Guard

Guard
Strong, fast, and efficient. But great strength comes at a great cost.
Main Stats
Type	Damager
Rarity	Common
Health 70 Melee Damage 27
Crit. Chance	30%
Crit. Damage	10%
Speed	14
Prepare Time	15
Courage Cost	30
Behavior Stats
Agility	60
Aggression	90 (normal) 100 (fixed, with SA)
Detection Range	80
Agility Penalty	50%
Aggression Penalty	50%
Morale Stats
Charisma	350
Valor	400
Charisma Radius	80
Abilities
Perks
Knockback Strength	15
Special Ability	There are no breaks between attacks.
Resistances
Bullet	90%
Knockback	60%
Unlock Requirements
Price	7,000
Player Level	9

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.

Overview

Guard is a Damager. His stats are above average for his class, and he does slow swings, together with moderately swifter critical kicks.

Guard has bullet resistance, along with slight resistance to knockback, which he can cause himself on critical hits. Some time after dying, he turns into an Undead.

Special Ability

Guard's special ability fixes his aggression at 100, eliminating any pauses between attacks.

This ability provides an obvious boon to Guard but it will only prove valuable for avid fans of this unit. Due to his slow attack speed, this improvement only matters in scenarios where units are especially susceptible to fear. It does not improve Guard's agility, which means he'll still have issues with targeting if it's not upgraded properly.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Stat-wise, Guard can be considered to be one of the strongest melee units in the game as he has very good damage, 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 Grenadier 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. His high damage is even less useful considering Rogue is an option, a unit which has much less cost and a substantially higher damage more resistances and a stun, making Guard effectively outclassed, although Rogue is unlocked much later during the endgame.

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 help to solve this issue entirely, only helping marginally if a fight lasts a bit longer than normal. 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 in health. Should the player have access to Rogue, it is heavily advised to replace Guard with him.

Item Sets

Among all damagers, Guard is one of the few that's 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.

Name	Guard
Skin
Unlock Req.	–
Team	Jailers

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 one of the few units that 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

• Before update 3.3.2, Guard's special ability used to grant him 45 shield points. Interestingly, the advertised amount was 15. Which of these values was an erroneous one is unknown.