Introduction This Guide Is Made to Help New and Old Sacred 2 Players to Understand How

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 opinions 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 possibly 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 currently 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 difficulty 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
Weaknesses
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 choices with its skills and combat art modifications which will further increase the difficulty 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 through the first 15 levels (trophy/achievement) probably don’t 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 usually 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 equipped battery, The damage and attack speed can further be increased trough increasing the attribute that increases the weapon damage (most swords/hammers use strength, some light once use dexterity)
Ranged weapon lore does not improve the damage or attack speed but the lore of equipped weapon does. Arm cannon cannot be used with ranged weapon (if you don’t 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 different purposes but especially source warden combat arts suffer from high cooldowns. With cooldown I don’t mean regeneration time but additional uneducable penalty that is added to regeneration. Usually around 10-30s.
So even with 0.1 regeneration 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 I will 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 levels 100-200. The amount of experience needed increases by every level and the amount of experience gained increases by difficulty and gear. So if your character can’t handle platinum 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 literally 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 strengths that make it a viable class for different purposes.
Team player
There’s no healer or buffer like Temple guardian. Combat arts like combat alert, Charged grid, fiery ember, Icy evanescence 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 evanescence can be modded to slow down enemies and either 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 elves 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 (possibly even larger area). The duration increases by every Combat Art level and these can be casted in chain to destroy even the more powerful 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 you’ll 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 doesn’t 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
Strength
This attribute is only important for Temple guardians looking to deal massive amounts of melee damage. It also provides some additional attack(accuracy). As damage and accuracy can be gained from different means, strength is advisable 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 combat 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 useful, however if you’re looking to increase both your attack and defense ratings and your happy with your other stats this might do the trick.
Vitality
Useful only if your building a Temple Guardian that doesn’t use 100% absorption warding energy shield at any point of the game. With insane amount of shield energy fully absorbing the taken damage it makes having hp or hp regeneration rather useless.
Intelligence
Not as useful 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 attribute a bit useless. Consider intelligence 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 doesn’t mention it, it increases the overall shield power. This is very useful 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
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 through some basic skills important for certain kinds of Temple Guardian’s and some additional skills that might be useful 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 won’t be discussing them in this guide.)
Melee based Temple Guardian: Devout guardian or devout guardian + source warden hybrid.]
Melee based Temple Guardian usually uses sword or a blunt weapon to deal massive amount 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 + Untouchable force
Toughness(*) – more armor and mitigation(damage reduced by %)
Constitution(*) – More hp and faster regeneration (don’t use 100% absorption warding energy with this 80% or 90% might be good)
Combat discipline(*) – combat art damage + less regeneration
note: combat discipline decreases regeneration 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 regeneration times.
Spell based Temple Guardian: Source warden and lost fusion
Spell may be a bit awkward 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 discipline
- Lost fusion lore (if LF Combat Art) or Source warden lore (if Shadow Warrior Combat Art)
- Intelligence
- +x% or +x element(ice/fire/magic) damage
- +x% damage(affects all damage melee and magic)
Using staff doesn’t increase your spell damage, but item modifier in the wand might.
Using staff/weapon that decreases regeneration, increases casting speed, is very useful.
Temple Guardian’s focusing fully on source warden or LF combat arts use the weapon only for its item modifiers so it really doesn’t 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 intensity increases the chance to deal max damage but as the Min damage = max damage there’s 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 regeneration times and increases the max level without penalty.
Combat discipline – increases Combat Art damage and decreases regeneration times 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 you’ll have a better chance to survive or if you aren’t using 100% warding energy
might be useful for some builds
Damage lore(*) – Increased chance to apply status effects.

About Skill levels and masteries
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
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 bumbled 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% absorption 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. Absorption 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 Absorption 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 (at least not directly).
Instead it increases shield energy by a hefty amount while also increasing shield Block warding energy (more like shield “thickness”) that reduces the damage by fixed amount shown in the T-energy shroud info.
Warding energy lore also affects strength of the item modifiers and possibly unlocks some additional modifiers to boost absorption 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 run in to a claw and your Temple Guardian has a tentacle growing from his back. Passive battle extension disappears 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 useful 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 beginning of combat and try to achieve Duration > regeneration 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:
Note most of these are based on preferences, feel free to explore your own modifications and adapt 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
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.