Guide to the Guardian
Tough and enduring, Guardians use their well practiced shield and weapon against any who seek to harm their allies. By the clang of sword upon shield, or the roar of battle cries, Guardians live to provoke opponents and divert potential damage from their allies. When fighting on their own, these masters of protection and heavy armour are like distance runners—winning through a well paced stamina of defence and offence abilities. When grouped with allies, Guardians focus on defence, defence, defence; no matter the direction of battle, whether victory or defeat, Guardians hold their ground until the last moment.
Introduction
The primary role of the Guardian is that of a tank:
- They possess numerous buffing skills that increase their Mitigations and Avoidances (blocking, parrying and evading).
- Several of the Guardian's skills help maintain Threat, drawing away enemies' attention from their allies and keeping them focused on the Guardian.
- Traited in The Keen Blade (red) tree, a Guardian can fulfill the role of a melee DPS, relying mostly on DoT (damage over time) skills.
Gameplay
If you are playing a Guardian for the first time, you have to be aware that in exchange for higher survivability, your damage output will be lower than that of other classes.
In Lotro, the role of a Main Tank is mostly fulfilled by the Guardian or Captain. The Beorning, Champion and Warden can be used as an Off Tank or main tank in easier content.
Further in this section, I will be discussing two examples of rotations that can be used when tanking or DPS'ing. This guide is not meant to be strictly followed, at all times you have to keep an eye on what is happening around you, if a new group of enemies appears and attacks your healer, your Morale is getting low or you need a cure. Cooperating with your fellows is the key to defeating a difficult boss.
For a complete list of skills, see Guardian Skills.
Trait Trees
There are three trait trees to choose from:
- The Defender of the Free (blue): The true Tanking build, using both AoE and single-target taunts. The primary focus is protection and survival.
- The Keen Blade (red): Focuses on dealing damage. Skills have high base damage, bleeds, and powerful finishing skills.
- The Fighter of Shadow (yellow): Excels at debuffing enemies, gaining survivability by making their enemies weaker. Guardians may Tank with a 2-handed weapon to inflict higher damage.
For all traits and set bonuses, see Guardian Traits.
Tank
To understand how to keep enemies focused on the Guardian, you need some basic knowledge about Threat. Dealing damage to an enemy or healing someone who is attacking an enemy generates threat. Enemies will always attack the character that is generating the most threat. Therefore, as a tank, you want to generate lots of threat to keep your lightly armoured fellows from getting attacked. Luckily, when traited blue or yellow, your threat from damage is build with a ratio of 3:1 instead of the normal 1:1. Some of your skills also provide additional threat when used (apart from the damage). Finally, Taunts can be used when someone else is generating more threat than you and thus the enemy is turning to him/her: you then copy that character's threat with a small bump of additional threat (so the enemy is focused on you once more) and force the enemy to attack you for a short period (ignoring threat).
As a result, the trait tree of choice for this role are The Defender of the Free and The Fighter of Shadow. More specifically, blue line is used for when you're the main tank (since it improves your taunts, mitigations and block response skills) and yellow line for when a bit more damage is preferred or when you want to use specific debuffs (like 
Stagger).
The main mechanic of the blue line is the usage of Block Response (or shield skills) to build Fortification stacks (or Improved Fortification stacks). These allow you to increase your Physical and Tactical Mitigations above the cap of 60% to up to 70%, decreasing the damage you take dramatically. When you block an attack, you get a Block Response and can use a chain of shield skills. Most of them provide additional threat:
By using 
Shield-blow, you automatically get a Block Response. This skill also provides some additional threat, but costs more Power than other skills. These skills all have a short cooldown, so you can keep using this chain as long as you keep blocking attacks. The threat provided also helps keeping enemies' attention to you. Parry Response skills provide less additional threat and are more damage oriented, so I will discuss them under DPS.
In between these block chains, you should use your taunt skills to draw the enemies' attention to you:
Challenge: multiple target taunt with a longer cooldown, try to save it for when it's needed.
Fray the Edge: single target taunt with a long range and short cooldown, use it on the main target a few times at the start of a fight and the they should keep focused on you for the rest of the fight.
Engage: short range taunt that slows the enemy for a short time.
Next, there are a few utility skills which should be used in between:
Guardian's Ward: increases your avoidances and Tactical Mitigation (with the trait Guardian's Ward: Tactics) for a short time, try to keep this buff up all time.
Stamp: has a short animation, can be used to interrupt an enemy or cut the animation of another skill.
War-chant (yellow tree): long range AoE attack which debuffs enemies' outgoing damage, reduces the cooldown of some of your skills (most notably Catch a Breath and Redirect) and provides a lot of additional threat.
Catch a Breath: a Block and Parry Response skill which restores a big amount of Morale (with the tracery).
Redirect (yellow tree): a Parry Response skill which reduces incoming damage for 10s.
Vexing Blow: an AoE attack that provides a reasonable amount of threat.
Shield-taunt: with the trait Break Ranks, this skill cashes out all Fortification stacks for a fellowship-wide damage buff (try to rebuild your Fortifications immediately afterwards).
Sting: has a short animation, can remove a corruption and deals good damage.- Stagger: applies a slowing debuff to the enemy when used from behind or on a critical hit, which can be useful in some situations.
Finally, there are several emergency skills which can keep you or your fellows alive in precarious situations:
Warrior's Heart: a big self heal (with the tracery) which also applies a bubble (with the trait Stoic) and a buff (with the trait Warrior's Fortitude).
Juggernaut: sets your block chance to 100% for 15s, while also reflecting some damage to attackers (note that only physical attacks can be avoided, not tactical attacks).
Guardian's Pledge: increases all your avoidances for a short time, useful when fighting lots of smaller enemies.
Thrill of Danger: restores some Power immediately and a small percentage of your maximum Morale each time you are hit for a short duration (with the trait Bring on the Pain), which can add up when fighting lots of smaller enemies.
Litany of Defiance: cashes out all Fortification stacks to double their damage reduction for a short time and redirect damage from all fellows to you, which can be useful when you expect a big spike of damage to your entire fellowship (try to rebuild your Fortifications immediately afterwards).
Shield Wall: toggle skill that redirects all damage from one fellow to you (this does bypass all your mitigations though, so you'll be taking a lot of damage).
DPS
The damage of a DPS Guardian relies mostly on four bleeds and some high damaging skills, unlocked in The Keen Blade trait tree. While as a tank you use your Block Response skills, here you'll be using a chain of Parry Response skills:
Retaliation (available after a parry): single target attack with a short animation.
Whirling Retaliation (available after a parry): AoE attack with a longer animation, which deals less damage than Retaliation.
Thrust (enabled by Retaliation or Whirling Retaliation): applies a Deep Wound.
Overwhelm (see Thrust): deals a lot of damage and tiers up a Deep Wound in a more damaging Terrible Wound.
To The King (enabled by Thrust or Overwhelm): deals a lot of damage and applies an attack duration and damage buff (with the trait Blind Rage), but with a long animation.
By using 
Force Opening, you automatically get a Parry Response, but (as with Shield-blow) at a higher Power cost.
In between these chains, you can use the following skills:
In the table below, the four bleeds are compared using their base duration, number of targets and relative damage. This does not take into account Word of Power Traceries, Word of Mastery Traceries for the individual skills or set bonuses from armour.
Equipment
The Guardian is a Heavy Armour class and can use almost all weapons and a bow or crossbow (see Passive Skills). It is also the only class that can wear Heavy Shields in addition to normal Shields, the toughest shields in the game. Furthermore, you can use shield-spikes to improve your shield skills by changing the damage type and/or increase the critical chance. From level 51 onwards, you can wear a Guardian's Belt.
Important Stats
When trying to increase your survivability, first look for:
Depending on the mechanics of the fight, you can look at other stats that might be useful:
When DPS'ing, improve the following stats (and some of the above stats):
Choosing crafting professions
The crafted items that are most useful to a Guardian come from the following professions.
- Metalsmith: being able to craft shields and heavy armour that you can wear, makes this one of your best choices.
- Jeweller: rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings make up a lot of your equipment slots, so this is a good option too. Furthermore, Hope Tokens are consumables used at all levels.
- Cook: Food can be consumed by all characters, which makes the cook a fine choice for you as well.
- Scholar: Scrolls of Battle and Warding Lore are consumables used at all levels. Moreover, you can craft class-specific consumables for other classes.
- Weaponsmith: here you are able to make metal weapons and shield-spikes, which change the damage type of your shield skills. At higher levels, you can start using Legendary Weapons and so this profession becomes less interesting.
Notice that these are all production professions, but the components used in their recipes can only be obtained by appropriate gathering professions:
Further Reading
...
Parry Responses and 
Block Responses to cycle through their most powerful skills. They are incredibly tanky in both of their specializations, and provide valuable support to their fellowship. They are masters of debuff applications, using 
Bastion of Light to spread various debuffs from their target to all nearby enemies.
Fortifications on themselves, and can cache them out to provide 
Break Ranks to the fellowship. They are masters of blocking incoming enemy attacks with cooldowns such 
Hammer Down can be used to consume the bleeds to deal big damage and debuff the enemy's incoming damage.
Breach and 
