soldier + what suggestions?

greetings, all! my first post… I’ve been playing GD for about 3 months now, got my first character up to level 87 elementalist (probably going for something along the lines of zeus’ lawn chair, haven’t decided yet), and my second main character just hit level 82… soldier… I find myself unable to pull the trigger on a second class yet.

I’ve read, uh… almost all of the soldier builds in build compendium V and VI and the reasonable builds for crucible thread… lots of great ideas, but the vast majority of them, even if they don’t rely on MIs, rely on a lot of legendaries that I just haven’t accumulated yet.

I like the doubleblitz commando, but have a long way to go to gear up and no sniffings of Korvaak’s Deception, I’ve got one piece of Markovian’s, non-mythical… I like the forcewave tactician, but no Octavius gear…

so, anyone have any suggestions for what might be the most versatile combo for soldier that’s a bit less super-legendary dependent? I’ve also got a necromancer around 40 or so, probably going death knight with him, so leaning away from necromancer…

thanks in advance, and I’ve loved reading and following along with all the build thread and drooling over the gear, you guys have been a great help so far…

HH

I would go Warder or Witchblade.

Every class combo is legendary hungry. You can’t just make a build with no legendaries and be powerful (I mean, you can, but it won’t be as effective). I’d rather go for something I find interesting and/or exciting. If you don’t want to make many characters, consider making a heavy armor based build, for example Soldier + Arcanist or Soldier + Necromander and get Krieg set, which is kind of easy to farm and drops from certain monsters. With that set you’d be able to farm bosses peacefully if your resists are capped and get many legendary items.

You can do a commando, it’s fun to play

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23wr942

Kind of a tough question to answer, because it’s a cart before horse situation. What 2nd class would be good, is almost entirely dependent on what damage type you want to focus on. If you just want a generalist build, that’s mostly focused on soldier abilities, shaman isn’t bad.

Stacking the bonus to your damage type, from 2 different classes, is sort of the whole game, so maybe figure out what damage type you want to aim for? That will narrow your choices down pretty quickly. Take a look at the damage types on some of the easier to farm, or rep bought pieces maybe.

I’ve been toying with the Witchblade idea… leaning away from Warder since most of my good lightning gear is on my Elementalist…

I may go with the Arcanist… per Ultrazen’s post below on 2nd damage type, I’m undecided, so I’d have to do some research…

I like the idea of commando, especially if I come across Korvaak’s Deception… BUT, already have a demolitionist with the Elementalist toon, so, sort of leaning away from that unless I find the Deception soon…

I do like Shaman (my first aborted/abandoned character was a Warder, and the main guy I was using before my soldier build is an Elementalist so I’ve got Shaman all over the place…

I guess I’ll just need to bite the bullet at some point… though I’m enjoying having forcewave, blitz, and cadence all overcapped…

guess I’ll do more research, thanks for the advice guys…

HH

The thing with s&b soldier builds is that no matter what second class you choose and what damage type you want, they’ll all play very similarly (with the exception of maybe lightning warder). This is because you only want the passives on your second class and all the main skills are in soldier already. You just smash everyone to the face and tank. So I would advice not to go (lightning) warder cause it’s the one with the nearest playstyle to your elementalist.

As for the other choices:

For physical: witchblade and commando are the classical choices here, though tactician and dk are also good. Witchblade and tactician are good if you want easier resistance capping while commando has better armor and has blast shield for ‘oh shit!’ situations. This makes all three buildable (is that a word?) Without much legendaries. Damage-wise, they all do good, though witchblade is probably the better one with shit gear.

Aether - Battlemage or DK obviously. The advantages of going aether is that Krieg set is the easiest set to farm in the game so it gives you a nice boost early. Both classes are equal, imo and you can’t really go wrong with the two of those.

Pierce - Blademaster or tactician is great, and BM has the ability to go dual-wield if that’s your thing. Chthon has a great guide on pierce bm/tact for beginners somewhere in this forum (can’t get links easy cause on mobile).

Other damage types are viable too but those require more gear so I don’t recommend them yet. If you wanna explore more though then you can check out bleed witchblade/warder, cold blademaster, poison blademaste/wb, fire commando

I’m in almost the same situation :smiley:
Playing for ~ 3 month, first char elementalist lvl 100, 2nd char a lvl 76 soldier… idling around, cuz I’m still unsure what to make out of it. :undecided:

Since getting full sets / usefull combinations of legendaries is a real pain (especially as a beginner with almost nothing already in the stash…) I lately decided to go for the more easy to obtain sets. Krieg’s for my Soldier and Dark One’s for my Cabalist (3rd char).

With Krieg’s set I can hopefully make something close to Zhuugus Battlemage, to have a char better suitable for farming.
Or I build something around the Mythical Gladiator’s Distinction I found.

My Elementalist gear is subpar for farming, but it works. (used Gutz build as guideline)
Only Valaxteria wouldn’t give me Krieg’s shoulders yet, even though I farmed her much more, cuz I was hoping for a nice MI chest and therefore visited her often even before knowing about Krieg’s set…:mad:

I’d recommend Tactician (soldier + inquisitor). It’ll have the best defense of all your options, and you get a good source of +OA, physical resists, a heal, and the inquisitor seal. It’s easy to gear, relative to DK, though don’t expect great gear until you’ve farmed for a while.

Thanks for the solid advice, x1… I’ve mostly for obvious solider-only reasons, been focusing on physical/trauma… guess I need to find a decent weapon of another damage type that doesn’t convert my physical damage TO that type… that’s why I like the doubleblitz commando idea, turning all that fire damage back to physical, plus zooming all over the place… running into spirit limitations on gear tho, and dont’ feel like taking crane, so think I’m going to have to decide here shortly…

thanks, Brykx, good to know I’m not the only one in this position… I figured I was on my own island here… the solider guy is sort of what I was going to use to farm gear for my other builds, eventually… on my elementalist (never built it in grimtools, maybe I’ll do that and post a link), I focus on lightning and electrocute obviously, but I use the bejeezus out of primal strike… haven’t seen too many builds do that here recently, have primal strike, wind devils and add-ons, and storm totem (and storm-bringer pact) all loaded out and try and just kite my way around while those things do the damage… but primal strike with thunderous strike, while it looses some damage, you can spam continuously, so as long as you have enough mana potions, you can fill the screen with lightning… but not sure that’s really the most effective way to do it, since I don’t see many of those…

I’m tossing up right now the last three contenders, and they’re witchblade commando and tactician… the issue I see with tactician is that, though it’s sort of face-tanky, I’m not geared-up or tough enough to really just stand there and slog it out, still have to do some kiting so figure I’d end up off the seal… though maybe standing on the seal makes it so I can just stay there? see, THIS is why I can’t decide! heh…

thanks, all…

HH