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Soldier is a mix between offense and defense. You can fly around the map bombing enemies, or defend a point and fend off enemies. I play soldiers if my team is off-balance, for example having too many low health classes (scouts,snipers,spies). Soldier have the second highest amount of health and great mobility, while being able to deal tons of damage on the enemy team. So I treat soldier as an all-round class in TF2.
Tips:
-Have good map awareness and position yourself at vantage points using rocket jumps, like rooftops or platforms. Your advantage is the ability to deal high amount of damage to multiple targets at once using rockets. The way I use soldier in team fight is by rocket jumping all over the enemy group or engineer nest, so it's difficult to hit me while I am raining rockets over their heads.
-To clear out engineer nest at close range, rocket jump near the sentry, it will automatically aim at you and shoot you up even higher until you ascend out of its range. Spam your rockets on it and it should be blown.
-Utilize your shotgun for combos, especially reserve shooter. Aim your rockets at their foot, and destroy them mid-air with your shotgun. Finish them off using your melee weapon if they managed to survive.
-Your rocket jumps allow you to do countless things mid-air. Bomb enemies on ground, scout an area, reach an unpredictable location, kill other airborne enemies, or escape. This list goes on as you master rocket jump, you can do amazing tricks with it afterwards. But I am an average player of soldier, so I can't teach you complicated jumps :P . Rocket jumps greatly improve the mobility, survivability, and killing potential of a soldier. If you plan on taking soldier as your primary class, you obviously need to learn and practice rocket jumps, find videos teaching them on youtube.
My Builds:
Direct Hit + Reserve Shooter + Market Gardener
This is a damage output build for expert players. Launch rockets at the foot of enemies, but it's very difficult to do so with direct hit due to its 30% explosion radius. If you managed to blow them up, hit them again with your rocket and they should die (it is easy to do so with the projectile speed boost). The reserve shooter and market gardener are for 1v1 airborne combat. Find another soldier or pyro to team up if you can't launch enemies mid-air. Maps with a lot of buildings are ideal as player tend to drop from them instead of walking down stairs, this gives you many opportunities to strike.
Black Box + Buff items + Disciplinary Action
This is a supportive build for soldier. Black box gives you the ability to heal yourself and sustain longer fights. Buff items provide huge advantage to your team in both offensive and defensive situations. Choosing the right buff item is very important. Use buff banner to help your team occupying an objective when the opposing team is defending really hard. Use battalion's backup if your team is the defending side. Use concheror if the frontline battle has come to a stalemate. Disciplinary action should be used to buff slow-moving classes like heavy and soldier. Do not split the team accidentally by boosting the speed of leading teammates, as over-extending is suicidal when the enemy team has grouped together.
Cow Mangler 5000 + Shotgun + Pain Train
This build is for defense breaking. Use the charged shot of cow mangler on engineer nest only, don't use it on players unless the whole enemy team is closely packed. 4 seconds is enough for teammates to reach and kill the engineer, the sentry may disable even longer if wrangler is activated. Shotgun is a great weapon of choice for damage output. Pain train boost your capture rate to assist you in taking points, which completely fit the purpose of this build. Choose this build if enemies have strong defense, it is especially good if they heavily rely on their engineers. If more than one engineer nest is present, tell your team to focus on destroying one first, while you use your charged shots to hold off other nests.
