Forcewave, though? Looks like a magic trick to me.
It literally is though.
Veterancy, Menhir’s Bulwark and Menhir’s Will all provide health regen support. Which makes it a health regen mastery.
Does it make sense? Not particularly, given that literally every skill (Sans War Cry) in Soldier uses WD% and thus natively supports ADCtH.
In contrast you have Demo which is a health regen mastery which makes sense because most of its skills don’t natively support ADCtH due to lacking WD% so it would normally require health regen instead (Of course, modern design is just having items that throw ADCtH onto all their stuff anyway…)
Its requirement of a 2h melee weapon or shield suggests it’s more of a “I just bonk SO HARD that a huge ahh shockwave is sent out”
Likely based around that anime trope where strong fighters just hit so hard/fast that shockwaves get sent out from their attacks.
I don’t think this is how one should make the distinction. By this logic, 5 of the 6 core vanilla masteries are health regen masteries. Seems a bit redundant.
The health regen in Soldier has never been substantial (other than Menhir’s Will) and I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone tried to capitalize on it.
As you say, Soldier is a Weapon Damage %-centric mastery, which therefore lends itself to favoring ADCtH for sustain. Not only is this likely the developer intent, it is also how players have used the mastery since the Dark Ages.
Soldier is an ADCtH mastery.
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So we should instead classify health regen masteries as the ones that DON’T feature health regeneration support?
That sounds far less logical than considering a mastery that has multiple skills that directly support health regeneration as a health regeneration mastery.
Yes, Soldier has not often been utilised as a pure health regen mastery (Though I have in some cases done so, dipping into Soldier on some builds purely for support skills like Field Command, War Cry and yes, health regen bonuses)
But it does have some built in support for health regen builds. More than just a single heal skill providing flat health regen (I.e. Occ/NB)
Heck, Soldier has more health regen support than typically noted “Health Regen” masteries like Demo which only has the flat regen from Vindictive Flame…
Which is likely a reason why ADCtH is by far the more prevalent sustain source for most builds and why it was felt necessary to throw ADCtH onto bunches of skills via items when the masteries that would otherwise rely on Health Regen have just a single source of flat regen to fuel the entire sustain system (That naturally requires investment into both flat and % regen modifiers to get values worth anything at higher levels, often multiple sources of both. Compared to just chucking ~5% ADCtH on and calling it a day. Maybe picking up some Leech RR if going against specific super bosses…)
Is that what I said?
I would say Shaman is the most basic Health Regen mastery. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s because it has Health Regen support! Look at that!
Difference being, it actually provides usable support and players have used it in that capacity since time immemorial.
I mean, shaman gives you both flat and percentage regen. Soldier does the same (slightly weaker), plus has Menhir Will and Bulwark. If soldier isn’t a regen class, then shaman is even less so.
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Pretty much.
You discounted Soldier, that has multiple health regen support sources as a health regeneration mastery.
If we don’t consider this a health regen mastery, what do we? The only alternative would be the masteries with no support.
In the case of masteries typically considered “Health regen masteries” they often have LESS support than Soldier.
Demo only has Flat regen (And less than Soldier gets, even without factoring in Menhir’s Will). Shaman has less Flat regen than Soldier (And only 10% more %regen). Occultist only has Flat regen (And less than Soldier)
Soldier’s regen is just often overlooked because ADCtH is just FAR better and FAR easier to build around and Soldier just supports it very easily due to how much WD% it has making easy to access global ADCtH just work out of the box.
Contrast this to other masteries that have LESS regen support, but have had to work around it due to lacking WD% and thus simply not having ADCtH as an option… Until recently when they started to throw ADCtH modifiers around like candy.
I’m not sure what part of this is hard to understand.
It does not matter what the masteries have themselves.
What matters is how they have been utilized for literally more than a decade. Soldier is not a health regen mastery because it has never been used as such and for good reason, because there are far more viable means of sustain available to it. Shaman is a health regen mastery because its health regen sources do other things too, making them useful in multiple other ways and resulting in Shaman builds typically maxing these nodes and winding up with a large amount of health regen across multiple builds without much intentional investment.
If you wanted to get a ton of regen on an Arcanist, you could, even though the mastery has no innate health regen. Does that mean Arcanist is a health regen mastery?
No, because no one does that.
If you wanted to get a ton of regen on a Soldier, you could, and more easily than an Arcanist too. Does that mean Soldier is a health regen mastery?
No, because no one does that.
And the reason no one does that is the restrictiveness of its skills/the scaling of those skills. Veterancy provides near no regen, and Overguard (hitherto unmentioned), Menhir’s Will, and Menhir’s Bulwark all have weapon restrictions. And even for builds that meet those restrictions, these skills are still not necessarily the best for their setup.
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Its a magic trick that’s entire purpose is to deliver as much of your weapon damage and properties to the enemy though. Again, trusting your equipment
“can you stack regen on Soldier” yes
“do you stack regen on soldier” - depends/“litmus test”
If you make a build that exists as ex Warder, that stacks regen in class and on outside the core items (ie not counting a Avenger set itself but gollus rings etc devos/comps/augs); do you do the same on the non Shaman version of that build? - no (is what i’m hearing)
I know i’ve seen Avenger Warders with regen, but i don’t recall Avenger Warlord stacking it as example, and went pure offensive rings/phys devos etc.
Warborn DK/WL/BM, no regen stacked, despite actually using veterancy; but for phys requirement reduct.
anyway, unironically i level pretty much all nightblades as regen after the regen buff couple years ago, actually pretty strong utility in Vet, guess that makes NB a proper regen class finally 
The future is now old man
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Shaman is just as eaily built around WD or skill leech, and most often will be unless paired with demo, soldier or some unfortunate bleed build having literally no other sustain option. I think that means there are no regen classes in the game period, only the gollus rings. Case closed.
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ADCtH is superior to health regen. Regen takes one second to take effect. ADCtH is instant. And one second is a very long time sometimes. I view regen as nice to counteract DoTs but not actually to replace ADCtH.
So having both at some level is the best.
And high regen on a build with no damage reduction or absorption sucks.
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So… When we talk about what a mastery “Is”, we do not care about what the mastery actually has?
Arcanist is a Physical damage mastery.
Soldier is a Pet mastery.
Inquisitor is a Good Skills mastery.
That doesn’t really affect what the mastery actually provides though.
Which is the whole point.
Soldier provides these tools. They may not be prevalently used across history (Nominally because other tools are just flat out better and more supported) but they are still provided.
Soldier provides Regen support. It always has. Regen might suck balls compared to ADCtH and thus has always been passed over in favour of ADCtH (Just like in the case of literally every other mastery where they’ve looked for ADCtH in lieu of Regen, going so far as to try and get any amount of WD% onto a skill just to use global ADCtH)
Even now, FoA has been pushing the new mechanic of Health Recovery. Either flat health recovery (Getting like ~500 health per second) or % max health recovery (Usually ~5% max health per second). Due to how much balls the regen mechanic sucks.
This doesn’t mean that masteries that provide regen support no longer are providing regen support.
They still do, even if the mechanic just sucks total balls and always has.
Now, if we’re talking in terms of how to change masteries to make them more gooder…
We might consider changing regen support into health recovery. Making flat regen into flat health recovery and % regen into % healing effects (Which will also boost ADCtH making the stat valuable even outside of “Regen” builds)
Trying to turn the existing sucky mechanic of Regen that requires a lot of investment only to be significantly worse than ADCtH into the health recovery mechanic that can provide comparable sustain to current Regen for a fraction of the investment (But will still suck balls compared to ADCtH)
My son wanted me to do it, so I made one. Who was I to say no? 
Now you can say you’ve seen somebody who tried to captialize on it (with a Commando using 2H Cadence too!). 
That being said, I think the idea of changing things in Soldier is definitely warranted and past due with FoA in our hands. Give Menhir’s Will some duration extension mods (without a limit too!), add % Health/sec, give it some steroids or just do… anything… to give this old dog some new tricks.
Soldier used to be the Mastery in GD that didn’t really need anything else to be competitive. You could single-class with Soldier and make a pretty solid character. Mind you, this was a long time ago and things have changed drastically over time; however, it shows that greatness was in the Soldier’s hands and has been passed on to literally any other class in GD.
Let’s get this beat-up, used, abused and passed-over guy back in the fight again!
I’m not the world #1 anime fan (ie I know almost nothing about it) but fwiw the words “anime” and “soldier” conjure up very different pictures in my mind.
At all events, it doesn’t have much bearing on the subject of this thread, but I was quite intrigued by the thought that Soldier had once been a gigatank. That would give it a strong identity.
Occultist and Inquisitor are Floor Circle masteries.
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My take on the soldier mastery :
It feels like the beginer frendly mastery. It offers acces to early life-saving option (Veterancy, Menhir Will), plus a few screw up counter (Military Conditioning and Veterancy patching up lack of health and phys to wear gear).
It comes with good defensive options (Multiple shield supporting skill, Menhir Bulwark for damage reduction and healing…). Again very beginner friendly.
It brings quite a bit of health (Highest health bonus from mastery bar even if not by much, a lot of physique and bonus % health)
You get multiple hard hitting %WD skill for adcth for endgame support, with good AoE choice.
And finaly, it can be used as a good support mastery on most build (OA bonus, armor bonus, AtS and CsS bonus…)
So overall, you get solid early game option (good damage, quick access to AoE, health, health regen…) with easy transition to endgame option (great damage with plenty of gear options, adcth…). So some strong foundation for any class.
BUT !!!
Many skills scale poorly in endgame (heck, even by midgame) or are very situational. And also no skill mods for most passive, again making some become obsolete with no option to strengthen them.
Menhir Will :
Summary
Nice early game when thing can hit you to under 33% health but with little to no danger of getting oneshoted, but by endgame become way less reliable. At least the acending health regen scaling is nice if you can exploit the skill
=> Buff health regen, add some flat damage absorption, or some CC res and max res. It’s lore friendly with the skill flavor text.
Military conditioning :
Summary
Falls hard at 4 points on the % health bonus (the best part) and uultimate ranks dont change much there unless you hardcap it for the final +3%… The % bonus physique is nice existe I guess. But overall, not really usefull early game because of % bonus, and become passable by endgame unless you dump a lot of point and aim for + skill points from gear, which you won’t because you’ve got better skill to buff.
Also NO SKILL MODIFIER (except from ascended affixes now).
=> Maybe add some flat physique and health bonus
Shield training :
Summary
falls harder than Military Conditioning at only 2 points. Only 1 SKILL MODIFIER and no ascended affixes
=> no idea for this one. Adding flat damage would make it like Safeguard from Oathkeeper… Maybe chance to deflect ? Seems coherent with knowing how to use a shield, kinda…
Veterancy :
Summary
Worst skill in the game ? Scales really poorly despite the ascending health regen bonus.
The bonus constitution is useful only for player up to level 10 ? Maybe ? The reduced physique req is useful for new player who may screw up stat allocation but you get a free potion to solve that issue. At best it can be used to help your squishy spellcaster wear real armors (so a 1 point wonder if you take Soldier as a support mastery).
Also NO SKILL MODIFIER
=> buff the flat health regen and % incresed health regen. Buffing anything else would be worthless anyway
Decorated soldier :
Summary
really low bonus to the easiest res to get and some decent slow res. The phys damage bonus may as well not be there. You will barely feel it early game, so lets not talk about engame.
Also NO SKIL MODIFIER
=> slight buff to bonus damage and make it all damage, maybe ?
Scars of battle :
Summary
Okayish freeze and stun res, but those aren’t the hardest to find. The bleeding res is one less res to worry about I guess… The best part of the skill is the bonus armor absorption, so you can use other components on your gear, but we are talking about a rank 40 skill. 1 good bonus is not enough.
And again NO SKILL MODIFIER except from some meh ascended affixes
=> no idea for that one either
So yeah, starting by making some of those a bit better could be a nice start.
That’s mostly the only part that matters because physical/pierce/bleed builds can fit more Cunning in.
Yeah I remembered that after posting. How much of a difference does it really make ? Real question.