What I mean is that they don't seem to point you to a specific playstyle, nor do they seem to really do a lot of heavy lifting to define your character in the way like Action Hero or Armor Storm do.
Instead they solve basic problems, like wanting to play a low-strength character or having melee allies.
Like if there's a short range party member (sometimes multiple short range party members) I feel almost obligated to take Bombard simply so I can keep using my features without being a nuisance. Battlemaps just frankly aren't always big enough to healthily support a good use of Area weapons with melee allies, especially if you're using cones or lines that are harder to aim.
The problem is they compete against gimmicks that are also unreproduceable and also help define what your character is. So it feels like the Soldier can very easily be forced into picking between a flavorful playstyle or a really basic piece of mechanical QoL to make their character functional. This sucks.
It was a really common criticism in the playtest so it's sort of a shame to see it untouched on release, which makes it even less likely to get addressed, but I still think it's worth repeating. At the very least I hope Paizo maybe considers feat options to let you order explorer your way into some of these benefits later on.
The Safe-Elements aspect of bombard especially really feels like it needs to be a low level option. It's too much of an objectively correct choice if anyone on your team is melee.
What I mean is that they don't seem to point you to a specific playstyle, nor do they seem to really do a lot of heavy lifting to define your character in the way like Action Hero or Armor Storm do.
Instead they solve basic problems, like wanting to play a low-strength character or having melee allies.
Like if there's a short range party member (sometimes multiple short range party members) I feel almost obligated to take Bombard simply so I can keep using my features without being a nuisance. Battlemaps just frankly aren't always big enough to healthily support a good use of Area weapons with melee allies, especially if you're using cones or lines that are harder to aim.
The problem is they compete against gimmicks that are also unreproduceable and also help define what your character is. So it feels like the Soldier can very easily be forced into picking between a flavorful playstyle or a really basic piece of mechanical QoL to make their character functional. This sucks.
It was a really common criticism in the playtest so it's sort of a shame to see it untouched on release, which makes it even less likely to get addressed, but I still think it's worth repeating. At the very least I hope Paizo maybe considers feat options to let you order explorer your way into some of these benefits later on.
The Safe-Elements aspect of bombard especially really feels like it needs to be a low level option. It's too much of an objectively correct choice if anyone on your team is melee.
Isn't Walking Armory a class feature at 1st level, not a Fighting Style? It's wrongly formatted on Archives of Nethys by being in the Fighting Styles section as well as the class page, but in the PDF it's a separate class feature.
My bad about Walking Armory, was away from my books and just glancing at AON, should have double checked.
However, I feel like it was pretty clear in the playstyle and purpose it had. It's very clearly meant as the Area-Fire specialist to contrast with Action Hero focusing on Auto-Fire and guns that can make Strikes. Bombard is for players who are making Area-Fires every turn, and have no choice but to probably-maybe hit some teammates in the process.
I mean to an extent they all are. Area/Auto Fire is just how you attack things as a soldier. There's some room for other builds to do other things, but it's still inevitably something a lot of your options revolve around.
For me the problem with Bombard comes down to the way it works with party dynamics. If I'm in a melee heavy group, Bombard feels obligate just to let me keep doing my thing without being a threat to my own party. We have a From The Front Envoy and a Solarian. I feel less like I'm choosing Bombard over Action Hero positively in terms of pursuing what features I want so much as picking it because the cones from my auto fire attacks are a constant threat to half the party without Bombard's ability to exclude allies.
This is the whole reason why Safe Elements is an easily accessible feat for Kineticists.... imagine if only one element had access to it. It'd suck so much to be put in that position.
I played a (bombard) soldier with a Cryo Cannon from level 10 to 13 in a party that had a Solarian. I can only remember the "ignore allies" feature coming into use maybe twice. That might be unique to the party we had (solarian mostly used reach, nobody else did melee) but... not that unique, and I could see it being entirely optional.
That said, I wouldn't mind seeing at least part of each fighting style made available (as feats or otherwise) so that a soldier can have a wider range of options in terms of play styles. They currently get very good at what they do, but tend to stay very narrow. This is made even more so by the fact that you can only really keep one weapon improved and modded to full level optimized effectiveness.