It says :
" What a soldier may lack in outright damage output is made up for …… "
Lack in outright damage ……the discription maybe …… need a little bit fix.
Have you played a shield Soldier based build? 
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not like soldier on its own is the most dmg dealing mastery
so it’s fairly accurate, as its when you pair soldier with a dmg dealing mastery soldier really shines
there’s probably a laundry list of masteries/skills people would rather level with than Soldier’s,
FW being famous for being “efficient” - but boring.
Spam blade arc being a borderline nightmare,
Cadence having a bad reputation for being bad (or at minimum have a significant amount of stat checks required to become decent for leveling)
Which is why when you see people level with soldier, it’s usually either using FW, or soldier as a support mastery.
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I have leveled few times Soldier builds, both as Blade Arc and Forcewave. I like BA better actually. Lucius aether Battlemage (or DK in that matter) melts everything in elite and ofc late normal and physical Witchblade or DK feels very good too. Idk if @Stupid_Dragon shares the same opinion, cause he’s posted the DK version.
I’ve also tried leveling as shield Cadence once, no thank you 
But the thing about Soldier is that it doesn’t have any - RR, so it’s not great support mastery and if it’s your main you will likely go for physical damage. Since early on you go with direct physical damage (you don’t have converted from Soldier skills) and can’t stack trauma, you might not like your damage. Also Assassin’s mark requires crit and you can have trouble critting against bosses while leveling, cause they are higher level than you and have respectable DA numbers and sometimes OA isn’t enough. 2H Soldier builds starts to feel better, when you can take Oleron as exclusive skill and max Field Command, also getting Kraken devotion.
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I know some top endgame builds use BA or Cadence, but that is with top gear support/modifiers. Like the others have said, soldier is really lacklustre to level-safe but kinda boring.
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when i/others usually refer to soldier as a great support mastery, ex while leveling, it has nothing todo with RR (since you can safely level without dual mastery rr), but because Soldier comes with a ton of passives, and some of the best buffs
and for 2 handers it even comes with a circuit breaker
so you see people take X mastery, pair it with soldier, and they grab teh passive, Field Command, Veterancy, Scars, Oleron etc etc etc whatever, but rarely use Soldier’s attack skill, unless they leveled with ex FW from the start
personally i definitely don’t share the sentiment of leveling with spam bladearc, there are just so many better skills dealing better dmg. It has barely any WD, the bleed is horrendous on spam, you’re unlikely to have the OA to make the crit dmg on Laceration mean anything and the flat phys dmg gotta be among the lowest flat a skill with such high investment gets
^id’ rather level as Cadence than spam BA again, at least it will kill things before my finger starts to get numb
probably same reason many people take Forcewave over Bladearc, it’s just an abysmal early game skill in spam form. Unlike ex FW or primal strike that doesn’t need a specific MI to just feel decent, but rather feels better/great if finding a good 2h stick, to me demonstrates that spam BA is subpar if when it can’t be done on avg/without a specific approach or weapon to boost it
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Can vouch for levelling Blade Arc as well, mainly 2-handed. Korvan Celestial Halberd is bonkers strong for Physical Death Knight. Outside of Physical, I’ve even levelled fine with it just picking up a relevant 2-handed pure damage MI with affixes for Physical conversion and attack speed e.g. Decaying Spectral Warmaul of Alacrity for Vitality.
1-handed might be more problematic with the low base weapon damage so it’s harder to scale up with weapon damage but i wonder if this could be circumvented by hardcapping Laceration and pushing Physical damage to Blade Arc mods instead, 1-handed means with typically more attack speed that you apply this damage at a faster rate than 2-handed. E.g. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrBYxOZ. Would need to be tested 
.
Also agree that Cadence levelling by itself is god awful and I never want to go through that hell again . But it seems a little better with either Aetherwarped Cleaver or Voldrak’s Crusher and 12/12 Fighting Form for a bit of crowd clear. Ulvar1 posted Voldrak Warder levelling so it can’t be entirely bad right?
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that’s my sentiment too. It feels like it has a bad rep, because it has a bigger “requirement”/stat check, than other skills, again ie either needing a specific MI or something, ex stacking attack speed etc
but when that threshold then is met, it feels fairly awesome even for leveling imo
i think that’s my point, it’s a skill as mentioned here “only” useful on a select pair of classes, and with certain (strong) MIs
whereas most other comparative skills feels fine “as is”.
i mean, 160WD and 80flat phys dmg on 28pts investment, savagery/RF almost gets better stats than that
like, why would i take BA spam, when almost any other skill would do more dmg for the same skill points, and not requiring a certain class/MI to boot
If FW feels dull; spam BA to me feels straight up tedious
I’ve fixed it for you
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Karen you insufferable Cthonic beast, release me from the void at once.
Almost? Savagery/RF are more efficient than that when WPS are concerned.
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I’m just triggered that Occultist and Nightblade is… witch hunter? Makes no sense. Nightblades worked for the empire. Same for the Inquisitors. While occultists were outcasts. So if someone is a NB and Occ both, the occultist side should take precedence.
Witch hunter implies someone that hunts witches. A witch hunting witches? WHAT?
From a RP perspective this class name makes the least sense imo. It should be something like… Venomancer, Heretic, Shadowblade, Doom Herald, Basilisk, Gorgon, Betrayer, just anything but witch hunter. If you are an assassin type person dabbling in the occult that doesn’t make you anyone who HUNTS WITCHES >.<
/end rant
Hm, no, they didn’t.
As for Occultists:
Witch Hunter in this sense probably just means someone who uses powers granted by the Witch Gods; that’s all, in the same way a Witchblade does. Not necessarily hunting witches.
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Hmm maybe it does make sense and I’m just missing it then. Not a native english speaker but Witch Hunter as a class name gives me connotations to a benevolent person, someone hunting down witches and those who practice the occult. For a combination of Nightblade and Occultist, I was hoping for a more sinister title. Or at least a neutral one.
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Mage Hunter is also a mage though. Kind of a Luminari special devision that hunts down rogue mages and practicioners of the occult, or something. Same for Infiltrators and Spellbreakers.
Generally speaking, most of GD’s class names are pretty badass. Like Defiler - ooh yeah, tell me about it! Or Oppressor. Or Apostate!
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at least gd’s soldier is not as mind numbing as levelling defense focused builds in titan quest… that mastery feels so slow and cumbersome to play (unless you pair it with offense oriented mastery).
Been there, done that.
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witch hunter is a very broad term in gd universe, where skilled people with/without magic can hunt witches. even the luminari inquisition are all basically witch hunters, who uses whatever tools and means they have to hunt heretical cults and otherworldly abomination.
we haven’t even talked about mage hunter. i think discussion about accuracies of gd class title wouldn’t go far because many of them overlap each other in terms of their profession/skills. just choose whatever class titles you like and don’t think too much on it.
as for soldier’s effectiveness, i believe it depends on the build and how the players play them. with so many options to design your builds, its hard to find classes that totally suck at everything. unless you’re going for deep diving into the shattered realm, which is very selective on which builds can survive it.
what better way to hunt your witches than to use one of their very own against them?
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To be fair, it always made sense to me that a person best equipped to hunt Mages is someone trained as a Mage themselves which shows in some of Arcanist’s skills at a gameplay level, e.g. Nullification and the massive Energy Leech on Iskandra’s Elemental Exchange. Like you mentioned, some of the other Arcanist combos like Spellbreaker show this as well.
Witch Hunter always struck me as a Hunter who is also a Witch or makes use of their powers rather than someone who hunts Witches specifically, which is pretty backwards. But it also makes sense for Witchblade as well being a Blade user with Witch-granted powers.
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