Because we were talking about monk/strength monk/monk shields earlier: despite it feeling kind of weird because it's the heavy armor class, guardian actually looks like a really nice archetype for monk. The dedication requires +2 strength and constitution, which every monk except monastic archers will qualify for at some point. The dedication itself gets you Taunt, which helps monks with a perennial issue of theirs: namely, that they need useful actions to fill up their turn after using Flurry of Blows. On top of that, pic related actually manages to step on a shield's toes a little bit, because it enables what effectively becomes the "Raise a Shield" action while wielding a two-handed d8 reach bo staff. A monk that just dips their toe in the guardian archetype for the dedication and Raise Haft can now Taunt > Raise Haft > Flurry as their core combat rotation.

If they stick around there's a couple of other goodies, but they're much higher level and less build-defining than those two actions are. Still, guardian can get you Reactive Strike all the way down at level 12 if you want it, and Ironclad Fortitude allows monk--in combination with Canny Acumen--to get master/master/legendary on their saves and master in perception, which is nice. Not bad.