Guardian Build Guide - Titan Quest
Skill Trees: Defense and Nature
Primary Skills: Batter, Call of the Wild, Plague, Heart of Oak, Sylvan Nymph, Battle Awareness, Rally, Quick Recovery
Important Stats: Pierce and Physical Resistance
Attributes: Strength with enough Dexterity to wear gear
The Guardian in Titan Quest is arguably the most tanky build that you can possibly make. It combines the Nature and Defense Skill Trees both of which contain some of the best survivability skills in the game. As you could probably imagine, seeing as how this build as very high survivability it'll be most lacking in the damage area.
While playing the Guardian you'll often have to make decisions that involve getting rid of some survivability and trading it for more damage. An example of this is once you get Rally high enough you'll often be trading off Elemental Resistances to boost your overall damage. Since Rally will give you +% Elemental Resist while it is active there's no reason to cap out your Elemental Resists with your gear.
For this character you will be dumping most of your Attribute points into Strength and Dexterity while leveling up. You'll want just enough Dexterity to use Stonebinder's Cuffs and to help with your Offensive Ability as that will be lacking quite a bit depending on your gear.
Below are the abilities that you'll want to get with your Skill Points as well as a little information about why I chose that ability and when it is best used.
(Defense) Rally: When you take damage this should be the first thing you use to heal yourself, use potions while Rally is on cooldown. Rally will also provide you with increased Resistances as well as a bunch of other goodies, so long as you get the passives.
(Defense) Battle Awareness: Long term buff that you'll want to use for a lot of survivability. Get the passives that go with it, especially Iron Will since that gives you 80% resistances to most of your Secondary Resistances (Sleep, Stun, Trap, Freeze).
(Defense) Colossus Form: Boss killing ability. Very long cooldown but you become insanely powerful (and big). When there are no bosses around to kill you can use this ability to run through maps like a giant and skip tons of enemies that you don't feel like fighting.
(Defense) Unyielding Phalanx: Added into the game during Atlantis and one of my favorite Defense abilities. Drop these ontop of a boss for tons of damage or a pack of enemies and they'll decimate them.
(Defense - Optional) Quick Recovery: The best way I can think of to describe this ability is it's like a tanking cooldown. Pop this to take less damage from all of the enemies attacking you. Will only work against melee or ranged (physical) attacks. With the Refresh Nature ability you will be able to keep this skill up 24/7 making it exceptionally useful.
(Defense) Batter: Your Left Click attack. Batter is really the only ability in both trees that you can spam for damage dealing. Get this early on and bind it to your left click.
(Defense) Shield Charge: Your Right Click attack. It will allow you to charge into combat instantly, closing the distance between you and enemies. It also deals a small amount of damage and stuns the enemies you charge. Technically this ability is optional but I highly recommend it.
(Nature) Call of the Wild: This is one of your most important skills for the build and for leveling. Max it out as early as possible and get +3 Skills as early as possible too as it'll allow you to summon 3 wolves. Survival Instinct and Strength of the Pack passives need to be maxed as well.
(Nature) Heart of the Oak: At max rank gives you and your pets +85% Health, additionally the Permanence of Stone passive will give you and your pets 31% Elemental Resistances too.
(Nature) Plague: Spread the Plague everywhere you go. It's a fairly weak DoT but the debuff on it is extremely powerful and will increase the amount of damage you deal as well as the damage your pets deal.
(Nature) Sylvan Nymph: I dump my extra Skill Points into the Sylvan Nymph as well as the 3 passive abilities tied to it once I am done all of the other important skills for this build.
Other Tips:
- Guardian Build Guide Youtube Video
- Start with Nature as that is the better skill tree for leveling up; get Call of the Wild ASAP as that is one of the best skills for leveling.
- Focus on survivability until you feel that you're beefy enough. Then start to slowly sacrifice your survivability for more damage.
- If you need Vitality Resistance I recommend you carry an Apples of Idun Artifact on you to swap out to for bosses. To easily make Artifacts in Titan Quest use the TQVault Third Party Program, it's an amazing program and essential if you plan to play multiple builds in this game.