Guardian Rank

Guardian Rank is a gameplay system in Borderlands 3 that gives permanent gameplay bonuses as a reward for continued playing. These bonuses aren't restricted to single characters, they are account-wide so they affect all the player's characters. It replaces Borderlands 2's Badass Rank system, sticking to the basic principle but introducing some major changes.

Overview

The Guardian Rank system is unlocked upon completion of the first playthrough (by beating the main story's final boss); any progress during the first playthrough will not count towards Guardian Rank. Once it is unlocked, a second XP bar is displayed above the character level XP bar in the HUD. Just like that, it will be filled by earning XP through killing enemies, completing missions etc., but the two bars are independent of each other; once the character reaches the level cap, the level bar disappears but the Guardian Rank bar remains.

Unlike the level bar, the Guardian Rank bar always needs the same amount of XP to be filled, no matter how high the player's Guardian Rank is. Once the bar is full, the player moves up one Guardian Rank and receives a Guardian token that can be spent on a passive bonus, and the bar is reset.

Guardian token

A Guardian token gives a small permanent bonus to stats like gun damage, fire rate, accuracy etc. which are distributed across three main categories: Enforcer, Survivor, Hunter. When the player redeems a Guardian token, the game will randomly choose 2 bonuses from each tree (6 in total) and lets the player pick one of these.

Spending tokens on the same bonus will yield diminishing returns: the higher a bonus already is, the smaller the increase from picking the same bonus again.

Guardian reward

A certain number of tokens spent in one category rewards the player with a gameplay bonus or a cosmetic item. The gameplay bonuses are similar to skills, but they are unlocked automatically when reaching the number of tokens required and they are permanent for all the player's characters.

Enforcer

This category focuses on increasing damage output.

Bonuses

• Critical Damage
• Grenade Damage
• Gun Damage
• Gun Fire Rate
• Melee Damage
• Vehicle Damage

Rewards

Name	Tokens	Description
Weapon Skin	10	Unlock the Weapon Skin Red Sands.
Inner Fury	15	Add 10% Gun Damage to all shots while in Fight For Your Life.
Overkill	25	Excess damage from a kill is added to your next shot.
Player Skin	35	Unlock the Player Skin Urban Blammo.
C-C-Combo	50	Increases Gun Damage by 2% for 1 second with each shot.
Hollow Point	75	Killing an enemy with a critical hit causes an explosion around them.

Survivor

This category focuses on survival skills.

Bonuses

• Shield Recharge Delay
• Max Health
• Shield Capacity
• Shield Recharge Rate
• FFYL Duration
• FFYL Movement Speed

Rewards

Name	Tokens	Description
Weapon Skin	10	Unlock the Weapon Skin Leather and Regret.
Resilient	15	Recover from Fight For Your Life with full health and shields.
Dead Man's Hand	25	Allows aiming down sights and removes aim penalties while in Fight For Your Life.
Player Skin	35	Unlock the Player Skin Hex Bolts.
Shield Reboot	50	Killing an enemy triggers shield regeneration.
Emergency Response	75	Improve Shield Recharge Delay and Rate based on missing health.

Hunter

Bonuses

• Action Skill Cooldown
• Accuracy
• Luck (Rare Drop Rate)
• Reload Speed
• Recoil Reduction

Rewards

Name	Tokens	Description
Weapon Skin	10	Unlock the Weapon Skin Dead Set.
Bullet Collector	15	Ammo pickups provide 15% extra ammo.
Tag and Frag	25	Regenerate a grenade every 10 kills.
Player Skin	35	Unlock the Player Skin Burning Bright.
Topped Off	50	Action Skill Cooldown Rate increases while at full shields.
Treasure Hunter	75	Increases luck for 10 seconds after each kill.

Notes

• Shield Reboot: while triggering shield recharge on every kill is a great perk for most builds, it can destroy roid shield melee builds that rely on empty shields. Thus, this perk should be unlocked with great care as it can't be undone.

• Borderlands 2's Badass Rank system was based on completing challenges, so it encouraged creating new characters because a veteran character would have few challenges left. The Guardian Rank system is the opposite: since Guardian Ranks are earned with a fixed amount of XP, low level characters will increase them very slowly, so it encourages playing high level characters.