How to Play Guardian – Elden Ring: Nightreign

Are you tired of trying to dodge enemy attacks and wish that you could just tank the hits and not have to worry so much about all the timing? Guardian is the tankiest Nightfarer in the game, and is fairly easy to learn. With a Guardian you will have the highest health stat in the game, but your real survivability comes from your mastery with a shield. When used properly, you can tank just about any attack in the game with little to no damage, while also offering some supportive abilities for your team.

The game doesn’t explain how to use your Guardian to his full potential, so this guide will help make things clearer: we will go over your abilities and how to make best use of them, and then discuss your main gameplay strategy as your team’s shield.

Skill Playstyle

• While you can still do good damage, your main goal is to distract the enemies and tank hits with your shield, so your allies are safe
• Use Whirlwind to damage groups of enemies and disrupt their actions
• Use Wings of Salvation to revive allies and protect them from dangerous attacks

Passive Ability: Steel Guard

Effect: Gives Guardians access to an improved block.
Approach: Use this over dodging to mitigate damage from attacks.

How to Use Steel Guard

Despite being categorized as one, Steel Guard is not a passive ability — you do not simply guard better at all times. Instead, Steel Guard is a second blocking stance that you will need to switch to. To do this, press any direction with / while blocking — it’s essentially like you’re ‘dodging’ while blocking — you will go into the Steel Guard stance until you stop blocking or your guard breaks.

You can tell you’re in the Steel Guard stance by looking at your character — he will appear to be bracing for any incoming attacks with his shield. While blocking this way, attacks will take much less Stamina to block, and you will be pushed back less than with normal blocking, helping you easily tank just about any attack in the game. Only powerful boss attacks will break your stance in a single hit, but even these will deal much less damage to you, as your Steel Guard will mitigate a large portion of the damage first.

Downsides to Steel Guard

While Steel Guard is an amazing tool to mitigate damage, it does have its downsides. The first one is that while using Steel Guard, your Stamina will gradually deplete. This means that you can’t just stand there with this block at all times, and you will want to wait until you’re about to be attacked to go into it.

The second problem is that the high blocking you get from Steel Guard comes at the cost of extremely low mobility. You will move very slowly while holding this stance, and with the Guardian’s low dodge distance on top of this, you will basically be a sitting duck while using this enhanced block. If you have plenty of Stamina, this won’t be much of an issue, but if you start blocking a large attack, or an attack with multiple hits in it, all while at low Stamina, you will be broken and punished quickly.

Primary Skill: Whirlwind

Effect: Creates a cyclone around you that damages and disrupts enemies.
Approach: Knock groups of enemies and weaker bosses up into the air to take them out more easily.

Take Out Enemy Groups

The most obvious and common use for Whirlwind is to go in the middle of a group of enemies and knock them all up into the air at once, disabling them from fighting back and giving your group some easy kills. This makes Whirlwind a great opening attack to use before the enemy can react, since it will give you an immediate advantage in the fight.

It’s also important to know that if you hold the attack, you will do a larger and more powerful cyclone after a short delay. The extra time charging up is very short, so you will almost always want to use the more powerful version. The only exceptions would be if an enemy is already winding up an attack and you want to interrupt them quickly, or if you want to take advantage of Whirlwind’s more niche use and deflect incoming arrows with your cyclone.

If you equip the Stone Stake Relic (obtained by completing Chapter 4 of the Guardian’s Remembrance questline), Whirlwind will stay up for around 5 seconds after using the Skill. Not only will this make the move a continuous source of damage, but you can stun-lock smaller enemies caught in the tornado, making it a much more effective Skill

Useful Against Some Bosses

While Whirlwind is very useful on normal enemies, it can work on some weaker bosses as well! Bosses such as the Fire Monk will also get sent up into the air when hit with the Cyclone, so it can be used to set up a very easy kill. It’s not quite as effective against some larger bosses, but they will still be pushed back and briefly staggered by Whirlwind, giving you and your team an opening.

The only bosses that Whirlwind is ineffective against are the largest and toughest ones, like the Night Bosses. Against enemies like these, Whirlwind will simply serve as an extra attack, but can still be useful if the boss summons a group of smaller adds.

Ultimate Art: Wings of Salvation

Effect: Leap into the air and slam down in an area, damaging enemies and protecting allies.
Approach: Wipe out large groups quickly, or save for emergency situations to resurrect your team.

Quickly Bring Back Allies

While the damage from Wings of Salvation is great, it is much more useful as a supportive tool. If a downed ally is within range of your damage area, you will instantly revive them when you slam on the ground, no matter how much damage they require to be brought back up.

This is a crucial emergency save, especially on tough bosses that can be relentless with their attacks. It can also save you time when an ally has died multiple times already (i.e., their purple gauge is full). It’s also worth noting that you are invincible during the entire animation. So, save your Ultimate for these kinds of situations, and don’t hesitate to use it immediately.

Keep Holding to Protect Yourself and Team From Attacks

If you keep holding the Ultimate, it will have a secondary effect upon landing — you will summon a protective aura that will negate all damage to you and your teammates within range. After you land, you will see that a small portion of the move’s charge will still be there, and holding it will keep the aura up until that charge is empty.

You will want to hold this aura just about every time you use the ability, but you need to keep an eye on the time you have left. The moment your Ultimate is depleted, your aura will end, and you will be susceptible to damage again — so, if a boss is in the middle of an attack, you will likely get caught up in it instantly without a proper block in place.

If you equip the Witch’s Brooch Relic (obtained by completing Chapter 9 of the Guardian’s Remembrance questline), Wings of Salvation’s aura will not only keep your party safe, but it will also heal your party while it stays up. This is perfect for when you use it to revive allies, as you will also save them from having to use a Flask to get their health back afterwards!

Weapon Strategy

• Thrusting weapons will give you a bit of an advantage, but overall, your weapon choice isn’t very important.
• You will want to find a shield with a high amount of Guard Boost, and preferably a Greatshield.

With high Strength and almost as good of a Dexterity, Guardians can be effective with a wide variety of weapons. Their best choice technically will be thrusting weapons such as Spears, because this will allow them to attack while blocking. However, this does not make a huge difference, so if you’re more comfortable using a weapon like a sword, feel free to.

More important than your weapon will be your Shield. In the vast majority of cases, you will want to have a shield equipped at all times so you’ll be ready to block attacks. As far as what to look for, keep an eye out for Greatshields, as these have the highest Guard Boost compared to the other types. Many will have greater resistance to certain elements as well, but you are not able to tell which shield resists what element during an Expedition — you should take a look at the Shield details in the Index back at the Roundtable or use detailed view at the Sparring Grounds.

You could also use larger two-handed weapons. While you would not be able to take full advantage of your extra defenses, this could be a viable way to play if you want to take on a more offensive role. Unless that’s your entire Build, though, you might still want to swap back to a one-handed weapon & shield to fulfill your tank role, as needed.

Weapon Skills aren’t super important for a Guardian, as they don’t have a lot of FP to use them frequently anyway. However, some weapons offer a buff Skill, such as Rallying Standard from the Commander’s Standard. These can be used to give you and your allies an extra boost in critical moments of a battle. It’s also important to know that if you’re using a shield that has a Skill, you will use your shield’s Skill instead of your weapon’s. If this happens and you want to use your weapon’s Skill, you will have to briefly two-hand it to use the Skill, then switch back.

Gameplay: Aggro Enemies & Block Everything

As a Guardian, you want to keep the attention away from your other party members so that they can deal as much damage as possible, safely. While you are certainly capable of dishing out some offense, your main goal is to bear the brunt of enemy damage.

Guardian’s highest HP stat among all the Nightfarers, as well as their high Stamina, allows them to block powerful hits or a combined set of smaller attacks. That’s the best value they can offer to a team.

Guardian’s timing for blocking is much more forgiving than dodging or parrying, and combining that with your Steel Guard means you can easily brush off just about any attack in the game (you will still have to dodge away from grab attacks, however). If you keep the enemy’s attention on you and have your Wings of Salvation ready for emergencies, you will make even the toughest boss fights go much more easily for your party.

The Witch’s Brooch Relic gives even more incentive to block over dodge, as it will cause a portion of the damage blocked to be reflected back at your enemy. This will help add a little bit of offense to your great defense.