Soldier's Gear

[marlax.2586]

So as they asked for a soldier build with damage i put something rushed together. 

Arms- 2 2 1

strength- 1 3 1 

Defence- 2 2 2

Soldiers gear, optional runes reallly but daredevil gives you another crit. 

 

With this build its mainly about dodges. you have massive hp and armor pools. but you want to dodge to get extra damgae. extra might, extra crit. lot of options for this build but you are taking all the damage traits that normal dps build dont. you will have over 3200 power baseline and 3200 armor in this build and you can even get your base crit chance to 40% if you like with sigils and percision signet however personally i went for the might signet to cut through my enemies when they came close. however percision sig gives that burst skill.

this build works on dodges, they give you damage, crits, and might, you will have vigor and endurance sig as options for more dodges. you will have sigils of endurance and crit on your weapons and you will have to the limit shout for shared 50% endurance gain. making more people in your group give you more dodges. 

 

not only will your dps builds have a hard time cutting my soldiers down but a hard time even landing a hit. 

and thse soldiers are not wimps on the dps charts. as dodge rolls can be faster than some attack animation and i forgot to mention their ferocity. you wil have 200-222% ferocity on this build. good luck beserkers i wish you well on your journy.

p.s. non of that is counting the 21% damage increase trait and the 25% damage increase from vulnerability trait. so not only is this build doing damage on par with you and with better defence stats but also getting a 46% damage boost in damage 

Edited February 20, 2022 by marlax.2586

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The whole argument of this thread is pointless. Soldier's gear is no longer the default nor easy to obtain, mainly just being available from the Orr karma vendor I think. The lv80 boost gears were replaced with Celestial.

 

Its still the default gear for WvW badges but it at least makes sense there.

 

That said I've mixed Berserker's/Soldier's (for example, Reaper can reach 100% crit with half Soldier's), and Diviner's/Wanderer's gear at times to make certain builds.,

Edited February 20, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[marlax.2586]

Just now, Hannelore.8153 said:

The whole argument of this thread is pointless. Soldier's gear is no longer the default anymore nor easy to obtain, mainly just being available from the Orr karma vendor I think. The lv80 boost gears were replaced with Celestial.

 

Its still the default gear for WvW badges but it at least makes sense there.

true, i have had some fun with celestial of late. made an amazing hybrid dps warrior and the power precison concentration runes let me make a sb power warrior with 100% protection uptime and weakness.

[Teratus.2859]

1 minute ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

The whole argument of this thread is pointless. Soldier's gear is no longer the default nor easy to obtain, mainly just being available from the Orr karma vendor I think. The lv80 boost gears were replaced with Celestial.

 

Its still the default gear for WvW badges but it at least makes sense there.

I don't think so.

It may not be the default anymore (and I approve of this change tbh) but the set still suffers from a lot of unfair bias against it if you ask me.
Some players will even go so far as to outright call you a bad player if you use it which is just absurd.

Continuing discussion on the topic with builds and playstyles that actually benefit from using Soldeirs stats is worth doing if you ask me.
The more people encouraged to break away from mindlessly following metas and instead start to build craft and experiment with less desired stat combos, traits and skills the better imo ^^

[AliamRationem.5172]

41 minutes ago, marlax.2586 said:

i make builds for fun, some very impressive ones if i do say so myself. i havnt messed around with soldier much however what comes to mind since i play warrior a lot is if you want to make the dps higher. you most likly will need 3 sec 100% crit sigils and possibly the precision and ferocity boost on disable sigil. then perhaps a build with high vigor and signet of endurance. with runes of .... daredevil i believe. every dodge gives a 100% crit. that or just a crit sigil of 7% with fury would give what 33% crit chance then you would have 1005 on dodges and 100% for 3 seconds. if you like more crit you can spec 100% crit on burst skills or 50% increased crit to disabled foes. then run some physical cc abilities.. there is also the signet stacking that can give 100 ferocity per stack of 5. 

so now you have the potential of a high power build with high armor and high health that can still lay down high burst and sustain damage while also being able to reckllesslly dodge. 

You're a couple of years late to the party on this thread, but the basic argument here is that we're using maths on paper and subjective interpretations to suggest that soldier gear can somehow produce "high damage".  I dispute that.  Can you play such a build?  Sure.  It'll be tanky and deal low damage. 

How do we define "low" vs. "high"?  As I challenged the others in this thread to do, provide some context for that.  Give us a ballpark DPS range in actual gameplay to compare or even better provide video.  It's a simple thing to do, but nobody who thinks soldier gear deals "high damage" will do so because it will be immediately obvious that they are objectively wrong.  Builds that use condition damage or power along with precision and ferocity will outperform such a build on damage by a significant margin.

When you get into competitive modes there is more to the calculation, but you still can't say soldier stats produce high damage.  The best you can say is that there is a place for tanky stats.  However, even there you would almost certainly choose celestial over soldier stats for tanky support types and deal both better damage as well as having better support, healing, and sustain.

[Teratus.2859]

3 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

You're a couple of years late to the party on this thread, but the basic argument here is that we're using maths on paper and subjective interpretations to suggest that soldier gear can somehow produce "high damage".  I dispute that.  Can you play such a build?  Sure.  It'll be tanky and deal low damage. 

What in your opinion would you define as "low damage"
I'm not delusional, I know Solders isn't going to match full zerkers or anything but I will question others when it comes to their views on high and low damage, specially when there are some people in the game who have absurdly high standards on this stuff, despite even the hardest content in the game being balanced around the average player's dps figures.

3 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

As I challenged the others in this thread to do, provide some context for that.  Give us a ballpark DPS range in actual gameplay to compare or even better provide video.  It's a simple thing to do, but nobody who thinks soldier gear deals "high damage" will do so because it will be immediately obvious that they are objectively wrong.  Builds that use condition damage or power along with precision and ferocity will outperform such a build on damage by a significant margin.

It's actually not so simple..

For one thing not everyone has the ability or knows how to record, edit and upload video content.
Not everyone has an account on a video hosting site nor wants one. ( I certainly don't)
A lot of people strongly dislike downloading and running software they don't like, or trust as well and Gw2 has no effective and reliable way to calculate in game DPS.
Unless you are running 3rd party software there is no way the average player can give you a ballpark DPS range, making this pretty much necessary. 

For some people it is a lot to ask them to download 3rd party software they don't know how to use, and record video of themselves playing and then make a/multiple accounts on some service they don't want to be on so they can upload said video just so you can watch it.
Specially when you can just copy their builds and play them yourself to find out what DPS range they are capable of.

3 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Builds that use condition damage or power along with precision and ferocity will outperform such a build on damage by a significant margin.

I'm not going to argue that.
Although how big that margin is compared to sufficient DPS vs content is something I would question to some degree.

I've mocked up 2 Necro builds on GW2 skills.

One is a Zerker stat Necro the other a Soldier stat necro.
Both builds have the same traits, same sigils, and food item.
Both builds have the same power stat at 3382 with 25 might.
Both builds have 100% crit chance providing the enemy they are fighting has 25 Vulnerability, otherwise it's 58% to the soldier, and 83% to the Zerker without either having Fury. (this being while they are in shroud too forgot to add this)
Neither builds have runes, secondary weapons, infusions nor any utility skills equipped.

The only difference between the two is that the Zerker build has around 920 more ferocity than the Soldier build which equates to an extra 64% more critical damage.
Meanwhile the Soldier build has 960 more Armour than the Zerker build and 9600 more health.
Soldier will also have a great deal more life force but I don't know how much for sure since the site doesn't calculate it.

That is not imo that big of a difference.
Yes Zerker is going to be doing more damage, but the Soldier is still going to be doing decent enough damage as well while having the benefit of being significantly more durable, which also means the Soldier is going to have to spend less time healing and dodging further increasing it's DPS uptime compared to the Zerker which will again do more overall damage in the fight but is at a much higher risk and will have to back off every now and again to recover, dropping it's dps uptime far more rapidly than the Soldier as well.

Personally I think both playstyles and stat sets have merit, although personally I would prefer to give up the 900 ferocity to get big gains in defence, but that's just my personal taste.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

What in your opinion would you define as "low damage"
I'm not delusional, I know Solders isn't going to match full zerkers or anything but I will question others when it comes to their views on high and low damage, specially when there are some people in the game who have absurdly high standards on this stuff, despite even the hardest content in the game being balanced around the average player's dps figures.

It's actually not so simple..

For one thing not everyone has the ability or knows how to record, edit and upload video content.
Not everyone has an account on a video hosting site nor wants one. ( I certainly don't)
A lot of people strongly dislike downloading and running software they don't like, or trust as well and Gw2 has no effective and reliable way to calculate in game DPS.
Unless you are running 3rd party software there is no way the average player can give you a ballpark DPS range, making this pretty much necessary. 

For some people it is a lot to ask them to download 3rd party software they don't know how to use, and record video of themselves playing and then make a/multiple accounts on some service they don't want to be on so they can upload said video just so you can watch it.
Specially when you can just copy their builds and play them yourself to find out what DPS range they are capable of.

I'm not going to argue that.
Although how big that margin is compared to sufficient DPS vs content is something I would question to some degree.

I've mocked up 2 Necro builds on GW2 skills.

One is a Zerker stat Necro the other a Soldier stat necro.
Both builds have the same traits, same sigils, and food item.
Both builds have the same power stat at 3382 with 25 might.
Both builds have 100% crit chance providing the enemy they are fighting has 25 Vulnerability, otherwise it's 58% to the soldier, and 83% to the Zerker without either having Fury. (this being while they are in shroud too forgot to add this)
Neither builds have runes, secondary weapons, infusions nor any utility skills equipped.

The only difference between the two is that the Zerker build has around 920 more ferocity than the Soldier build which equates to an extra 64% more critical damage.
Meanwhile the Soldier build has 960 more Armour than the Zerker build and 9600 more health.
Soldier will also have a great deal more life force but I don't know how much for sure since the site doesn't calculate it.

That is not imo that big of a difference.
Yes Zerker is going to be doing more damage, but the Soldier is still going to be doing decent enough damage as well while having the benefit of being significantly more durable, which also means the Soldier is going to have to spend less time healing and dodging further increasing it's DPS uptime compared to the Zerker which will again do more overall damage in the fight but is at a much higher risk and will have to back off every now and again to recover, dropping it's dps uptime far more rapidly than the Soldier as well.

Personally I think both playstyles and stat sets have merit, although personally I would prefer to give up the 900 ferocity to get big gains in defence, but that's just my personal taste.

It's not on me to provide context for the assertions made by people two years ago regarding the performance of Soldier's stats.  If the damage is high enough for them then it's high enough.  I was simply trying to develop some context for what that means and was met with a lot of theoretical maths and subjective counter-points.

I understand that it's not reasonable to expect everyone to upload video.  Somebody else's video would have sufficed.  Barring that I also asked for just a ballpark DPS range in actual gameplay (e.g. "I typically see 7.5-10k DPS on a golem, on a boss, in the park or in the dark.).

I'm not pushing meta or telling people what they can or can't do/should or shouldn't do.  If you follow what I do here that is not my thing.  I do solo play and I got started doing buildcraft of my own and sharing it with others specifically because of the lack of good information on this sort of thing.

So again, all I'm asking for here is some context.  If we can shed some light on that other players can benefit by using what they learn here.  If, however, the goal is to maintain our power fantasy and rabidly defend it against objectivity, I don't think we're helping anyone.

 

[Teratus.2859]

52 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

If the damage is high enough for them then it's high enough.  I was simply trying to develop some context for what that means and was met with a lot of theoretical maths and subjective counter-points.

I would say that for a lot of people that "high enough is high enough" statement you made is very very true.
My only real issue with people on the criticism side of these kinds of arguments (I don't specifically mean you just to clarify) is the close mindedness they often have for anything outside of accepted metas.

I just can't stand the common attitudes some people have like "if it's not top tier DPS, it's useless and should be removed".. it's so tedious to hear that kind of thing over and over again, specially when it's just wrong.

52 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I understand that it's not reasonable to expect everyone to upload video.  Somebody else's video would have sufficed.  Barring that I also asked for just a ballpark DPS range in actual gameplay (e.g. "I typically see 7.5-10k DPS on a golem, on a boss, in the park or in the dark.).

In all honesty I don't know of anyone who uploads videos with unusual builds like that, I would share them otherwise.

The Golem is one of those tools that imo is horribly inefficient for getting realistic DPS figures.
I was in the arena mere days ago testing out some changes I made to one of my builds and I could not find any option to artificially max out my sigil stacks which was largely the reason I was in there.
I wasn't willing to spawn multiple golems and kill them to hit that cap either.
It also got a bit buggy on me as well, when I tried adding some conditions to trigger some traits for some reason the golem became highly resistant to my physical damage.. no idea why but even after completely resetting it the bug persisted :S 

I'm really not a fan of that golem tbh, we need something a lot better and more customisable to give more accurate DPS calcs.
3rd party software remains the only real efficient way of doing this sadly.

52 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I'm not pushing meta or telling people what they can or can't do/should or shouldn't do.  If you follow what I do here that is not my thing.  I do solo play and I got started doing buildcraft of my own and sharing it with others specifically because of the lack of good information on this sort of thing.

Apologies if you thought I was accusing you of pushing metas, I wasn't implying you personally were doing that just that a lot of people tend to do it and personally I consider it to have an overly negative impact on the game.

52 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

So again, all I'm asking for here is some context.  If we can shed some light on that other players can benefit by using what they learn here.  If, however, the goal is to maintain our power fantasy and rabidly defend it against objectivity, I don't think we're helping anyone.

My only real argument was that there are places in the game for gear sets like soldiers.. one such example being with the Necro profession due to their superb ability to get around the need for direct precision stat investment.

I'm a huge fan of stuff like that in build craft largely because it opens the doors for stat sets like Soldiers to really shine on a specific class like that.

I'm actually very very excited for the new Dragon's Stat set coming in EoD as well for the same reason I like Soldiers gear on them, I expect Necros are going to get exceptional use from that stat set.

In case you are unaware, Dragon's stats will provide large increases in Power and Ferocity and minor increases in Vitality and Precision.
Imo this set is just made for Necromancers, especially Reapers who will probably benefit from it the most.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this set becomes the highest power DPS stat combo for Necromancer, with Necro's capable of easily hitting well above 2K ferocity in shroud, with 100% crit chance.. even on solo builds.
 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[AliamRationem.5172]

40 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I would say that for a lot of people that "high enough is high enough" statement you made is very very true.
My only real issue with people on the criticism side of these kinds of arguments (I don't specifically mean you just to clarify) is the close mindedness they often have for anything outside of accepted metas.

I just can't stand the common attitudes some people have like "if it's not top tier DPS, it's useless and should be removed".. it's so tedious to hear that kind of thing over and over again, specially when it's just wrong.

In all honesty I don't know of anyone who uploads videos with unusual builds like that, I would share them otherwise.

The Golem is one of those tools that imo is horribly inefficient for getting realistic DPS figures.
I was in the arena mere days ago testing out some changes I made to one of my builds and I could not find any option to artificially max out my sigil stacks which was largely the reason I was in there.
I wasn't willing to spawn multiple golems and kill them to hit that cap either.
It also got a bit buggy on me as well, when I tried adding some conditions to trigger some traits for some reason the golem became highly resistant to my physical damage.. no idea why but even after completely resetting it the bug persisted :S 

I'm really not a fan of that golem tbh, we need something a lot better and more customisable to give more accurate DPS calcs.
3rd party software remains the only real efficient way of doing this sadly.

Apologies if you thought I was accusing you of pushing metas, I wasn't implying you personally were doing that just that a lot of people tend to do it and personally I consider it to have an overly negative impact on the game.

My only real argument was that there are places in the game for gear sets like soldiers.. one such example being with the Necro profession due to their superb ability to get around the need for direct precision stat investment.

I'm a huge fan of stuff like that in build craft largely because it opens the doors for stat sets like Soldiers to really shine on a specific class like that.

I'm actually very very excited for the new Dragon's Stat set coming in EoD as well for the same reason I like Soldiers gear on them, I expect Necros are going to get exceptional use from that stat set.

In case you are unaware, Dragon's stats will provide large increases in Power and Ferocity and minor increases in Vitality and Precision.
Imo this set is just made for Necromancers, especially Reapers who will probably benefit from it the most.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this set becomes the highest power DPS stat combo for Necromancer, with Necro's capable of easily hitting well above 2K ferocity in shroud, with 100% crit chance.. even on solo builds.
 

Lord Hizen is probably the most prominent example of a player that uploads detailed videos and build links for builds primarily focused on solo play in open world content.  When I first started playing there weren't many people doing this and finding information on how to play builds other than "go zerk or go home" was difficult.  Now you can look on sites like metabattle and find a variety of builds expressly for solo play including builds designed to be easier to play at a cost in performance.

That's the reason I press for context.  It was the lack of this kind of information that made it difficult to break out of the meta, which was driven primarily by players who concerned themselves with group play and speed runs.  The best you could usually get out of them was "It's open world.  Do whatever you want."  Here we're being told the same thing by players running Soldier stats and it's just as useless.

 

 

[AliamRationem.5172]

7 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

What in your opinion would you define as "low damage"
I'm not delusional, I know Solders isn't going to match full zerkers or anything but I will question others when it comes to their views on high and low damage, specially when there are some people in the game who have absurdly high standards on this stuff, despite even the hardest content in the game being balanced around the average player's dps figures.

It's actually not so simple..

For one thing not everyone has the ability or knows how to record, edit and upload video content.
Not everyone has an account on a video hosting site nor wants one. ( I certainly don't)
A lot of people strongly dislike downloading and running software they don't like, or trust as well and Gw2 has no effective and reliable way to calculate in game DPS.
Unless you are running 3rd party software there is no way the average player can give you a ballpark DPS range, making this pretty much necessary. 

For some people it is a lot to ask them to download 3rd party software they don't know how to use, and record video of themselves playing and then make a/multiple accounts on some service they don't want to be on so they can upload said video just so you can watch it.
Specially when you can just copy their builds and play them yourself to find out what DPS range they are capable of.

I'm not going to argue that.
Although how big that margin is compared to sufficient DPS vs content is something I would question to some degree.

I've mocked up 2 Necro builds on GW2 skills.

One is a Zerker stat Necro the other a Soldier stat necro.
Both builds have the same traits, same sigils, and food item.
Both builds have the same power stat at 3382 with 25 might.
Both builds have 100% crit chance providing the enemy they are fighting has 25 Vulnerability, otherwise it's 58% to the soldier, and 83% to the Zerker without either having Fury. (this being while they are in shroud too forgot to add this)
Neither builds have runes, secondary weapons, infusions nor any utility skills equipped.

The only difference between the two is that the Zerker build has around 920 more ferocity than the Soldier build which equates to an extra 64% more critical damage.
Meanwhile the Soldier build has 960 more Armour than the Zerker build and 9600 more health.
Soldier will also have a great deal more life force but I don't know how much for sure since the site doesn't calculate it.

That is not imo that big of a difference.
Yes Zerker is going to be doing more damage, but the Soldier is still going to be doing decent enough damage as well while having the benefit of being significantly more durable, which also means the Soldier is going to have to spend less time healing and dodging further increasing it's DPS uptime compared to the Zerker which will again do more overall damage in the fight but is at a much higher risk and will have to back off every now and again to recover, dropping it's dps uptime far more rapidly than the Soldier as well.

Personally I think both playstyles and stat sets have merit, although personally I would prefer to give up the 900 ferocity to get big gains in defence, but that's just my personal taste.

Also wanted to add, thanks for providing the build comparison.  That helps to know what we're talking about.  Ferocity is more important the more precision you have.  With 100% crit, every hit benefits from the critical damage increase.  That should mean the differences are significant.  This is also a best-case scenario for a class that can trait to make up for not having precision.  I think you're right that Dragon will greatly benefit a build like this.

[Teratus.2859]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Also wanted to add, thanks for providing the build comparison.  That helps to know what we're talking about.  Ferocity is more important the more precision you have.  With 100% crit, every hit benefits from the critical damage increase.  That should mean the differences are significant.  This is also a best-case scenario for a class that can trait to make up for not having precision.  I think you're right that Dragon will greatly benefit a build like this.

That's my hope yes, I can't wait to get my hands on that stat combo and start playing about with it 🙂 

I think it will be great for solo play and probably even more so for group play where you can reliably lean on a team to perma stack the Vulnerability for Decimate Defences extra 50% crit chance as well as keep your 25 stacks of might up, fury and alacrity on top of that to cap out the crit chance and damage output.

Invest in damage modifiers on Sigils and traits and Reaper is probably going to hit like a truck.
But we'll see when the combo comes out 😄
Necro's definitely the first class i'll be trying it on that's for sure.
 

[Stx.4857]

I don't see too much of a point to chiming in here but I will say that using a Necro to demonstrate why soldiers gear "isn't that bad" isn't a great example, because I honestly can't think of another spec that gets a whopping 50% crit from a master trait, and an incredible 40% critical damage from GM traits.  Suffice to say soldiers synergizes much better with Reaper than anything else.

 

Even for warrior, you would be better off mixing cavalier with knights to get the same armor as soldiers but you don't really gain much from going so high on HP.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

4 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

I don't see too much of a point to chiming in here but I will say that using a Necro to demonstrate why soldiers gear "isn't that bad" isn't a great example, because I honestly can't think of another spec that gets a whopping 50% crit from a master trait, and an incredible 40% critical damage from GM traits.  Suffice to say soldiers synergizes much better with Reaper than anything else.

 

Even for warrior, you would be better off mixing cavalier with knights to get the same armor as soldiers but you don't really gain much from going so high on HP.

I used Elementalist for my comparison.  Funny bit of trivia, here, there's actually a sweet spot where Berserkers is most effective over Soldiers, and that is when Berserkers hits 100% crit chance.  If you compare this to the 54.2% crit chance of a Soldier set, you'll get 59.1%  of the damage output compared to Berserker.  That... is as low as it goes, unless the profession has special critical damage modifiers.  From there, capping out Soldier's crit chance will net you 72.1% of the damage output.

In any practical sense, this is a bit of a trivial point.  Reason being that a Berserker build capable of hitting 145% crit chance isn't going to build themselves that way.  They'll take different traits.  It's only Soldier and Valkyrie builds where stacking absurd levels of trait-based crit chance is meaningful.  

[Teratus.2859]

8 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

I don't see too much of a point to chiming in here but I will say that using a Necro to demonstrate why soldiers gear "isn't that bad" isn't a great example, because I honestly can't think of another spec that gets a whopping 50% crit from a master trait, and an incredible 40% critical damage from GM traits.  Suffice to say soldiers synergizes much better with Reaper than anything else.

 

Even for warrior, you would be better off mixing cavalier with knights to get the same armor as soldiers but you don't really gain much from going so high on HP.

Fair response, but that was also kind of my point in my own comments as well.

Some classes are just more capable of bringing out the potential of certain stat combos that others classes cannot.
I consider this so be extremely good for the game and I want to see more of it with future elite specs etc.

Regarding Soldiers specifically, it is a stat combo i've used for a long time on Necromancer which is why I'll defend it.
Specially when for a long time I have seen people unfairly trash the stat combo as garbage, worthless and as mentioned before even calling people bad at the game for using it.
All those statements in my eyes are horribly untrue and bigoted.

It is true that it does synergise more with Reaper but it's also usable well on core Necro as well if you run accuracy sigils, get some precision from runes and take Death Perception in the Soul Reaping line.
Can still make it work that way it's just not as efficient as it is with Reaper.

I believe people should play around more with less popular stat combos just to see what they can come up with even if it is only on a single class.
Another build I personally really enjoy playing is a Zealots Daredevil, which is a stat combo that I never had any reason to use before but really wanted to play around with on something.
Having a scrappy melee thief that can actually sustain itself in combat made the class so much more fun to me.
Honestly if I hadn't made that build, I'd likely still have nothing positive to say about the thief class at all, just because I never liked how it played in Gw2, I never liked how pathetically squishy it was in PvE and my experiences with it in competitive content have never been positive lol

Edited February 21, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[Stx.4857]

Thief isn't squishy once you get the hang of evades.  It is also one of the only classes that has a damage conversion into HP effect.  I can survive easier on my Thief than I can on my engineer just because of the near infinite dodges, built in evade attacks, and healing via dealing damage.  

 

I'm going to be honest, I didn't read the whole thread because I saw it was from two years ago.  I personally feel soldiers is pretty bad.  I think that for 99% of builds, there are better defensive stat options including cavalier and knights for higher Hp classes like warrior.  Or celestial for classes that have good scaling on their heals.  

 

That's not to say don't like fun builds.  The warrior build posted earlier using a bunch of crit traits and daredevil runes is cool and creative.  But at the end of the day, I'll take a cavalier/knights warrior build that has more armor, more crit damage, more crit, the same power, but less HP.  And then you don't need to build for crit traits, you can build for sustain or consistent damage.