View source for Sacred 2:Temple Guardian: Character Guide, All the information you might need to build up your own succesful Temp

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== '''Temple Guardian: Character Guide''' ==

'''By Viper7'''


Introduction

This guide is made to help new and old Sacred 2 players to understand how to build a good Temple guardian. Like with any build there are a lot of preferences and oppinnions about skills and combat arts. However I will try to provide as much info from the both sides of the coin for both skills and combat arts.
I am not a native English speaker so this guide will most likely have plenty of grammar errors and bossibly typos. Feel free to point these out and I might fix them.
By the time writing this guide I have build up to 8 Temple guardians (more than half of them were scrapped before reaching level 50 and plenty of them are experimental.). Probably the most successful one is the Paladin build I made a guide for which is currenlty around level 87. I have little to no experience on Sacred 2 HC (Playing on Ps3 and got platinum trophy recently) and I have little to no experience on Niob dificulty so much of the later game experience has been gained from more experienced Temple Guardian players like Zinho, Llama8 and Vaclaf.
Also thanks to tapir for providing valuable test information about shield recharge modification and showing of his effective Source warden build.

Mods are free to add info, correct typos/grammar and modify this guide as they see fit. Also making this sticky might lessen the amount of same questions asked over and over again in this board. This text is free to use/copy by any1 as its only here to help people understand this exotic class/race

Quick Find (ctrl + f) - Guide Contents
[CG01] Weaknesses
[CG02] Strengths
[CG03] Attributes
[CG04] Skills
[CG05] Melee based Temple guardians (DG - DG/Shadow Warrior)
[CG06] Magic based Temple guardians (DG/Shadow Warrior, DG/LF, DG/Shadow Warrior/LF)
[CG07] About Skill levels and masteries
[CG08] Some Temple guardian basics
[CG09] Aspects and combat arts
[CG09][1] Aspects and combat arts - Devout guardian
[CG09][2] Aspects and combat arts - Source warden
[CG09][3] Aspects and combat arts - Lost fusion



Weaknesses
[CG01]

Temple guardian is probably by far the hardest class in Sacred 2 to build. Temple guardian suffers from plenty of handicaps compared to many other classes and many make some more or less bad choises with its skills and combat art modifications which will futher increase the dificulty of the game.

1 hand only
If you have not yet noticed, one of temple guardians arm is a weapon itself. Most players who have never played Temple Guardian or just went trough the first 15 levels (trophy/achievement) probably dont know that it has around 4 forms.
- Battle extension passive: Increases the number of double hits)
- Dedicated blow passive: increases chance to hit
- Arm cannon: a ranged weapon.

These useful features remove the possibility of Dual wielding, use of 2 handed weapons and shield. So every Temple Guardian will have to make do with one weapon/staff only.

Low hp and armor
Temple guardian starts off with rather low hp and armor values, this makes building up exotic less melee based temple guardians rather tough on lower levels. Low armor and hp are usualy countered with T-Energy shroud (energy shield), warding energy lore and Armor lore. More about: how to improve the defensive part of your Temple Guardian later in the guide.

Arm cannon
Arm cannon damage and element is based on the equiped battery, The damage and attack speed can futher be increased trough increasing the atribute that increases the weapon damage (most swords/hammers use strenght, some light once use dexterity)
Ranged weapon lore does not improve the damage or attackspeed but the lore of equiped weapon does. Arm cannon cannot be used with ranged weapon (if you dont count lost fusion skills as use of arm cannon.)

High cool downs on some of the combat arts
Temple Guardian has plenty of combat arts for differend purposes but expecialy source warden combat arts suffer from high cooldowns. With cooldown I don’t mean regeneration time but additional unreducable penalty that is added to reneration. Usualy around 10-30s.
So even with 0.1 regen time you will still need to wait additional number of seconds for the combat art to be usable.

Restrictions on hybrids
This probably is one of the rules in sacred in general. But as many have made this mistake including myself ill say it again. YOU CANNOT BE A MAGE AND A WARRIOR AT THE SAME TIME. Within the 200 levels the game will give you a lot of skillpoints to master most if not all your skills, but most of those are gained on lvls 100-200. The ammount of experience needed increases by every level and the ammount of experience gained increases by dificulty and gear. So if your character can’t handle platinium before level 70 or niob around level 100 you’ll be in for some really tedious leveling. Not to mention the level of mobs increase along with your character so if your character is weak at level 80 he might as well be weak at level 90 as well.
Pick Melee or Magic. Do not take this too literaly however, many source warden Combat Art’s may be used as debuffs instead of Area of Effect damage and you only need to increase Combat Art level to increase the effect.

Strengths
[CG02]

To even things out, Temple guardian has plenty of strenghts that make it a viable class for differend purposes.

Team player
There’s no healer or buffer like Temple guardian. Combat arts like combat alert, Charged grid, fiery ember, Icy envanescense and jolting touch can greatly help team.
Combat alert with right modifications can increase damage, attack and defense and give a nice reflect with correct modifications. Charged grid may be modded to become a Area of Effect skill that heals every team member in the whole screen including yourself. Fiery ember and Icy envanescense can be modded to slow down enemies and eather increase teams resistance against fire/ice attacks or decrease the elemental resistance of enemies.

The Best Area of Effect damage dealer in the whole game
Yes high elfs can do pretty nice Area of Effect damage with some of their skills, but Source warden based Temple Guardian build can deal nice high DoT Area of Effect damage to the whole screen (bossibly even larger area). The duration increases by every Combat Art level and these can be casted in chain to destroy even the more powerfull enemies.

Utility character like no other
Only Temple Guardian is able to pick all 3 bargaining, blacksmith and enchanted perception. Get a good utility Temple Guardian and youll be able to support all your characters with a single character.
(note: Ice and blood all skills modifications might make this a lot less effective)
(Console gamers note: Blacksmith doesnt work on Ps3/X360)

Boss killer
Maybe not as good as BFG seraphim, but with jolting touch and deadly spears Temple Guardian can take out most of the bosses without breaking any real problems.
(Console gamers note: the bug on jolting touch modification! – Self repair heals enemies)


Attributes
[CG03]

Strength
This attribute is only inportant for Temple guardians looking to deal massive ammounts of melee damage. It also provides some additional attack(accuracy). As damage and accuracy can be gained from differend means, strenght is adviceable for builds that focus almost purely to melee.

Stamina
The most important attribute for temple guardian, you can really never have enough of it. It will reduce the regeneration times of all compat arts and as most of the combat arts only gain damage or effectiveness from levels. Ignore this only if your aiming for a very exotic build.

Dexterity
Not very usefull, however if your looking to increase both your attack and defense ratings and your happy with your oher stats this might do the trick.

Vitality
Usefull only if your building a Temple Guardian that doesn’t use 100% absorbtion warding energy shield at any point of the game. With insane ammount of shield energy fully absorbing the taken damage it makes having hp or hp regeneration rather useless.

Intelligence
Not as usefull as Stamina, it increases the spell base damage by 0,1% and increases the chance to deal max spell damage. But as Temple Guardian only has no min-max damage on his magic based combat arts it makes this atribute a bit useless. Consider inteligence only if you are happy with your current stamina level and want to increase the base damage of your spells a bit.

Willpower
Although the game doesnt mention it, it increases the overall shield power. This is very usefull as most of the shield energy is gained by using shield energy + x% item modifiers and warding energy increases also increases shield energy by certain %.
It also increases the magical resistance and resistance against status aliments.

Skills
[CG04]

There are plenty of skill’s that temple guardian can use, and as there is sacred wiki I will not fully describe the skills here. However ill go trough some basic skills important for certain kinds of Temple Guardian’s and some additional skills that might be usefull for Temple Guardian. As there are really only 2 kinds of Temple Guardian ill use them as example.
(*)optional (has some benefits but not a must have skill, all utility skills are classified as optional skills so I wont be discussing them in this guide.)

Melee based Temple Guardian: Devout guardian or devout guardian + source warden hyprid.
[CG05]

Melee based Temple Guardian usualy uses sword or a blunt weapon to deal massive ammount of hurt to the enemies. It also focuses mainly on devout guardian aspect and tries to make use of Battle extension, dedicated blow, deadly spears and combat alert. Melee based Temple Guardian might want to get additional combat arts from source warden aspect but they should instead of trying to make the skills do damage they should focus on untouchable force, modding Area of Effect Combat Art’s to debuffs/healing.

Devout guardian focus – A must have skill for all Temple Guardian’s because of T-energy shroud
Armor lore – more armor + lower regeneration penalties
Warding energy lore – More shield energy
Weapon lore – Attack accuracy and attack speed
Tactics lore – your melee damage will be poor without this

Source warden focus and lore(*) – Focus for debuffs, take lore only if you want additional healing
Concentration(*) – 2 buffs T-energy shroud + Unctouchable force
Toughness(*) – more armor and mitigation(damage reduced by %)
Constitution(*) – More hp and faster regeneration (dont use 100% absorbtion warding energy with this 80% or 90% might be good)
Combat discipline(*) – combat art damage + less regeneration

note: combat discipline decreases regen times of Combat Art’s in a combo, combo can contain a single Combat Art so use the Combat Art in a combo instead Combat Art itself to reduce the regen times.


Spell based Temple Guardian: Source warden and lost fusion
[CG06]

Spell may be a bit ankward word for Temple Guardian combat arts, but it is used to describe the fact that your weapon damage has no effect on your combat art damage. All lost fusion and source warden damages are strictly based on
- level of your combat art
- Modifications of your combat art
- Level of combat disclipline
- Lost fusion lore (if LF Combat Art) or Source warden lore (if Shadow Warrior Combat Art)
- Inteligence
- +x% or +x element(ice/fire/magic) damage
- +x% damage(affects all damage melee and magic)

Using staff doesnt increase your spell damage, but item modifier in the wand might.
Using staff/weapon that decreases regeneration, increases casting speed, is very usefull.
Temple Guardian’s focusing fully on source warden or LF combat arts use the weapon only for its item modifiers so it really doesnt matter if your wielding a lollipop as long as it has good item modifiers benefitting your spells/Combat Art’s.
Spell intensity is useless for Temple guardian, because temple guardian Combat Art’s have a single damage value meaning that all spell based Combat Art’s do the same min and max damage (example: 100-100 min-max). Spell intesity increases the chance to deal max damage but as the Min damage = max damage theres no real use for it.

Devout guardian focus – A must have skill for all Temple Guardian’s because of T-energy shroud
Armor lore – more armor + lower regeneration penalties
Warding energy lore – More shield energy
Source warden or Lost fusion Lore - decreases casting speed and increases the max damage by %
Source warden focus or Lost fusion focus – decreases regen times and increases the max level without penalty.
Combat discipline – increases Combat Art damage and decreases regentimes of Combat Art’s in a combo

Toughness(*) – Extra armor and mitigation help to sustain the shield
Tactics lore(*) – Increase the damage of deadly spears
Combat reflexes(*) – more evasion.
Constitution(*) – incase your shield drops youll have a better chance to survive or if you arent using 100% warding energy

might be usefull for some builds
Damage lore(*) – Increased chance to apply status effects.

About Skill levels and masteries
[CG07]

As I said before, spreading skills to openly may severely handicap your character. Here are few reasons why.

Mastery, when skill reaches level 75 (with hard points (toughness is exception)) you will unlock new bonus or increase the effect of the skill. Skill mastery may also unlock specific bonuses on certain weapons and gear. Armor lore opens mitigation properties on armors etc.

Focusing on specific skill, may give you great benefits. If you keep a skill close or even to your character level (highest possible without all skills item modifiers), the items marked with "modified by *skill name*" will get better bonuses. Having high armor lore may give you higher mitigation x% if the item tells the values are modified by these bonuses. So spreading points too openly will not only affect your character but also his ability to use certain kind of gear.


Some Temple guardian basics
[CG08]

T-energy shroud
This is a main buff of every respectable Temple Guardian build, without it you will suffer heavy damage and if you have not bumbed your hp and armor you might even die. Shield has very confusing values so let me clarify them a bit.

Firstly T-energy shroud is a energy shield almost identical to the one Seraphim has, however it starts with basic 60% absorbtion warding energy value. This means that the shield takes 60% of the damage shown above your character. So even if 100 damage shows above your characters head, your hp will only suffer 40 points of damage. If the shield goes off you will take 100% of the damage. This is very important to understand when playing Temple Guardian as you might feel safe taking only 40% of the damage but as soon as shield goes off your hp will be depleting way more rapidly. Absorbtion warding energy can be increased to 100% by item modifiers making shield take all the damage. Many counter the low hp of Temple Guardian by increasing their Absorbtion warding energy to 100% and getting their shield power to insane levels (sometimes even at levels of 100,000! think about enemies having to deal over 100k damage to even touch your hp! Not to mention that the shield regenerates outside battle.)

Warding energy lore DOES NOT INCREASE ABSORBTION WARDING ENERGY (atleast not directly).
Instead it increases shield energy by a hefty ammount while also increasing shield Block warding energy (more like shield “thickness”) that reduces the damage by fixed ammount shown in the T-energy shroud info.
Warding energy lore also affects strenght of the item modifiers and bossibly unlocks some additional modifiers to boost absorbtion and shield energy values.

Recharge modification, in battle recharge amount increases by increasing Tactics lore skill level. However the amount is not really enough to compensate the mitigation gained from reduce. (No need to start a char over tough if you already have it, having reduce helps but picking recharge instead doesn't break your build.)


Passive Battle extension
Battle extension is a passive skill that you activate by a) activating the Combat Art attack or b) activating it while doing another Combat Art attack like deadly spears, combat alert etc.
You know that the battle extension is active if you see that your arm cannon has runed in to a claw and your Temple Guardian has a tentacle growing from his back. Passive battle extension disapears every time you activate another Combat Art, so to keep it active be sure to activate it everytime you cast combat alert or something similar. NOTE: Mods do not affect the passive battle extension (or so I have read)

Combat alert
Combat alert increases your attack accuracy and ability to defend against enemy hits. It also increases the Melee damage Temple Guardian deals (by ½ the value of attack/defense boost (if attack +100% damage = +50%). Very usefull for melee Temple Guardian to get some additional damage. Combat alert can also be modded to provide melee reflect which makes even the weakest Temple Guardian’s nearly invulnerable to melee hits (maybe not at lower levels but around level 80 character level it may offer over 80% chance to reflect melee damage!)
Learn to cast this skill at the begining of combat and try to achieve Duration > regen time to gain near invulnerability against melee attacks.
When attack is reflected it is also completely nullified, meaning you will take no damage.


Aspects and combat arts:
[CG09]

Note most of these are based on preferences, feel free to explore your own modifications and addapt them to your own play style. These are mainly to warn people about possible mistakes on how a certain modification works and if its is as good as the tool tip says. Recharge for example sounds way more useful than it actually is.

Devout guardian
[CG09][1]

Devout guardian aspect is mainly melee based, but it has plenty of good combat arts to use with builds focusing Source warden or Lost fusion.
Best Combat Art's to mod first: T-energy shroud and Combat alert.

Combat Alert – Battle Aura
Combat art that can be turned in to a buff with the last modification. However before turning in to a buff think it trough clearly as it will halve all its values including reflect and damage. Not to mention that combat alert can achieve a point where its duration is longer than time needed for regeneration. In most chases party protection is better choice but there are few expections like the Lost utility build invented by Vaclaf.

Bronze: Barricade is usualy the more viable option as Temple Guardian gets pretty good attack accuracy trough Battle extension(BE) and weapon lore.
Silver: Healing or near immortality? Riposte is the way to go
Gold: aside from few builds party protection or neather is the way to go.

Battle Extension
The Combat Art attack is rather poor, but the passive bonus that this offers is great for all melee Temple Guardian’s. Be sure to get this as fast as bossible with T-energy shroud as it helps with dealing damage on lower levels. I usualy take all the double hit modifiers as more hits usualy defeats small damage boost and critical hits. Mods do not effect the battle extension when using it as passive.

Bronze: Both are fine
Silver: Impairment as the higher the regen for this skill the better
Gold: Both are fine


Dedicated blow
Not as good as battle extension as passive (except maybe when fighting mobs with high elemental resistance to your attack.) However the Combat Art attack deals some heavy damage when it hits. This with character that has high melee damage may deal serious damage to any opponent with a single hit.

Bronze: If combat alert has reflect its more viable to not stun enemies so they can kill themselves. So Transformation.
Silver: Intent as many prefer to have their DB with high damage.
Gold: Enforce as inflicting wounds is unnecesary combared to damage boost.



Deathly spears
Generates a ring of spikes around the Temple Guardian that damage everything around you. The amount of rings depends on the level and last modification of your deadly spears. Clafication to the ammount of rings: only 1 ring activates at the time so deadly spears basicly damages like this:

1st ring spikes - 1 second wait - 2nd ring spikes - 1 second wait - 3rd ring of spikes.

Great Combat Art to activate when fighting bosses as the rings will continue to damage the boss for a long time after casting it. Not to mention a single ring of spikes may hit the opponent for multiple times making it really deadly with high damage.

Bronze: Gore but not for the increased damage but for the fact that you dont want to knockback to this skill
Silver: which you prefer (note the fire and magic status aliments)
Gold: Jab = extra ring of spikes!

T-Energy shroud
This is a must have for all Temple Guardian builds.
see section T-energy shroud in Temple guardian basics section for more info.

Bronze: Both are good, Derogate damages everything around you by fixed ammount. The damage can be increased trough leveling T-energy shroud, x% magic damage, combat disclipline and tactics lore.
Silver: Reduction as the combat recharge value is way too low to even compare with the ammount of damage reduction the reduction mod offers. (in battle recharge =/= out of battle recharge)
Gold: Both are good but for magic reflect pick Reflection.

Source Warden
[CG09][2]

Primal mutation

Mainly used to reduce target’s attributes as deadly spears is often more viable “spell” to deal damage even as source warden focused build.

Bronze: both are fine
Silver: Helpless
Gold: Helpless

Fiery Ember

Area of Effect Spell with very good range, however as the Combat Art spawns multiple volcanos to the field to damage mobs. However if the mob gets away from the volcanos range it wont be damaged any longer. Best to gather around a lot of mobs around the player and cast this to damage them while they are hitting you. Low base damage can be increased trough leveling the skill and the methods described in Spell based Temple Guardian section.
Melee Temple Guardian might use this to slow enemy attack speed and and increase/reduce Ice/fire resistance.

Mods heavily affected by build, increase damage if you want to use it as offensive Area of Effect spell. Conservation is also a better choise as lower regen means a lot higher spell level and duration.

Icy Evanescence

Identical skill to Fiery ember but instead does Ice damage and rather than slowing down enemy attack speed it can be modded to slow down enemy running speed.

Charged grid

Area of Effect Skill that does magic damage and also heal team members including the caster. This skill can be modded to eather deal damage or heal team members. Its adviced to choose one instead of mixing the choises to gain the max benefit. Healing and damage are greatly affected by source warden lore.

mods: healing or damage. Longetivity is better choise for gold modification to countier the heavy cool down.

Untouchable force (Buff)
Firstly, this skill sounds a lot better than it actualy is. The 0,2 pulese frequency doesnt mean that it hits every 0,2s. It means that it hits every 5 seconds. 0,2*5=1!
As once every 5 seconds is not much many prefer to use it to pulse debuffs to mobs.

Bronze: Both are good but with good level combat alert stun might slow down the speed on which enemies kill themselves. But it might save your life as well.
Silver: Same as above many prefer calm
Gold: Crumble as combat alert doesnt reflect projectiles.


Lost Fusion
[CG09][3]

If you think your truly hardcore Sacred2 player, Lost fusion based Temple Guardian is for you. Not only is this the hardest aspect to use efficently it is probably weakest aspect in the game (aside from jolting touch skill). Most of the skills are ranged and only hit few opponents at the time. Furious emplazer and Archimedes beam both bind the player to its spot when activated making them sometimes even rather dangerous to use. Battery damage and weapon damage do nothing to increase lost fusion Combat Art damage as they are considered as “spells”.

The damage of Lost fusion Combat Art’s can be increased by increasing the level of combat art, Lost fusion lore, intelligence, combat discipline, damage +x%, element of Combat Art +x%


Amplifying Discharge
Shoots a small orb that hits and bounces from enemy to another. Best to use with small regeneration time and fast casting speed.

Bronze: Ricochet – hits maxinium of 3 opponents
Silver: Ricochet – hits maxinium of 4 opponents
Gold: both are good

Furious Emblazer
A flametrower, which hits multiple opponents in front of Temple Guardian. Rather hard to use as you can’t move while using it and enemies tend to move away from it. Easier to use when using special mount.

Bronze: Both are good
Silver: Incapacitate, as we want to kill the mobs since game only rewards experience and loot from kills no?
Gold: Both are good

Jolting touch
Probably the most usefull Lost fusion Combat Art and many take lost fusion focus just to improve this Combat Art. It binds the opponents while damaging them. This alone isnt so good but the modifications like payback, self repair and shelter make it bossible for Temple Guardian to become invulnerable or nearly invulnerable while they are using this skill against the enemy. Very effective against bosses as they cant really do anything while your binding them down and slowly killing them off by repeating deadly spears and jolting touch.

Bronze: Paypack since reflect is very effective against pretty much everything, console gamers might consider life leechs as silver mod Self repair is bugged.
Silver: Pc: Self repair console gamers: Voltage
Gold: Shelter: this with high mitigation gear = 100% damage resistance.


Archimedes Beam
Locks on to an enemy and shoots a powerfull beam that does DoT for a while. It has slight Area of Effect element as everything the beam touches it damages. But as enemies tend to spread the Area of Effect effect is just slight extra. usefull against escaping enemies and does decent damage overall.

Mod as you see fit, but consider leaving this as last Combat Art in lost fusion because of its very limited usefulness.

Build guides
[CG10]

Fully tested (niob cleared)

Temple Guardian Utility Fusion Build - "Dwarf in my left arm" (HARDCORE!)
Alpha D.O.G. a NON-utility Temple Guardian

Well tested level 75+
Source warden Temple Guardian
Temple Guardian - Combat Support build - "Paladin"

Other
Purity Warden Build
Dreadnaught and Centurion Builds
Theoretical Maximum damage build
The Muttronic, A Guide to the Swiss Army Knife of Ancaria


Temple Guardian guides in DarkMatters forum

Seen a good Temple Guardian build guide or want to promote your own (preferably good) build guide? Ill be happy to add it to the list.


'''''Originally published at [http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=13461 DarkMatters]for review and discussion.'''''

==See Also==
*[[Sacred 2:Temple Guardian Guides|Temple GuardianGuides]]
*[[Sacred 2:Temple Guardian Combat Arts|Temple GuardianCombat Arts]]
*[[Sacred 2:Sacred 2 Player Contributed Guides|Sacred 2 Player Contributed Guides]]