A gold hexagon with 24 drones and no gun. Warden is the first boss in the rotation and the one most players learn bosses on, because everything it does comes from one swarm you can watch.
All numbers are the server's defaults. The server can raise boss damage by up to 12% when one player is running away with the lobby, so treat damage figures as the floor.
| Health | 3,450 |
| Body radius | 32 px (a normal tank is 20) |
| Contact damage to you | 16.8 per tick while touching, 30 ticks a second |
| Gun | None. Its six barrels only spawn drones |
| Drones | 24 triangles, 25 HP each, 23 damage per hit, 280 px/s. One new drone every 1.3 s until it has 24 |
| Movement | Keeps about 700 px from the nearest player, at 126 px/s. Wanders at 90 px/s when nobody is near |
| Notices you at | 1,600 px |
| Signature move | Drone lance: starts when you're within 850 px and it has at least one drone |
| Lance wind-up | 0.8 s, blue glow |
| Lance flight | 900 px/s for 0.7 s, about 630 px from the boss. Enraged: 1,260 px/s, about 880 px |
| Lance cooldown | 5.5 to 7.5 s (about 2.9 to 3.9 s while enraged) |
| Healing | 0.1% of max health per second, only after 4 s without taking damage |
| Kill reward | 24,000 score to whoever lands the killing hit |
| How it spawns | First in the seven-boss rotation, so it's usually the first boss a new lobby sees |
Warden doesn't shoot. Its body barrels spawn drones and nothing else, so the whole fight is about the swarm. At full strength it carries 24 drones, and each one hits for 23. That number matters: a class with a normal health multiplier and all seven points in Max Health has 190 HP. Nine drone hits kill that tank.
The drones don't answer to Warden's aim. Each one looks for the nearest target within about 400 px of itself and goes for it, and when nothing is in reach they orbit the boss close in. Shapes count as targets. Boss drones can't break shapes, so a drone that picks a square just hangs on it. On open ground with no shapes around, every drone that can see you comes for you.
Warden itself is a kiter. It tries to sit about 700 px from whoever is nearest and backs off if you push in. That keeps its body away from you and keeps you just outside the reach of its orbiting drones, which is why the lance exists: it's the move that reaches out to where you're standing.
Warden has one tell and it's easy to see. When the lance starts, the boss stops moving, turns to face you and lights up with a blue glow. A blue ring shrinks in toward the body over the 0.8 second wind-up. At the same moment every drone breaks off what it was doing and flies back to the boss. The swarm collapsing onto the body is the clearest part of the tell, because you can often see it before you see the glow.
When the ring closes, every drone launches in a straight line along the direction Warden was facing at that instant. They fly for 0.7 seconds and then go back to normal behaviour. They don't steer. The aim is locked at the end of the wind-up, not the start, so Warden tracks you all the way through it.
What that means in practice: don't sidestep early. If you move at the start of the glow, it turns with you. Move in the last part of the wind-up, when the ring is nearly closed, and move sideways. Backing away in a straight line only works if you're already near the edge of its reach.
The lance flies about 630 px and Warden likes to sit about 700 px away. So a lance thrown from its preferred distance lands short. It connects when you've pushed in, or when it's backing off slower than you're closing. The simplest safe fight is to stay at the distance Warden already wants and shoot it from there. That needs a gun that reaches 700 px, which the sniper line gets with a few points of Bullet Speed: Vantage, Nightfall, Horizon and Apex all do it.
Your bullets stop on the boss. Against a target this big, penetration doesn't carry a shot through it, so what kills Warden is damage per bullet times bullets per second. Put your points into Bullet Damage and Reload, then Bullet Speed until you can reach it from 700 px.
Kill drones when they come at you. A drone has 25 HP and Warden only rebuilds one every 1.3 seconds, so thinning the swarm to a handful makes the next lance small. The lance needs at least one drone. With none left, Warden has nothing to throw.
Warden always kites and lances the nearest visible player, not whoever is hurting it most. Use that. Let one tanky player stand closest and keep Warden's attention while everyone else shoots from further out. The person in front should be the one with the most Max Health and room to sidestep. Everyone behind them is out of the lance's line as long as they don't stand directly behind the front player.
Drone classes have a hard time here. Your drones and Warden's swarm meet in the middle, and every time one of your drones touches the boss it loses penetration equal to the boss's body damage divided by 12, about 4.7 per hit. At zero Drone Penetration a drone lands one hit and dies. Maxed, it lands three. If you're on Hivelord or Shepherd, max Drone Penetration before you take this fight. Rammers have it worst: you'd be walking into 24 drones to reach a body that deals 16.8 damage a tick back.
At half health, 1,725 HP, Warden enrages once. It knocks back everyone within 360 px and deals them 12 damage, a pulsing red aura appears around it, and its next lance comes almost immediately. For the next 60 seconds its lance cooldown runs 1.9 times faster, it moves 22% faster, and the lance flies at 1,260 px/s.
The faster lance is the real change. It now reaches about 880 px, so the "sit at 700 and shoot" plan stops being safe. The enrage also starts dropping hazard zones around whoever Warden is targeting: four at a time, every 3 seconds, within 130 px of you. They last 5.5 seconds, hit for 10, and they're solid. You can't walk through them, so a cluster behind you can block the sidestep you were planning.
The enrage ends after 60 seconds and doesn't come back that life. If you can't finish Warden inside that minute, backing off and waiting it out is a real option. Warden only heals after 4 seconds without damage, and then at 3.45 HP a second, so a minute of waiting costs you about 200 of its HP back.
Other bosses: Conjurer · Bulwark · Juggernaut · Wraithspire · Nemesis · Leviathan