1. Which Guardians Should You Pick
Hello, I'm 재뷰리, a Server 1 player.
Recently, with the Light and Dark factions being added, Guardians that could be called a rank above Legendary Guardians have appeared, but
Basically, Neuphoria has three kinds of Guardians.
Those are Legendary, Epic, and Rare Guardians.
Out of these, you only need to look at the Legendary Guardians.
In the past, among the Epic Guardians, the Forest faction's Abel and the Water faction's Fantasia and Chaos (formerly Forest faction) were even used as members of main decks, but
due to the direction of the developer's patches, they have all fallen out of use now,
Even Surena, who among the Epic Guardians has a usable skill similar to Max's, has base stats so far below the Legendary Guardians that right now there is not a single usable character among the Epic Guardians.
So then, among these Legendary Guardians, which ones should you use?
Let's start by looking at my personal tier list.
2. Guardian Tier List and Explanation of Strengths and Weaknesses
As of June 16, this may change with future patches — for instance, a nerf to Max is currently announced — but
The current tier list is as follows. Even within the same tier, a Guardian listed earlier is higher in that tier.
<Tier 1> Aurora / Stella / Stanley / Dora
<Tier 2> Max / Kiki / Archibald / Marilyn / Buster / Zeus
<Tier 3> Agent J / Cain / Thomas / Rony / Layla / Pixie
<Tier 4> Chaos / Surena / Abel / Roxie, and others
The Light and Dark factions are set to keep being added, and each new addition will probably keep landing around Aurora's level.
<Tier 1> These are the Guardians you should build your deck around. You absolutely need one or two of them in your deck for it to have real strength.
1) Aurora: A Guardian who needs no introduction. She only wears the Support label — in reality she's a powerful damage dealer and buffer for the Water deck. Her total damage percentage is even higher than Stella's, the Water deck's main damage dealer, and she has an all-enemy AoE attack with E.Def reduction; on top of that, the Light faction's signature base stats make even her base stats high, and her fast basic-attack motion lets her spam skills endlessly — her advantages are endless.
If she has one weakness, it's that against opponents with higher Combat Power than her, the 180% damage that gets split up inevitably lands for less, and she lacks the burst firepower to blow up a key strong enemy in one go.
2) Stella: The unshakable Tier 1 Stella. Stella's strength is that with overwhelming firepower she can blow up the enemy's main damage dealer or front line in an instant. Her option to shred the enemy's E.Def is just a bonus — in terms of firepower she has no rival.
Her weakness is that her reach is short, so if things go wrong she can get targeted and blown up herself.
3) Stanley: The love-hate Stanley. With decent firepower and Airborne, an excellent CC skill, he has the ability to dominate the battlefield. His firepower itself is lower than Stella's, but through a CC skill Stella doesn't have he can interrupt enemy skills, and his versatility depending on which Helmet you give him is a strength.
His weaknesses are that using Stanley properly requires overwhelming stats, and that the unshakable Tier 1 dealer Stella is his faction counter. Without the stats or a countermeasure to properly withstand Stella's damage, he gets blown up helplessly, and as a melee dealer he often can't even get close before he uses one skill and dies. Also, his skill motion is so big and slow that if he gets hit by an enemy CC skill at a bad moment, his skill gets canceled and he becomes useless.
4) Dora: Honestly, I even considered dropping her to Tier 2. It doesn't quite feel like she belongs at the same table as Aurora, Stella, and Stanley. Still, there's no one quite like her and she always does her part, so I put her in the last Tier 1 slot. Her strengths are overwhelming range and a powerful CC skill. In this game Stun is a top-tier control skill, and her cast speed is so fast that Dora's Stun almost always lands first, before the opponent can interrupt with a skill, leaving them useless.
Her weaknesses are low firepower, a fragile body, and being far too vulnerable to her counter, the Fire faction. She's weak to both Kiki and Stanley, who are used as Fire faction mainstays, and if Dora meets them 1-on-1 she almost always loses even if the opponent is weaker than my Dora, so you have the homework of dodging them well.
<Tier 2> They're clearly weaker than the Tier 1 Guardians, but they're like the seasoning that absolutely has to go into building a deck.
1) Max: Along with Buster, he's one of practically only two Tanks in this game and has sturdy stats, but his best strength is Max's skill: a 3-second AoE invincibility. Being invincible for 3 seconds alone is already a broken skill, but he grants invincibility even to allies right next to him, so a Max on an opponent with higher Combat Power than you is bound to be a wall.
Weakness: a nerf is scheduled for the June 23 patch, and given this game's tendency toward extreme buff-nerf swings, rather than just increasing the invincibility cooldown or shortening its duration, there's a chance the skill gets deleted entirely and changed into a different skill like a Knockback. If that happens, then despite his sturdy Tank stats, he could get shunned in mainstream decks. Also, the invincible shield skill is amazing, but it comes off when he's hit by a CC skill, so against a deck with lots of CC he can be neutralized much more than you'd expect.
2) Kiki: Along with Aurora and Agent J, she's a Guardian with top-tier basic-attack speed and movement speed in this game. Personally I rate this stat profile very highly, because Guardians with these stats always do their job whenever it counts, even if they eventually fall off. She has a powerful CC skill in Knockdown, and thanks to her fast basic attack speed her skill cooldown comes back quickly, so with good timing she can harass the opponent endlessly.
Her weaknesses are short range, a narrow skill area, and a fragile body. She has to close in and hit with that fragile body, and since she usually only fights 1:1 it gets really awkward. And even in a 1-on-1, unless the opponent is Forest faction she doesn't put out enough firepower to guarantee a win, so she's a bit of a mixed bag.
3) Archibald: The Water deck's sub-tank, Archibald. His strengths are a powerful burst percent damage, decent stats, and being Water faction like Stella. He's strong against Beasts and shows quite a strong performance when he goes 1-on-1 against the Fire faction.
His weaknesses are being a melee fighter and having so-so tanking ability. He stands in front of the dealers meaning to protect them, but he often gets swept up in the opponent's strong firepower and melts along with them. His skill also shows solid firepower against Beasts, but it's iffy in player PvP. Unless he lands a CRIT, he doesn't put out enough damage to melt the opponent, so he's an iffy one. Still, when building a Water deck it's hard to leave him out.
4) Marilyn: The Archibald of the Forest deck. When building a Forest deck she's awkward to leave out, yet if you put her in, her firepower is iffy. Still, along with Dora, thanks to her overwhelming range and a skill with strong percent damage and a wide fan-shaped area, she pulls her own weight to some degree.
Her weaknesses are like a combination of Dora's and Archibald's. She's so overly weak to the Fire faction that meeting one is a tonic you smile while beating, and her own overwhelming range can actually become poison. Overwhelming range + a wide, long fan-shaped skill should combine into synergy that hits several enemies, but because she attacks from so far away, the misfortune often happens where the skill only lands on the single nearest enemy in the front line.
I'm ragging on Marilyn like this, but I'm currently using her myself. I've done a lot of research to solve those weaknesses, and I'll cover that later in a Helmet guide.
5) Buster: The Forest deck's reliable Tank, Buster. His skill Knockback is highly versatile and creates a lot of variables, and like Max he's in the Tank class so he's fundamentally sturdy. Even without much investment, thanks to the faction counter he shows a very sturdy performance against the current Tier 1 deck, the Water deck — that's his strength. His floor being very high is a strength, and depending on how you use him his ceiling is high too.
His weakness is dealing with the Fire faction, the chronic problem of the Forest faction. When he meets Stanley, aside from one resisting Knockback there's no way to cope other than getting hit until he dies, and due to the limits of being a Tank, his ability to carry a fight is much lower. Also, because the game places units randomly, there are limits on how much I can control Buster's variables myself.
6) Zeus: Thanks to Aurora's existence, Zeus is rising these days as a sub damage dealer for the Water deck. He got a buff once in a recent patch, but he was still being ignored — so Aurora came out to revive him. She bounces back Zeus's orbs, and if they hit well his damage instantly gets inflated 2x.
Also, the extra option where enemies close to Zeus during his skill motion get Stunned is useless on most Guardians, but it triggers well against the Tier 1 Stanley and interrupts Stanley's skill, so Zeus can serve as a counter to Stanley.
His weakness is that his usefulness is still iffy even so. You can't control the direction Zeus's orbs bounce, and the close-range Stun option is practically nonexistent, and so on — he does put out a fair amount of damage, but he's still iffy as a member of the currently overwhelming Tier 1 noble deck, the Water deck.
<Tier 3> Their performance is too iffy to use as members of a main deck, and there's no real reason to use them unless it's for a special role like Beast content or your own personal preference.
Only Agent J and Cain get occasionally fielded as needed, so I won't bother with extra explanation.
So far we've looked at which Guardian has which performance, strengths, and weaknesses.
I won't tell you 'Use this Guardian!' Because I think personal taste and variety matter most. Try out a variety of them and pick the Guardians that suit your taste.
3. Choosing a Faction and Composition
The very first thing to consider when building a deck is faction.
Neuphoria recently added the Light and Dark factions, but the basic factions are Forest, Water, and Fire, and they form an interlocking counter relationship with each other.
Forest is weak to Fire, Fire is weak to Water, and Water is weak to Forest.
However, because of the stat and tier differences among the Guardians in each faction, even within a counter matchup there are differences in just how weak one side is.
Forest, when it meets the Fire faction, is so weak that no one can cope,
the Fire faction, when it meets the Water faction, holds its own to some extent but then gets blown up in one hit,
and when the Water faction meets the Forest faction, they trade blows but it ends up feeling like the Forest faction barely scrapes out a win on the back of the type advantage.
Because of this structure, the most people use the Water faction, which has a comfortable faction matchup and many high-tier Guardians.
The basics of building a deck start with 'which Tier 1 Guardian do I want to use.'
Decide on one or two Tier 1 Guardians you're fond of or want to use,
and make these Guardians' faction your central axis.
Then, based on that, you season it nicely with Tier 2 Guardians to bring out the deck's flavor.
When building a deck, focus on the Squad Combat Power buff,
and there are broadly the cases of 3-1-1 / 3-2 / 4-1 / 5,
- 3-1-1 — only 3 of the same faction = 5%
- 3-2 — 3 and 2 of the same faction = 10%
- 4-1 — 4 of the same faction = 12.5%
- 5 — 5 of the same faction = 15%
Among these, I recommend building your deck at 3-2 or above, which gives a 10% Combat Power bonus.
To give you some examples, I'll show a few deck samples from Server 1 players.
Seeing them should make it easier to understand.
1) First, the deck of '은지짱', ranked #1 across all servers.
They built a 3-2 Squad Synergy centered on the Forest and Fire factions, and since they don't use the Water faction, they boldly skip the Tier 1 Aurora and Stella. It's a deck that uses Cain — who is low-tier but has the advantage of very high base HP — to crush opponents on the strength of high Combat Power and stats.
2) The current Tier 1 deck used as their main by Server 1's very top rankers.
This deck is used by Server 1's very top rankers such as '비비', '준구', and 'Hedera'. Based on a Water deck that includes the top-tier Stella, they mix in Stanley to make use of a 3-2 Water-Fire synergy and high-tier Guardians. Since it's a deck like a variety gift set of high-performance Guardians, its base stats are quite high, allowing versatile use on both offense and defense.
3) The deck of '미쯔', the ultimate composition even among Water decks — currently the only one that can form a high-tier deck with all 5 of the same faction.
With 4 Water faction members plus Aurora adding a Light faction +5% synergy on top, it can receive an absurd Squad Combat Power bonus of 17.5% total extra Combat Power — a boss-level Water deck. It's a deck with such good synergy and firepower all around. It can be very vulnerable when meeting a Forest deck, but since there are few Forest deck users in the current meta, it has no major weakness other than interrupting with CC skills before they use a skill.
4) The deck of '호두과자', which is well-structured even with relatively cheap investment and catches opponents even with a large Combat Power gap.
It uses the two highly compatible tanks Buster and Max together — Buster pushes away incoming enemies, and Max protects Buster with invincibility so he doesn't die, forming a sturdy front line, while Stella's burst damage blows up enemies from the back — a very well-structured deck. With this deck, 호두과자 can trade blows even with opponents about 4m apart in Combat Power, and recently has even won against an opponent 7m apart.
5) Embarrassing, but this is the author's own deck. 재뷰리's deck.
Back when Stella first came out, I made the foolish misjudgment that Stella wasn't good and didn't raise her — and for that sin I got happily beaten up by Stella while researching to build this deck. Its strengths are that no one across all servers uses it, and that of the 5 squad Guardians, all 4 except Marilyn have CC skills, so with Stun, Knockback, Airborne, and the like I can interrupt and harass the opponent's skills. I'm using it with quite a lot of satisfaction, but I'm always looking for a chance to swap out the likes of Kiki or Marilyn.
Besides these, there's an assassination deck using 5 Fire faction heroes and the Flash Helmet,
and a deck that makes the most of Forest faction Guardians with a 4-Forest+1 synergy, and so on, but
they didn't show much of a showing as Tier 1 decks.
Even in such a narrow Guardian pool there's a fair variety of deck variations, so use them as reference,
first decide on the style of deck you want to play, then prioritize that first team and use Fruit to raise their levels.
Guardian Star Grade will be tough for now, but ultimately, to fight properly, you'll need 5-star as a baseline for there to even be a conversation.
You don't need to worry much about your second and third teams for now — just match the minimum level to run Ruins, and by all means build your deck around the first team.
4. Closing
The deck samples I showed as examples above weren't shown to say 'copy these decks,' but to convey that you can build a deck with this kind of structure, and I think you've gotten a bit of a feel for it.
It's no fun if everyone runs the exact same deck, right?
More than what the Tier 1 deck is, I think what matters most is which deck style you like and which squad composition satisfies you.
We Server 1 players will keep researching with each patch, but a deck composition we never even imagined might be discovered by players on later servers, so let's all keep it up going forward.
Let's enjoy the game together for a long, long time.
Thank you for reading this long post.