Why I Play Soldier

ROCKETS!

Okay that’s not the only reason. There’s a small collection of reasons why I play Soldier in my spare time, when I’m named Medic but can’t be bothered to play my own name sake. Recently though, there are actually too many Medics around for me to be able to do so, probably because they are so good at scoring points and recently got some nice buffs. I may be a one trick pony, but I do actually dabble in other classes. Soldier is my go-to secondary class though.

But yes, rockets are a big reason why. They’re both skillful and skill-less, a weird paradox. Any idiot, including me, can spam rockets at an enemy, even more so with the Beggar’s Bazooka, but it takes genuine skill to actually lead your shots, do sick airshots and be able to kill Scouts with your slow-moving, high damage projectiles. There’s also the whole aspect of rocket jumping, something I still haven’t gotten the hang of yet, which is a skill all of its own. Like the Crusader’s Crossbow or the Sticky Bomb Launcher, the Rocket Launcher has more than one use aside from “kill everything.”

That’s not to say that I can’t do basic rocket jumps, I can, I just can’t do them efficiently. I do very much envy the people who do all these fancy jumps, and people who can do basic rollouts, but oh well.

Another reason to playing Soldier is that it’s still somewhat tied to the supporting role, especially with the banners. I’ve always been a fan of the Concheror and the Battaltion’s Backup, and both were nicely buffed when I started playing Soldier properly. You end up with a support damage hybrid, but filling up those little bars is just as much a challenge as filling up an Ubercharge. On top of that, you get AOE effects, which are always neat. More work and more risk but a really nice reward.

There’s also the general tankiness that Soldier seems to have. He’s the second slowest class and the class with the second most health. It takes three Scout meatshots to kill you, which may seem like not a lot (that’s only half the Scattergun’s clip size – he can kill two Soldiers before having to reload…) but everyone else is a lot more flimsy and most classes are a lot more prone to being shot in the head by a Sniper. You can say the same about Pyro and Demoman, but going back to the Scout example, they’d both be dead in two meatshots. It’s why I originally liked playing Medic, I was just a bit healthier and faster than most other classes.

Really, the main reason I play Soldier is that it’s very hard to actually fuck up with him. There are all the normal fuck-ups like dying and blowing yourself up and stuff, but at the most you don’t get to fill up your banner, rather than losing a game-changing Uber, or dying as your sentry gets sapped, or failing a backstab, or getting counter-sniped or any of that. You die, you respawn and you’re back on the front lines relatively quickly, or relatively slowly. That doesn’t matter though, you’re Soldier, you can get away with that. But on the flip side of things, playing Soldier is a huge undertaking if you wish to master him.

But most important of all, you can never, ever, ever have too many Soldiers. You really can’t. Every other class, you can have too many of – Heavies on CP/CTF, Engineers on Attack, Scouts on defense, Demomen need direct damage at times, Medics, Snipers, Pyros and Spies in general.  Soldiers are such a good Jack Of All Trades class that you can field an entire team of them and still do pretty well, filling every niche from speedy cap-capturer, to support buffer to basic damage dealer.

Soldier is just too all-round-y to pass up on.