Soldier buff

[Legrad]

Soldier feeling himself not quite well in FoA. With the release of Zerker a lot of soldier archetypes are severely powercreeped. Most notably its Bleed and Pierce Soldier specs.
There’s already a very good suggestion in OP things_ topic

@banana_peel

Cadence. And melee Soldier in general while we are at it
Ceno has a good topic on Cadence. The skill itself is not among the worst but its falling off highlights the gap between the “old” skills and the new toys. As for melee Soldier in general, I like some of Markovian and Zolhan fresh mod additions. But they aren’t nearly enough. Soldier quickly became outdated as a bonking mastery, and it shouldn’t. I think the mastery needs a flat source that’s not tied to Cadence or restricted exclusive. Pretty much every last row passive of Soldier is weak and outdated. Give Decorated Soldier some phys flat and move slow res to Scars. Nothing will become broken, trust. And will resolve some of those Cadence problems.

But i also want to add some suggestions.
First of all, let’s focus on one of the Soldier’s selling points - War Cry.

• Add pierce/bleed flat rr on Break Morale - i think its quite fitting, because we already have bleed-focused Blade Arc (and also quite a lot of items which support Bleed Soldier, like Bloodrager/Jarldin sets) and pierce damage% on Deadly Momentum and Oleron’s Rage. Yes, we somewhat already have it in the form of Terrify, but… uh… its just bad to use. Changing Terrify into oathkeeper-like mutator, which will switch flat phys rr on Break Morale to Bleed/Pierce would be also nice.

• Make cooldown of War Cry 4,5-5 secounds. Maybe with level scaling, so we will need to get levels of War Cry to get to this cooldown. Seriously, the fact what any phys soldier build which is not snb warlord hard-locked into 2(!) helmets, to have 100% uptime on warcry just feels bad. Especially with addition of Berserker which have no such problems with his cry.

Second skill which really needs buff is imo Menhir’s Will.
Worst circuit breaker in the game by far.

Restrictive skill which procs on 33% hp and does nothing but regen and one-time healing, this skill is very underpowered and outdated. Just the fact what its the only restrictive circuit breaker in the game should make it if not the best saving skill, but at least strong.
Suggestions:

• Increase proc threshold to 50-60%, so this skill can be reliable.

• Make Healing over-time, it will really support bleed Soldier.

• Add any form of damage mitigation - either max res%, flat absorb, or %absorb

[Smish.smash.smosh]

Poor ol’ solly struggling to keep up in FoA. Definitely a fan of adding the flat pierce and bleed rr to war cry! Would make bleed blademaster less of a meme

Also big agree on raising the threshold for Menhir’s will proccing. As it stands now, you get brought down to 40% and a big hit just kills you immediately without the circuit breaker even activating.

Let’s give soldier some love!

[RxJunkie]

@Legrad

Add pierce/bleed flat rr on Break Morale

Not possible. The only options for RtR are Elemental, Physical and All.

Just change it to All and we’re good! Soldier needs the RtR in high numbers to actually work well as evidenced by the Elemental items getting horse steroids.

@Legrad

Make cooldown of War Cry 4,5-5 secounds.

Sounds good here, you can get the CD down with something like a CDR Star Pact/Shield user as well right now, but not many others can. If you change the CD and the RtR to all damage then it makes for straight forward application for everybody using Soldier.

@Legrad

Second skill which really needs buff is imo Menhir’s Will.

Soldier is a Health Regen class (not a Health/sec class), so it fits with the current skills. If anything I would increase the activation threshold to maybe 50% and drop the max %Heal accordingly.

Also, I can see the addition of flat Damage Absorption being added as it’s based on Menhir. You already have %DAbsorp from the Eclusive so that would help.

[mad_lee]

I finally played some FoA and my first build contained Soldier. I agree with all of the suggestions. To add to the op Soldier’s passives are not up to snuff these days. 1% hp scaling on Military Conditioning? 1% armor/7 OA/7 DA scaling on Field Command after 4/12? This stuff feels completely outdated nowadays, even its other passives like the one that give reduced Physique requirment feel outdated (you can manipulate your green items with rerolls and get sufficient attributes more easily now). Bleed res on Scars of Battle is mostly unused on Soldiers because they usually have a surplus of it.
Soldier mastery was known for providing easy stats/attributes and means of tank like hp and armor. Its hp passive has been diminished and there are classes that can naturally stack much more armor than Soldier. Like for example much more offensively potent builds like this Cold Wereraven Reaver. Or this simple melee Reaver.

I also agree that Break Morale should have all flat RR. That might finally make all those countless meme Acid and Cold and Fire Soldiers become something interesting and dare I say competitive.

[banana_peel]

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

can’t buff Soldier because it will carry over to Thane

War Cry change has been asked for for years, is it time?

@RxJunkie

Soldier is a Health Regen class (not a Health/sec class), so it fits with the current skills

“problem” is, it then gates its safety off on additional investment (outside super early levels where 300 regen is actually default doing something)
It has nothing on Battle Surge otherwise, BS heals more total, heals even more in the same timeframe, has better uptime, isn’t blocked on a lot of builds from item requirement, - for less points too.
It functioning kinda like a lifesaver is the main benefit, but in this time it’s easy to either get it ignored/go from 34 to 0, or have it not that useful because more reliable healing/constant healing, ala Battle Surg, is just overall more useful/“keeps you up above 50” most of the time anyway, putting Menhir in this limbo of potential total 1shot waste, or potential rarely useful(single heal)…

i’d be more generous and say it should have all 3, with values adjusted. Basically make it a combo of chariot/behemoth, instant heal, heal over time, and regen. -mebe even lift part of the item requirement so it can be used on 2h ranged too.
→

[Serafim_94]

@Gnomish_Inquisition

can’t buff Soldier because it will carry over to Thane

can’t buff any class period

[KingRed_424]

Agreed on most parts. Especially on CD of War Cry.

@Legrad

• Increase proc threshold to 50-60%, so this skill can be reliable.
• Make Healing over-time, it will really support bleed Soldier.
• Add any form of damage mitigation - either max res%, flat absorb, or %absorb

As a life saving skill, threshold being 50-60% will trigger it too early so that when you really need it to save your life, it may be in CD. Unlike Blast Shield which has max res% and thousands of flat absorb that can make you really immortal from time to time, Menhir’s Will is more like a rescue airbag that saves you from real big hit. I personally don’t like another Blast Shield with different skill name on Soldier. So just keep its threshold 33% imo. It’s fine.

It’s underpowered and outdated indeed. I personally want it to have big base one-time HP restored plus small over-time HP restored. One or two forms of damage mitigation is in need and not excessive as well.

[Paikis]

@Gnomish_Inquisition

War Cry change has been asked for for years, is it time?

I propose a different solution: let the Wookie win Remove large amounts of RR from everything.

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

War Cry also has DR with only 5sec uptime on it

[_maverick]

Zakull set is missing in the picture on top of it all

[_maverick]

@Gnomish_Inquisition

War Cry change has been asked for for years, is it time?

Perma War Cry with flat all RR will open many soldier builds.

[banana_peel]

how about this

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

War Cry has DR too with just 5sec duration

[Yarik85]

@KingRed_424

I personally don’t like another Blast Shield with different skill name on Soldier.

Hey, I want my Commando to be extra immortal, yo.

[Ceno]

10 MORE YEARS OF CADENCE THREADS

Would be a neat gift.

---

@Legrad

Add pierce/bleed flat rr

Doesn’t exist.

N Reduced RR types are All Res, Phys Res, Elemental Res. No others exist.

@Legrad

Make cooldown of War Cry 4,5-5 secounds.

I have turned my nose up at this suggestion in the past as just being another “t0x1c El1t1sT buff everything” kind of thing. I think Zantai/Crate shares my personal vision that each vector of buildcraft should have holes that need to be filled. Masteries are one such vector; they should have weaknesses/areas that feel incomplete, that can be “filled in” via Devotions or Items (or Potion Modifiers, now).

I don’t think the problem with War Cry is that its cooldown is so long, I think the problem is that there have not been adequate means to reduce it through other buildcrafting vectors. As you say, our options are Fleshwarped Casque (?) and Warborn Helm. That’s it.

Now, there’s another way of looking at this too; if every Soldier item needs to provide CDR to War Cry, indeed why not just hand that CDR to the skill by default? To which the counter argument is that leveling/progressing to a point at which you acquire such itemization makes those items feel extra powerful/special when you put them on for the first time. It’s important to remember that Grim Dawn is first and foremost its own game, not a simulation system for Grimtools. (A mistake I make, too, all too often.)

However, with all of that being said, I’ve thought it through enough to be in favor of reducing War Cry’s cooldown baseline (or making it scale downward with investment) for the simple reason of playing to Soldier’s fantasy of being a tanky sonofabitch - something that has been muddled and lost over time as % DR has proliferated with easier access/uptime across other sources. Censure, Icebreaker, Onslaught, Ill Omen, Demon Fire, etc. All of these are just so much easier than War Cry which makes War Cry feel less meaningful.

@Legrad

• Increase proc threshold to 50-60%, so this skill can be reliable.
• Make Healing over-time, it will really support bleed Soldier.

I like both of these suggestions.

I also want to chime in on the subject to push for more unrestrictive/uncapped Duration Replenishment procs to both Menhir’s Will and Fighting Spirit. I had to fight for Nar’s/Discordant Gem to be uncapped for Arcane Will, and it seems that’s really the only one for which that occurred.

Both MW and FS could be reasonably uncapped with the right itemization/limitations.

And, of course, buff Cadence.

And and, delete RR rings. That winds up being a mastery buff for off-kilter damage types on underperforming masteries. Seriously, why do RR rings still exist in 2026, and why did we get more of them in FoA?

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

@Ceno

why did we get more of them in FoA?

“we don’t negotiate with terrorists - we troll them”

[Norzan]

@Ceno

Seriously, why do RR rings still exist in 2026, and why did we get more of them in FoA?

Because you keep making Cadence threads. Each new Cadence thread is one more RR ring.

[Toxophilix]

@Ceno

Soldier’s fantasy of being a tanky sonofabitch - something that has been muddled and lost over time

That’s interesting. The thing I don’t like about Soldier is that it doesn’t seem to have a class fantasy and is just a bag of buffs. I started playing in early FG time, so perhaps it had more of an identity before that.

(As it happens I think the same about Inquisitor, but it’s just a coincidence that they are both at the bottom of that swimming pool.)

[Smitherson]

@RxJunkie

Soldier is a Health Regen class

I wouldn’t say that, given that most soldier builds use damage absorb as their favored secondary layer if they have one.

@Toxophilix

That’s interesting. The thing I don’t like about Soldier is that it doesn’t seem to have a class fantasy and is just a bag of buffs.

The class fantasy of soldier is the exact same as “human fighter” in DnD, it’s favoring trust in your weapon and guts over fancy magic tricks.