The Solder Specialization in Star Wars Zero Company packs a punch with their strong melee attacks and explosives. This guide covers ability mechanics, weapon choices, secondary specializations, and build tips.
Best Soldier Build Overview
The Soldier Specialization is focused on the use of explosives and melee strikes on top of the standard blaster attacks.
This specialization is not concerned with critical chance, but increases the base damage for blaster weapons, explosives, and melee attacks for more consistent damage.
- Best Weapons: Blaster Rifle and Repeater
- Best Mods: Amplifier Barrel and Targeting or Range Scope
- Best Utilities: Impact Bomb/Imploder, Concussion Grenade, and Firebomb/Droid Popper
- Secondary Specialization: Assault or Scoundrel
- Recommended Talent: A Life of Labor, Cold Blooded, or The Bigger They Are…
- Cross Training Priority: Focus Points, Grenade Damage, Melee Damage, and Ranged Damage
Let’s dive deeper and explain why and how each of those recommendations work together and how to use the Medic Specialization to its max potential in various situations.
Soldier Abilities and Mechanics
The Soldier Specialization grants an Operator the following abilities: Rocket Strike, Brutal Strike, Strength, and Armsmaster.
If you want to maximize your AoE potential, focus on Strength and Rocket Strike first. If you want more consistent damage with Crowd Control throughout a combat encounter, focus Strength and Brutal Strike first.
Rocket Strike (Ultimate)
Fire a powerful rocket that explodes on impact, damaging all targets in the blast.
Rocket Strike hit enemies in an area at the cost of 10 Advantage. In the early game it’s good for clearing out a lot of weak enemies. Later on, it becomes more useful for putting a dent into Coil cultists.
Maxing out this ability means damaged targets become Vulnerable, making the next attack against them a critical hit.
Use this ability wisely as you only get one Rocket Strike per combat, usually in the second half of a battle as you’re reaching or completing objectives.
Brutal Strike (Standard)
Rush and strike a target, dealing Melee Damage and Dazing.
This melee attack isn’t something to be ignored as when fully leveled, it can deal as much base damage as Tel-Rea’s lightsaber attacks when she has full Harmony.
It’s also good crowd control as it applies Dazing (or Stunning at max rank). Dazing prevents a unit from attacking, but not from moving. Stunning prevents any action whatsoever for a turn (once per enemy per combat).
Assuming you fully upgrade Brutal Strike, Strength, and A Life of Labor, Brutal Strike deals 34 base damage. This doesn’t include Melee Damage buffs from Cross Training rewards.
Strength (Passive)
Increases Melee Damage by +2 and increases the throw Increases range of all Grenades by +2.0m.
Increased melee damage and throw range of Grenades helps the Soldier hit hard in more ways than one. Having the ability to throw different grenade types at a target is a valuable tool for wiping out weak enemies, gaining Advantage, or applying debuffs to groups of enemies.
Armsmaster (Passive)
Increases Blaster Damage and Grenade Damage by +2.
Recommended Weapons
For the Soldier, we recommend the Blaster Rifle for more mobility, or the Repeater if you want to take advantage of increased blaster damage from the Armsmaster passive.
Blaster Rifle
The Blaster Rifle is a good general purpose weapon if you’re looking to do more running, punching, and throwing grenades. With less AP to spare, you can still get a good shot in with 1 AP to spare with the Blaster Rifle.
Repeater
If you’re wanting to hit like a truck with the added damage of Armsmaster, Repeater is the way to go. You can use Brutal Strike or Movement to get into a good position to hunker down, allowing you to save future AP for Repeater attacks.
Recommended Weapon Mods and Utilities
An Amplifier Barrel and a Targeting or Range Scope will be your best bet. The Soldier relies on consistent base damage, simplicity is its strength. Both of these help the Soldier with that.
As you’re encouraged to get up close to punch enemies, the Amplifier Barrel will make your close range shots hit hard. The Targeting or Range Scope is down to personal choice if you want better chance to hit with longer ranges, or want to get close and deal with enemies hiding behind cover.
For Utilities, you’ll want grenades. You’ll want the Impact Bomb/Imploder in one slot, and a Concussion Grenade in the other.
If you’ve unlocked the third utility slot, use the Droid Popper when fighting droids, or the Firebomb against anything else.
Best Secondary Specialization Pairings
The Soldier works well with the Assault and Scoundrel Specializations. If you want to use the Repeater, the Assault will be a better fit. Scoundrel works a bit better with the Blaster Rifle.
Assault
The Assault is the best compliment to the Soldier as all of its abilities syngerize extremely well. It gives you another melee attack, Bull Rush, which scales with the Strength passive.
Fleet of Foot increases your First Movement range, which only benefits Brutal Strike and Bull Rush. With the addition of Sweeping Salvo, you’ll have a wide assortment of damaging AoE attacks between it, Rocket Strike, and your grenades.
Assault’s Strike the Flanks passive gives the Soldier something it lacks, Critical Chance. This can help you hit harder and hitting exposed enemies would benefit from a Range Scope mod.
Scoundrel
Scoundrel will work better with the Blaster Rifle due to its ability Identify Weakness. For 1 AP, the next attack will be a critical hit. Between this and ignoring up to 4 Defense with the Scoundrel’s Instinct passive, you can put a good dent into more durable enemies while remaining mobile.
Recommended Talents
A Life of Labor, Cold Blooded, and The Bigger They Are… are good fits for the Soldier Specialization.
A Life of Labor
If you want to use more melee attacks, A Life of Labor adds up to 4 melee damage. The added durability from the additional Health and Defense is just the cherry on top.,
Cold Blooded
The Soldier lacks any critical hit chance or critical damage bonuses, so having an on-demand critical hit is a good supplement to your high base damage.
The Bigger They Are…
This works well with the Armsmaster passive when dealing with Elite and Boss enemies. This can add 6 damage to your Ranged and Melee attacks against elites and bosses, for a total of 8 additional with the Armsmaster passive.
Cross Training Priority
Get Focus Points, Grenade Damage, Melee Damage, and Ranged Damage. Focus Points and Grenade Damage take priority lean into the Soldier’s strengths with the increase grenade range.
If you love going in first first, focus Melee Damage if Focus Points or Grenade Damage are not available. Ranged Damage is always a safe bet to work with the Soldier’s bonus to damage from blasters.
