Laser Guard
Health	70
Will gib when health is	-30
Attack Damage	Laser: 1 per hit
Drops	Cells
Found in	The Reckoning Call of the Machine
[Source]

The Laser Guard is a new variety of Guard introduced in The Reckoning. He has most health out of all of the six Guards and is armed with a laser gun; a weapon that is quick to fire, strikes its target instantly and produces a stream of continuous damage.

Laser Guards appear again in Call of the Machine.

Behaviour and attacks

Laser: Essentially a hitscan weapon, this gun is very quick to fire, strikes its target instantly and inflicts 1 damage per hit, but the Guard may fire a lengthy stream. Strafing can help to reduce the damage taken, but the player may still take some damage.

Like the three Guards in the original Quake II, there is a chance the Laser Guard will try to perform a final attack when it is killed but not gibbed. It falls onto its back, raises its weapon and fires two more volleys directly forward before succumbing to death. However, in the original game a bug caused the Laser Guard to fail to actually fire its weapon in this way, but this bug was fixed in the 2023 remaster.

Strategy

• The Laser Guard is strong offensively. His laser isn't the most powerful weapon in the Strogg arsenal, but it's probably more likely to actually hit a player than most other Strogg guns. Although tougher than all the other guards, it is still pretty weak defensively. When encountered at close range, the Super Shotgun can bring him down easily; at longer ranges, the Railgun is the best bet (or the Chain Gun if you don't have the Railgun yet). It might sound like a waste to use Railgun slugs against a Guard, but it's really not - this particular enemy is more likely to hit you and cause damage than most other enemies are.

Appearance statistics

Death messages

• [Player] saw the light.

Sounds

Trivia

• The Laser Guard and the Brains have the distinction of causing a special death message to be displayed when they kill a player with their laser weaponry. When a player is killed by most other Strogg weaponry, this does not happen; it simply says "[Player name] died".
• His Laser Gun is almost completely silent.
• He is the only one of the six Guards in the original release of The Reckoning that cannot perform a final attack as he lays dying. He may perform the animation (in which the dying Guard raises his weapon to fire) but unlike the other five Guards, he won't actually fire his weapon. This bug was fixed in the 2023 remaster.
• The Laser he wields is one of rather few guns that are available to the Strogg but unavailable to the player, although the Plasma Beam in Ground Zero is somewhat similar.

Gallery

Laser Guard's texture map

Laser Guard's texture map when injured

Remastered model

See also

• Hyper Blaster Guard
• Ripper Guard