Something is wrong about the soldier introduction text

[XandeRoot]

I think I saw a discussion about Witch Hunter being a “hunting witch or vice versa?”. Or was it about Mage Hunter? Both are the same argument… So, the way I see it, Witch Hunter is one of the Nightblade orders that tap into occult magic and devote themselves to either Dreeg or Solael, to improve their “elimination capabilites”.

And when dealing with witches and cultists, it would definitely help to know the enemy from “within”. Pretty much what @Gnomish_Inquisition said.

[Res]

You’re talking about this: Is a Mage Hunter a mage that hunts mages or simply a mage that hunts?

[vizix]

From the soldier class I have both a blade arc physical tactician and a death knight physical cadence build. They play very smooth however when it comes to damage it is not that they do so much damage but the ability to stand on the toes of the enemy while being completely fine, is the essence of the success of these builds.

I have a druid that has incredible damage potential with 4 shards that can be thrown at any distance hitting single or multiple targets. In that sense the text of the soldier is accurate and in general in grim dawn there is sometimes a effect to the damage you do due to the fact you can apply it constantly do to the property of being tanky with or without a shield.

[Feralwarlord]

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 .

I’ve leveled a 1 hander + shield battlemage using BA, until lvl94 it took forever to kill anything but at least the build was tanky af

[casedeck]

Spam blade arc being a borderline nightmare

This (together with other comments below) actually made me build and try it for a while…

TLDR: seems fine to me, didn’t encounter any issues so far. Currently I’m at Act 2 on Veteran after about 3-4h of play, going strong… (yes, even against the dreaded Undeads and their bleed res).

I have leveled few times Soldier builds, both as Blade Arc and Forcewave. I like BA better actually.

Yup, true for me as well.

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.

Um… what’s the problem with stacking trauma? It can be got pretty fast, methinks.

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.

Points-wise the most efficient tool here is Blindside from Blitz… the DA debuff works wonders on anything stubborn.

2H Soldier builds starts to feel better, when you can take Oleron as exclusive skill and max Field Command, also getting Kraken devotion.

Also, Fighting Spirit… I don’t know why, but it seems like people often forget about FS (or discount it’s utility).

Like the others have said, soldier is really lacklustre to level-safe but kinda boring.

Well, I don’t know for sure, early leveling yet…but to me this setup (untransmuted Blade Arc) seems to perform similarly to untransmuted CT (another “weird” leveling option that I tried recently). It behaves and plays similarly as well, big boomy circles of destruction and melting everything with critted-up DoT damage.

personally i definitely don’t share the sentiment of leveling with spam bladearc… It has barely any WD

So then, why focus on that part of the skill?

…you’re unlikely to have the OA to make the crit dmg on Laceration mean anything…

Have you tried it? I mean, actually tried it?
My path for very early leveling was to pump mastery until Laceration is properly available, and just use component skills for damage abilities (cracked lodestone etc.). It makes you into such a beefcake that nothing else is really necessary, so you can search for only gear which gives you flat OA.
Also, for stats, I pushed almost everything into Cunning. But I don’t think the gain was that significant… probably it wouldn’t lose much from pumping Physique for even more beef.

…and the flat phys dmg gotta be among the lowest flat a skill with such high investment gets

Well, yes. So go for bleed, max your OA and Blindside into anything which remains standing for over a second after first contact.

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

Well the MI sticks are available in Forgotten Gods areas (IIRC), but even without them the item support is pretty good?

There’s a good chance of finding (or buying) items with “Soldier’s” prefix which boost Blade Arc specifically, that Brutal Great Axe thing is rather good and usually available early (I think you get the crafting option immediately by choosing Angrim?), or even superb if you spend some scrap and craft a good-prefixed one like “Officer’s”.
Also there are Epic items that support the build well: Gutwrench, that Lacerator axe, the Bonecrusher 2h mace MIs… the Bloodreaper set is also good early on with only 2-3 pieces if you have it (though not the weapons).

On the early Relics, Rampage is probably the only damage-specific one that’s better for DoTters that just taking Fervor.

For constellations, one can stick with the usual Owl or go for Fox immediately (which is also nicely affinity-efficient). Panther is very good also, even from the start. I tried Falcon, didn’t impress me much. If sustain is lacking (or you like to feel extra-safe), go for Bat’s skill on Blade Arc.
Once you have 8+ points it’s pretty clear, respec to fill out Eel+Fox and get started on Kraken.

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

I believe this statement indicates that you are concentrating on the wrong half of the skill, at least early on. Here’s a good question to get one started with builds like these: “what is the purpose of re-applying the DoT activator on the same enemy?”

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 .

Yup, 1-handed is an interesting puzzle, def needs testing. I believe nothing fundamental changes, the same principle still stands (go for OA), but it might be necessary to stack more sources of bleed earlier (Fox+Owl into Berserker? Or maybe Panther & Hawk will be needed for boosting crit multiplier). Having the off-hand will be very nice though; with cooldown reduction, physical resist, all that good stuff.

If FW feels dull; spam BA to me feels straight up tedious

Here’s my rule of thumb for DoT builds of this kind while leveling: trash should die immediately on first contact, or after 2nd swing max. Bosses after 5-6 seconds max… If you are slower than that, something’s wrong.

[Gnomish_Inquisition]

i mean nothing you’re gonna say is gonna change my own experience/how it felt to me leveling or using, or my perception of blade arc thereof

you mention dots as a counter to my mention of BA WD and flat, yet compared to other dot levelings, BA feels way worse. It’s a cheaper dot investment than other skills sure, but that doesn’t make it good or great, and for me it’s not fun to wait around an hour waiting for things to die, when 98 other skills could kill things immediately or in half the time
as far as crit goes to benefit of laceration, i usually go for a fairly high OA approach which results in me on avg having like 20%+ crit chance during the leveling phase, and still BA/Laceration felt entirely “bleh”, compared to almost anything else - most regular/avg players probably don’t stack that much OA during leveling.

Like i said, even FW feels better to me, which doesn’t feel awesome, which means BA dot leveling is just mindnumbingly tedious
i can give it a spin with FG Mis for sure, but imo MIs shouldnt’ be necessary for a skill to feel tolerable, see FW, but make it even more awesome, if not “OP”

oh and last i leveled with BA it was with a witchblade, which gets like the highest bleed RR and phys RR tossed in the same debuff, and still it overall ended up as one of my least liked skills leveling. Not panetti territory bad, but still not enjoyable

[system]

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