Since my old MVM Soldier guide was pretty much outdated and terrible either way, I decided to just create a new one not really, I just mostly copy from the original and "update" it that'll be more likely up-to-date (and less garbage) instead.

Soldier is one of the easiest class for newbies to get into, with the Heavy standing next in line. I will, however, try my best to explain basic Soldier loadout and strategy that will help you stand your ground against the menace robot threat from Gray Mann at your full potential. By the end of this guide, you'll know both the most effective and even fun loadout to mess around when you're playing friends.

Like in PvP, the Soldier is a full offensive class. Due to the horde nature of MvM, the Soldier's power becomes more prominent and his banner items can see the light far more frequent.

• Damage Output Dealer & Crowd Control: His wide variety of Rocket Launchers allows him to wreck havoc the robot force with little trouble. Whether he's in 1 on 1 against Giant or a group of robots, rocket spam is an excellent solution against them.
  
  
• Buff Support: The Soldier has access to 3 different types of buff secondary that can be filled by dealing damage, which is much easier in MvM since you always get to rain down rockets to a big group of robots. This can greatly empower your team when used at the right moment.
  
  
• Tank Buster: Along with the Pyro with Phlogistinator (and the Scout with fully upgraded primary), the Soldier is another damn good candidate to take on Tanks extremely quick, by doing his own damage (especially with Beggar's Bazooka) and buffing the entire team if you're using the Buff Banner. One of the main reason Buff Banner's being used frequently is due to it being a feasible way to get constant extra damage against Tanks.

With base 200 HP, the Soldier is the 2nd strongest class ingame, tie with booties Demoman and losing only to the fatty Heavy. Soldier's only slightly faster than the Heavy though, moving at 80% speed. Because of this, try not to put yourself in situations where it'd be hard to run away from robots. You can afford to get closer (and you really should get used to this) to the front to deal more damage with rampup, but not face-to-face against the robot horde. Keep being on the move and don't afraid to rocketjump away when things get ugly.

The Soldier has 2 hard-counters against him: Pyros with Normal or higher AI difficulties and Deflector Heavies. Pyro bots will always be able to deflect your rockets, no matter how fast your rocket travels. Deflector Heavies can shoot down any projectiles coming toward them so fighting heads on against these guys are useless. In general, unless those Pyros always go W+M1, just avoid them and let other players handle it. Against Heavies with Deflector, you can shoot at their feet/side to avoid their deflecting bullets, or blow their arses when they're not having their gun revved.

All in all, a Soldier's main job is to constantly putting out damage as much as possible. If you're incapable of output enough damage, the team will be cut off of a powerful DPS dealer.

While Soldier's skill ceiling is not that high, unlike Demoman and Sniper, your choice of loadouts is extremely important as it will determine your capability to contribute to your team.

The Rocket Launcher is your main method of dealing damage to the robots. You have the following choices so far:

• Rocket Launcher.
  
• Direct Hit.
  
• Rocket Jumper.
  
• Liberty Launcher.
  
• Cow Mangler 5000.
  
• Air Strike.
  
• Black Box.
  
• Beggar's Bazooka.

The Stock Rocket Launcher remains a decent choice in MVM for those who are new to Soldier. 4 rockets Clip Size that deals decent damage depending on the range and good splash range. Like the Sniper with his Sniper RIfle, using the stock Rocket Launcher does not give you any extra benefits you could get from other Primaries that you can't get from upgrades. This also means you don't have to worry about any other disadvantages either. Recommended if you're new to Soldier until you get the hang of it and need to get extra benefits from other launchers.


Pros:

• Good Damage and Splash.
  
• 4 clip size.

Cons:

• No extra benefits that can't be found in Upgrades.

While it's a good and viable weapon in PVP, the Direct Hit's ability is severely hindered and straight awful in MVM. You get extra 25% Damage and 80% Projectile Speed so you can deal more damage to single target at start and spend less money to upgrade Damage. However, you can get both of these benefits in the Upgrade Station and the downside is what make it worse: the explosion radius of your rocket is reduced by 70%, the size of a Teleporter. This pretty much forces you to score a direct hit (as the name of the weapon says) for you to deal any kind of damage to the robots, effectively remove your ability to crowd control and deal with multiple robots, and sometimes it's not really easier to score a direct hit. While you can upgrade Damage + Projectile Speed for other launchers, you'll waste more money just to get the splash damage slightly closer to half of stock's, which does not worth the money to spend on. Avoid this if you can.


Possible shenaginans: Kill uber medics without popping others thanks to the lower splash. Cheaper than stock if the mission is full of Giants/Tanks only.

Pros:

• +25% Damage from starts.
  
• +80% Projectile Speed from starts.
  
• Mini-crit airborne targets that was sent flying by explosive jump.

Cons:

• Still deals as much damage as other Launchers when they're also upgraded.
  
• Little to no Splash damage, remove your ability to crowd control.
  
• Effectively requires you to score direct hit all the time to deal damage.

Ah yes, definitely the best Primary to use for trolling your team. You deal absolutely no damage to both yourself and the robots, and you can rocket jump everywhere. That's very nice, right? And no, upgrading Damage does not allow the Rocket Jumper to deal any damage.

If you're having fun with Bison or money Soldier with Conch though, you can use this to quickly jump around.


Pros:

• No self Blast damage taken.
  
• +200% Ammo Capacity.

Cons:

• -100% Damage Penalty
  
• Damage upgrade won't increase that base 0 damage either.

You exchange -25% Damage for merely +40% Projectile Speed and +1 Clip Size (and -25% self blast damage on rocketjump). Extensive field testing has proven that Liberty Launcher with +100% damage upgrade is still only capable of dealing as much damage as stock Rocket Launcher with +50% damage upgrade instead. I'd tell you the reason but I suppose I'm not here to bore you with tons of Elementary-level Math. Do I need to give you any more reason on not to use this?


Pros:

• -25% self blast damage on rocketjump.
  
• +40% Projectile Speed.
  
• +1 clip size.

Cons:

• -25% Damage, making this the best ranged shotgun ever.
  
• You can only deal as much damage as other launchers (except Air Strike) when they're at +50% damage bonus.

You start with -15% damage penalty, and slightly reduced explosion radius. In exchange, your clip size will increase as you kill robots (maximum of +5, stacks with clip size upgrade) and your firing speed will be increased by 65% while you're rocketjumping (only takes effect after the initial slow firing speed is finished). In effect, the Air Strike acts like a more accurate and weaker Beggar's Bazooka while you're airborne with rocketjump. The gun suffers little damage reduction, however the height you're raining rockets from is somewhat counter-productive as your rockets will suffer damage falloff as well (unless direct hit with RS, which you'll only deal base damage). Your splash is further reduced while rocketjumping too (-28% in comparison to Stock).

Most people pair this with the parachute/B.A.S.E Jumper to extend their air time. Gunboat is another excellent item to pair with this launcher in early game to keep bombing robots without as much HP required to keepup that firing speed.

Value: ***

Pros:

• More clip size as you kill robots, to a maximum of +5.
  
• +65% firing speed while blast jumping.
  
• -15% self blast damage when rocketjump.

Cons:

• -15% damage.
  
• -10% explosion radius (-28% in effect while rocketjumping).

The Cow Mangler is like a sidegrade of Rocket Launcher. You get infinite ammo to reload (so no more Ammo Capacity, Ammo box and Dispenser to worry about) and the ability to fire a charged shot that deals mini-crit, sets robots on fire and uses up all of your clip no matter how many points of Clip Size upgrade you have (fun fact: the splash range is the same), which is rather obsolete when you have the Buff Banner around. The launcher is also unable to deal any kind of Critical hit (mini-crit is still possible), be it from random Crit, Medic's Kritzkrieg or Crit Canteen. This may or may not reduce your overall effective damage against robots. You'll also be less effective when fighting Engineer bots, as your shots will deal only 20% of their damage to buildings.

Personally, having the ability to deal crit still comes in handy at many points and I never run out of ammo during battle that much, even with the Beggar's Bazooka. It's your choice.


Pros:

• Infinite Ammo Capacity.
  
• Alt-Fire: Charged shot that deals mini-crit and set robots on fire.

Cons:

• Slightly slower initial reload speed.
  
• No Random Critical Hit.
  
• Can't be Crit boosted.
  
• Deals only 20% to building.

When you hit a robot, you'll regain HP depending on how much damage dealt on that hit, up to 20HP. It's somewhat useful against Giants, since you can regain your health while fighting them when health on kill isn't feasible enough (but this doesn't mean you can tank them like a Heavy against milked Giants). While the healing effect is no longer as crazy like before, it still is a decent +20HP per rocket benefit that can slowly heal you up.

The trade off for this launcher is that you start off with only 3 clip size. This will hurt you noticeably in early game so you'll have to make every shot counts before finally able to negate that problem with 1-2 clip size upgrade (no, this does not mean you have to get it right off the bat).


Pros:

• +20 HP max per rocket.
  
• Stack up with other healing effect.

Cons:

• -1 Clip size.

My favorite Soldier Primary to use so far, even in Expert. Many players said it's the best, while many others also said it's not that good, with both sides have their own arguments going along with it.

Using the Beggar's Bazooka is almost like when you're switching from stock Sticky Launcher to Scottish Resistance as Demoman: you'll have to learn and adapt a totally new playing style.

The Beggar's Bazooka is unique from other primaries is that you starts off with 0 rocket in your clip and 20 ammo capacity. By holding down your primary fire, the Soldier will start to load up rockets to the chamber until it reaches 3 (can be increased by clip size upgrade), and if you continue to holding down fire, the Beggar will overload and one rocket will explode right in your face, heavily damage you and any robots around (can also be used to rocketjump).

When you release your fire button, the Beggar's Bazooka will instantly launch any loaded rockets at an extremely fast rate (due to that hidden +70% fire rate bonus) and is capable of bombard robots with little time for them to dodge. So, it acts as a good way of quickly unleash a good amount of burst damage before falling back behind cover to avoid incoming fire, then do it again.

However, that's not the main reason why I'm using the Beggar's Bazooka. Instead, it's because of the firing AND reload speed that makes it considerably cheaper to upgrade than other Launchers. Now, instead of keep loading up rockets before firing them as a barrage, you only load up and fire one by one rocket (a.k.a tapping M1 only). If you have full Reload Speed upgrade, the Beggar's Bazooka will effectively act like a Rocket Launcher with full Firing Speed upgrade WITHOUT having to reload at all!

Now you effectively have a bottomless clip size Rocket Launcher that can be fired continuously, so you don't even need to upgrade Firing Rate and Clip Size until you have excess money around, allowing you to get more Damage, "Clip Size" (Ammo Capacity) and Buff Duration from the beginning! Later on, you can even upgrade your firing rate so you can quickly doing this slightly faster as well (since it'll decrease the lag time between firing and reloading another rocket). The following video will show you what I mean:

Of course, a weapon like this is far too perfect, thus it has three downsides, which are enough to prevent many players from using it and master this weapon due to not getting used to this weapon's playstyle.

The 1st downside is that the Beggar's Bazooka is not really accurate and has a max 3 degrees random rocket deviation. This is really noticeable at long range so you'll have trouble taking down Snipers camping from afar and just about any robots from range. You'll have to keep your distance at mid-close range for the Beggar's to be in full effect. However, the deviation can also be used as a way to cover the battlefield with rockets when you're firing as a barrage so this can be both an up and downside. This downside also forces you to keep the fighting at mid-close range, where you can take advantage of extra damage ramp-up.

Take advantage of the deviation and the barrage you can launch at robots!

The 2nd downside used to be what would throw off most players from using this weapon: The inability to collect ammos from a Dispenser. As of Feb 7th, 2014 Patch, the Beggar's Bazooka was changed so that you can only not collect ammo for your Beggar's Bazooka when it is the ACTIVE weapon (as in you're holding it in your hands).

Switching away from the Beggar (holding Buff Banner, your Shovel, whatever you have) will allows you to collect ammo for the Beggar like normal, so the downside is no longer as punishing and hard to overcome like before, and you don't have to worry about your Demoman, Sniper or Engineer complaining about no ammo box for them any longer!

You can effectively "reload" your ammo by running to the Dispenser while blowing your Buff/Backup/Conch, thus by the time that buff is ready, your launcher should be fully loaded and ready to rock again! Thus, your DPS against robot threats is significantly increased comparing to other rocket launcher choices, including both Giants and Tanks.

The 3rd downside, that's been brought by the Tough Break update, is 20% reduced blast radius. Your ability to crowd control is no longer as potent as the pre-nerf version, making the Beggar's Bazooka no longer an overpowered straight upgrade in MvM (and kinda pushing it in PvP too). Rocket Specialist helps, but it's only on direct hit.

Overall, you trade off accuracy and splash radius for far better starting firing speed, "infinite" clip size and cheaper upgrade path. A rather fair trade off for such a powerful weapon, don't you think? It was already powerful to begin with, now it's even more ridiculous for both new and veteran users of this weapon.


Pros:

• +70% Faster Firing Rate.
  
• Can load up and unleash a barrage of rockets.
  
• Has effectively most "clip size" compare to all other launchers.
  
• Cheaper to upgrade than other launchers.
  
• Highest DPS Rocket Launcher available.

Cons:

• -30% Reload Speed.
  
• -25% Clip Size.
  
• -20% Blast radius.
  
• Slight deviation, making the Bazooka inaccurate at range.
  
• Can't collect ammo from a Dispenser when active.

The Soldier also has a wide arsenal of Secondary to aid in his war against the machine, ranging from personal weapons like Shotgun or team support like the Buff Banner. Before we move on with the Banners, we'll take a quick look at secondary weapons/utilities first. You have the following secondary weapon/utility choices:

• Shotgun
  
• Gunboats
  
• Mantreads
  
• Reserve Shooter
  
• B.A.S.E. Jumper
  
• Righteous Bison

Your good ol' trusty Shotgun. It deals ok damage against single target at close range but outside of that, your Rocket Launcher clearly outclass this. Nothing in MVM comes alone and since you can freely upgrade your Rocket Launcher to maximum efficiency, using the shotgun is not really recommended, unless you don't have any other secondary at all.

It's like a worse version of the Shotgun in MVM. First, you'll have to launch any robot to the air either by your own Rocket Launcher or someone else's explosive weapon/airblast before you can pull this out and mini-crit them in the air. This is extremely inefficient and reduce your capability to crowd control and defend yourself a lot. Avoid this if you can.

The Gunboats reduce the amount of Blast damage to yourself by 60%, allow you to rocket jump for less self damage. An alternative for those who wish to use the Air Strike as you'll suffer less self damage to activate that bonus firing speed.


These boots provide little benefit for you and your team. Beside, you shouldn't rocket jump (or jump from high ledges) to land on a robot's head. You'll deal rather mediocre damage and put yourself in a dangerous situation as all robots can easily shred you at close range (due to high damage rampup). I guess the only other benefit you can get from this is the reduced knockback from taking damage (but may also server as a double-edged sword since it's harder to surf knockback to safety).

A special utility for both Soldier and Demoman. While you're in midair (due to jumping, explosive-jumping or knockback), you can press jump to activate the parachute, slowing down your vertical descent and giving better control over air-strafing. This utility was mainly designed to work in conjunction with the Air Strike, since as long as the original jump was an explosive jump, you'll continue to gain the extra firing speed from it.

It may be fun to rain rockets like an airstrike but you should remember that firing rockets from that height means you'll suffer damage fall-off a lot. Also, while you may be able to dodge most projectiles (if you know how to airstrafe), any hitscan robots (Scouts, Heavies, Snipers) can easily munch you for quick breakfast. Good to screw around, there are simply better options.

Ah yes, the BISON. What a load of crap this is right now thanks to the new balance change brought over from Meet your Match (or Meat vs Match, whatever). The gun used to be able to deal damage every tick or so as long as the target is colliding with the laser projectile. Well not anymore, too bad! They buffed the damage slightly to compensate which is abysmal (54 damage at point blank, might as well use the shotgun), but in exchange every target penetrated will reduce the projectile's damage by 25% so you actually deals even less damage than the previous version. And yes, this sucks against Tanks too. It used to be... uhm... ok pseudo-primary weapon to use and mess around, but now, this thing is just a wannabe Huntsman weapon.

Pros:

• Infinite Ammo Capacity.
  
• Projectile penetrates enemy targets.
  
• Projectile cannot be deflected.

Cons:

• Terrible damage overall.
  
• -33% clip size.
  
• -25% damage for each penetrated target.
  
• Deals only 20% damage to buildings.

Unique to the Soldier only, he has a variety of Banners to use, which he can easily empower the entire team with different effects. These banners can be filled by doing damage to robots, a relatively easy task in MVM since you have plenty of robots to hit to begin with. Using the right buff at the right moment can help your team tremendously. You have the following choices:

• Buff Banner
  
• Battalion's Backup
  
• Concheror

The Buff Banner is no doubt the most used Secondary for the Soldier by every players out there. When fully charged (requires 600 damage done) and activated, it will grant everyone near him the ability to deal mini-crit to all enemy targets, including Tanks. This can easily boost your entire team's DPS to the robot horde significantly, as you don't merely get 35% extra damage, but it'll also negate any damage falloff from long range. This can easily give you far more damage for yourself and other classes like Heavies! (if they prefer to snipe from range for some reason, that is)


Engineer that's being buffed by this banner will grant his Sentry Gun mini-crit damage as well so remind your Engineer to stand close to you to boost his Sentry Gun damage.

While Buff Banner is a decent choice, there are situations where this banner is rather ineffective, allowing other banners to actually shine.





Pros:

• Provides mini-crits for self and other teammates within range.
  
• Decent source of extra damage against Tanks.

Cons:

• Useless against Battalion's Backup Soldiers (and any robots buffed by it) until they died/charge is depleted.
  
• Overkill in late-game against common robots as everyone upgrades their weapons.

The Battalion's Backup is another banner to use for your team. If they're capable of putting out enough damage but having trouble to stay alive to do that, this buff may comes in handy. It requires 600 damage done to fully charge (like the Buff Banner), and when activated, it'll provide 35% resistance to all type of damage (including melee) and provide complete immunity to all mini-crit and critical hits! It'll also remove any extra knockback you may receive from crits as well, saving you from being sent flying by those nasty crit-boosted robots.

Now, this is quite situational so unless your team is capable of doing enough damage or you already have another Soldier with Buff Banner/Concheror, the Backup is not really a good all-around solid choice. It can certainly comes in handy in certain waves... like this for example:











In this 1st wave of Hamlet Hostility, there will be many Buff Banner Soldiers spawning toward the end of the wave. Their mini-crits (along with Scattergun Scouts and Giants) will hurt you a lot in this early state, thus a charged Battalion Backup is immensely useful at negating those pesky Buff Banners completely.

The Battalion's Backup is somewhat preferable when fighting against Bosses, seeing that the Scout can already fill up the Buff Banner and Concheror benefits by mark and milk.

Pros:

• Negates all kind of crit/mini-crit damage, a decent counter against crit-boosted or Buff Banner Soldiers in early game.
  
• +35% resistance to all damage (this includes melee, does not protect against backstabs), +50% against Sentry Gun.
  
• +20 max HP.

Cons:

• Redundant when everyone has access to resistances later on.
  
• Reduces rocket-jumping's force.

Another great banner to use for the Soldier. The Concheror requires only 480 damage done to fully charge the meter and when activated, it'll grant nearby players 35% damage heal on hit (similar to Scout's Mad Milk, only it applies to all robots) and the same Speed Boost you get from Disciplinary Action.

You might think that this is rather redundant when the Scout's Mad Milk is readily available and provides more health on returns, but these two items stack on nicely, allows you to quickly regain your health back. This also certainly works great when combined with Buff Banner from other Soldier and/or you only have the Spy as the main money collector; or just plain doesn't want to rely on the Scout's Milk and Health on Kill. The Conch encourages you to take an aggressive approach, taking advantage of the extra speed to dodge attacks and heal-on-hit to survive. Coupled with resistances, movement speed upgrades and proper use of Beggar's Bazooka, you're literally a speedy undying tank. Really fun to try out.



Pros:

• 35% damage dealt to enemies returned as health (similar to Mad Milk).
  
• Speed boost from Disciplinary Action.
  
• Passive +4HP regen.

Cons:

• Heal-on-hit may not be enough to survive in early game (lack of damage, resistance, etc.)

Let me tell you something: Melee combat is not the Soldier's specialty. The Soldier is too slow and not strong enough to engage robots in melee combat regularly. Thus you'll only use melee as an utility or when you're completely out of ammo. You have the following choices:

• Shovel
  
• Equalizer
  
• Escape Plan
  
• Pain Train
  
• Half-Zatoichi
  
• Disciplinary Action
  
• Market Gardener

Your field Shovel for every Soldiers. Doesn't have any specialized benefits but certainly not the worst melee to wield either.




Still a straight upgrade to Shovel as you'll most likely only melee when your HP is low as well. But then, you should be escaping in this situation, not staying to pick a melee fight with robots.

This pickaxe has quite a decent amount of DPS against single bulky target if there's little money to upgrade your launcher. Work out from this.


Even after the nerf, it still is one of the best Melee utility for Soldiers to use. Yes, you get marked while holding this, but then it shouldn't be matter that much due to the low health you probably have. Just don't pull this out during mid combat too much or have a few Crit resistance upgrade to negate the cons entirely, if that still bothers you.


There's no payload cart to push or control point to capture. You're stuck with inherit 10% bullet vulnerability, allowing Scouts, Heavies and Snipers to have a good day with you.




While it's good for Demoknights, this sword is certainly not suited for Soldier in MVM. If you pull the sword out without switching back to other weapons fast enough, you'll be stuck with the honorbound effect (sheathing this without killing anything will deal 50 damage to you, and you can't sheath this if your current HP is <50). Since melee combat is not the Soldier's specialty due to his lack of mobility and resistance to approach robots unlike Demoknights, I advise staying away from this.

Pro tip: If you're feeling like taking on Samurai Demoknights because you know how poor the AI is at meleeing, feel free to use this as you can one hit them (same goes for you too so beware).



Another decent utility Melee. Whip a teammate and you'll boost both yours and his Movement Speed for 4 seconds. However, you'll rarely be able to pull this whip out to boost your teammate during combat so the benefit of the whip is rarely noticeable. Still a good choice with that extra attack range despite reduced damage.

Also handy to punish naughty players or robots.



Technically, it's a straight upgrade from Shovel if you don't count in random crits (well... Tough Break introduced the -20% firing speed penalty). However, you'll have to rocket jump to acquire the crit from the Gardener, which can easily put yourself in dangerous close range combat and you can only deal effective damage to one robot only. Don't try to grief your team by doing that.

Having a decent loadout is one thing, knowing how to upgrade is another crucial part as the game gets harder after every wave. Even if you're using Beggar's Bazooka with Buff/Conch/etc, having poorly thought-out upgrades means you can't output enough damage against the increasing dangerous threats and unable to survive the onslaught (other than hiding like a coward).



Generally, you should upgrade your Rocket Launcher first, being the main weapon you're using (except shenaginans), everything else is up to your preference. Maybe resists (crits resist is guaranteed when the mission has many crit-boosted robots in several waves), movement speed, buff duration, health regen, whatever you can find. The following is my upgrade route:

• Full Reload/Firing Speed: Gotta need to pop up those rockets fast. I usually go for Reload before Firing.
  
• 1 Rocket Specialist: If I find my team sucks at fighting any kind of Giant Scout (or when I snipe from range for some reasons), one tick is enough (I'll explain this later), otherwise I'll get this at a later point.
  
• Full Damage: Who wouldn't want more damaging rockets?
  
• 1 Health on Kill: Depends on how I choose to survive.
  
• Clip Size: For late game, to empty my entire salvo against repeated waves of robots before having to reload again.

• Full Reload Speed: So I can tap-firing at similar speed of full reload + firing speed of other launchers.
  
• 1 Ammo Capacity: To keep myself in battle long enough before the banner is ready to blow again.
  
• Rocket Specialist: Like for non-beggar's primary.
  
• Full Damage: You know it.
  
• 1 Health on Kill.
  
• More Ammo Capacity.
  
• Full Firing Speed: I'll get this when I feel like I already maxed out everything I need, which may not include resists, etc. This can slightly increase your tapping rate (by around 12% but screw numbers).

• Any applicable resists/regen: Crit resists for Two Cities and Broken Parts, I usually only bother with other resists and regen when I have my primary maxed out.
  
• Full Movement Speed: Because I just hate Soldier's snail-speed.
  
• Banner duration: I guess those who uses non-Beggar primary may want to max out his banner duration. When I'm using Beggar, I'll only upgrade it accordingly with the current Ammo Capacity I have (1-2 ammo cap -> 1 duration, etc.)

One of the common mistakes I've seen is that many people decided to fully upgrade Rocket Specialist, with some even forego Damage upgrade just for this. So what does Rocket Specialist actually do and how does each upgrade point affect it?

• "Stun" on direct hit (no, it's not the Direct Hit weapon, like one person previously mistakenly stated): Any robot that has been hit by a rocket directly will have their velocity instantly set to almost 0 (almost like airblast's baked knockback) for around half a second (no, this duration cannot be increased with more RS invested) before their speed is back to normal. This "stun" effect is just about as potent as the Spy's Sapper and when combined with Beggar's Bazooka, you can effectively stunlock Giants to a crawl until you run out of ammo/die.
  
  
• No damage fall-off: In TF2, the further you're from the enemy's position, the less damaging your rocket is. RS, however, will ensure that if for some reason you're sniping from long range and directly hit the enemy (in Hammer/mapping term, more than 512 hammer unit), your rocket will not suffer damage fall-off and will always deal the base 100% damage. Ex: base damage of rocket is 90, if you're hitting a robot from a distance equivalent to the distance between 2fort sniper balcony, your rocket will always deal 90 damage instead of like 45 only.
  
  
• Extra Splash radius: every point of RS you purchase will increase the splash radius of your rocket by 15%, but remember this also only applies on direct rocket hit.
  NOTE: This sadly stacks multiplicatively with Direct Hit's reduced splash. Even with full RS, the splash range of DH would be -52% (RS's 1.60 x DH's 0.3 = 0.48) radius instead of -10% like some would think.
  
  
• Extra Projectile speed: the only thing independent from direct rocket hit, all of your rockets will have increased velocity, 15% for every point.

Two of the most potent benefits: "stun" and fall-off negation, are already at their full effect when you only invest ONE point in RS. The remaining 3 points of RS are for extra splash radius and projectile speed only (which, personally, I don't think it's worth the $300 each for them). I'm not really against you if you're going to upgrade RS to full in the end but if you're forgoing other upgrade like Damage, you're not as efficient as you could be.

To be honest, there's nothing much on how to play Soldier. It's a matter of keep tapping M1 at robot's feet and watching them fly, with occasional trumpet blowing and rocket jumping for mobility. I guess I can give you a few pointers though:


I've seen many newbie Soldiers keep attacking robots from long range because they think it's safe to stay away from robot's firing range. That's very counter-productive in general since your rockets will suffer damage fall-off. Even with Rocket Specialist to negate this somewhat, your rockets still take awhile to reach the target, by then they may have already been killed by your teammates or robots merely got away far enough.

Instead, you should try to go up-front whenever possible to take advantage of damage ramp-up. Don't worry about dying far too much: you won't die if you kill those robots first, and everyone loves dead robots. Of course, this doesn't mean you have to go for suicidal attacks and standing right in front of them. If things get ugly, just retreat back to cover and fire around the corner.


You are not a Heavy. You don't have to stay in one spot and spam rocket from there. Keep being on the move by strafing and jumping around: you don't want to be nailed by millions of rockets/pipes/bullets because you're just standing still. Also, your rocket launcher gives you lots of mobility with the use of rocketjump. This way, when robots are coming from different locations, you can quickly jump around to aid your teammates and protecting the flank at the same time (like in Mannhattan where robots occasionally spawn on the catwalk in addition to the main spawn under).

3. Be an effective Support.

The Soldier is strong in both offensive and defensive roles due to the banner items. In MVM, it's easy and quick to fill the banner's rage meter due to the horde nature of the robot attacker. However, you should know when your choice of banner is the most effective:

• Buff Banner's extra damage is generally good when threats are around but if there's only few robots/one Giant in battle (which can be simply marked by the Scout), it might be better to just save it for later use. Also completely useless against Battalion's Backup Soldiers so don't bother blowing this against them.
  
  
• Battalion's Backup's capability of negating crits (also works against mini-crits) with extra 35% damage resistance is immensely useful in early game if your teammates barely got any resistance to survive (could be because their playstyle focus on raw damage with their primary weapon). Be aware though, when active, the Backup can actually reduce the force of your rocket-jump (this actually took me by surprise a few times).
  
  
• Concheror's speed boost and heal-on-hit promote an aggressive playstyle. Since it requires less damage dealt to fully charged, your teammates will get to reap the benefit from this banner quite frequent.

Overall, effective use of banners requires you to remember the mission's layout (which and when robots will spawn). If you accidentally blow the banner while no threat is around, you can actually keep holding the banner before letting it active (by holding M1). When used with Beggar's Bazooka, you no longer need to go through lengthy reload time: just pop out the banner while standing next to the Dispenser (or ammo pack) to "reload" and you're instantly back in action.

I personally avoid the use of canteens in general (yes, even as an Engineer) unless I want to screw around due to having excess money. In pub games, canteens can be a last resort life-saver if your teammates (and maybe you) screw up a lot. Just don't spam them too much or you'll just waste lots of money on these temporary buffs to yourself.


Uber Canteen barely has much purpose for Soldier. You can rocket jump or firing from around corner to avoid taking too much damage from robots to begin with. Still, in case you need to block robots or merely trying to distract them, this can comes in handy and even the only viable canteen to use when you're using the Cow Mangler.




Now this should be the main canteen to buy if you ever need it. This will allow you to unload several powerful crockets to robot's face. Works extremely good with the Beggar's Bazooka as you can load up a barrage before activating the crit boost. Do not buy this if you're using the Cow Mangler as it won't get the crit boost.





Using this canteen will instantly refill your ammo capacity and your clip. This can allow you to fire your rocket uninterrupted and can be a good backup for the Beggar's Bazooka. A rather waste of money if you're using the Cow Mangler, seeing as you already have infinite Ammo Capacity to begin with.




This canteen serves as a quick get-away or to catch any robots that have bypassed your defense with the bomb and coming close to the hatch (usually Super Scouts). It's relatively cheap to the point it can barely hurt your credits, and you probably won't use more than 1 of them per wave anyway. Pro tip: I use this canteen to return to base for upgrades everytime I'm too lazy to walk back (or even suicide)

That's everything I can say about the Soldier in MVM.