guardian meta

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So y'all may have encountered this calling card in lockdown from yours truly along with a squad of other guardians, and if you're absolutely clueless as to what the heck it is well I'm bored at work so here's a write up on what it is, how it works, how you can join in, etc.

What the heck is Guardian Meta?
Guardian Meta is the best way to play lockdown, and honestly a way of life after you've joined the cult. It's fairly simple to explain - you play as the guardian class alongside other guardians and just cause absolute chaos.

The key point of Guardian Meta is playing guardian with other guardians via strong teamwork. Voice chat is key, so calling out who is shielding, when shields are about to break, and who is going to shield next is very important. By doing so, you extend the shield lifespan massively which can simply outlast other players.

The final and honestly most fun part of Guardian Meta is that you absolutely dig into anyone for plays striker. It's worth noting that, at no point in Guardian Meta does a user hate on, disrespect, or otherwise anti-TOS another player, but hating on the striker class is fair game. If someone playing striker does, for one reason or another, decide to change class to guardian, they're now a good friend. You can all call out under the battle cry of "guardian meta" and race to the battle.

(NOTE: Guardian Meta doesn't hate on the recon class. We respect and tolerate them, but won't accept them into our ranks unless they switch to guardian too)

Guardian Meta players never lose, despite what the scoreboard says. If you end up separated from your Guardian Meta squad for a few games it's all fine, you're all still winners.

Why should I join Guardian Meta?
Guardian Meta is a lot of fun and has a tendency to take over lockdown lobbies. With absolutely no barrier to entry (you don't need health trinkets or any weapon slots to be a good Guardian Meta player) you can pick it up whenever you'd like.

Guardian Meta also somehow obliterates standard striker playstyles. On top of the fact that a large group of guardians working together is hard to fight, group healing negates the need to run back to the base to heal after skirmishes, and by shielding so many attacks you can drop the damage values of damage-hungry players.

Popular counters, such as pulsar spam, AT acheron, mist bomb denial, etc. also have limited effect on Guardian Meta. This isn't to say they won't eventually work, but when the guardian has a 100% chance to win and have the strength of like 3-4 shields available, these counters cease to be as threatening.

When enough players join into the Guardian Meta, and entire teams are guardians that's when long, epic battles ensue. Without the ability to retreat you're fighting to the death.

On top of all of this, you actually get a bit of additional skill and know-how on how to use guardian as a standalone class. I never really gave guardian much thought until Guardian Meta and it's the best accidental discovery in my PvP career.

Why does this even exist?
soot covered shrek face: good question

Guardian Meta was first created during a New Year's livestream coming into 2019. Solotron, myself, and a few others essentially drank a bunch and goofed around in Spiral Knights, eventually landing on Lockdown. Absolutely hammered, we essentially meme'd Guardian Meta into existence and about an hour or two into it we realized it was actually working.

We turned it into a bit more of a meme on The Arcade Discord, and had a few more sessions for fun. Doing such, we drew more and more players into the Guardian Meta, many of which had written off lockdown as being an awful experience and swore it off. Since this mode is based around teamwork, not UVs, trinkets, AT, etc. it's a much more casual experience that anyone can get into. The general shenanigans everyone gets into in this mode keeps everything upbeat.

Guardian Meta is now a reoccurring fun event we host on The Arcade for anyone to join in. Even if you've written off guardian as a class or lockdown as a gamemode, joining in with Guardian Meta leads to a lot of silly situations that you wouldn't see in normal play. Hell once we got a lobby to fill up with all classes primarily using blitz needles and despite all classes being used it was a lot of fun.

How can I join the glorious Guardian Meta?
The easiest way is to join The Arcade Discord here: https://discord.me/spiralknights. From there, you'll be able to talk to other users about really anything you want, but you can also join in with Guardian Meta by pinging our @guardian meta role and a bunch of excited Guardian Meta enthusiasts will show up out of the woodworks. From there you can hop into a voice chat and run around chanting "guardian meta" with a squad.

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If y'all have any questions about this feel free to post 'em below or ask on the discord server.