, high caps and high defends. It's doing a 3-way job which most people cannot do. Even if you can't do it the priority is capping which is stated correctly in your comment. I love that you also stated that you should not be in the middle of a fight, this is the best piece of advice you can give when you do GvG as a guardian.

Bigfoot has the right ideas. Mostly everything he commented is pretty good. Having a gun as a guard is almost essential.

@Feller; I just rolled a range max UV on my auto-target set.

I lied. I have like hundreds of pennies. I'll throw some at you.
Have to do hwk, not much time to elaborate, but you should be able to figure it out.

1. Carry a gun
2. Carry a bomb
3. Don't charge your sword so much
4. Team up with another guard (me and blinding did with much success. we only died once that game, 6v2.. 15 and 18k + most caps)
5. Shield your teammates. Remember, when your teammates are in your shield, not only do they not take damage, they do not get affected by hitstun! In other words, if the enemy swings at them first, your teammate can still be with first one to hit the other!
6. Loadouts-
Combat guardian...
weapon 1- Faust
weapon 2- flourish
weapon 3- Valiance
weapon 4- Polaris
Team guardian...
weapon 1- Voltedge
weapon 2- Valiance
weapon 3- bomb of your choice (Voltaic Tempest, Stagger storm, Venom Veiler..)
weapon 4- Polaris

P.S. Timing of your swings is FAR MORE important than ASI. get the timing right, and you wont even need asi. (of course more asi, the better)