I have learned that just having an infinite +2/+1 attack on tap is already one of the best things you can manage. For most Guardians, at least on normal, it means you fight at 6 and can reasonably hit most things without other setup. It is also nice to be able to run other cards besides Beat Cop and Ace of Swords. In this sense, the first ability compares favorably to Timeworn Brand. Now, this does take an extra hand slot, but does cost one fewer resource. So how does the second ability compare?

First off, the second ability is repeatable this time, though requires bless tokens and some usage of the first ability to get it off. +4/+2 is pretty good for just being able to lay the hurt into most things, and if you have some sort of plus 1 damage ability, whether through beat cop, Vicious Blow, or Enchant Weapon, you can whack a 4 health enemy pretty reliably. I would say I prefer the flexibility over the Brand.

So, is this worth running? If you are already running Bless, absolutely! The question is more, is it worth running bless to get access to this weapon? I would say, maybe... It probably isn't as good as Flamethrower, but that has to run its own support suite to be repeatable. I don't think you're going to ruin your game though if you go for this. If you want to force bless tokens just to get the spear, I'd say go for it! Guardian doesn't have great ways to get the tokens into the bag though, so you might need some help, and as always, check with your group to see if they are on board with it. But ultimately, I am glad there is another viable high-end option for using violence as the solution to all problems.

Brilliant weapon. Just the basic attack is worth the XP cost, it's extreemely efficient and dependable and a 1 resource difference makes it competitive with Timeworn Brand despite the hand disadvantage. The spear however lacks the boss killing special attack, instead it has this:

A 3 damage burst attack that depends on to be usable, and the ability to hoard via the main attack.

So. By itself the Holy Spear cannot generate the bless it needs, but the big attack can bank up a small stash of that you can release to try and chain together a spear swinging combo, so long as something or someone is generating the tokens in the first place. The initial tokens are the hard bit, because full hand slots block Blessed Blade and Book of Psalms. A Holy Rosary coupled with encounter card management can do the trick (Gloria Goldberg or First Watch for example), Hand of Fate will do it, but it's pricey. My favourite methods are Keep Faith, Spirit of Humanity and Righteous Hunt, if your class access or level isnt good enough, Tempt Fate will do the trick in an absolute pinch.

When set up with teck, the Holy Spear grants access to full rounds of 3 damage super-attacks, something that insofar only limited-use cards like Shrivelling or Lightning Gun grant access to, and Holy Spear blows them out of the water by being a desirable 2 damage weapon in of itself. Once you add in all the other support for doing damage, cards like Enchant Weapon or Vicious Blow, you really will start dancing through enemies.

Note that Sister Mary with her roundly bless token has the best chance at enabling the spear without too much trouble, even in a 4 player game the spears's bank ability and her native generation should let her pull off 3 damage attacks once in every three rounds in multiplayer, or more often if she adds more support.

Outside of Mary, Zoey Samaras and Tommy Muldoon can muster a lot of power with the Holy Spear, by merit of having access to Keep Faith and other cards.

I recently wrote a review of the butterfly knifes, and I mentioned this weapon, I really liked using this spear with sister Mary and Tommy, but I wrote in that review that you could make a blessish build with lily, but then I thought can you really build for bless with cards she takes?

Let's talk about the cards she can take.

Tempt Fate - this is an excellent card that not only helps fill the bag up with bless tokens, but it is also an automatic cantrip. The down side is that is also fills the bag with curse tokens as well. This card really shines in paradox build where using both benefits you. But with lily, it really doesn't benefit her at all.

Guardian cards-.there is not many options that she has, but their is a few.

1 - Book of Psalms- this is actually a really good bless generator, especially in horror heavy campaigns like tcu and ptc. But in this case, unless you have bandolier, it gets in the way of using the spear.

2- Blessed Blade, this is definitely not a weapon I recommend, but if you are stuffing the bag with tokens, you have a good chance of doing the +1 damage. It does only put 1 token in the bag per round. It still interferes with the spear.

3-Hand of Fate.- expensive in terms of resources, but a bless version of dodge, depending on the attack, it will yield 1-4 bless tokens. There can be times where this is more, but you usually want to use this when the bless payback is good. Which also decreases it's value somewhat, compared to dodge.

4- Holy Rosary(2) starting the lvl cards that generates bless token, this card is pretty good in terms of providing not only soak and a bonus Stat, but a somewhat reliable means to add tokens. The drawback is that it's not any will test, but only treachery cards. You can do this with any will treachery(weather it being you or your friends.)

5- Righteous Hunt(1). This so a good zone clearer. And depending on the horror it does, can provide a decent 1-2 blesses, you can easily fit this into a deck.

These are all the guardian cards I can see that generates bless, the rest of the bless token cards they have requires the token be already in the bag to actually do anything. So unless you Sister Mary, you don't have a reliable means of adding bundles of tokens to the bag. She also has lvl 0 mystic access, and there seems to be 2 cards that add bless tokens, but she may only use 1 of them(Tides of Fate). As Rite of Equilibrium is a lvl 5.  Tides of Fate is very tricky to use, especially if you don't have ways of putting curse in the bag.

So, with the cards she can take, she is very hard pressed to fill the bag with bless tokens. BUT... thank God this is a co op game, where you can play with more investigators. I built a preston deck along side her that try to lean a little on getting clues, and adding some bless generation. There is no better feeling then playing Keep Faith(0) twice with Double,double(4) "8 bless tokens at once?! Yes please!!!"

So, if you have the means of generating bless, the spear will carry you. But I would not just take the spear as the only card that uses blesses, cards like Hallow(3) or Ward of Radiance(0) are stand out cards that provide decent support. But having cards like this as well as the spear makes taking bless tokens alot more worth the trouble putting them in,another example is in this preston deck, he utilize Ancient Covenant (2) so he can skate pass some test.

So the long and short of it is, this is a good meh weapon when you only meet the requirements and only use the bless tokens with the spear, but this weapon becomes extraordinary with additional bless tech. While lily doesn't build bless well by herself, with team work, she can be just as good!

With the release of Cyclopean Hammer this has lost a lot of appeal. Most bless oriented guardians have a high willpower and Hammer can be augmented quite reliably with reliable, which nets might plus will plus 2 (4 with two copies), has infinite uses and doesn't eat up bless tokens.

The bless generation from this thing is also quite paltry to the many other options often available to bless generators (Keep Faith recursion with resourceful, spirit of humaniry).

As a result, this weapon has gone the way of lightning gun and is firmly obsolete.

Ancestral Token has given this card new life. It now makes it very easy for Guardians (who historically don't have much competition for the accessory slot) to generate the bless to power this card. And of course Sister Mary only loves the spear more now.