Soldier School - Learn to be Useful!

[felixng2016]

Arcadia: Antag,Cheer, DS, Support skill

I honestly don't like the tank and off tank skillsets. Mirror Guard and HB is a waste of a slot 95 times out of 100. The only thing I recommend it for is that snowman quest arcadia where a set like: Mirror Guard, Antag, BS, filler, Intrepid is legit.
No real soldier will take enough dmg to need those skills. Even arcadia tickles me dmg wise.

As for the new moveset sure it will help keep others alive sort of but you do joke damage, its very cost heavy and you can't fit a support skill. Also it makes you very likely to die especially if hb is dispelled, since you will take way more damage and dmg taken is based on squishies bad defense.

At that rate just go double cleric its way better in terms of making people live with slightly less dmg but really a good solo cleric should be able to keep everyone alive provided that their defenses and defensive procs just don't flat out stink and people are using pl, bal and mr correctly.

Best to have a soldier that can draw aggro that can provide dmg and utility at the same time. For ex: I can do 400k x 2 with fire element stacking and full buffs ds on wind arcadia.

Also 2 soldiers on one side is great for tanking. Cleric is generally tanky so its cleric + 2 soldiers usually taking the dmg.

[Mirabelle]

felixng2016 Oh my, Felix. We disagree on many points here! Let's see if we can find out where we differ.

I think the best place to start is for us to understand each others builds better. I suspect that you may have a different perspective and a different experience from many newer players. (Meaning, I think you might be OP and you can probably run almost whatever you want when questing x3) May I ask what your cost setup, stats, and defensive procs are?

[HotMessExpress]

A good debuff soldier can negate the need for tanking in some quests and make the healing job trivially easy. Potentially enough that you could replace the healer with more dps and let monsters handle heals

[felixng2016]

Its not really a matter of how high your gs is. A properly built soldier shouldn't have problems tanking so they shouldn't be using hb, mirror guard since they are slot +cost wasting moves + bring hb gives you a high boot chance anyway. The exception is snowman. Of course if your using 7/x/x/7 or some kind of ridiculously bad build or your a fake soldier you might need those skills but I am referring to soldiers that are at least somewhat decent. A good cost allocation is 5-7/7/7/x mostly because monsters don't get any stat bonuses, personally I use 7/7/7/3.

Now debuff moves still have their place. Vanquish is very viable for arcadia and potentially very useful if players are squishy as heck.

Possible setup: Vanquish, utility, two out of antag,cheer, charisma, divine smash

Personally the only arcadia where I feel vanquish would really shine is the light one which hits like a truck.

Even fairly squishy people can survive other ones with a good healer and people using mr, pl, balance at the correct time. Honestly the longer arcadia drags out the greater the chances of a screw up so yes although debuffs are good its also good to have good dps so you can beat enemies up quickly.

[Chisaku]

Well, I finally found the time to read this myself and I have a few criticisms personally from playing Soldier myself.

I agree with Fenix that debuff Soldiers shouldn't be needed in some quests, proper Tank built Soldiers (x/7/7/x) shouldn't have any problem eating damage especially if they're smart in their usages. Personally I prefer to have a hybrid "Offtank" as you call it.

With the introduction of Phoenix Swords, I think you can update this a little bit because Defender Testament allows BattleShout to be dropped for an extra utility, mostly in Arcadia runs I'll be running 2 Utility (Usually Mass and PL)/Cheer (Charisma's cooldown and small chance of damage negation with a small window doesn't sound appealing for 5 cost during a crucial boss fight sometimes)/Antagonize/Swift Smash(can be interchanged with Trip or Intrepid if applicable). This way Soldiers with Defender Testament can draw more Hate stacks from the procs while still applying decent damage and having utility roles.

[LaconicLeaf]

Mirabelle Defender Testament is your typical Physical Testament, but it also gains more AP damage the lower your HP is, kinda like Blood Oath. For every 5% HP you're missing, you gain +5 AP, up to a maximum of +50, so it can be a +90 AP proc when at <= 50% HP.

On top of that, it also boosts your Aggro for 10 seconds, which I think is a Hate buff, so that makes Battleshout less needed.

(But on a side note... I think they should buff Dual Impact and Rage Slash so they get a +40 AP damage boost if you have any number of Hate stacks active or something like that)

[Chisaku]

@Mirabelle
Yes Defender Testament applies Hate on yourself when procced, it seems to trigger off regardless if the attack lands or not.

[Mirabelle]

Chisaku LaconicLeaf Aha. Thank you for the information! nn

[HotMessExpress]

Perhaps my opinions are colored by previous mmo experience, but in my opinion reliable mitigation is always better than soaking unnecessary damage. This is why I advocate for mirror guard and almost never for hb.

Against strong monsters that don't constantly purify or buff (enough to outpace debuffs) I think that reducing their output is generally an ideal strategy. In UL there's no way to control party placement; it's fine for a sturdy soldier to survive, but adjacent members are still taking heavy damage in some fights. There are also full party stat-based attacks that need to be accounted for. I'd rather see attacks bouncing everywhere for 4 digit damage than have to worry because a mage ended up next to the soldier.

This is a cleric's opinion, though. I realize that vanquish is not a sexy ability, numbers-wise, and I'd probably want to carry antag or dual if I was soldier by identity

[Mirabelle]

I agree that Mirror Guard should be preferred over Heaven's Breath in most circumstances! :3

However, if you think of it a certain way, Heaven's Breath is also damage mitigation. It's just a static amount of damage mitigation instead of a %-based like Mirror. The amount it reduces is equal to the amount of temporary health gained (which can be very large if you are damaged and get some Heart of Vitality procs)

Heaven's Breath has a few situational advantages over Mirror Guard:
1) Still works against Piercing (reflect-ignoring) attacks or Reflect-removing effects
2) Synergizes with Devotion/Loyalty and Regen effects
3) Acts as a huge heal with Heart of Vitality procs
4) When the effect is hard-removed, you reset to your normal health (which is usually full)
5) Can be cast as a reaction instead of pre-emptively

One big thing that Heaven's Breath can do that Mirror Guard cannot is be used as a reaction to a full-party HP% attack. If you proc Heart of Vitality at low health, you basically reset to full health. If for some reason the Cleric doesn't have Dignity ready for that attack, they can ignore you and heal the rest of the party with a 3-heal and a single heal.

Essentially, Heaven's Breath can be used skillfully if you use it as you're being heavily damaged instead of wasting cost on it by using it pre-emptively. (Many inexperienced players do the latter.)

[Mirabelle]

Chisaku felixng2016

I think I know why we have a difference of a opinion. >u<

You both have your IDs posted, so I looked up your profiles. (I hope you don't mind me posting a little for the explanation...) You are both at the current level cap (135) with over 260k GS. As you mentioned, I think you both have Defender Testament procs and I suspect you probably have multlple Reflection XL gears equipped. You are both very experienced, endgame-level Soldiers with powerful gear.

Imagine for a moment that you're level 110. You have significantly lower max HP, and you have 1 less gear slot to work with. Can you still run Arcadia content?
Maybe you can. Now imagine that you're an F2P player that started playing 1-2 months ago. You don't have any Reflection XL gear. You have a smattering of different defensive skills, and you don't have any XXL weapons or any of the latest weapons with fancy procs. Your best utility monster is Avsaris. Can you still run Arcadia content?

If it's hard to imagine being without your gear, imagine that Ateam adds a new quest tier difficulty above Arcadia. In this difficulty, enemies hit so hard that if your Reflection procs ever fail to go off against monsters, you will take 80%-90% of your normal max HP in damage. Or possibly get OHKO'd on occasion. Non-Soldiers have a very high chance to get OHKO'd. If the enemies attack while they are buffed, you will die if only one of your defensive procs goes off. The boss has a full-party attack that has a chance to OHKO everyone in the party if it's not debuffed. And monsters get a chance to attack multiple times before the party can DPS them down. This should sound pretty scary. And this is what Paragon and Arcadia level content feels like to players that aren't at your power level and don't have your monster utility options.

Please read my post here for a longer explanation, but I think character level and gear matter a lot for what strategy you need to clear a quest.
<Quest Difficulty>: <Strategy Needed To Clear>
---
Very Easy: No Cleric needed. Just burst it down and heal with unison if needed.
Easy: Cleric and 4 Burst DPS players.
Medium: Cleric and DPS using Party-Support abilities.
Hard; Cleric, Tank/Offtank, and DPS using Party-Support abilities.
Very Hard: Premade party with everything planned, including abilities and unisons.

Felix and Chisaku, I think you are at a level of strength where you can treat Arcadia content as a Medium quest. In my mind, the set mentioned earlier (Cheer, Antagonize, Dual Sword, Party-Support) is a Burst set with a Party-Support move. I really believe that if you used a Tank or Offtank set with your current gear, you would be able to take on content even more difficult than Arcadia. Unfortunately, this content does not exist.

For newer players or players with less efficient builds, these Tank and Offtank sets should make clearing difficult content (content difficult for them) much, much safer.

[felixng2016]

Chisaku felixng2016

I think I know why we have a difference of a opinion. >u<

You both have your IDs posted, so I looked up your profiles. (I hope you don't mind me posting a little for the explanation...) You are both at the current level cap (135) with over 260k GS. As you mentioned, I think you both have Defender Testament procs and I suspect you probably have multlple Reflection XL gears equipped. You are both very experienced, endgame-level Soldiers with powerful gear.

Imagine for a moment that you're level 110. You have significantly lower max HP, and you have 1 less gear slot to work with. Can you still run Arcadia content?
Maybe you can. Now imagine that you're an F2P player that started playing 1-2 months ago. You don't have any Reflection XL gear. You have a smattering of different defensive skills, and you don't have any XXL weapons or any of the latest weapons with fancy procs. Your best utility monster is Avsaris. Can you still run Arcadia content?

If it's hard to imagine being without your gear, imagine that Ateam adds a new quest tier difficulty above Arcadia. In this difficulty, enemies hit so hard that if your Reflection procs ever fail to go off against monsters, you will take 80%-90% of your normal max HP in damage. Or possibly get OHKO'd on occasion. Non-Soldiers have a very high chance to get OHKO'd. If the enemies attack while they are buffed, you will die if only one of your defensive procs goes off. The boss has a full-party attack that has a chance to OHKO everyone in the party if it's not debuffed. And monsters get a chance to attack multiple times before the party can DPS them down. This should sound pretty scary. And this is what Paragon and Arcadia level content feels like to players that aren't at your power level and don't have your monster utility options.

Please read my post here for a longer explanation, but I think character level and gear matter a lot for what strategy you need to clear a quest.
<Quest Difficulty>: <Strategy Needed To Clear>
---
Very Easy: No Cleric needed. Just burst it down and heal with unison if needed.
Easy: Cleric and 4 Burst DPS players.
Medium: Cleric and DPS using Party-Support abilities.
Hard; Cleric, Tank/Offtank, and DPS using Party-Support abilities.
Very Hard: Premade party with everything planned, including abilities and unisons.

Felix and Chisaku, I think you are at a level of strength where you can treat Arcadia content as a Medium quest. In my mind, the set mentioned earlier (Cheer, Antagonize, Dual Sword, Party-Support) is a Burst set with a Party-Support move. I really believe that if you used a Tank or Offtank set with your current gear, you would be able to take on content even more difficult than Arcadia. Unfortunately, this content does not exist.

For newer players or players with less efficient builds, these Tank and Offtank sets should make clearing difficult content (content difficult for them) much, much safer.

I already stated why a tank set is not good. There will never be a case where I struggle to tank damage with hb aside from against real players or bot players(snowman). Why is that? Arcadia was introduced in jp when they reached the level 150 cap so in reality it was built for stronger players. Currently arcadia mobs are powerful enough to easily one shot other classes even with fairly good defenses if they are not careful or screw up or don't have gb or buffs on especially light arcadia. If monsters actually reached that level of strength to potentially one shot me then other classes would die with a sneeze and you would need 4 pally + 1 cleric parties. I think you are underestimating arcadia here I still see lots of high gs players die, not me unless I do something stupid but squishier classes and squishier soldiers.
Another reason why hb isn't useful. Single target tanking isn't a really a thing, monsters use multi-target moves and you can't draw aggro 100% of the time anyway and soldiers shouldn't need that extra max hp.

Level 110 should never be running arcadia content to begin with so I am not sure what your trying to say with that. The bare minimum to be useful is level 120 with 220k gs(being very very generous with that number).

And never have I used hb in my questing set even when I was low level. Soldiers who run hb get the boot and understandably so, its a selfish skill that a true soldier doesn't need unless its for colo or gb. Its not a matter of gs or gears its not a good ability to use for questing.

Vanquish is semi useful but takes up a slot and has a lot of cost for what it does, sword clash isn't really useful at all at this point. Its not really needed with debuff monsters. If your soldier doesn't do that much dmg you are better off using two utility skills, antag and cheer at that point then like chi said. And f2p have plenty of good monsters at their disposal.

F2p can easily get SSR collab monsters if they try, nemain, bull, 30 cost and 34 cost monsters, christmas lilith, and more. There really isn't an excuse to not have useful monsters besides: Oh i just want to selfishly stack the highest cost monsters I can with the best stats. Useful mon>>>slight stat loss.

[Mirabelle]

Your statements are absolutely true when applied to you. Your recommended set makes a lot of sense given your level, stats, and build.

I gave those examples because I'm trying to get you to empathize with players that are weaker than you. You are strong enough that you never need a Self-Support move when questing. The parties you join are probably strong enough to be safe most of the time with zero or minimal debuffing of enemies.

This is not the case for everyone. Not everyone can do what you do. People may miss events for various reasons. (Even I don't have an SSR collab monster)

[HotMessExpress]

Vanquish is semi-useful until you can proc it

[Rezorrose]

So I looked over my gear and I'm running 5/5/5/5 and I'm on Lv 106 is ok or should I try to fix it

[Mirabelle]

I recommend using some reset scrolls to take just enough cost out of monsters that you are able to equip a 6th weapon and 6th body armor. You could take even more out for a 6th helmet, if you can afford it. :3

Or if your helmets aren't very good, you could take points of out those instead of monsters. This will make you a little less tanky and a little more offensive.

Or you could grind to 120 to unlock the 7th slot, and then reset with that 7th slot in mind.

[Sircrow]

I've tried it. Doesn't really work for me. Instead I use the one 6b mentions and it works great for me on paragon level content. Not having enough cost to draw aggro and not doing enough damage are the problems I frequently find with your build sets. As a burst tank hybrid, I get more enemies aggro'd on me, and I do above average damage.

[Mirabelle]

If I'm understanding correctly, your issues with the Tank/Offtank sets are that they don't do enough damage and run out of cost too quickly.

The mindsets of Tank and Offtank are not about doing damage. They do some, but the primary focus is to help the party survive. If the quest is easy enough that you only need to worry about dealing damage, then a Burst set or Burst/Tank like 6b works fine! (I prefer Burst over BurstTank because if the quest is easy, you don't need Battleshout or HB.)

As for having enough Cost with a Tank set, keep in mind that you only have two spammable abilities: Battleshout and Intrepid. Antagonize actually eats a lot of cost if you use it on cooldown. If you only use Antagonize to fill the gaps between Battleshout's Hate buff, you will gain plenty of cost while retaining enemy focus over non-Soldier classes. Early in the quest I actually like to purposely whiff Antagonize on an enemy that's about to die in order to gain the Hate buff without spending any cost. Your Self-Support move should only be used when absolutely necessary. (Often I only cast Mirror/HB twice per quest... usually at the boss fight). I also use one or two Cost Recovery weapons, so those may help you out as well. If you play slow and steady you'll find you can throw in extra Antagonizes when your cost is running high.

There's a similar cost mentality with Offtank--only bother with Vanquish when it's needed or you have extra cost.

I hope you give those sets a try again some time!

[Zakrella]

You can indeed run 6b into arcadia as wel,l though if you are just coming into it I would recommend you use cheer instead of EE and deal with your cost using uni.

As for battle shout I feel that you should treat this just as you would treat any other form of utility, is it required to deal with a specific boss/mob mechanic? Certain bosses (sorry I can only think of Benki off the top of my head) stack debuffs onto just one target which will be the tank more often then not. In another scenario battle shout maybe needed to quickly establish aggro in a quest that starts with multiple strong enemies. The point is, this slot should go to whichever support ability is most appropriate for the quest.

I feel that the beauty of the 6b build is that when used by an experienced soldier who is:
- aware of the mechanics that need to dealt with in the quest,
- aware of what their party is capable of,
- able to manage their aggro,
- able to manage their cost
- and able to handle the damage (whether they have to adjust their gear beforehand or not)

it allows them to do their job and to contribute to the groups damage (which is great because some bosses really do put your group's DPS against the clock).
I wouldn't recommend this build to a beginner but at the same time I would not dismiss it as a non-viable way to play in a guide.

-Side Note-
You can totally clear arcadia under lvl 120 if you organise yourself and some friends/guildies, having a game plan and splitting the responsibility between a group of people can make a goal considerably easier to accomplish.

[McKraken]

Now that I have a new phone and can post again.
I believe I have a good perspective.
I'm a tank specialist. I've been playing the class since the 8o's
Ive been playing ul with my main as tank for two years this October. I was lucky enough to be a baby in a top 200 guild a few rounds ago.
It's a great guide and it helped me evolve but I have some thoughts. I just came up as a f2p tank and im about to hit 120. As a f2p guy you have to spend some gems to shift cost around to suit what gear you happen to get or farm for. I was running. 6/3/6/5 and that was versatile.
Ant and dual being my bread and butter. Loyalty for gb.
I ran hb as a panic button or the paly heal. Both way to cost heavy. Seems I usually run ee to keep up with aggro against some of you whales. I ALWAYS spec for the quest. Now aggro mitigation is dmg mitigation pure and simple. The last colab we just had was a prime example.
I could take a score hit and pop intrepid at the start of every round and save millions in dmg collectively for my party. Just a free taunt and pure defense while the party sings the praises of the 185 tank they were nervous about. For that build and I'm close to settling on it. But i get a new slot at 120 so...the build is...6/3/6/6.
I have more versatility now to spec for so many different events. So for the nine man recently? I run that 6/3/6/6 set up. Ee, mirror, divine and vanquish.
If i had time i would debuff. But a full set of reflect armour and stacked reflect procs...I would hit at least a 5-10 (i know it caps) mirror and sit stunned while reflecting way more dmg back then I ever could swinging a sword fully debuffed. I'm talking the lvl of dmg the dps was doing i was popping 100-160 k in reflect when he would do his chain attack. Whole party is whiped, I'm at 10k hp with a lvl 7 mirror up, the boss is max buff. I would take ten hits with my hp under 15k while hitting him for 100k a pop per chain attack. Again...that little 185 f2p tank you were skeptical about in the paragon lobby. The sweet spot for me was hitting 51k mdef with all the refleck armour.

[Shadow_Umbreon]

Looking back at this thread, I don't think you put how to build soldier class, isn't it 5/8/8/5 or smth?

[Verdungo]

My alt soldier is 7/7/7/3. Defenses alone dont cut it anymore.

[HotMessExpress]

Yeah max armor and weapons for antag/dual/etc. Max weapons and monsters for rage/impact/etc.

Imo

[Chaz]

I find that my 8584 build makes use of all the skills quite nicely.

[psydeus]

I just got around the forums lately so i have some questions.

I'm originally a mage(180k gs, 80k matk, lvl 106). and i wanted to make it a soldier when needed simply because the items i got on the previous spawns are mostly not that useful for mage(tons of physical testament swords, the sword that gives swift smash, sword with brave blade(physical testament with added effect of increasing ability power of skills like divine smash), and 2 SSR collab blue monsters(Rider and the magical girl that gives counter heal buff). so I thought this would be nice to play with soldier for a bit.

My question now is this, my mage is build with 6/4/4/6 (going 7/4/4/7 for the mage) at the moment. Can I still make a somewhat decent soldier with that cost allocation? My soldier gets to 175k gs(50k atk, 67k def and is not royal protector yet). If so, what role should it be? pretty sure i can't go full tank because of my helm and armor cost though.

[SubZer0]

Dont take it from me bc I haven’t played soldier in months but...
If you want to use antagonize+dual sword cost allocate and go tankier
If ya wanna go antagonize/rage slash+ dual impact
Keep the build ig but I don’t think 8 armors total will cut it

[Harukage]

Hey! For all of you that don't want to read the entire guide (it's super in depth, and I recommend you do), I've condensed it into this smaller guide. It retains almost all of the info, just simplified.