Walkers

Walkers are the towering lane bosses standing guard behind each Guardian — the second objective in every lane. Cracking a pair of them open is the mid-game power spike: it swings thousands of souls and pushes your whole team toward flex slots.

The lane boss behind the Guardian

A Walker is the second objective in each lane — a giant turret-legged boss that holds position behind its Guardian and won't chase you, so backing out of range always resets the fight. The big rule: you can't scratch it at all while its Guardian is alive. It only becomes a target once that Guardian is dead, and even then it keeps backdoor protection — without one of your Troopers (or a teammate) standing close it shrugs off roughly 65% of your damage. That's by design: you bring a wave to a Walker, you don't solo it. On defence, it's the opposite read — body-block your own Walker and it stays bulletproof until they clear your troopers off it. A Walker starts around 4,000 HP and empowers as the match goes: every lane objective that falls pumps its health and resistances, so a late Walker is a multi-thousand-HP wall. It's also heavily bullet-armored — your gun chips it slowly, hardest of all early — but it takes full spirit damage, and like Guardians that early armor decays over the game, so it's a slog to shoot at 10:00 and melts to a focused dive later. Killing one pays out about 4,000 souls: 40% weighted to nearby players, the rest split across your whole team, and a recent patch counts anyone who damaged it in the last ~20 seconds as 'nearby.' A downed Walker stays down — there's no respawn timer. The only thing that brings one back is the Rejuvenator, the mid-boss prize that rebirths a team's fallen lane objectives.

Beam, stomp and fireballs

A Walker fights back with three attacks, and they all hurt enough to end a careless dive. The laser locks onto one target and tracks it with a continuous beam that scales off your max HP — so tanks bleed just as fast, and you can't simply face-tank it; strafe out of its arc or break line of sight to drop the lock. The stomp is a ground slam for about 350 damage plus a slice of your max HP and a ~2-second stun in a wide radius around the Walker's feet — it interrupts dives and chains you in melee range, so don't be sitting point-blank when it winds up. The fireball barrage lobs roughly six projectiles (~200 each) that leave burning patches on the ground for a few seconds of pure area denial — step out of the fire instead of standing in it to finish your damage. The attacks rotate on set durations and cooldowns, so there are clean windows between them: most of the time it's beaming someone, which is your cue to commit while it's busy on a tank and not on you.

How to play it

Never touch a Walker until its Guardian is down — chipping it does nothing while the Guardian stands. Once it's exposed, take it the right way: crash a trooper wave into it first so backdoor protection drops, then dump damage with a numbers or man advantage rather than poking it solo. Lead with spirit and armor-piercing damage — raw gunfire is the slow way through that bullet armor, and a single spirit ability or a Curse/Decay on the dive shreds it far faster than mag-dumping. Put the tankiest body in the beam's face so the rest of the team free-fires, and respect the stomp: don't stack on its toes when it's about to slam. The payoff is why this is the macro objective that decides games — every enemy Walker your team destroys is ~4,000 souls and pushes the whole team toward a flex slot (an extra item slot). The classic mid-game gate is a pair of them down, with the next slot when all four fall, and one player's kill unlocks it for everyone — see the Flex slots card for the exact table. So time Walker pushes around a pick or an even fight you've won: take the kill, grab the souls, then either keep sieging the Base Guardians and Shrines or rotate off before the enemy respawns. Late game the armor has decayed and a coordinated team can burn a Walker in seconds, so once you're ahead, knocking down their Walkers snowballs straight into the Patron.