Intro
Hello. Today I would like to share my single mastery soldier build with you and tell you my thoughts about the solider class in general. I have seen pre-AoM spure soldier builds, but I’ve never actually tried making a solo class build before myself, but when I saw sigatrev’s Single Mastery Challenge I decided to give it a try.
Soldier was the first ever class that I have tried in Grim Dawn. Back than I didn’t know how to play, just took one point in the Soldier class and maxed out Cadence. That was a painfull experience, killing one enemy at a time, I can assure you! But at the same time a fell in love with that CRACK sound that Cadence makes. A lot of time has passed since then and now I return to that very mastery that opened Grim Dawn for me to put it through the ultimate challenge!
The Build
*all perma buffs active
Gear
For this build I have chosen to use Warborn Bastion set, because, in my opinion, it has the best single target damage of all the physical soldier sets. The set proc is amazing - healing and damage with duration being longer than the CD = permanent damage increase. The rest of the gear is pretty simple and standart - both rings with -% physical rr, Barbaros pants for the proc and e.t.c. - all the usuall things that the shield soldier uses. The chosen relic is Deathstalker. Doom might have been usefull, but pure Soldier needs as much rr as he can get. And as always - try to get +% armor on craftable items. There is a little chaos resistance problem but Bloodbound Ointment can help with this. Crucible buffs also cover this up. I used one Ointment in my run, but now when I think about it, I didn’t actually had to.
Skills
Cadance - our primary LMB attack. 3 targets, 200k crits and extra damage from Deadly Momentum - is all you need to know about it.
Blade Arc - the nuke of this build. The nuke that sometimes deals more damage than Cadance (even at 20 out of 16) and hits a ton of enemies around you. Oh and it also gives extra Internal Trauma as a bonus.
War Cry - a very good debuff. 12 out of 12 in the main skill for 25% reduced enemy damage and 22 out of 12 in Break Morale for flat physical rr. -3 second cooldown from the helmet is a nice bonus.
Blitz - a nice movement skill with some AOE DA debuff.
Markovian’s Adavantage - a good wps with a decend damage,decent animation speed and a WD bonus from the medal. 12 out of 12. Didn’t take Zolhan’s because of it’s slow animation that actually lowers single target DPS.
Oleron’s Rage - the Exclusive Skill of the build. Since this a single mastery we need to get OA and DA as high as possible. Extra damage and movement speed are also very welcome in crucible.
Fighting Spirit and Menhir’s Will - nice passive skills. I desided to go 12 out of 12 and 16 out of 16 just to be safe. You can dicide for yourself how many points you want to have in them.
Field Command and Squad Tactics - max those out for OA, DA, armor, damage and attack speed bonuses.
Overguard and Shield Training - good shield bonuses, max those out too. We need as much survivability as we can get.
Decorated Soldier and Scars of Battle - also maxed out. Solo classes tend to have problems with resistances and these passives are really helpful. Decorated Soldier has also got some % physical damage bonus as well.
Veterancy - I actually have 11 out of 10 in there, because initially I wanted to take Counter Strike for this build, but due to mana sustain issues I had to drop it. You can invest that last point basiclly anywhere you want and leave Veterancy at 10 out of 10 for health regen.
Devotion
This is an interesting part of the build. I decided to go for Aeon’s Hourglass and get the Time Delation proc, so I can use Overguard and Blade Arc more often. Aeon’s Hourglass also give nice crowd control resistances and those are very important in 150-170 crucible. I didn’t go for the Dying God proc because I don’t want to have -hp regen and the overall damage and crit damage are absolutely fine even without the Hungering Void proc.
Crucible Gameplay
Soldier is a pretty tanky mastery and you can facetank most of the stuff - but I still recommend moving around a bit, avoiding those acid/aether/vitality pools and e.t.c. especially in crucible. Ghoul and Menhir’s Will are out there to save you, but don’t rely on them too much. Avoid meteors from Aleksander and Anasteria and be very carefull with all enemies that tend to shred your resists.
Video 150-170
It took me about 15 minutes to finish Crucible with 4 buffs. Not the best time out there, but remeber - it’s a single mastery build without any greens. My Deathstalker kept dying on me and I was so irritated, that I even forgot to resummon it back :rolleyes:. If smb from Crate is reading this - pls make it immortal. But overall it went smoothly and I enjoyed it.
Conclusion
So the Soldier in my opinion is a very strong and well rounded class in it’s current state. But it still has some problems. Almost every Soldier build has serious mana sustain issues. You can always take Harp and Tree of Life, but not all builds have enough points to invest in them. Another thing is that strange flat RR on Break Moral - perhaps a -% bonus will be a good improvement, since we can already get flat RR from Manticore. But this change may cause some balance issues - it’s for Crate to decide. Also Zolhan’s Technique - slow, hits with one weapon when DW = currently worst wps in the game for melee builds. It works fine for ranged though. Also some Spellcourge set buffs won’t hurt.
P.S.
I’ve heard that Soldier is the favorite mastery of Zantai himself, maybe that’s why it’s so OP :p.
Enjoy!
