The Soldier is one of the more popular classes in Rogue Trader, offering players that ranged fantasy off being a space shooter. While the Soldier is all about that ranged specialization, you can specialize into becoming more of an entrenched unit, area assault unit, or suppressive firing bullet hose. All of the builds are viable, yet the focus of our Soldier Build is to create something that no companion can really specialize in. The aim of our Rogue Trader Soldier Build is to enable you to become a crit armor shredding machine, using supportive burst fire, and then the armor shredding of the Bounty Hunter, followed by crit increasing to ensure you can still deal damage while providing bonuses, this is something not many other companions and their restrictive builds can do.

With that said, here is a closer look at our Supportive Soldier Bounty Hunter Build in Rogue Trader. You’ll get a deeper dive into talents, skills, and starting characteristics along with recommended items to fulfill the build.

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A guide on how to build a Soldier in Rogue Trader using Las guns.

Soldier, Bounty Hunter Support DPS Build - Rogue Trader¶

To get started, we recommend creating a character that looks something along the lines of this:

• Homeworld: Fortress
• Origin: Astra Militarum Commander
• Characteristics
  • WS: 30
  • BS: 45
  • STR: 30
  • TGH: 30
  • AGI: 40
  • INT: 30
  • PER: 50
  • WP: 35
  • FEL: 25

The general idea is you need a high Ballistic skill (BS), so starting with 40 allows you to reach that ideal 70. You want 70 BS since after you add another 30, you’ll make it a 100% chance to hit while fighting in your recommended range as listed on each ranged weapon. The other major stat you want to look into is the Perception stat since that lowers enemy dodge chance against your shots. This is important for how Soldiers function, especially for the supporting aspects of CC, armor penetration, and other stat-stripping penalties this build will take in the Bounty Hunter section.

While we are here, we strongly advise taking characters with stronger damage builds. This build will not do that much damage, since its concentration lies on stripping armor, dodge, and CC. The burst fire weapon likely won’t deal much, but your Las Sniper will deal solid damage to the focus kill target you’re bursting with your skills. Ideally, you want one Vanguard and then two pure DPS characters in any form you want, followed by an Officer and an Operative.

Soldier Build¶

Row	Unlock 1	Unlock 2
1	Run and Gun	–
2	Optional	–
3	Revel in Slaughter	–
4	Firearm Mastery	Fired Up
5	Ballistic Skill	Spare Magazine
6	Ballistic Skill	Rapid Fire
7	Perception	Nimble
8	Unflattering Fire	Optional
9	Firearm Mastery 3	–
10	Hail of Steel	Perception
11	Controlled Shot	Optional
12	Agility	Las Weapon Expert
13	Trace the Trajectory	Suppression Fire!
14	It Will Not Die	Optional
15	Firearm Mastery 2	–

The general idea of the Soldier build here is that you’re setting yourself up as a Support DPS-type character. The Abilities and Talents you are getting will be for key burst fire moments, improving your own survivability, and then ramping up your bonus free attacks using your Fortress World and Militarum features to get your bonus damage and bonus attacks off.

Bounty Hunter Soldier Build¶

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Vanguard tanks the enemies, then you burst fire or pick off the ones you need with Tactics activated.

Row	Unlock 1	Unlock 2
1	Hunt Down the Prey	–
2	Piercing Shot	–
3	Heightened Concentration	–
4	Wild Hunt
5	AP increase + Ballistic Skill	Familiar Kickback
6	Agility	Pierce the Armour
7	Cull the Bold	–
8	Pierce and Ruin	Optional
9	Ballistic Skill	Shoulder to Shoulder
10	Gruesome Kill	–
11	Optional	Perception
12	Wild Hunt 2	–
13	Catch	–
14	Optional	Perception
15	Characteristics Training: Ballistic Skill	Ensnare the Prey
16	Hunter’s Ambush	–
17	Agility	Optional
18	Pounce	–
19	Characteristics Training: Agility	–
20	Wild Hunt 1	–

The general premise of this build is that you are going to be fighting a lot of really armored enemies and a lot of enemies that have high dodge. The general idea is that your Las guns are going to be useful at lowering dodge, alongside your near 100% hit chance via getting Ballistic Skill and Perception to 70. Those annoying Aeldari and Drukhari enemies during Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are going to have trouble dodging you now. Now you can land your shots reliably, you can easily start stripping away enemy armor, and thus provide assistance to your allies. For example, Arch-Militants can get a talent called Exploit Weakness, so this allows them to get a huge talent to reshape builds around your supporting features. Throw in the Agility lowering debuff once you can score kills via Gruesome Kill or lower dodge via Cull the Bold, this makes allies’ damage per round increase, as they’ll land their shots more often alongside because of you.

In addition, you now have more reliable ways to land crits, to take advantage of the Fired Up talent from the previous Archetype in Soldier. Applying Prey to an enemy and then using the Piercing Shot skill will allow you to auto-crit an enemy, not to mention hit another target via Overpen, and start shredding their armor too. You can use this to hit multiple targets or start focusing on a boss.

It is also worth mentioning that at this stage of the game, you’ll be using your four or five Rate of Fire Lasguns on Burst Fire. Chances are you’ll have a vanguard in your party, and that means stacking multiple enemies in a block. As long as you can land either one of your eight or ten Las rounds against a foe, you will begin the process of big damage, armor, and dodge shred across multiple enemies. Throw in an Ensnare the Prey for Immobilization bonuses, and you can become a pretty solid support gunner character for your team. This will make it a lot easier for your primary snipers and Heavy Bolter builds, such as how we recommend building Argenta, Yrliet, or an assassin like Marazhai to make it much easier to fulfill their role. This is where you can make the most use of your Regimental Tactics, as you’ll get big perception bonuses against enemies adjacent to the Vanguard, taunting enemies to attack it.

Exemplar¶

Recommended Exemplar Talents:

1. Master Precision (if you use Deadly Repeater)
2. Grievous Wounds
3. Cataclysm

Master Precision will grant you over 205 more damage when you use Deadeye Shot. The only weapon you can really get value out of using this build is the Deadly Repeater sniper rifle, which is a solid Las-themed sniper sold by traders. This has a chance to double fire and will grant you the Deadeye shot you need. It’s a great second weapon option when you don’t need to burst fire.

The others are largely damage boosts. One is based on how many threats you hit per fight, while the other is huge damage bonuses against targets you have managed to strip the armor off.

As for the rest of the talents in Exemplar, you’re essentially grabbing any remaining base common talents for your Homeworld or Origin. You also want to grab any other minor improvements to Bounty Hunter and Soldier talents.

When you need to improve your Characteristics, we recommend furthering your Perception for more dodge chance stripping or agility for Run and Gun improvements, thus increasing your dodge chance further. You should already have enough Perception and Ballistic Skill to make hitting enemies painless. If you still need a little more, then add slightly more to Perception since you get Regimental Tactics improvements for Perception too.

Recommended Items¶

• Camouflage Robe - 5% dodge reduction when shooting an enemy. This Does not stack and is an early game item
• Deadly Repeater, Stupor, or Sol Pattern Longlas
• Lasgun, Hotshot Lasgun, or Assault Lasgun
• Light Carapace Scale Armour
• Stalker Gloves or Apex Predator’s Gloves
• Pinpointing Visor - Chapter 1 from the Galvanic Hymn Puzzle
• Armour-Piercing Ammo
• Hypnotising Pendant
• Litany of Exhaustion

These items are a hint on the type of accessories you want. These are largely here for boosting your debuffing potential since you’ll be landing your shots quite a lot. It also increases your critical hit chance, so you can make your non-piercing shots more likely to crit and increase your damage. We also give a list of guns for you to look for as you play the game for potential upgrades. We prefer Stupor, despite being the second-highest damage las sniper for humans in the game, and the reason for it is because of the Stun. This scales with your Hunter’s Ambush, and you’ll typically get Stupor around the start of Chapter 4 on Quetza Temer.

As for everything else, it’s largely about slotting in spare, well-rounded accessories until these more specialized items start appearing. This concludes this support Soldier Build in Rogue Trader.