I think the soldier needs to be more resilient earlier in game. A project of tank that cant face off a mini boss? Need to run all time. Run, pot, run, pot.
A little bit of resilience, sturdiness, unwavering, please.
Soldier is one of the easiest early game for both damage and resillience. What skills do you use when leveling?
At what level are you struggeling? Do you use 2handed weapon or 1handed with shield?
I played with an occultist and an arcanist. In comparsion with the soldier I think the fact of the damage source come from ranged attacks, make the things diferent. Diferent in gameplay style of course. I can run, attack and run, pot, etc.
With soldier, many times I feel like receiving too much damage. I begin using cadence (with forcewave and blitz). After few levels, I think the farm was slow.
Than I change to Blade Arc. But the curve of dmg down a lot.
I really dont know if u can understand me.
The core of the idea is: melee needs to be I little bit more stronger in earlier game. Resilient. Its something like a tank.
It is strong. Get Deadly momentum and Blitz (with falcon swoop on it)and you will destroy early game. Then work to menhir’s bulwark and it becomes almost too easy. Then level cadence, a bit of overguard for toughr battles, Get some lifesteal and it’s good. I felt the same as you did in the beginning but soldier is easy if you play it right.
I think you were too spread out with your skills.
also Solider gives a lot of HP and PHY just by investing in mastery bar, so you’re inherently thougher than any other mastery, especially early game when you have no gear to offset that.
then there’s Military Conditining to pump it even more, Menhir’s Will for survivability… just to talk about the bottom of the tree
Combine that with Occultist (for RR and HP skill) or Shaman (for more HP, Healing Totem and HP regen) you’re good to go even with shit gear.
Soldier is probably one of the more well-balanced (if a little boring) masteries at the moment. About the only things that really need tweaking on Soldier are Forcewave/Tremor and Veterancy, IMO - the rest of the tree is solid and the mastery bar is one of the most useful ones to pump thanks in no small part to the Physique-heavy meta.