looking for advise on weapons

[rubyismycat]

ok im doing a soldier arch militant build i have not yet chosen which weapon to specialise in as i have been trying deliberately not to min max but to go for a well rounded very intelligent character with high skills but now i need to decide what ranged weapon to use

[Morgian]

Best in game: bolters - especially the one on tier 29 with the Fellowship, but there are good ones to be found all around. Soldiers excel with them.

Next best: deadly drukhari rifle in chapter 3 (unique)

Not sure about: heavy stubber (great against mass mobs, sucks against bosses)

Third: laser weapons with burst; some of them are not bad, and especially in act 1 better than bolters, when you have only Argenta's piece of junk

Besides the various burst weapons you can use sniper rifles, which do way less damage, but have greater reach.
Flamers, plasma and melta weapons are all OK, but only as secondary armament because they suck in range and magazine size. You usually bring your main weapon in slot one and put a melee weapon and a handgun in the other. Until you get to the point where you can fire twohanded guns in melee. Argenta can pick Flensing, which makes flamers, plasma and melta better against many opponents. If your soldier has access, it is not a bad idea to have (you want more versatility anyway).

Avoid melee like the plague. The time for swords ended when we invented guns, and that is for a reason. A gunner needs merely to point at the enemy and shoot him. The swordsman must cross the battlefield to deliver a blow. Warriors have Charge, which can help, but soldiers don't (unless run-and-gun works with melee weapons). You also don't get the defensive traits of a warrior. That comes into play when the enemy strikes back, since melee attacks from the NPCs are often more dangerous than their shots. Often, not always. Snipers and the hellbeast will teach you that :)
I am thinking here of act 3, where a khymera ripped Pascal in two in one attack. Or the tentacle monster in the 3rd arena fight wiped the party because I was too stupid to check its abilities and positioned too close.
Going into melee will also expose you to the nasty effects some monsters have upon dying. Some dissolve into poison clouds, some can set you to burn, others get a final blow at you that hits like a truck.

About pistols and other handguns:
Their range is low (like 6) and their armor penetration typically zero. They make very bad main weapons. Either you go full melee, then it makes sense to keep one or two, when you have an attack but nobody next to you, or you go for rifles with better range (at least 10).

Other gear
The only weapon enhancers are for burst weapons. Two negate recoil, three increase the RoF, one of which is ridiculous (BS/2). There is a pair of boots that can grant +2 movement for a kill (25%), which are helpful.
No matter what you pick, any item increasing to hit and crit chance is to be considered.

Armor
Dodge is best, since who doesn't get hit takes no damage. Parry is good, but works only against melee. Armor is next, but you have to decide where your breakpoint is between reducing dodge and having armor. Deflection is nice, but hard to get. Typically not worth the consideration, as fights last only 1-2 rounds. But if you want to follow new paths you won't be able to do that. Or I will be very much astonished.

[rubyismycat]

Thanks

[Neoz]

Originally posted by rubyismycat:

ok im doing a soldier arch militant build i have not yet chosen which weapon to specialise in as i have been trying deliberately not to min max but to go for a well rounded very intelligent character with high skills but now i need to decide what ranged weapon to use

crimelord operative->assassin use a sniper rifle, forge world for Int to Fellowship skills. You can do this with Arch militant, but you aren't getting any real combat benefit from your Int. Up to you.

Arch militants are really great at skills outside demolition.

Now, the *best* weapon in the game for arch militant is the heavy bolter from Ryzza in act 4+

The 2nd best, and easier one to get is the calibrated heavy stubber. It only costs 1 AP for a burst of 12 rounds. You can easily boost the base damage through master tacticians/versatility stacking.

Melee is great, don't listen to nay-sayers a sword and pistol build works well on anything below unfair, and can honestly probably get through on unfair. Run and Gun Works with melee attacks, (and psychic attacks)

Also, if you want FUN and flavor, while still being viable. Heavy flamer+Heavy Melta are amazing weapons for that. Burn the Heretic, Purge the unclean. You can clear entire mobs of enemies with either, and melta's work well enough against tough enemies, since you can easily stack crit damage upwards of like 400%. It WON'T provide the best boss killer, but it suffices, snowballs off killing mobs (which it does better than burst weaponry IMO), and oozes flavor.

[Morgian]

Quick add-on:
- I used swords at the start as they were the most efficient weapons then.
- I switched to guns somewhere in chapter 1 when I realized that it was way faster to shoot the enemy instead of running after them.
- Be wary of area attacks like flamers and Cassia's gaze. There are times they don't work. I have flamed across enemies and they were not hit. I did not see the potential damage on their bars either. Cassia is trickier. Her gaze is a cone and on flat ground it works fine. But when looking up or down it hits only a line and not as a cone (marked in red on the ground). And there are many places with elevations, ramps and stairs.

The most important weapon stats are RoF and armor penetration. The rest matters not so much for a soldier-AM, as your versatility kicks in.

[Gessh]

Dual pistols are 100% a viable strategy even on unfair if you go operative they don't burst as hard as a bolter but the damage ramp up fairly quickly you would want a drukhari/aledari burst pistol and a single shot stubber/revolver in your off hand to not overburden yourself on needing ap.

[Kixaster]

It's genuinely funny seeing "build" topics coming up day after day. People talking about how they don't want to minmax then proceed to debate för hours over how to best optimise their "melee warrior" build then, finally, about 2 days later they come across one of the admittedly trickier encounters so they spend an afternoon spamming the steam forum with how X fight is literally impossible, unbeatable, stupid, literally worst game ever, everyone who beat that fight is either lying or copied some build he found online and for good measure throwing in that good old "owlcat forcing sweaty, boring minmax builds *again* meanwhile you're sitting there, patiently listening to the exact same rant going on about how their one-handed sword using strength based melee warrior literally couldn't even hit the enemy, meanwhile his supposedly big, tanky warrior dies from only just 2 burst salvos in the face from 3 cells away, complete trash game and you genuinely understand and can relate to his struggle but even with the best of intentions and endless patience, you can't help slowly but steadily disengahing mentally as you still catch some things he says about how operatives are completely useless, he doesnt even know what they do but clearly nothing... how he is a strength based melee warrior, clearly you must be actually, clinically dumb if you seriously think his epic legendary swordsman will sit behind cover for even half a round... and for what?? To not literally die before getting into melee range ??? yeah sure maybe cowering behind a fence for about 15 seconds did help you survive long enoughj, you officially make it into the 2nd round, sure, but now friends and family all think you're a ♥♥♥♥♥, and yeah I mean they're not completely wrong, you *are* horribly designed and janky and slow. And people are really trying to have fun, they try, they really want to like you but even the most patient people I've ever known, some of whom literally moved out into some forest and spent months there just surviving, alone. But even these people, with you the best they can do is "barely a week" before dropping you completely and ultimately coming to the same conclusion as everybody else: the more time we spend together, the less confident I we'd feel that this wasn't some eastern european tax writeoff scheme.

[REhorror]

Two words: 'eavy Bolter.

And praise the Emprah!

[Gracey Face]

The best build is to have cassia tell people to shoot things harder.

[mortuavenamur]

I have been running a Sanctic Psyker Soldier/Arch Militant with Bolt Weapon Expert.
Weapons are a Heavy Bolter in one slot, and a Bolt Pistol/Force Weapon in the other.

Argenta I have as a Melta weapon specialist... Meltagun/Multi-Melta (depending on situation) and an Inferno Pistol/Power Sword.

[Morgian]

If this is your first go at it, you will love the bolters when they slowls but surely grow from not-very-good to take-another-4k-to the-face weapons. Admittedly, the 4k salvo was at the very end of the final encounter with a fully buffed Argenta at 24 versatility (or thereabouts).

When building your character do not forget to give him heavy weapon proficiency, breaking point, overpower and heavy gunner. Not only are the top bolters heavy weapons, the talents help with all other heavy weapons too, which you can employ on your way there.

[REhorror]

Originally posted by Gessho:

Dual pistols are 100% a viable strategy even on unfair if you go operative they don't burst as hard as a bolter but the damage ramp up fairly quickly you would want a drukhari/aledari burst pistol and a single shot stubber/revolver in your off hand to not overburden yourself on needing ap.

I'm actually trying to get my GS to be Creed-tier, dual Bolt pistols when I get to Exemplar-tier, let's see if I can make it.

[xmixaplix]

Originally posted by Morgian:

Avoid melee like the plague.

Me as a Commissar: You will charge if I tell you o,0 *cast Bring It Down on you* <.<