Ultimate Soldier/Guardian Build

Gopher · Post by **Gopher** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 10:02 pm

Ok, forget all the crap you learned when you played through as a consule

The hack n slash game is ten times easier! Hell, you can probably go make coffee during most battles.

First of all : Strength! Strength and more Strength. Screw Dexterity. Get 18 str at the get go. Then con. Get the whole idea of defence out of your skull from now on! Offence is now your main thing. It moves, you hit it until it stops moving.

Now I know this goes agaisnt the grain a little. Myself I always like dodging and parry etc etc. But in this game its not really an issue. You will have over 300 vp at the end of the game, and with toughness rank 3 / conditioning rank 3, and some good armour you survive most fights without needing a heal. In fact the only time you will heal mid fight is to help one of your wuss teammates who spend half their life unconsious!

Next start thinking ARMOR! Lose the dress right now! Armor gives defence, resistance to damage and sometimes other benfits: Heavy Exo gives 3 str (YES TO STREGTH!) and is without doubt the coolest outfit in the game bar none!!! That and dominator gloves give you a whopping 8 str bonus, plus the 3 you get for LSM guardian and you gracking 32+ str at the end of the game. We are talking uber damage here.

Feats: Two weapon, Critical Strike, Toughness, Conditioning

Forget flurry. With critical strike on a keen weapon and your godly strength you will stun almost everything in the game, including the big bad guys. I usually force wave a crowd and then critical strike each in turn, most do not survive that, any that do are stunned

Light saber crystals: Stick to normal color and use NEXTOR for KEEN. Add solari or whatever else you have for damage. Mantle and Heart crystals? None of them will allow you a KEEN weapon. With the nextor crystal and 3 ranks of critical strike you will hit a crit on 9-20. Im seeing 50s each strike. Even more with the Bendar assault blade (sp?) which I have a max damage of 98

Yeah thats right, a melee blade instead of lightsaber. You lose the jedi jump, which gets useless towards the end anyway, but we are talking silly damage AND its keen. Do not underestimate the KEEN weapons with critical strike feat and high strength. I may not get extra attacks with flurry etc, but I get 100 to 150 damage each round with a stun.

Skills: whatever. Most mines barely scratch you, you can knock down all the doors bar one and with sucky charisma your persaude is never going to rock. You dont need patrolling droids and hacking the comp to kill enemies just prevents you from having fun with them.

levels: AS MANY SOLDIER AS YOU CAN. Get the feats. Only thing you miss is force powers, and seeing as you end up with more than you will use with this build its a no brainer.

Lastly : Force powers...... err ... actually really doesnt matter. Take heal for saving on med packs. Take destroy droid, thats quite useful. Force wave is ok too. All the buffs require you to wear a dress, and they run out after 20 secs anyways. You seriously dont need em. Actually if i played again I would take dominate. Charisma on this char sucks and you get few skills. So being bale to Force persuade would be nice.

You now have a character that is big (soldier model), so stylish it hurts (heavy exo is seriously sexy!) and can knock down a battle droid with his little finger.

Its not as stylish as choke and lighning, but you will take appoximately 15 seconds to kill Malek (assuming you handle his *advantage* early --- sorry no spoilers here

). There is no macro management of fights. You dont have to time all the buffs and re apply them every second strike. You click on the opponint cand carve him up. Wear a belt to prevent mind affecting, and carry a few str stims .... did I mention you cant get enough strength??

Im just glad none of the bad guys have this build!

Gopher · Post by **Gopher** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 10:13 pm

Small note:

I played a scoundrel / guardian build side by side with this as far as the second star map. What I noticed was that the small bonus the soldier had on Attack bonus made a huge difference. Even level one with a mere +1 attack bonus I found he hit noticably more often than the scoundrel. Plus the 4hp per level made a difference too.

I never beat Twitch in the arena without using stims for the scoundrel. The soldier had no difficulty whatsoever.

Just a small additional reason I took the soldier to the end

Oh all right 90% it was because the soldier looked like duke nukem and the scoundrel looked like the school nerd!

Armisael · Post by **Armisael** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 12:44 am

I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I read "get the whole idea of defense out of your skull," and then two paragraphs later, "start thinking armour!"

Look: armour sucks for any Jedi. If you're doing a defensive build, you can get a higher defense with robes and dexterity. If you're doing an offensive build, then you're just crippling yourself by foregoing master speed, which gives two extra attacks per round. Especially if you're talking about critical strike, for crying out loud. You'd need to be getting a hell of a lot more than one or two extra points of damage out of that armour for it to compete offensively with master speed. You think two attacks per round is teh ubar build? No.

You're right about the Baragwin assault blade, but not the light saber. You lose way too much damage with a nextor crystal to make that extra two point threat range worthwhile. You're dropping 20 max damage to make your saber keen. It's not worth it.

Forget toughness. Get implants first. Anything toughness can do, implants can do better.

And, soldier? Are we still talking about an offensive build? Because a scoundrel will do a goodly amount more damage than any soldier will, and with a higher natural defense to boot. I've played this game through many, many times, and I'm happy to inform you that those extra two AB points from your soldiering days don't matter a stuff by the time you're sporting 35 strength, whereas 3-18 bonus damage in the form of sneak attack does. The only time the AB difference is noticable is on Taris; later on you won't even care. Especially if you're attacking four times per round instead of two. All you're really sacrificing by choosing scoundrel over soldier is 28 VP, which is stuff all.

Finally, light side mastery? What? No. Go dark. Dark side mastery as a guardian will give you +1-8 damage on all hits, which I'm sure you'll agree is considerably better than +1 or +2.

Gopher · Post by **Gopher** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 5:18 am

Originally posted by Armisael
I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I read "get the whole idea of defense out of your skull," and then two paragraphs later, "start thinking armour!"

Then you missed my point. Armour looks cool and give STR

Defence is for consules

Look: armour sucks for any Jedi. If you're doing a defensive build, you can get a higher defense with robes and dexterity.

Totally disagree. The end fight with this build was the easiest so far. Took about 4 rounds with no powers, no med packs. Dexterity points takes away from your STR points. Without dex jedi robes dont give much defence anyway. And I dont care about defence. They hit me or they dont, who cares. They hit like little girls

If you're doing an offensive build, then you're just crippling yourself by foregoing master speed, which gives two extra attacks per round. Especially if you're talking about critical strike, for crying out loud. You'd need to be getting a hell of a lot more than one or two extra points of damage out of that armour for it to compete offensively with master speed. You think two attacks per round is teh ubar build? No.

Utterly disagree. Those extra attacks do NOT transfer from opponents. You can only face one opponent per round. No cleave attacks here. So whats the benefit? You kill one per round maximum anyway. The major difference is I kill one opponent every round on a row, whereas you have to stop in the third and fourth round to reapply speed and force aura. Only things it makes a difference on are the big guys that take more than one round to kill, and seeing as they are stunned from the crits with such high str, it isnt an issue.

You're right about the Baragwin assault blade, but not the light saber. You lose way too much damage with a nextor crystal to make that extra two point threat range worthwhile. You're dropping 20 max damage to make your saber keen. It's not worth it.

Its not a two point increase in the crit threat, its an eight point increase. You will crit 17-20 normally, but with critical strike thats quadrupled, which makes it 5-20. Pretty much its unusualy not to crit and stun your opponent.

Forget toughness. Get implants first. Anything toughness can do, implants can do better.

Get both.

And, soldier? Are we still talking about an offensive build? Because a scoundrel will do a goodly amount more damage than any soldier will, and with a higher natural defense to boot.

I played acoundrel too. See my previous points on defence. However the sneak attack is good with the stuns. BUT for some reason, especially early in the game, the attack bonus defecit seemed to make a difference. I knows its only one point at level one, but even then I noticed the difference. Even as far as the second star map I was feeling a difference. But Ill concede it may have been in my imagination.

But the biggest reason for taking soldier vs scoundrel is I wanted a male char this time. And male model for the scoundrel is so small and puny looking

The heavy exo looks lame on them!

When I said ultimate I meant it in many different ways... all of them personal

Finally, light side mastery? What? No. Go dark. Dark side mastery as a guardian will give you +1-8 damage on all hits, which I'm sure you'll agree is considerably better than +1 or +2.

Yeah, but ive played through twice as dark and each time it annoyed me how hard it was to keep DSM. Thats the one area the game fell down on. It was easy to be light, hard to be dark (unless you naturally enjoy being a tit). I would constantly loose LSP for idiotic things like encouraging the wookies to overthrow the slavers, or even worse, for not asking for a 50 credit tip. Some jedi (no spoilers) fall the the dark side in 5 mins through one act of vengence, but I had to steal candy from children and pull the wings of insects.

I gave a medpack to the wounded wookie cos I had a few hundred spare and wanted any info he had, and im a nice guy. I had to save before every conversation in case I accidently did something nice.

And besides the only good reason to play DS is for choke and lightning. DS scout/consule was the most fun so far.

Builds played to end:
Scout/Consule DS
Scout/Consule LS
Scoundrel/Consule DS
Soldier/Guardian LS

Builds played to at least two star maps:
Scoundrel/Guardian LS

Easiest build to play:
Soldier/Guardian LS

Most fun:
Scount Consule DS

Next and LAST build:

Female Scoundrel/Guardian DS with high dex and high wis. Gonna play an assassin type.

Lamer · Post by **Lamer** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:36 am

i have to say that DS soldier/guardian was easier than LS

Gopher · Post by **Gopher** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:43 am

Originally posted by Lamer
i have to say that DS soldier/guardian was easier than LS

Easier as in combat was easier or easier as in easy to keep DSM?

I found DSM hard to keep. I had to act childish and money mad half the time. It got easier towards the end, but for the first 4 star maps it was hard. I wanted to play the vengeful jedi who wasnt exactly mean and spiteful, but enjoyed crushing his enemy and believing the strong should rule. To keep DSM i had to instead play a mean spirited thug who asked for 50 credit rewards for doing things that were in his own interest anyway.

The path of the dark side is supposed to be easy, and therfore seductive. Instead its hard work. LS was easier, u just acted with some sense of dignity. You could kill thousands and even pick fights where it was uneccessary and still be a saint

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 6:37 pm

Originally posted by Lamer
i have to say that DS soldier/guardian was easier than LS

What's the value of ease, though, in a game that's so remarkably easy to beat at the normal difficulty setting, and only requires some party management on hard?

Armisael · Post by **Armisael** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:23 am

Doesn't really matter if you disagree with my statement about higher defense with robes/dex. I didn't say anything about it being easy, I said you could get a much higher defense with robes and dexterity... that's a fact, not an opinion.

Totally disagree. The end fight with this build was the easiest so far. Took about 4 rounds with no powers, no med packs.

Yes, it took you four rounds to kill Malak with no powerups, etc. That's because this game is easy. Very easy. You can absolutely cripple yourself in the worst possible way and still trounce Malak at the end. But as this thread's title contains the words "ultimate build," I felt obliged to speak up. What I said about defense was said simply for the sake of academic merit, as this thread doesn't regard defensive builds. But my comment remains true: armour is pointless for a Jedi. Whether you're building your character defensively or offensively, all it does is weigh you down.

Those extra attacks do NOT transfer from opponents. You can only face one opponent per round. No cleave attacks here. So whats the benefit?

The benefit is that you don't have to worry about failing to kill your enemy with those paltry two hits. You can't be certain of a one-round-kill with two hits, especially not when you're relying on critical strike to do your damage, and then there's the chance you'll miss entirely. With four attacks, you're doubling your potential critical hits, you're halving the impact of a critical miss, and you're dramatically decreasing the time it takes to kill particularly tough enemies (rancors come to mind). Your build simply isn't guaranteed to kill an enemy per round, and I've played it all the way through, so I know. I never have to stop in the middle of a battle to reapply speed. It lasts for six rounds, and I don't think there even is a hostile encounter in this game with more than six enemies at a time. Even if I do have to cast something at the beginning of the battle, I'll be done in seven rounds tops while you could still be hacking away in round ten. And... who said anything about force aura? All I use is speed. Malak's immune to stun, by the way.

Its not a two point increase in the crit threat, its an eight point increase.

No, it's not. Critical strike's threat multiplier is applied before the keenness bonus. With master critical strike and keenness, your saber's threat range is 11-20. With just master critical strike, it's 13-20. Check it out for yourself if you don't believe me.

Get both.

Usually do. But you left implants off your feat list entirely.

And male model for the scoundrel is so small and puny looking The heavy exo looks lame on them!

The models are exactly the same. The only visible difference between the starting classes is what the basic clothing looks like on them.

Yeah, but ive played through twice as dark and each time it annoyed me how hard it was to keep DSM.

Fair enough. Differs from person to person. But technically, a guardian is far better off with DSM than LSM.

It's okay if you like this build best, but it's not an 'ultimate build'. If you already knew that, then you should've titled it "my favourite offensive build' or something, instead.

Gopher · Post by **Gopher** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 4:53 am

Originally posted by Armisael
But as this thread's title contains the words "ultimate build," I felt obliged to speak up.

Ok I concede that. I actually meant ULTIMATE in the context of easy to play, no macro management and in the end just damned sexy

With this build the game was a no-brainer. No power-up macro management. Just hack slash and go. Oh and rememeber this is the ultimate soldier/guardian build (IMHO), and should not be compared to scout/consules etc

I wasnt trying to eeek out 2% more damage, but have a character that could destoy almost anything fast and with minimal fuss, and not be left in that 'out of force' dilema ever. The tank class.

Originally posted by Armisael

The models are exactly the same. The only visible difference between the starting classes is what the basic clothing looks like on them.

Ahh we must be playing different versions. Soldier model is a lot lot larger than the scoundrel on mine. The heads are the same though, so scoundrels look kinda skinny wimpish. Especially in armour

Originally posted by Armisael
It's okay if you like this build best, but it's not an 'ultimate build'. If you already knew that, then you should've titled it "my favourite offensive build' or something, instead.

Why isnt it ultimate? Im sorry but for me this was the best soldier/guardian build for me. Certainly the easiest and by far the coolest looking. I might think the ferrari is the ultimate car, you might think not. Its my post, ill 'enthuse' if I want to

Now you prefer scoundrel/guardians and im sure you have an ultimate build idea for that. Im even trying that one now. But already its far more 'work'. Im timing power ups, using heals and macro managing fights again. I end fights with low force. With the soldier/guardian this only happened if i was fighting lots and lots of droids (destroy droid power is just too easy to resist).

However I was unaware of how the keen and critical skills mixed together was messed up. Thanks for updating me.

In the end I guess its a personal choice. For macro management I preferred the scout/consule DS build. Insanity, kill and force storm pretty much ruled. I only held lightsabers for the bolt deflection. For 'sit back and watch the mayhem' the soldier/guardian TANK build hit the spot.

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:01 am

Originally posted by Gopher
Why isnt it ultimate?

Because ultimate implies a quantifiable criteria against which a class of objects can be measured relative to one another. In this case, as you admit later, it's just a very good build you happen to like.

Gopher · Post by **Gopher** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:24 am

Originally posted by fable
Because ultimate implies a quantifiable criteria against which a class of objects can be measured relative to one another. In this case, as you admit later, it's just a very good build you happen to like.

It is quantifiable. I like it LOTS

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:43 am

Originally posted by Gopher
It is quantifiable. I like it LOTS

And that's a measurable yardstick?

I think it's fair to say that there are many ways to play and win, especially when the combat AI is so poor.

AVENGER · Post by **AVENGER** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 1:12 pm

I would have to say that you need plenty of defense as well as offense but keep a little more offense, but personally i like the scoundrel/consular duo who cares about the hack and slash when you freakin force powers I beat the snot out of everything using stasis field and force wave. On the Leviathan I just walked into a room with 8 elite sith soldiers and wam hit em with stasis field freezed em all up then I hit em with 2 force waves and they crumpled to the ground. I would hardly ever use my lightsaber it was just like a side weapon if the enemy got to close. Plus with all the scoundrel's improved scoundrel luck and sneak attack IV combined with master critical hit and master two weapon fighting I was death on the wind! Plus the scoundrel gets so many points to put towards computer use and security so much more the the scout and the soldier so the scoundrel makes you all around good at everything. Combined with a bunch of persuasion and dominate mind you can get almost everything to do what you want besides things that automatically don't work no matter how much persuasion. Even though the soldier/guardian is a good combo I've played it twice that way so far once on DS and once on LS it was fun and you can pretty much beat anything in combat, but I still liked the scoundrel/consular better because you and you party can just sit there and not even get touched using force wave and stasis field. But they are both great ways of playing even though I disagree about using heavy armor you want to use the jedi robes because of all the dexterity you get to dodge.

Gopher · Post by **Gopher** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 2:55 pm

Originally posted by AVENGER
even though I disagree about using heavy armor you want to use the jedi robes because of all the dexterity you get to dodge.

Defence? Why? They hit so rarely and even then for such ****y damage i dont care. Heavy armour gives STR! More stuns ...... oh yeah.

This was a tank build, not a rogue build. The only thing that hit me was force powers, so I focused more on resists that defence.

However on my consul I did focus on defence. Mostly to avoid blaster damage though. I didnt let the lightsaber people even get close to me

jeremiah · Post by **jeremiah** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:19 pm

Why not the best of both worlds? Non-force using enemies just wear armor and stun them with criticals while fighting enemy Jedi means wear robes to use Force Immunity and Master speed. Whatever you use, I think Improved energy resistance (I think this will be a mandatory power for my PCs now) and Improved toughness is good gravy for this character (plus any armor damage resistances). Only problems are enemies that hit for high physical damage but that is what the Mandalorian shields and Brejik's equipment are for.

Also you realize that you can still force jump and deflect blaster bolts as long as one of your weapons is a light saber? So Baragwin assault blade main hand (the best crystals for lightsabers don't show up until late in the game anyway while this blade is available mid game or use Bacca's blade first) and a nice short lightsaber on your offhand will get you the best of both worlds again. A keen weapon on your main hand and still allow use of the Guardian's main ability.

AVENGER · Post by **AVENGER** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 7:37 pm

Originally posted by Gopher
Defence? Heavy armour gives STR!

It doesn't give strength it gives defense and fortitude it doesn't have anything to do with strength plus if you have all that big heavy armor on your main NPC then they can't use all their force powers like force immunity, improved force resistance, force shield, master speed, and all those really good boosting powers that you need before a major battle. The armor is all well and good but force powers are the bulk of a jedi's arsenal besides his lightsaber so all he needs is to be able to retaliate an enemy's attack and parry it which dexterity helps you do. Plus Qel-Droma's robes give a defense bonus of 5 and that's pretty much all you really need to have a good defense if you have all that dexterity from your robes. Also if your concentrating on a soldier/guardian build then your main force powers should be ones to get you ready for a major battle since you don't rely a whole ton on your power force powers because you can't use them a whole ton as a guardian your force points are very limited thats why I was talking about major kick freakin butt powers with the consular, but since your concentrating on Guardian your going to need those build up stat powers so you'll need to be wearing robes plus with a dex bonus of +8 the dark jedi will rarely hit you plus if you have master jedi defense then the blasters will pretty much never hit you. The armor defense is all good too, I'm guessing you probably wear Calo Nord's Battle Armor, it gives you no extra dexterity bonus so when you really need to dodge some hits in a major battle to use some extra force powers like heal you won't be able to because it's armor plus you won't be able to dodge a whole lot one of these battles would be against Darth Malak. Even though he is pretty easy your still going to want a balanced dex as well as defense because I'm not saying defense bonuses aren't important I'm just saying the Jedi Robes give you enough defense that the dex takes care of everything else plus you can use all your force powers.

Armisael · Post by **Armisael** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 2:08 am

There is armour that gives strength. But as I've already said, the strength bonus it gives is absolutely pitiful compared to the extra damage you inflict from master speed's two bonus attacks.

Force powers don't even compare with physical damage. The most damage force wave can do in a round is 30. You can do ten times that much with physical attacks. Half the point of playing a guardian is the fact that you can leap from enemy to enemy, destroying them at a rate of one per round and regardless of distance. Force wave won't even work if there are enemies more than fifteen meters away from your character, and it can be resisted to boot.

Skills are irrelevent in a powerplay build.

And please use paragraphs, Avenger, reading your posts hurts my head.

jeremiah · Post by **jeremiah** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 9:47 am

What are you talking about force powers not comparing to meelee attacks?? Sure Force wave maximum damage is 30 but that is PER ENEMY at the same time. Walk into a room full of half a dozen enemy, you are more likely to walk away as soon (inflicting 6 * 30 = 150 damage in one round) or faster than a Guardian attacking with meelee weapons or lightsabers when using successive force waves and high DC build consulars stun the enemy for their allies is like gravy.

But really it shouldn't matter, defense is overrated as I found having a good verpine prototype shield made the end battle a breeze.

AVENGER · Post by **AVENGER** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 10:41 am

I wasn't talking about force wave in my last reply! Even though I did in my first reply!

And force powers totally compare to lightsabers. I didn't even need a lightsaber almost on the Leviathan because I'd just walk into every room unarmed use stasis field then force wave twice sometimes three times and whether it be dark jedi or elite sith soldiers they all crumpled to the ground.

The only time I actually needed my lightsaber was against darth malak. On the Leviathan I hardly ever used my lightsaber other than that, but in my last reply i was talking about master speed, force shield, and those boost powers so you must have misunderstood my last reply.

I also totally agree with Jeremiah when you have a verpine prototype shield you don't need armor at all. But this is just my opinion.

jeremiah · Post by **jeremiah** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 11:07 am

Only shields worth having are Mandalorian meelee and power shields when facing Tarantateks and Rancors. The verpine prototype and Echani shields against everything else.