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The Guardian - Frontline Spellcaster and Support [LeaderLib Version]

Guardians are frontlines specializing in Warfare, and use their Strength to cast spells. They provide limited support in healing and armor restoration, but excel at a variety of magics that shield, redirect, or mitigate damage. Guardians are driven by Virtues of Justice, Resolve, and Courage and can utilize them in a variety of ways; more skilled Guardians are able to alter the effects of their virtues, opening up the core of their skillset to a surprising level adaptability.

• Shared Resources - My shared resources mod helps trim down on how many Icon Atlases you have to use for my mods. The benefit is not usually impactful, but can be nice if you run multiple mods of mine. It is also the home of many statuses and their interactions, including Auras, Impaled, and Boons.
  
• Norbyte's Script Extender[github.com] - Lets modders utilize many more tools than the engine provides as well as the ability to write code for things the engine cannot do on it's own.
  
• LeaderLib - Provides a lot of tools that make using Lua for modding a breeze. Both this and the SE are required for most of this mod's more complex effects to function.

For those without the Script Extender or who cannot use it at all, the previous version of this mod will remain posted but unlisted: Guardian - Frontline Support and Spellcasting (No LL or SE)
Under no circumstances should you use this mod in combination with the non-extender version listed above.
The previous mod will be unlisted in a couple weeks, but this link to it will remain available. While the two should not conflict, the confusion and chance issue that could come up are avoidable and that is preferable.


While there are only three Virtue skills, they are the key to using almost half the Guardian's skills (though in limited quantities at a time). Virtue skills grant you a passive, and that passive grants you an active skill that will remove the passive and place the Virtue on cooldown. Virtue passives have effects that trigger while they are active, so the decision between passive effects or more potent active effects is core to the Guardian's playstyle. Furthermore, Focus skills alter which active skills you will gain, which dramatically change your Virtues' role in a fight!

Justice
A burning passion to see Righteousness prevail and the source of Wrath when it fails.
Justice's passive is dealing additional damage to enemies you apply Burning or Zealot's Fire to.

Resolve
Staying firm to a course of righteousness requires steady resolve, and faith that noble goals remain achieveable.
Resolve's passive is healing allies nearby each turn.

Courage
To defy fear and pass Judgement on those who would threaten to turn over the world to unrighteousness.
Courage's passive is restoring a portion of allies' Physical and Magical armor whenever the Guardian applies a Boon.

**Boons as far as this mod is concerned are ones added by Shared Resources: Might, Fury, Regeneration, Protection, Resolution, Stability, Quickness, Swiftness and Retaliation. Guardian also adds Aegis which counts, although it's exclusively applied by Courage skills and will likely not benefit from Courage's passive.

Focus Skills

Focus skills function as both a skill and as a modifier for Virtue passives. As a skill, all three will end cooldowns on your Virtues, allowing you regain passives and use the active skills again if needed.

• Crusader's Focus - The most straightforward, Crusader Virtue skills are potent and more precise. Crusader's shine in fights that could be ended quickly.
  
• Firebrand's Focus - Firebrands open tomes of knowledge that grant them several skills at a time. Tomes put Virtues on long cooldown, but contain a library of skills and shine in fights that are drawn out.
  
• Willbender's Focus - Willbenders are chaotic Guardians. Their Virtues are channeled inward granting them extreme mobility, but requiring follow up for their Virtues to be more effective. Willbenders shine in any fight, but tend to be most effective when the battles require their mobility.

Other skills
Most of the Guardian's skills focus on damage, with several healing and support skills sprinkled in. Source skills outside of the Focus skills are numerous, but each tier has 1 skill of each Archetype - Justice, Resolve, Courage; giving all stripes of Guardians potent skills to use at a moment's notice.

Full Skill List [docs.google.com] here!

Tips and Notes

• Guardian skills are purchasable from all Warfare vendors as well as Cleric the Cleric (a personal vendor for my mods, see Shared Resources for a list of locations).
  
• Guardian healing and armor restoration is by percentage of target's max values. Guardians will be most effective when providing these effects to characters who's pools are large. Guardians have no in-class access to increasing armors or health, but investing in Hydrosophist and Geomancer WILL improve the healing they provide. If the Heal is 30% of a target's health, and the Guardian has 10 Hydrosophist, the heal will be 45% of the target's health.
  
• Hydrbidizing as a damage-focused Guardian is still not a good idea. A support Guardian will be fine, since Attributes do NOT affect any mitigation or restoration effects for any skill or status. Support Guardians should invest primarily into Geomancer and Hydrosophist, and would benefit their team with higher Leadership to round everything out. Attributes at that point can be spent to make sure you have the Memory and Initiative you need to be effective!
  
• Guardians only have access to 3 weapon skills, unlocked at levels 4, 9, and 16. They will need to supplement with other skills if they wish to focus on weapons. Guardians do get a plethora of damaging spells, allowing them to carry a shield without a real penalty to their output.
  
• All non-weapon and non-Armor-scaling skills deal Physical damage and scale with Strength, including damaging effects from Virtues. Be sure to read tooltips and spec accordingly.
  
• While I've added preset classes, always be sure to read over skills and your stat pages to ensure you're starting off how you want to.

Credits and thanks
Credits to ArenaNet for all of the skill icons, skill names and inspiration. Pretty much everything in the mod aims to bring Guardian and Monk skills from GW1 and GW2 into DOS2.
Thanks to Laughing Leader for being incredibly consistent with helping all sorts of creators with questions and for providing LeaderLib. A huge amount of work goes into it and it reduces my workload by an utterly insane amount.
Thanks to Norbyte and their script extender, being a huge piece in the puzzle of making the game do things is was never supposed to do.
Thanks to many of the modders and the Larian discord community for consistent help and input, especially Doctor Beetus who somehow still lets me DM and pester him.