[Suggestion] Defender hero's ability "Guard"

Agree.

I never take Guard myself.  If a hero comes with Guard, I'll use it if he has nothing better to do, but Guard as implemented now is nearly useless.

I would favor the suggestion of making the effect stay until the caster's next turn.  Also grow the effect area beyond the arc of 3.

The traits are a little unbalanced inherently, I think. Compare to Invincible - I generally take a defender champion, load him down with initiative-reducing equipment, and then send him into the middle of the enemy army with "Invincible" activated. He tanks like the entire enemy army for several rounds. That's how you beat dragons!

I agree that the Guard ability wears off too soon. I would like to to last until the Defender's next turn, rather than the units it effects.

OR

Have the ability effect the tiles instead of the units. It would "fortify" the tiles, giving any friendly unit in them a defense bonus equal to the Defender, and prevent enemy units from entering those tiles.

The guard ability appears to be bugged or I don't understand how it works.  I cast it on a unit and it added 9 defense even though the caster had 4 defense.  It also gave my sovereign -1 defense for some reason.

It applies Guard mode on the applied unit, so the flat armor increase + guard = 9 increase.

How much does guard normally add and why would it make my sovereign's defense worse?

it puts the unit in defense mode, so the unit gets a flat + 5 defense plus whatever bonus it has for improved defense mode (defensive trait +10 def, shields add +5 to +20 depending on type of shield) additionally, the guard ability adds the base defense of the caster to the buffed unit, which can be pretty high considering defender champs can wear plate armor. timing is important, though (probably too important), since it only lasts until the buffed unit acts. so if you buff a unit that is next in the initiative list, it's pretty much useless.

one reason why this ability is so weak is that the caster isn't affected, so he loses his own defense stance when casting the ability.

Your using the ability wrong - the best way to use is to stand your hero behind a low initiativeunit, such as a mace wielding unit to turn them into a brick wall. It's not going to be as effective on a spear or sword using unit since they have a higher initiative. I'm just saying there is nothing inherently wrong with the ability as it is written, just that you want to do things with it for which it was not intended.

If it's an ability that can be spammed (namely, cast indefinitelly without cooldowns), why not just make its duration infinite and only end when the guarded unit moves away from the guardian or when the guardian decides to take an action that ends its defensive stance?

What I'm saying is someone guarded my sovereign and it actually reduced my sovereign's defense by one instead of increasing it.  That's what I don't understand.