Guardians of the Wall Guardian Roster and Roles

A Guardian is the playable hero you take through the cracks in the Wall. Boiling Bits has been clear about fantasy and vague about names. You are one of the few willing to leave the last fortress. Each Guardian has a combat style, customizable skills, and an ultimate. The store page groups those styles into three jobs. This roster follows that grouping and only adds what the announcement screenshots actually show.

If you want a ready-made spend order, skip to hero builds. If you want a ranked seat for a first queue, use the hero tier list and remember it is a pre-release read.

Job one: brutal frontline fighters

Frontliners take space. They live in melee, they eat the overhead that would delete a caster, and they decide when a palisade gate opens. Steam’s combat blurb tells them to charge, cut through hordes, block crushing blows, and let aggression lead.

Public visuals match a heavy: horned helmet, fur mantle, plated arms, a blade on the back, and a shotgun that still comes out when the street is too long for a sprint. That is not an official name. It is the body in the burnt-forest and energy-lash screenshots. Until a character select screen labels him, call him the horned heavy in voice chat and everyone will know who you mean.

Play this job if you like being the person who walks in first. You must learn dash and block on combat and controls or you will become a corpse that the ranged seat has to walk around.

Job two: ranged specialists

Ranged specialists delete clumps and runners before those problems become melee problems. Steam’s tags include third-person shooter for this seat. The shotgun is the public weapon, but the job is broader than one gun: hold a lane, watch rooftops, and grenade a doorway that the frontliner cannot see.

This job fails when it hipfires the same zombie the frontliner is already cutting. It succeeds when a white-haired runner dies before it touches the caster. If your group wipes to grabs, you did not need more melee. You needed this seat to do its work. Grenade manners for that work sit in the co-op guide.

Job three: elemental casters

Elemental casters are the third named style. Steam promises elemental effects as mid-run stacks and elemental kits as a hero identity. Screenshots add a bright blue lash or bolt from the horned heavy’s off-hand — which may be a frontliner ability rather than a dedicated caster, and we will not pretend we know. What we know is that control and elemental damage are part of the fantasy.

Play a caster if your group already has a street-holder. Do not queue four casters into a village. Density will ignore your highlight reel. Raid positioning for casters is on raids and bosses.

Silhouettes that are not jobs yet

The cabin-yard screenshot shows a lighter, shirtless runner with a close-range weapon moving toward a burning shack. He might be a second hero, an armor-break state, or a cinematic double. This roster lists him as an unconfirmed lighter melee so you can recognize him in footage without turning him into a fake name.

Undead silhouettes are not playable. They are the other roster: crouched bleeders, a tall gaunt body, a white-haired runner, a heavier shape in purple smoke. Learn those as kill priority, not as skins.

Ultimates, skills, and customization

Steam says each Guardian has strengths, abilities, and ultimate powers, plus customizable skills. There is no public skill tree image. When the playtest shows one, we will transcribe nodes with their in-game names, not with wiki nicknames. Until then, think in verbs: a frontliner ultimate should create space, a ranged ultimate should delete a pack, a caster ultimate should change the elemental rules of a courtyard for a few seconds. If an ultimate you unlock does none of those, it is a cosmetic button. Spend essences elsewhere — weapons and items explains the sinks.

Character customization as a tag could mean armor pieces, trinkets, or a future cosmetic shop. It does not mean we have a slider for horn length. Do not buy third-party “skin packs.”

How heroes unlock

Awakening new heroes is a listed sink for resources, essences, and rare materials. There is no published order. Playtest builds may gate the caster. If you only unlock the horned heavy, you still have melee, a gun, grenades, and that blue off-hand — enough to learn the game. Do not sit in the Bastion waiting for a favorite that is not in the branch. Request access on How to Join the Playtest and play the body you are given.

Launch in Q1 2027 will almost certainly expand this page into a named grid. The job list should still be the way you party up. Names change. A raid still needs someone to hold the street.

When you have picked a job, take it to hero builds and write a Bastion kit plus a raid-greed rule. Then go to Getting Started if you have not actually installed the client.