Soldier - The Baseline for Physical Melee and Durability

What It Does Well

The official description casts Soldiers as trained to survive the most hellish conditions and hold the line, making up for raw damage with fortitude and leadership.

• ▸Defense: passives that raise health and Physique, shield block bonuses, enemy damage reduction, and percentage damage absorption - plus self-sourced armor and armor absorption against the physical damage that is hard to mitigate elsewhere.
• ▸Offense: several physical weapon-attack skills and an area debuff that heavily reduces enemy physical resistance, with buffs for physical damage and attack speed.
• ▸Clear speed: builds around Forcewave or Blade Arc cover crowd clearing.
• ▸Retaliation: Soldier has the skills to turn its defenses into damage, making it a foundation for retaliation builds (mechanics in the Retaliation and RAtA article).
• ▸Attribute growth: Physique 4 stars, Cunning 3, Spirit 1 - it grows straightforwardly toward durability.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• ▸Strengths: excellent passives and buffs, stability against tough single targets, mobility from a movement skill, and crowd control through stun, knockdown, and skill disruption.
• ▸Weakness: energy starvation, a direct consequence of low Spirit.
• ▸Weakness: many skills knock enemies down, which scatters packs and can make area attacks harder to land.
• ▸Weakness: few resistance-reduction options outside physical, and relatively few good skills to bind strong devotion procs to.
• ▸This list follows the Japanese wiki's Soldier page and can shift with patches - in-game skill text is always the final authority.

Choosing a Partner and Getting Started

The first mastery is chosen at level 2 and the second at level 10. You can also stay single-class - the game is tuned so that any single mastery can clear Normal.

• ▸Soldier's two holes are resistance reduction and energy. Pick a partner that fills them and you will rarely go wrong.
• ▸Occultist: Curse of Frailty reduces a wide band of resistances including physical, addressing Soldier's biggest weakness directly.
• ▸Demolitionist: brings fire, lightning, and area damage, covering the clearing speed and elemental coverage Soldier lacks on its own.
• ▸Skill points can be respecced at the Spirit Guide at any time, so allocation mistakes are recoverable (see the Respec article) - but the mastery choice itself cannot be changed.
• ▸For attributes, spend only what gear requires and put the rest into Physique (see the Attribute Points article).

1. Official Grim Dawn Game Guide: Masteries — Confirms the official descriptions of all ten masteries, the first mastery at level 2 and the second at level 10, and Soldier's framing as favoring close combat and firearms while making up for damage with fortitude.
2. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Soldier — Confirms the physical focus, top-tier survivability and best-in-base-game shield defense, Menhir's Bulwark now applying to two-handed melee, the worst Spirit growth in the game, the shortage of physical resistance reduction and the resulting reliance on Assassin's Mark or Curse of Frailty, and the listed strengths and weaknesses.
3. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Masteries index — Confirms the per-mastery attribute growth (Soldier: Physique 4 / Cunning 3 / Spirit 1) and favored damage types (1. physical, 2. bleed, 3. pierce and elemental).
4. Official Crate Forum: Grim Dawn Version v1.3.0.4 + Hotfixes — Official patch notes for the verified version (v1.3.0.5 being the latest hotfix as of 2026-07-31).