This page will show you some of the best Soldier builds in Mass Effect 3. Here, you’ll find details on the best abilities to pick, the best weapons to equip, and you’ll find what armor works best for the build. Finally, you’ll have builds included for the squad mates that accompany this build.

Soldier Overview¶

Soldiers are the combat specialists of the class pool, they’re efficient in all weapon types, and have access to all the special ammo types. Their unique Power is Adrenaline Rush, this’ll slow down time, and increase the damage you deal to enemies whilst it’s activated. And if that wasn’t enough for you, they have access to Frag Grenades which can help with crowd control alongside Concussive Shot.

Explosive Burst Build¶

This build revolves around the evolution upgrade of Incendiary Ammo, Explosive Burst. This can deal major amounts of damage when used with a high fire rate weapon to trigger its effect explained below. We then take Concussive Shot, and take the evolution upgrade, so it can prime and detonate its own Tech Bursts, this is the only power in the game capable of doing that.

Powers¶

This section will go into more detail on why the Powers are chosen for this particular build.

Incendiary Ammo¶

Incendiary Ammo is the bread and butter of this build. By taking the final upgrade path, Explosive Burst, and using it with a high fire rate weapon, it’ll decimate anything it comes into contact with. Explosive Burst ignites enemies with an intermittent explosion that covers the radius of 2.50 meters for 100 damage. By using a high fire rate weapon, you’ll get increased chance of this effect happening.

Cryo Ammo¶

Cryo Ammo is more of a crowd control power, and can be used to great effect in some builds. For this build though, it’s not really needed, but it’s still nice to have.

Disruptor Ammo¶

Disruptor Ammo is great to use against shielded enemies like Centurions to strip them of their shields. Also, it can be used for Tech Bursts if you shoot an enemy with them and follow it up with either a Concussive Shot or a Frag Grenade.

Adrenaline Rush¶

Adrenaline Rush isn’t the go-to power like it was in Mass Effect 2. In Mass Effect 3, it rightly got a huge nerf, but now it’s not worth building your class around it. Saying that, it still has some useful traits like, increasing your weapon damage for 25% or increasing shield strength by 50% whilst it’s activated.

Concussive Shot¶

Concussive Shot is the next big part of this build, whilst Adrenaline Rush got nerfed, Concussive Shot got buffed. It does more damage, and with its Recharge Speed upgrade, it can be fired more often. The biggest upgrade it received was the ability to be used as a Tech Burst primer and detonator via the Amplification upgrade, making it the only power in the game to prime and detonate.

Frag Grenades¶

Frag Grenades are nothing special on their own, but they can be useful when used in conjunction with your Incendiary Ammo, they’ll create a fire explosion that’ll hit more enemies,then the explosion will transform into several smaller fireballs similar to the Inferno Grenade. On top of that, they can be great against either high shielded enemies, or high armor enemies depending on their last upgrade path. This build chose the Shield Overload upgrade, but if you’re having more trouble with armored enemies, you can switch over to the Armor-Piercing upgrade.

Fitness¶

Maxing out the Fitness line will give you some much-needed survivability, increasing your Health and Shield bonus up to 50%, whilst decreasing your shield-recharge delay by 15%.

Combat Mastery¶

Combat Mastery will allow you to maximize your offensive output by increasing the damage you deal with weapons. The last upgrade is particularly important for this build because it’ll increase your Ammo Powers by 40%.

Bonus Power: Marksman¶

Marksman is a great buff to supplement the Soldiers arsenal, and more importantly, this build. You can get it by talking to Ashley throughout the game. The main purpose of taking this as your Bonus Power is to increase your fire rate even more (up to a possible 50%) allowing Explosive Burst more opportunities to trigger its effect. The only downside to this power is it can’t be used inside Adrenaline Rush.

Best Weapons¶

This section will talk about what weapons are best for this particular build. This build relies on having your Ammo Powers available as often as possible, for this reason, you should only take one gun to keep the overall Power Recharge Cooldown as near to 200% as possible.

Assault Rifle¶

The M-76 Revenant is obtained in the C-Sec locker room’s bathroom during the Mission Priority: Citadel.

With this build you’ll want to be focusing on weapons with high fire rate, so you can trigger the effect of Explosive Burst, for this reason, we’ve gone with the M-76 Revenant. It has a high fire rate, huge clip size with plenty in reserve.

or

The Phaeston can be obtained during the Mission Tuchanka: Turian Platoon next to a dead Turian, early in the mission.

Once again, this weapon is picked purely for its rate of fire, It’s very similar to the M76-Revenant in all ways other than its stats are a little lower. The bonus for this weapon is you can acquire it earlier.

Submachine Gun¶

The M-9 Tempest can also be found during the Mission Tuchanka: Turian Platoon, early in the mission, next to some Turian bodies after killing the first group of Husks.

This is a great SMG that can compete with some Assault Rifles, once again a high rate of fire plays its part in choosing it. Choosing this over the Assault Rifles will be you receiving lower weight which will affect your cooldowns at the cost of a little damage.

Best Armor¶

This set will give you +50% Weapon Damage increasing your overall damage. If you don’t want to hunt down individual pieces, you could use the Cerberus Nightmare Armor set acquired from doing the Armax Arsenal Combat Arena or the Armax Arsenal Armor acquired from the Mission N -7 Cerberus Attack (arms) and the rest at the store.

Best Squadmates¶

As a Soldier, damage will be through the roof, but you’ll need help with enemy shields and barriers. For this reason, take EDI and bring Liara along for her crowd control abilities.

Liara Build¶

EDI Build¶