So is soldier always the best 2nd class for melee builds?

[Hurricane]

Passive buffs to da and oa along with hp buff passive res and regen.

Seems nothing comes close bar the caster class with its shield and passives. I mean 22% damage absorb should be pretty good end game? But im not sure if the armor absorb and % buffs of the soldier dont out power that?

I now have a 70 sham all sham but bow hes struggling in elite. Tbh sham is the most op class to single class with... insane skill tree and primal strike build until 60ish is super op. But after that he just doesnt get much oa so cant hit crap and u need go savage

I already have 3 soldier melee builds lol but it seems soldier mixes in with everything... and i dont even have a shield build yet!!! Which ofc ill want soldier :/ derp

[Azunai]

soldier offers decent stat boosts, but i'd only consider the mastery mandatory for physical damage builds.

shaman, inquisitor or arcanist also bring decent generic bonuses and are well suited as secondary masteries.

and demo and occultist also have some nice widely compatible skills, though both are a bit more biased

[Cthulhu's Email Server]

Oathkeeper works very well with any class also.

[Drakkar Calethiel]

Originally posted by Hazy:

Demo is great melee secondary.

Soldier and Demo is a beast, tons of fire and physical damage! Also awesome to play.

Currently playing Warlord (Oathkeeper + Soldier) on Ultimate. I'm now 55 and so far it makes fun to play.
OP: You are right, Soldier mixes well with pretty much everything.

[Hurricane]

I dont own the last dlc so cant do the oath boi.

Im building a lighting sham atm but lacking oa. I wanna stay lightning so thinking soldier will just boost me while i stay tanky and able to crit.

I feel demo is more ranged focussed than melee but will take another look at it. Most the gear i find with demo has ranged weapons

[Dranolth]

You'll continue to struggle until you pick a secondary mastery because you have way less stat points than you should.

[Azunai]

occultist would be more suitable for a lightning build. curse of frailty (elemental rr includes lightning) and blood of dreeg are both pretty decent skills.

demo would also work better than soldier. flash bang is basically the same as increasing your OA (by lowering targets DA). and mines have resistance reduction vs. lightning damage. also blast shield and vindictive flame are both useful passives.

inquisitor could also work. storm box has similar DA shred as flash bang and you could use aura of censure as exclusive (imo much stronger than the shaman lightning buff). plus inqu. seal and word of renewal (both always useful to have)

[Hurricane]

Keep in mind i want to play 2 hand melee, not a caster build, only spell ill cast as i switched from primal spam is primal on cd and lightning totems but they seem to suck vrs bosses... literally useless do lightning totems ever scale to be worth while? they seem utterly useless

[Hurricane]

Okay so checking demo, it has 4 skills that i can use... it doesnt seem worth it :\

Soldier has like 14! Massive da and oa boost along with hp res armor and absorbtion

Arcanist has 11 skills, nowhere near as much boost as the soldier.

Necro has 7 but not very good ones.

I cant see any real argument to not use soldier? It literally turns you in to a beefy lightning boi and warcry debuffs res and damage of enemies so you do more AND take less damage... it has a 33% hp proc that basically keeps you alive along with all the other passive buffs.

It has a charge attack to speed around the map smashing things.

Am i missing something from the other classes? I just cant see why i would ever pick them over the soldier?

Remember im playing melee 2 hand, not a caster.

[SchnitzelTruck]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Am i missing something from the other classes? I just cant see why i would ever pick them over the soldier?

Remember im playing melee 2 hand, not a caster.

You're just inexperienced is all. Soldier would make my 5 most recent builds noticeably worse were I to take it.

Shaman + inquisitor primal strike is far better than shaman + soldier for example. It's not about how many skills a class has, it's about how useful they are.

[Childe Roland]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Okay so checking demo, it has 4 skills that i can use... it doesnt seem worth it :\

Blast Shield and Vindictive Flame/Ulzuin's Wrath are never useless and Demo has a fairly balanced mastery bar stat payoff (4,4,3) which makes it useful for most play-styles. Even if those are the only things you get from Demo, that means more points for your other mastery, which is good if you want to do a mostly single mastery build or have a bunch of skills that you want to use/are useful in the other mastery.

It's not great for everything but if you don't have a definite second mastery decided on, it's always something to consider, unless your doing a pet build, I guess.

In your case you'd also benefit from using Flame Touched, even without the second node, and either Thermite Mine (again just the base skill) or BWC w/ Agonizing Flames. And regarding your "don't want to play like a caster" thing both TM and BWC are over time effects that mean you won't be using them constantly, so you'll still be focusing on melee.

I'm not saying you should pick Demo, just that you shouldn't rush to rule it out.

Also, if you choose Soldier, I'd recommend getting at least one point in Wind Devil and several points in Raging Tempest for the resist reduction (possibly replacing Storm Totem with it), especially since it can be fairly strong if you power it up and the RR would probably be more helpful than ST. In fact, if you don't want to use WD, then I'd recommend either Demo or Inquisitor (Deadly Aim, Word of Renewal, Aura of Censure, maybe Horn of Gandarr) for RR skills.

[Hurricane]

Well wind devil is my resist debuff along with warcry it should be a good chunk then gear and devotion procs on top.

The soldier skills are all useful they all add something to help. Im capped already on the shaman skills that i can use for my build.

Im no longer playing primal strike although its one of my fave skills in the game it just doesnt look to scale as well as savage until maybe end game gear comes in. Im also using the guillotine to survive atm although i have much better weapons it just heals me to full hp all day.

Im at the point i need my 2nd mastery and really wanna go soldier but think arcanist would be cool yet you 2 say demo and inq which demo adds nothing to lightning damage and inqs is just debuffs?

[Childe Roland]

TL;DR: IMO the most important thing is to try to figure out something that will work with your playstyle and go with that, so that you can get the most out of the build. Just make sure that you understand the mechanics. The Game Guide is good for that: https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Im at the point i need my 2nd mastery and really wanna go soldier but think arcanist would be cool yet you 2 say demo and inq which demo adds nothing to lightning damage and inqs is just debuffs?

Regarding lightning Warder: I needed to change mine (started in the base game) to physical and bleed damage, but at least a part of that is my play style, since I like using weapon pool skills and the rapid fire Primal Strike won't proc those. I had several devotions on WPSs and wasn't getting any use from them. So you might have more luck with that build if you use a different playstyle.

Demolitionist's Flame Touched ability does increase lightning damage and either Black Water Cocktail w/ Agonizing Flames or Thermite Mine would reduce enemies resistance to lightning damage which would increase the amount of damage you do to them. In fact, if I understand correctly, resists can even become negative allowing you to do more than your supposed maximum damage, though that's not likely to actually happen.

As for Inquisitor, again Aura of Devotion and Horn of Gandarr both debuff enemies resists allowing you to do more damage, while Deadly Aim buffs your critical hits and Word of Renewal heals you and can buff both the amount of damage you do (including lightning), especially to Cthonics (and Eldritch enemies in FG) as well as increasing your resistance to freeze/petrify/entrapment.

If you want to do Warder (Soldier/Shaman) and you think you've got a plan that will make it work for you, go for it. I can also see why you might want Arcanist and again, if you've got a plan for it, great. I think that the most important thing, at least with early characters, is to try to figure out how you would play a class and if that fits your playstyle. Like I said, I had to completely change a build because I wasn't getting the most out of it with my playstyle.

Whatever you go with you might be able to find some inspiration/guidelines in the AoM build compendium; just bear in mind that the guide makers have mostly moved on to FG and can't keep the AoM builds up to date so they will probably need some tweaking.

https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/build-compendium-ix-ashes-of-malmouth/47681