Elden Ring Nightreign Guardian guide – how to best use Guardian’s abilities and stats

Guardian is Elden Ring Nightreign’s tank. With the highest possible starting health and a great shield in his offhand on the drop, he’s there to rescue his teammates and prevent them from taking damage. With relatively high strength and a massive stamina pool, he’s no slouch when it comes to dealing damage either. 

Elden Ring Nightreign Guardian attributes

A character’s attributes tell you two things: what their starting stats will be in terms of health, stamina, magic pool, and strength, and what weapons they’re most comfortable with. The highest possible stat is an S, followed by A, B, C, D, and E as the lowest. 

Here’s what each stat means: 

• HP - How large your health pool is.
• FP - How large your mana pool is.
• Stamina - How large your stamina gauge is. 
• Strength - How much physical damage you can deal, scaling with colossal weapons. 
• Dexterity - Proficiency with daggers, bows, katanas, and other fast weapons. 
• Intelligence - Your magical potency, impacting the power of sorceries. Scales well with weapons such as the Moonveil katana and Fallingstar Beast Jaw. 
• Faith - How effective your healing and holy incantations are. Scales with weapons such as Golden Epitaph and Erdtree Greatbow. 
• Arcane - Holy damage and death blight negation. Increases blood loss buildup for bleeding weapons. Scales with weapons such as Serpent Bow and Rivers of Blood. 

Here are Guardian’s attributes: 

• HP - S
• FP - C
• Stamina - A
• Strength - B
• Dexterity - C
• Intelligence - D
• Faith - C
• Arcane - C

Elden Ring Nightreign Guardian abilities

Each Nightreign character also has two active abilities and one passive ability. These abilities can also be changed with certain relics, making them more potent. Here are Guardian’s: 

Passive: Steel Guard

Unlike other passives, this ability, which greatly boosts guard, isn’t really passive at all. You trigger it by holding up your shield with LB and pressing the dodge button, at which point Guardian plants his feet and tilts his shield forward. While active, your stamina constantly drains, but it will shrug off anything that’s thrown at it. With good stamina management, you can tank every single attack and keep your team safe. Pairs excellently with any weapon buffs that grant HP upon successful guards. 

Character Skill: Whirlwind

While pretty useless against bigger enemies, this passive ability whips up the wind and pulls smaller enemies toward you. Hold it down for an even larger radius. This is best used for large groups of smaller mobs, who can be juggled like ragdolls if you get in among them and trigger it at the right time.

Ultimate Art: Wings of Salvation

Wings of Salvation often comes in clutch. Not only does it do big damage to enemies, but it can even revive allies if they’re down near the point of impact. Hold the ability down and you’ll keep your weapon pinned in the ground while creating a protective aura around you. This aura gives a huge increase in defense, allowing your allies and yourself to shrug off attacks that would otherwise kill them. Once you get the relic that makes this aura also heal, never take it off. 

Elden Ring Nightreign Guardian’s best weapons

Like Wylder, Guardian is pretty versatile in terms of what weapons he can use. However, you’ll always want a greatshield in his offhand. This means you’ll naturally want something that deals big damage in your main hand. If you want to play to his strengths, polearms and anything that pokes are ideal, but he’s just as happy with a greatsword. 

If you're still on the fence, check our Elden Ring Nightreign review.