Team Fortress 2: Soldier Weapon Tier List

This guide will rank every single soldier weapon into 4 categories based from my personal experience and the overall opinion from the Steam community!

 

Introduction

So in this guide I’ll rank every single soldier weapon into 4 categories Meta, Side Grade, Gimmicky, and Direct Downgrade, This is mostly my opinion and those who helped me in making this guide and we judge the weapons based on how they perform and the overall opinion from the community.

Rocket Launcher
Class: Meta
Explanation: The Rocket Launcher is considered to be one of the best rocket launchers. It deals strong AoE damage and solid damage output. If you are a newer soldier this is by far one of the best rocket launchers you can use. It is good and reliable, as well as being an overall solid choice.

Original
Class: Meta
Explanation: The Original is a reskin for the stock rocket launcher, with the only difference being that it fires the rocket from the center instead of the side. There is not much to say about this weapon since it’s almost the same as the stock rocket launcher.

Direct Hit
Class: SIdegrade
Explanation: The Direct Hit is a good rocket launcher due to its strong damage output. Since you can now one shot light classes such as scouts and spies, this is a second meta of sorts to the rocket launcher, Its mostly used by experienced players since it has low AoE damage forcing you to hit directs. So if your a soldier on the newer side try and use stock first.
The Liberty Launcher
Class: Direct Downgrade
Explanation: While in a glance it might seem to be a good rocket launcher with only a 25% downside, a jack of all traits of sorts combining the rocket launcher and the direct hit, the 25% damage penalty is actually a major downside, i wont go much into this because RocketManFran already made a great video on it, but to summarize less damage means people can kill you first before you kill them.

Black Box
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: The Black Box gives out health and increases your survivability, in exchange for a smaller clip in your rocket launcher. It is a good sidegrade, and good for some situations. It is commonly paired with the conch and is an overall good weapon. However, losing 25% of your clip is a big downside especially for roamer soldiers which makes it lose out to stock.

Cow Mangler
Class: Gimmicky
Explanation: The Cow Mangler in pubs is mostly a gimmick weapon with people playing with the charge shot since the 20% damage to buildings penalty is a major downside in pubs since its one of your main jobs as soldier but in competitive where you rarely meet a building/engineer except if your only on last its a pretty minor downside making it a straight upgrade, but sadly its banned in competitive 6s and Highlander.

Beggars Bazooka
Class: Gimmicky
Explanation: The Beggars Bazooka is fun to play with and extremely gimmicky. With beggars jumping and doing the barrage mechanic it makes it extremely fun to play with. And you can go from last to blu first spawn in a matter of seconds in some maps, There’s a bit of a learning curve but once you master beggars jumping it will be extremely fun to play with added to that with the Projectile Deviation which makes it require less aim and makes it much more fun.

Rocket Jumper
Class: Gimmicky
Explanation: Mostly only used in the Trolldier subclass pairing it with the market gardener to make cool jumps and 1 hit kills snipers using a spoon without taking any damage whatsoever

Air Strike
Class: Gimmicky
Explanation: The Air Strike is usually paired with the Base Jumper, it acts as an eyelander for the soldier, It increases your clip every time you kill someone with a maximum capacity of 8. The best way to use this weapon is to rocket jump and then unleash hell upon your opponents. It’s very satisfying to use when you get a random crit or a Kritz med as you unleash your 8 clip into an entire team in the control point and an overall fun weapon to use

Gunboats
Class: Meta
Explanation: By far the best soldier secondary this weapon allows you to have your mobility at full swing and still allows you to have your main damage output, this weapon is mostly used by roamer soldier’s but is also used by normal soldiers due to the mobility you get allowing you to go places in fast speeds for substantially less damage

Mantreads
Class: Gimmicky
Explanation: Mostly used by the Trolldier subclass and is the secondary weapon of choice for most Trolldiers this is pretty much only used by Trolldiers these days.

Buff Banner
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: Good for damage and giving your team added damage. Good option overall but the weakest of the three banners

Concheror
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: While the buff banner gives you damage, the conch gives you speed and mobility for you and your team, as well as giving you a passive health regen. And when paired with the black box gives you almost infinite health regen and making you unkillable in the right hands

Battalion’s Backup
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: If you are a newer soldier and haven’t gotten the hang of rocket jumping yet, the battalion’s backup is the best option for you. It gives you extra health and provides you with resistances and is by far the strongest of the 3 banners and is super helpful for you and your team and can also save your medic from being killed by that roamer soldier with a crit rocket coming your medic’s way.

Shotgun
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: Good ‘ol reliable, a good weapon to finish people off and is an overall solid secondary choice

Panic Attack
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: Functioning very similarly to the Shotgun, its used mainly for finishing people off and as of more recently to combo people using its 50% faster deploy speed. The only other notable difference between the two is that the Panic Attack fires in a fix spread while the Shotgun has Random Bullet Spread making shots less consistent. But in servers with fixed spread such as Uncletopia this upside is completely nullified

Reserve Shooter
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: Good for comboing by shooting the rocket to your enemies feet and launching them to the air and mini critting them mid air makes for a solid soldier combo

Base Jumper
Class: Gimmicky
Explanation: Most commonly paired with the airstrike, as previously mentioned to help make you stay in the air longer to give you time to launch your 8 rockets in your clip. This weapon is also used for trolldier as training wheels, so you can get the hang of trolldier a bit. However, against decent players, you are a sitting duck. This weapon is really only useful for Airstrike soldiers which is useful enough to keep it out of the Direct Downgrade tier.

Righteous Bison
Class: Direct Downgrade
Explanation: This weapon is genuinely by far the worst soldier weapon. I recommend never using it. The only time you will see it used is by soldiers looking to meme and that’s saying a lot

Shovel
Class: Direct Downgrade
Explanation: The shovel is a direct downgrade from other options, as you rarely need to use melee while playing soldier. The only reason this could be useful is if you have an empty clip with a demoknight rushing at you, and you are completely out of ammo. Even then, if you use the escape plan it could be better to just run away.

Ham Shank
Class: Utter Garbage
Explanation: Worst of the worst of the soldier’s weapon, atleast with the shovel it looks like a spoon and is mildly funny to a degree, this weapon is just awful to look at and out of every single soldier weapon this weapon is by far the worst and is utter garbage.

Frying Pan
Class: God Tier
Explanation: The best melee there is due to a hidden stat which allows it to have a 100% crit chance, and by far the best melee reskin and if you use this your an overall big ♥♥♥♥ person

Equalizer
Class: Direct DowngradeExplanation: For the reasons mentioned above, it is still better to run away with the escape plan even in situations where you are in low health. This weapon is somewhat gimmicky as you could become a discount market gardener when you get to low health and pretend to be a trolldier, but even then why not just use the market gardener.

Pain Train
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: It allows you to back cap as soldier and with rocket jumping that might come more in useful then you might think and the 10% bullet vulnerability is a minor downside and its still more situationally useful then stock

Half-Zatoichi
Class: Direct Downgrade
Explanation: It is fun to use when you go discount demoknight and run around with the samurai loadout slashing people, but it really isn’t useful for the most part and its generally a worst stock shovel

Disciplinary Action
Class: Sidegrade
Explanation: It is good for team support and going fast when you don’t quite know your way around rocket jumping, or if you wanna be a team player and push people around and is a good utility weapon for you and your team when rolling out with your team

Escape Plan
Class: Meta
Explanation: The Escape Plan Allows you to escape deadly situations when your on low health and don’t have enough health to rocket jump away and can be a massive life saver so as long as you know what your doing then this weapon will be the best option 70% of the time

Market Gardener
Class: Gimmicky
Explanation: It’s fun for the aforementioned Trolldier Subclass which allows you to crit targets while airborne. If you are good at rocket jumping and market gardening, this weapon is super fun to play with

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