Updated Title Publisher
Updated Title Publisher
Updated Title
Published Title Score Editor's Choice Publisher
Published Title Publisher

Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader

Las Rifle Soldier Bounty Hunter Build - Rogue Trader

By
Craig Robinson

The Soldier is one of the more popular classes in Rogue Trader, offering players that ranged fantasy off being a space shooter. While the Soldier is all about that ranged specialization, you can specialize into becoming more of an entrenched unit, area assault unit, or suppressive firing bullet hose. All of the builds are viable, yet the focus of our Soldier Build is to create something that no companion can really specialize in. The aim of our Rogue Trader Soldier Build is to enable you to become a crit armor shredding machine, using supportive burst fire, and then the armor shredding of the Bounty Hunter, followed by crit increasing to ensure you can still deal damage while providing bonuses, this is something not many other companions and their restrictive builds can do.

With that said, here is a closer look at our Supportive Soldier Bounty Hunter Build in Rogue Trader. You’ll get a deeper dive into talents, skills, and starting characteristics along with recommended items to fulfill the build.

A guide on how to build a Soldier in Rogue Trader using Las guns.

Soldier, Bounty Hunter Support DPS Build - Rogue Trader

To get started, we recommend creating a character that looks something along the lines of this:

The general idea is you need a high Ballistic skill (BS), so starting with 40 allows you to reach that ideal 70. You want 70 BS since after you add another 30, you’ll make it a 100% chance to hit while fighting in your recommended range as listed on each ranged weapon. The other major stat you want to look into is the "Perception" iconPerception stat since that lowers enemy dodge chance against your shots. This is important for how Soldiers function, especially for the supporting aspects of CC, armor penetration, and other stat-stripping penalties this build will take in the Bounty Hunter section.

While we are here, we strongly advise taking characters with stronger damage builds. This build will not do that much damage, since its concentration lies on stripping armor, dodge, and CC. The burst fire weapon likely won’t deal much, but your Las Sniper will deal solid damage to the focus kill target you’re bursting with your skills. Ideally, you want one Vanguard and then two pure DPS characters in any form you want, followed by an Officer and an Operative.

Soldier Build

Row Unlock 1 Unlock 2
1 "Run and Gun" iconRun and Gun
2 Optional
3 "Revel in Slaughter" iconRevel in Slaughter
4 Firearm Mastery "Fired Up" iconFired Up
5 "Ballistic Skill" iconBallistic Skill "Spare Magazine" iconSpare Magazine
6 "Ballistic Skill" iconBallistic Skill "Rapid Fire" iconRapid Fire
7 "Perception" iconPerception "Nimble" iconNimble
8 Unflattering Fire Optional
9 Firearm Mastery 3
10 "Hail of Steel" iconHail of Steel "Perception" iconPerception
11 "Controlled Shot" iconControlled Shot Optional
12 "Agility" iconAgility "Las Weapon Expert" iconLas Weapon Expert
13 "Trace the Trajectory" iconTrace the Trajectory "Suppression Fire!" iconSuppression Fire!
14 It Will Not Die Optional
15 Firearm Mastery 2

The general idea of the Soldier build here is that you’re setting yourself up as a Support DPS-type character. The Abilities and Talents you are getting will be for key burst fire moments, improving your own survivability, and then ramping up your bonus free attacks using your "Fortress World" iconFortress World and Militarum features to get your bonus damage and bonus attacks off.

Bounty Hunter Soldier Build

Vanguard tanks the enemies, then you burst fire or pick off the ones you need with Tactics activated.

Row Unlock 1 Unlock 2
1 Hunt Down the Prey
2 "Piercing Shot" iconPiercing Shot
3 "Heightened Concentration" iconHeightened Concentration
4 Wild Hunt
5 AP increase + "Ballistic Skill" iconBallistic Skill "Familiar Kickback" iconFamiliar Kickback
6 "Agility" iconAgility "Pierce the Armour" iconPierce the Armour
7 "Cull the Bold" iconCull the Bold
8 "Pierce and Ruin" iconPierce and Ruin Optional
9 "Ballistic Skill" iconBallistic Skill "Shoulder to Shoulder" iconShoulder to Shoulder
10 "Gruesome Kill" iconGruesome Kill
11 Optional "Perception" iconPerception
12 Wild Hunt 2
13 "Catch" iconCatch
14 Optional "Perception" iconPerception
15 Characteristics Training: "Ballistic Skill" iconBallistic Skill "Ensnare the Prey" iconEnsnare the Prey
16 Hunter’s "Ambush" iconAmbush
17 "Agility" iconAgility Optional
18 "Pounce" iconPounce
19 Characteristics Training: "Agility" iconAgility
20 Wild Hunt 1

The general premise of this build is that you are going to be fighting a lot of really armored enemies and a lot of enemies that have high dodge. The general idea is that your Las guns are going to be useful at lowering dodge, alongside your near 100% hit chance via getting "Ballistic Skill" iconBallistic Skill and Perception to 70. Those annoying Aeldari and Drukhari enemies during Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are going to have trouble dodging you now. Now you can land your shots reliably, you can easily start stripping away enemy armor, and thus provide assistance to your allies. For example, Arch-Militants can get a talent called "Exploit Weakness" iconExploit Weakness, so this allows them to get a huge talent to reshape builds around your supporting features. Throw in the "Agility" iconAgility lowering debuff once you can score kills via "Gruesome Kill" iconGruesome Kill or lower dodge via "Cull the Bold" iconCull the Bold, this makes allies’ damage per round increase, as they’ll land their shots more often alongside because of you.

In addition, you now have more reliable ways to land crits, to take advantage of the "Fired Up" iconFired Up talent from the previous Archetype in Soldier. Applying Prey to an enemy and then using the "Piercing Shot" iconPiercing Shot skill will allow you to auto-crit an enemy, not to mention hit another target via Overpen, and start shredding their armor too. You can use this to hit multiple targets or start focusing on a boss.

It is also worth mentioning that at this stage of the game, you’ll be using your four or five Rate of Fire "Lasgun" iconLasguns on Burst Fire. Chances are you’ll have a vanguard in your party, and that means stacking multiple enemies in a block. As long as you can land either one of your eight or ten Las rounds against a foe, you will begin the process of big damage, armor, and dodge shred across multiple enemies. Throw in an "Ensnare the Prey" iconEnsnare the Prey for Immobilization bonuses, and you can become a pretty solid support gunner character for your team. This will make it a lot easier for your primary snipers and "Heavy Bolter" iconHeavy Bolter builds, such as how we recommend building Argenta, Yrliet, or an assassin like Marazhai to make it much easier to fulfill their role. This is where you can make the most use of your "Regimental Tactics" iconRegimental Tactics, as you’ll get big perception bonuses against enemies adjacent to the Vanguard, taunting enemies to attack it.

Exemplar

Recommended Exemplar Talents:

  1. Master Precision (if you use "Deadly Repeater" iconDeadly Repeater)
  2. "Grievous Wounds" iconGrievous Wounds
  3. "Cataclysm" iconCataclysm

Master Precision will grant you over 205 more damage when you use Deadeye Shot. The only weapon you can really get value out of using this build is the Deadly Repeater sniper rifle, which is a solid Las-themed sniper sold by traders. This has a chance to double fire and will grant you the Deadeye shot you need. It’s a great second weapon option when you don’t need to burst fire.

The others are largely damage boosts. One is based on how many threats you hit per fight, while the other is huge damage bonuses against targets you have managed to strip the armor off.

As for the rest of the talents in Exemplar, you’re essentially grabbing any remaining base common talents for your Homeworld or Origin. You also want to grab any other minor improvements to Bounty Hunter and Soldier talents.

When you need to improve your Characteristics, we recommend furthering your Perception for more dodge chance stripping or agility for "Run and Gun" iconRun and Gun improvements, thus increasing your dodge chance further. You should already have enough Perception and Ballistic Skill to make hitting enemies painless. If you still need a little more, then add slightly more to Perception since you get Regimental Tactics improvements for Perception too.

Recommended Items

These items are a hint on the type of accessories you want. These are largely here for boosting your debuffing potential since you’ll be landing your shots quite a lot. It also increases your critical hit chance, so you can make your non-piercing shots more likely to crit and increase your damage. We also give a list of guns for you to look for as you play the game for potential upgrades. We prefer Stupor, despite being the second-highest damage las sniper for humans in the game, and the reason for it is because of the Stun. This scales with your Hunter’s "Ambush" iconAmbush, and you’ll typically get Stupor around the start of Chapter 4 on Quetza Temer.

As for everything else, it’s largely about slotting in spare, well-rounded accessories until these more specialized items start appearing. This concludes this support Soldier Build in Rogue Trader.

No Comments
No Upvotes
User profile pic

Comment submission error:

The comment must be at least 1 character in length.

Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Owlcat Games
  • Platforms,
    PS5, Steam, XB X|S
  • Genre
    RPG
  • Guide Release
    23 November 2023
  • Last Updated
    16 June 2024
    Version History
  • Guide Author

Share this free guide:

In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, there is only war. The Imperium of Man, ruled by God-Emperor of Mankind from atop his Golden Throne, is a vast interstellar empire with countless armies. Despite the Imperium’s apparent strength, however, its enemies are even more numerous and threats to mankind both surround the Imperium and gnaw at it from within. Where the constantly strained military might of the Imperium can’t reach, humanity must find other champions, and blessed with holy Warrants of Trade, Rogue Traders have almost unlimited authority to operate in the unconquered reaches of the galaxy beyond the Imperium’s direct influence. After unexpectedly inheriting the title of Rogue Trader von Valancius, you’ll have to secure your holdings in the Koronus Expanse, establish and develop new colonies, investigate the conspiracy that led to your ascension and fend off threats, internal and externals, humans, xenos and worse…

This guide will provide the following information:

  • Tips and info about various gameplay mechanics, including injuries and trauma, veil degradation, momentum, resolve, heroic acts, weapon types and space exploration.
  • Recruitment guides and builds for every companion in the game.
  • Walkthroughs for main quests, boss battle strategies and the effects your choices have.
  • Complete chapter overviews.
  • Best weapons lists for each chapter.
  • Guides for optional dungeons, side quests, errands and solutions to puzzles.
  • Colony guides, including colony projects and their rewards.
  • A vast database of weapons, armor, accessories, abilities, talents and more!

Get a Gamer Guides Premium account:

Quick sign up

Already have an account?

Quick log in

Don’t have an account?