The Heavy Bolter is a fan-favorite weapon amongst Warhammer 40,000 fans, and you can pick it up in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.
The bulky Heavy Bolter is aptly classified as a heavy burst rifle, and making full use of its power requires a build that plays to its strengths.
In this guide, we’ll detail a build tailormade to use the powerful Heavy Bolter!
Heavy Bolter Build in Rogue Trader
Before we get started, you should know that your build will require at least 35 Strength.
The Heavy Bolter requires 60 Strength to wield, but you can lower it to 35 if you learn the Heavy Weapon Proficiency talent. The talent will lower the requirements to wield the Heavy Bolter by -25.
Interestingly, though, the Bolter Weapon Proficiency talent is not required for you to be able to use Heavy Bolters.
Additionally, you will require a Heretical conviction if you wish to get the Heavy Bolter as soon as possible. This isn’t mandatory, though, as there are non-Heretical versions of the weapon later in the game.
However, being Heretical will allow you to use the Heavy Bolter that you can loot from the Chaos Space Marine boss at the end of Act 1. It’s up to you to decide if you want to become a heretic just to use the weapon earlier!
Your homeworld won’t matter much for this build, but we recommend choosing either the Crime Lord or Astra Militarum Commander as your origin if possible.
Remember that you can respec, but your homeworld and origin can’t be changed!
Stats-wise, you’ll want to focus on Strength, Ballistic Skill, and Perception. They’re key to using a heavy burst weapon like the Heavy Bolter.
As for your Archetype, we’ll go with the obvious choice of Soldier as our starter. After all, they’re the specialists when it comes to Ranged weapons.
We’ll then specialize into Arch-Militant once we reach Level 16. The main reason to choose Arch-Militant is due to the Heavy Gunner talent, which pairs up extremely well with the Heavy Bolter.
Now, let’s take a more in-depth look at which talents to choose for this build!
Soldier Talents & Abilities
The Soldier will be our archetype for our first 16 levels, and we’ll have to balance picking common talents and Soldier talents.
The order in which you choose them is up to you, but these are the must-have talents you should get for your first 16 levels.
- Heavy Weapon Proficiency – This is key if you wish to use your Heavy Bolter with just 35 STR instead of 60 STR. You can replace it with anything you want if you instead opt to have 60 STR, though.
- Nimble – Grants a +10% bonus to dodge.
- Rapid Reload – Reloads cost 2 AP less, with the first reload per battle costing no AP.
- Fired Up – Anytime a Soldier deals damage their critical damage is boosted by +1% until combat ends.
- Unfaltering Fire – Rapid Fire no longer reduces damage dealt.
- Overpower – Increases the Critical Hit Chance and Critical Damage dealt when firing heavy weapons.
- Muzzle Velocity – Boosts the damage of the first shot of each burst attack based on the current rate of fire.
- Second Skin – Medium armor won’t reduce dodge anymore.
- Unflinching Heroism – If you chose the Astra Militarum Commander origin. Your character will get +5 to all stats in combat after performing a heroic act.
- Sure-Fire Plan – If you chose the Crime Lord origin. Grants a variety of bonuses depending on what your first action in combat is.
As for the Abilities, these are the best ones suited to a burst weapon like the Heavy Bolter:
- Rapid Fire – Doubles the next burst attack’s rate of fire, but deals 25% less damage.
- Controlled Shot – The Soldier warns their allies that they’re about to open fire. This will ensure that the Soldier’s allies will automatically dodge the Soldier’s next attack.
Level 16 & Beyond
As we’ve mentioned previously, you’ll choose to spec into the Arch-Militant advanced archetype.
This will grant you access to the Heavy Gunner talent. We already mentioned it before, but it will greatly improve your use of the Heavy Bolter by reducing heavy weapons’ action cost by 1 AP.
You’ll also get the Confident Approach ability, which uses versatility to buff your dodge and parry, negate enemy cover somewhat, and make all of your attacks critical hits. It does, however, reduce the damage dealt by criticals.
Next up, you will keep leveling up until you reach Level 36 and become an Exemplar. This will allow you to finish off the build by picking the following talents and abilities:
- Always Ready – You’ll start battles with 2 stacks of versatility.
- Contempt for the Weak – Increases critical damage against stunned, prone, or blinded by 20%.
- Critical Versatility – Boosts your critical damage by +3% for each stack of versatility you have.
- Devastating Attack – Arch-Militant Ability. Has a chance to apply a variety of status effects on your targets, including prone, blinding, bleeding, and slowed.
With all that done, you should now have everything you need to make the most of your Heavy Bolter! Now go out there and burst-fire every enemy to smithereens.
There you have it! If you’re interested, we have other guides that you might want to try out as well:
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