#Fate of The Empress Guide: How to build Main Character Guard

Author: Jiodi

Updated by: Not A Snack

Last update: 2023, September 12th

The Guard is the sword-wielding badass of Fate of The Empress, and they really live up to that namesake. They have the potential to be one of the strongest heroes in the game, the best of the Guards in the game, and just look super cool while doing it. Unlike the other classes that wield umbrellas and fans and, uh, ladles, a guard actually uses a sword.

I. Skills

II. Gems

MC Guard gems are pretty simple, this is the formula Jiodi recommends:

• Slow Guard (recommended): ATK/CRIT/DMG+/EVA/RES

• Fast Guard: AGI/ATK/CRIT/DMG+/RES/DMGRES

There are two main guard builds, but one of them I do not recommend at all for the current metagame. Since I am so adamantly against fast guards I won’t be covering them in this guide. But just use agility if you want a fast one.

Slow Main Character (MC) Guards are preferred because of how many reflect shields exist. Between heirs, Peacock and Zhuang Zhou, killing yourself on shields is an absolute threat. If you are building yourself with enough damage you will find yourself dying a lot. To mitigate this, you want your other heroes clearing the way up as much as possible, allowing your MC to get in some massive damage.

Snack's updates: Fast guard is much more viable now if you have the new godly relics and spirits. Especially viable if you have Meng Jiusi. If you are carrying for Floral Shadows or want a good timing, use fast guard.

III. Team Formation

"The format of ‘2 scholars, 2 guards, and 1 Gourmet and 1 Doctor’ is recommended."

=> This is WRONG. Very common but WRONG. Wrong wrong wrong on every level.

It has several problems:

• Spreads damage potential way too thin: Having to spread your offensive resources across five different damage dealers is just going to just cause you to have five mediocre damage dealers. The only time this is even remotely possible to pull off is if you are one of the top world spenders and can afford to put tons of atk/crit/dmg+/agi gems and crystals on everyone. If you are a massive whale that can afford all that stuff then disregard and do whatever you want, lol.

• Snack's updates: Having mediocre damage dealers is even worse now with the release of owl eagle pet. You're more likely to trigger the opponent's rage and buff from owl eagle. If they're stacked, this can lead to instant death for your team.

• Extremely Limited Utility: Scholars and Guards are real good damage dealers, and some of them can do ok as hybrids but you won’t get the support and control you need at higher levels of play.

• You end up having useless heroes: When you have to spread your damage potential you’re going to see how ineffective it is the higher you get. So then you have to push those resources onto your best damage dealers, making the ones left not able to do much but stand there and eventually die.

* Actual real photo of your damage dealers

So there are the recommended team formation for Guard.

III.a Double Doc High Investment Build: 1 scholar, 2 gourmets, 2 doctors

• Gourmet 1: You are absolutely going to need sustain (healing) if you’re running a slower scholar. Diaochan/Wang Zhaojun/Liu Shan/Zhuang Zhou/Zhao Jing (skinned)/Meng Jiusi are all really good choices for this spot. Mostly because they’re the only ones who actually heal.

• Gourmet 2: You are going to need some support beyond just healing to keep your team protected while you wind up the big swings. Jia Baoyu/Ji Kang/Pan An/Meng Jiusi/Zhao Jing. I don’t mention Wu Zetian/Linglong because they also increase agility. It’s not that it’s bad, per se, just that it might not be as useful to your team.

• Snack updates: Meng Jiusi and Zhao Jing can fill either role. Meng heals much more than Zhao Jing and his lotus shield provides amazing damage mitigation. His buff significantly boosts attack and def. If you have both, Meng will be the main healer while ZJ is there to provide revives and support heals/shield/debuff.

• Doctor 1: Put a doc on your team for control purposes. You almost always want control. Daji/Guiguzi/Mi Yue/Princess Taiping/Lotus Fairy/Shen Chuyin are all good candidates.

• Doctor 2: Put a doc on your team for control purposes. You almost always want control. Daji/Guiguzi/Mi Yue/Princess Taiping/Lotus Fairy/Shen Chuyin are all good candidates.

• Scholar: This is kind of a wildcard slot. If you want your team to be tankier, run another gourmet. If you want to be able to control the fight a little more and have the acc, run another doc!

III.b Triple Doc High Fast/Slow/Support Investment Build: 2 gourmets, 3 doctors

• Doctor 1: The usual fast doc for control out of the gate and reindeer maximization. High acc/agi are essential here, prioritize this doc with acc/agi over the others.

• Candidates are Mi Yue, Daji, Guiguzi, Shen Chuyin

• Doctor 2: Doctor number two is our slow doc. High accuracy but survivability is important here.

• Candidates are Mi Yue, Princess Taiping, Shen Chuyin

• Doctor 3: You want to run a more support-like doc here that doesn’t necessarily need a ton of acc. Ying Zheng, Lotus Fairy are ideal candidates for this slot.

• Gourmet 1: It doesn’t matter how fast and strong your damage dealers are, you need a healer. Zhuang Zhou is the best healer, Diaochan is the second-best.

• Snack's updates: Meng Jiusi is now the best healer. Zhao Jing is another healer who can revive.

• If you choose to run a gourmet that doesn’t have a direct heal, like Wu Zetian/Princess Linglong, make sure you have other forms of healing (treasure skills like Selfless Spirit and pets like Phoenie/Chinchilla) to help keep you sustained during the fight.

• Snack's updates: You can get significant healing from relics, tapir pet, spirit, artifact potential, scroll painting skill. Scroll painting skill trigger is a chance but it is the highest chance out of all scroll skills at lvl 1. Each gourmet has a chance to trigger the painting skill as well.

• Gourmet 2: This can be any gourmet, really. Jia Baoyu, Wu Zetian, Princess Linglong, Wang Zhaojun, Pan An, Liu Shan are all good options.

• Snack's updates: I don't recommend this especially at higher might play (> 40 mil). Having only 1 damage dealer is risky because high ranking teams now have a ton of damage mitigation. In peak, players get a 50% damage buff at round 4 and a 500% damage buff at round 7. If your 1 damage dealer is incapacitated, you'll be at a disadvantage. 1 damage dealer will also hurt your timing in Floral Shadows if you're carrying or your teammates don't do much damage. There is also no chance for you to trigger the scholar painting scroll skill.

III.c Supertank Guard Version High End/Budget Build: 3 gourmet and 2 doctors (high end) -or- 1 doctor, 1 scholar (high end/budget)

• Doctor: Control ends up being really important for fast teams. You want a fast (and accurate) Daji/Guiguzi/Mi Yue/Shen Chuyin to control potential counter attacks.

• Mi Yue can be used as the single doctor here if you have her.

• Gourmet 1: It doesn’t matter how fast and strong your damage dealers are, you need a healer. Zhuang Zhou is the best healer, with Penguin.

• Meng Jiusi is the best if you can afford.

• Options: Wang Zhaojun, Liu Shan, Diaochan

• Gourmet 2: Supertank runs two healing gourmets for survivability redundancy. Tough Piggy on Liu Shan is a decent budget option. Wang Zhaojun cleanses debuffs. Diaochan with Peacock can resurrect and will resurrect herself.

• Options: Wang Zhaojun, Liu Shan, Diaochan, Zhao Jing

• Gourmet 3: We use a support gourmet here for, well, support. Wu Zetian for the atk/agi/crit increase, Princess Linglong for the agi/atk buffs, Jia Baouyu for the proteccs, Wang Zhaojun for the cleanse, Pan An for the shield.

• Meng Jiusi is also the one of the best support lol

• Doctor/Scholar: Ying Zheng is amazing here as the doctor. He can burst rage heroes on round one, leading to stuff like Daji Confuse/Mi Yue Confine right away. Really really good. Li Bai, Mozi, Zhuge Liang, Song Yu, Li Qingzhao are all good secondary damage dealers.

• Snack's updates: Fu Yunqi is an excellent secondary or primary damage dealer. Meng and Yunqi is an insane combo and extremely hard to counter. Same cautionary note about having 1 damage dealer if you're high might.

IV. Pets

MC Guard pets are going to look similar to MC Scholar pets, with some slight variations:

Brave Doggo is my absolute favorite pet for MC Guard. Combined with Sunset Smile, this allows for brutal sweeps by your mc. The way the special skill works with MC is that they will use either their main attack or secondary attack, this can lead to 7 hits if they follow up with Bloody Blade, or 5 hits with one of them ignoring def if they follow up with Predominance. The damage you can do with this pet is absolutely insane.

Penguin is really good on all kinds of heroes. You sacrifice some passive atk and dmg stats to get three chances to counterattack. If you kill someone with this lil guy’s proc, you can activate the follow-up passive. This is a lot of damage potential.

Snack's updates: Not recommended against teams with owl eagle on a stacked damage dealer.

Snowman An MC with high enough atk will be absolutely brutal with the snowman. DMG% increase stats are among the best stats to work on and a 36% buff after three rounds is a nice boost. But make sure your mc is stacking attack and crit when using this pet.

Ferret is grants atk buffs by stealing atk from enemies. Nice momentum swing and does a *lot* of work in PvE situations like Cascade Manor.

Vixen is great for not dying to shields early on long enough to do some crazy damage with your mc. Not the first choice but

Snack's updates: Flash is one of the top choices because it prevents your MC from getting controlled. Owl eagle is also another excellent choice if your EVA is high. Owl eagle boosts attack and allows the carrier to rage more often. If you aren't running Diao Chan, you can consider using peacock to get back up and fight when you die. It can be risky against a stacked damage dealer with owl eagle though.

V. Heirs

This section will be short and I will probably add on to it in the future. But this is what I recommend for all Guard builds:

For PVP you see a ton of shields. These can be obnoxious to murderous. I almost always run at least one piercing shield if I’m going to be facing other players.

Arrow Blow hit’s so much harder the higher your MC’s attack *and* the higher the enemy's HP. This is incredibly powerful when taking on higher level NPCs, like Cascade Manor and Elites.

Snack's updates: Prefect cure + Precaution for invincibility and Irresistible Charm (poison) are also good depending on the situation. The good thing about heir skills is that you can easily change them up at no cost.

VI. Real World Examples

Double Doc w/ Secondary DMG Scholar

This team runs fast/slow two doctors, Wu Zetian for buffing and Zhuang Zhou for keeping everyone alive. Li Bai is the secondary damage dealer. Peacock on Mi Yue and Reindeer on Guiguzi for the lulz.

Snack's updates: You can run reindeer and chenghuang on the doctors. They are great control pets and their control skills scale off ACC.

Triple Threat High-End Team

This team requires a lot of offensive investment. Zhan Zhao with Peacock is the only real comparative Guard to MC, and if you can run them both you can dole out a lot of dmg. But you have to be able to do a ton of damage, so lots of atk is important for every member.

Snack's updates: Helan Ci and Fu Yunqi do a lot more damage but you have to be at kraken/leviathan level spending to deck them all out. Meng Jiusi for heals, buff, bodyguard support and reviving Yunqi.

Lilith’s SuperTank

This is my team. Mi Yue has had all of my agility and accuracy put into her, Jia Baoyu can defend anyone that gets too low, Ying Zheng does burst, Zhuang Zhou and Diao heal and rez, Lilith does all the damage.

Budget MC Guard

Wang for cleanse, Ji Kang for rage burst, Li Qingzhao and Li Bai for area damage, Taiping for stun/daze. This team runs really slow to maximize Taiping's control abilities.

Extremely High-End Triple Doc

This build requires a ton of acc/agi to work. Three docs, even running a slow one, is a massive investment. Like you need to be at least whale status to pull this off.

Snack's updates: Outdated. You're better off investing in other stuff.

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