Guilty Gear Strive: What Is The Guts System?

Guilty Gear Strive has a unique defensive system called Guts. This feature allows characters with lower health to take more hits than they normally used to. Here's how the Guts system works in Guilty Gear Strive.

Guts System and Defense Stats Explained

In Guilty Gear titles, the Guts system is damage scaling feature in which rating are assigned to characters. From 0 to 5, characters will be assigned a Guts rating which will then be mixed with the character's defense rating. At times, some characters may survive some combos and even raw supers even when they're at dangerously low health.

Here is the Guts rating of every character released in the game as of Goldlewis Dickinson:

• Anji Mito - 5
• Axl Low - 1
• Chipp Zanuff - 4
• Faust - 0
• Giovanna - 1
• Goldlewis Dickinson - 3
• I-no - 1
• Ky Kiske - 2
• Leo Whitefang - 3
• May - 4
• Millia Rage - 2
• Nagoriyuki - 4
• Potemkin - 3
• Sol Badguy - 2
• Zato-1 - 0

The best Guts rating is at 0 for the best defense boosts. Meanwhile, the worst one is at 5 Guts rating.

Read more: Guilty Gear Strive Review: A Welcoming Fighting Game?

Low Life, No Problem

The Guts rating gives out defense boosts to a character starting at 70% health. The boosts are given out more at increments of 10% with the maximum defense boost given out when 10% of the character's health is remaining.

Overall, the Guts system only protects the player at times from dying to repeated pokes as the kill combo. Cleaner combos and some supers will definitely drain that small remaining health.

Don't Give Up

Due to the Guts system, it's best to keep on fighting regardless of your matchup even at low health. At high pressure situations, your character may survive some fatal combos from your opponent.

However, the best characters in the game are considered top tier due to the high damage potential they have in combos. If a long combo is coming for your last bars of health, make sure to have a Psych Burst ready as it is highly likely to take the round.

Read more: Guilty Gear Strive Sol Badguy Guide: Beginners Tips, Move List & Best Combo