Is the Soldier Straight Up Broken?

[newwailer]

So am I reading things wrong:

The Soldier has Legendary Armor, Legendary Fortitude, Constitution-based, Ranged combatant. A strong combo.

Then at it also gets Legendary Class DC, which scales at the same rate as a caster, but there's one big difference... the Area Fire trait. An area weapon adds your weapon's tracking bonus to your class DC. So a Kineticist or Psychic at Lv20 will likely have a spell DC 3 points lower than a soldier with an area weapon. The soldier is a blaster tank?

Is this broken good or am I missing something?

[Lyra Amary]

You have to look at things in context.

Area fire does significantly less damage than even cantrips and can only target Reflex saves. Frankly I would never even consider using any area fire/automatic weapons if I wasn't playing a Soldier. It needs the bonus to DCs to be competitive, and likely still isn't unless you also have the Soldier's Primary Target ability.

I remember the musings the devs had during the Field Tests where they concerned about giving the Soldier legendary armor, and primary target didn't give a free attack on top of area fire, and to me that version of the Soldier was one of the weakest classes I'd ever seen.

I'm glad the Starfinder devs are not afraid of giving their classes legendary proficiencies in things.

[Candlejake]

Right now the soldier looks very strong but is kept very limited by being super MAD.

primary fire is really strong but it doesnt key off your main stat. Area Fire does use your main stat since it uses CON, but your save proficiency grows slower than your attack proficiency (at level 7 instead of 5 for example.)

And Close Quarters is just the MADest thing ive ever seen. You want high STR for your melee weapons, high dex for primary fire because you likely still want some range and high con for your saves

[Lyra Amary]

As an amendment of my previous statement, it seems area fire/auto-fire does compare favorably to cantrip damage when taking into account weapon specialization and upgrades that increase damage like flaming or frost modules.

Still, being comparable to cantrip damage on a character with 0 spellcasting capability is not that impressive. I still wouldn't use area/automatic weapons on any class without the Soldier's Primary Target feature.

[WWHsmackdown]

Candlejake wrote:

Right now the soldier looks very strong but is kept very limited by being super MAD.

primary fire is really strong but it doesnt key off your main stat. Area Fire does use your main stat since it uses CON, but your save proficiency grows slower than your attack proficiency (at level 7 instead of 5 for example.)

And Close Quarters is just the MADest thing ive ever seen. You want high STR for your melee weapons, high dex for primary fire because you likely still want some range and high con for your saves

Exactly! Btw, close quarters is the soldier I want to make. 14 dex and 14 str may sound risky, but that whirling swipe feat at lvl one means my guy's main damage is all from DC. Having my primary target strikes a few points less accurate isn't a big deal when they're more of a bonus. Switch hitting brawler looks like he'll be eating good