This is the Soldier. He is in the Offensive tier with 200 health, the 2nd highest health in the game, along with his 80% speed. He specializes in all ranges of combat with his 3 weapons: the Rocket Launcher, the Shotgun, and the Shovel. His special ability is to Rocket Jump with his Rocket Launcher, and is a jack of all trades class. The Soldier is also a great starter class in the game, and should be played as your 1st class.

To play Soljah succesfully, you need to predict where the enemy is going to go. These rockets arn't heat seeking, so you need to know how fast the class is going. To get the most use out of your rockets, aim at their feet. It's almost impossible to directly hit the enemy('s), unless if you are a God Soldier. Of course, even I can't get my rockets in the right places at times, but most of the time, you should be getting damage from your rockets. Know where Health Packs are on a map to know where weakened enemies are going. When you know this and do this, you will instantly become a good Soldier.

Aside from the last thing I was talking about and the next thing I will talk about, there isn't much to the Soldier other than to ROCKET SPAM. Use your high health and damage to get up close and personal with the enemy and spam your rockets. Thats about it for this section, nothing much other than rocket spamming.

The Soldier's special ability is his Rocket Jump. I won't go into deep detail of how to do speed shots, pogos, and ramp slides, but I will go into the very basics of Rocket Jumping. You only need about 3 keys: Jump, Crouch, and Fire, all in that order. Really, all you need is Jump and Fire, but you gain more momentum when you crouch. When you need to gain highth, you jump, crouch, and shoot at the ground. Shooting at the ground is not appliable to every kind of rocket jump you do. Sometimes, you need to shoot at the wall going away from it, and sometimes shooting at the wall going up it. Another thing that I'm going to touch briefly on is Pogos. Pogoing is basically shooting at the ground to extend your rocket jump. Because of the speed that you are going at, you might need to adjust your aim to time the explosion to propel yourself, and this is why rocket jumping is so hard to do. There are certain weapons that benifit from rocket jumping, and those weapons are the Rocket Jumper, Liberty Launcher, Air Strike, Gunboats, B.A.S.E Jumper, and the infamous Market Gardener. You can find out about these weapons in their respective weapon catagories that I'm going into next. Thats about it, but before I go, I want to show you a video that shows if you do get good at rocket jumping.
The video belongs to the owner, I didn't make this.

I will list all of Soldier's Primaries, excluding reskins.

Rocket Launcher: This is the stock rocket launcher you get when you start. It's the best for base and splash damage. Currently this is my most used Primary for Soldier. There is a reskin named The Original, modeled after the Quake rocket launcher, and has the viewmodel in the bottom middle rather than the left or the right.


Direct Hit: This rocket launcher makes you have to HIT your targets than just hit their feet. The blast radius is smaller than a flea's dingle. However, you will be rewarded with more damage and faster projectile speeds. You will also be rewarded with mini-crits on hitting rocket jumping targets. This rocket launcher will take hours upon hours to master, and is not recommended for open, wide maps.


Air Strike: This weapon is very similar to the Direct Hit, but it will deal less damage and have 3 rockets in the clip. The cool thing about this weapon is that every kill you get with the weapon, your clip size increases, making you have a max clip size of up to 9 rockets I believe. The other awesome thing with this, is that when you rocket jumped and in the air, your fire rate increases when you are in the air, way faster than a Pyro can airblast them. This weapon goes hand in hand with the B.A.S.E Jumper (See B.A.S.E Jumper in Secondary Weapons), with the parachute slowing your speed down to fire a barage of rockets. This weapon is cool, and is a recommended one to use if you want to mess around with some other weapons.


Black Box: This box will give you 15 health per hit that you get with this weapon, but you only get 3 rockets in a clip. This is one of the rocket launchers where having the Shotgun in your loadout will help you a lot. If you don't have a Medic on your team, this weapon is worth a shot.


Liberty Launcher: This rocket launcher will have 40% faster projectile speeds, and you will recieve less damage from rocket jumping. The bad thing about this is that you will deal less damage, so this launcher is for mobility uses rather than damage uses.


Cow Mangler 5000: This projectile launcher uses no ammo at all, and if you have your clip full, you can fire a slow charge shot that can mini-crit players, inflict afterburn for 6 seconds, and disable buildings for 4 seconds. However, you cannot be crit boosted with this, deal no critical hits, and only deal 20% damage to buildings. This rocket launcher is only for support purposes and should never be used as your main weapon.


Beggar's Bazooka: This crazy weapon is a rapid fire weapon that can fire 3 rockets at the same time. You hold the fire button to load your rockets and release fire to shoot your rockets. However, the rockets have multiple degrees of rockets being shot, overloading the chamber will damage you, cannot collect ammo from dispensers while out, and a 30% longer reload time. This is only helpful in x10 mod and MvM.


Rocket Jumper: This weapon does NO damage, to you, or enemies. Instead, this is used for rocket jumping instead. It has a larger ammo capacity, and you can't carry the Inteligence or Power Core in Capture the Flag and Robot Destruction, respectively. This is great to have on if you just want to rocket jump. Many newbies that come into TF2 think that this does damage to others, and this is the reaction. By the way, I made this meme.

Here is a list of Soldier secondaries, excluding reskins.

Shotgun: This is the stock secondary you get when you start the game. Its your basic shotgun that have six shots, and is great for finishing off enemies that you hit with the rocket launcher, or great for using against a pro Pyro. This is the secondary that you should always have on you, with the exception of the Gunboats and the Buff Banner, which I will talk about later.


Buff Banner: This is one of 4 backpack weapons that Soldier has. You have a bar on the bottom of your screen, and you do 600 damage to charge it all up. When you use your charge, you play a little bit on your trumpet, and you and every teammate around you will deal mini-crits. This can turn the tide of battle real quick. The only bad things about this is that you have to do 600 damage to charge this up, and that is a lot of damage. Also, its only active when you are alive, so you can't charge in and think you are invincible.


Battalions Backup: This is more of the defensive version of the Buff Banner. When you charge this up, to the same amount as the BuffB, you and every teammate around you will get 10 seconds of resistance to critical hits, sentry gun resistance up by 50%, and damage resistance up by 35%. You will also passively get 20 more health than your max, making it 220 total health. This is less useful than the Buff Banner, but can literally stop an offensive team in their tracks, when used right.


Concheror: This is the other backpack weapon for Soldier, and its compleatly different than the other backpacks. When you charge this up, which takes 480 damage to do so, you and your surrouding teammates will recieve a slight speed boost and heal 35% of damage delt for 10 seconds. In a lot of ways, its like Mad Milk for the Scout. You will also passively regenerate 2 health a second, which paired with the Black Box, you are a health regenerating machine.


Gunboats: For rocket jumping lovers that don't want to take a lot of damage, these are the boots for you. When you have them equiped in your loadout, you will take 60% less damage from rocket jumping and self-inflicted rocket damage. With the stock rocket launcher, this is about 20 damage lost on rocket jumping, opposed to the 50 damage you normally take without Gunboats. This is a great weapon to have on you, but the bad thing about this is that you still take fall damage, but thats about it.


Mantreads: This is the other version of the Gunboats, and its is not a good weapon at all. When you land on someones head, the fall damage you have taken is x3 the damage delt to the person you just landed on. You will also lose 75% on push force from damage that you taken. It could be useful for taking Sentries, but the Shotgun is way better than this. Don't use it.


Reserve Shooter: This other Shotgun is too situational. When you pull it out, which is 15% faster, you will have 5 seconds to shoot someone that is airborne to deal minicrits on them. The bad thing is that you only have 4 shots until you have to reload. It's also has a more muffled sound when you shoot it, so you can land a couple more shots until someone notices you. This is garbage, since the lowered clip size will kill you. Might as well use the stock Shotgun instead.


Panic Attack: This Beggar Bazooka of shotguns can load up to 4 shells and shoot them all. This also has some properties of the Equilizer where the lower your health is, the faster you shoot, and the larger your bullet spread is. You also have a 34% faster reload time so you won't be left in the dust. Really good to use when you want to get in the enemies faces. The Panic Attack will burn through your ammo, so watch it. For being a Hightower/Harvest/Double Cross god, using this will be loads of fun.


Righteous Bison: The future is here...kind of. The cool things about this is that there is infinite ammo, penetrates multiple people, and the projectiles cannot be reflected, so its still usefull against Pyros. This can also light friendly Huntsman arrows on fire. The only thing thats bad about this is that it only deals 20% damage to enemie buildings, but you can easily switch to other weapons to damage them. This weapon is somewhat as good as the Shotgun.


B.A.S.E Jumper: This cool backpack weapon will deploy a parachute when you press the JUMP button (Space Bar on default). You can bring it back in with the same button, and take it out as many times as you want. This makes Market Gardening way more easier, as long as you rocket jumped. The bad thing about this is that you still take a lot of rocket jumping damage, but as long as you use the Liberty Launcher, Air Strike, or Rocket Jumper, you should be fine. For Market Gardening and just all around rocket jumping, equip this.

Now I will list all of Soldier's Melee weapons.

Shovel: This is the stock weapon you get when you start out. Compared to Soldiers high damaging rocket launcher and shotgun, this isn't really all that good. Only use this if you have no other weapons to choose.


Equalizer: This weapon was once very cheap, but now is not very good. When you have full health, you deal less damage than the stock shovel. The less health you have, the more damage you will deal. The max damage you will ever get out of this thing without crits is 107 damage, but you are risking your life there. Also, when you have this out, you will not recieve healing from Medics. This weapon isn't that good period. It could be helpful for close range combat, but only when the enemy team is unaware. With this, you can also taunt kill, where the Soldier pulls his gernades out and kills himself, killing any enemie around you.


Escape Plan: This is very similar to the Equalizer, since the qualities of it were in the Equalizer. When you pull it out, based on how much health you have, you will go faster. The bad things is that you will recieve mini-crits, and a little bit after you change weapons. You will also not get healed by Medics when you have it out. As with the Equalizer, you can preform the taunt kill that will kill you in the process. This is a weapon you should always have out, and you can run away to get health or go in for the kill.


Pain Train: The worst weapon and idea put into TF2. When you have it, you act like a Scout capping a point or pushing the cart. Also, you will recieve 10% more bullet damage, which is major. Don't use this weapon. Period.


Half-Zatoichi: This weapon is good if you just want to go on a crazy killing run with your melee. When you kill someone, you get all your health back, and when someone wields this, its a one-hit kill. The bad thing about this is that you are Honorbound when you have it out, meaning that you can't put it away unless if you kill someone. This is a bit of a hassle, but for finishing off close enemies its great.


Disciplinary Action: This melee weapon will speed up any friendly teammates if you hit them with this, but you will have a 25% damage penalty for hitting any enemie peoples. This is a great weapon to have if you want to be a support Soldier. It also has a large-a$$ melee range, so large in fact that I think you can hit someone behind you. I don't know if its true, but otherwise, this weapon is good.


Market Gardener: Dis weapon, omg. When you rocket jump, if you hit someone with this, it will have a 100% chance of a critical hit. Bad thing is, no random crits. Before the B.A.S.E. Jumper (see in Secondary Weapons) was released in the Love and War update, this weapon was only good for Hightower and rocket jumping gods. Now, it's a good weapon to insta-kill any class with HP under 195, and with the B.A.S.E Jumper, "...there is more creative ways to shovel people" -STAR_.

Here are some good loadouts to try out, including...

My Personal Loadout

• Original (Rocket Launcher reskin)
  
• Gunboats for big maps, Shotgun for small maps
  
• Pan

If you get killed by someone that has an Original named "Quake's ♥♥♥♥ Rocket" that will probably be me.

Love, War, and Shovels

• Air Strike
  
• B.A.S.E. Jumper
  
• Market Gardener

The Air Strike and BASE Jumper were made hand in hand. If you are going to be rocket jumping a lot, might as well have the Market Gardener.

Trollgier

• Rocket Jumper
  
• BASE Jumper for everyday use, Mantreads for PROS.
  
• Market Gardener

A very poplular loadout for screwing around on Hightower or any other map with lots of open air sections.

There you go! You have learned all the things to go out and be at least a decent Soldier. If you have any question, or things I need to add, just put it in the comments below. I will try to keep up with weapon buffs/nerfs/new attributes. I am making a whole series on How to Not be Noob on the clases, and sooner or later official gamemodes. All of my guides can be found in my guide portal.
Now go out there and show your skillz!