How do you make vanguard more tanky?

full shield recharge on charge, shield recharge on a annihilation kill, shield recharge on armor per kill and +50% more shield -50% health augmentation.

Mind you im playing on norm but fully upgraded biotic passive skills and fitness etc this is overpowered as hell

I am playing on insanity and i have no problems. It's actually OP compared to other classes as far i know.

Mastert advices work (yes, get that +50 more shield - 50 health augment, it's priceless). Also:

- Invest into charge very early. I got 1 point on nova (invuln timing), 1 point into singularity (prime targets), then full on charge to get that sweet 75 defense after charge.
- Get gear which increases maximum health and maximum shield (specially maximum shield). Hyperguardian works.
- Get the kett sword which steals life (chardaan something it's called, just read the tooltip and seek that vampiric stuff).
- Charge + nova + shotgun blast/melee, dodge, charge again, rinse and repeat. Vanguard it's about doing damage while you keep your shields up.
- Kill easy minions first and use your mobility to avoid the hard ones. They have a tendency to swarm you if they have the numbers, but to play safe if they don't, you want them to stay put so you have safe retreat paths.
- Don't mind too much about cover, just get full out of line of sight when retreating.
- Once you upgrade your shotgun skills and you can, use a sniper rifle as secondary weapon, you will thank me later
- Singularity is nice for priming, but even better as CC. Use wisely.

Nova doesn't seem to do that much damage, but it's very useful to allow you for dodge + nova + dodge invulnerability windows. Other than that, just work into your spatial awareness to know where to move.  I am sure you could switch it, but i actually enjoy having it.

People make it sound like vanguard is hard, it is not, you just need to get into the mindset and the perks to back it up, and it doesn't take that long, since you only need 23 skill points to get charge at max rank +`singularity + nova.

I've been playing hardcore and just finished Voeld. I think I'm level 9 and Charge is at rank 4. Dodging like crazy has been the most important thing for me so far. since my recharge speeds are not optimal yet. When the numbers are tough, I equip Backlash as a panic button. It buys me a second or two if I'm out of cover or space to dodge, and can't use charge yet.

My usual pattern is charge + nova + shotgun + jump/melee (depends) + dodge away + repeat

I presume you are talking about this one, however, it doesn't give you life, it only increasing your damage resistance

masseffectandromeda.gamepedia.com/Kett_Carfalon

How fast does the fire sword kill those big ketts with miniguns. I use the freezing melee weapon to stop them shooting at me as they can kill me quite quickly on hard.

I been running with an n7 pirana with the armour and shield break augment I been using the n7 armour for the biotic perks an asari sword and a n7 hurricane flamethrower is really useful as well for armoured enemy's and the n7bhurriance wrecks Shields

Actually you are right, it does give you health. Thanks for the advise.

Pretty sure I can. On hardcore atleast. 

How so? I get my ass kicked as soldier on the hardest difficult as a soldier. but when playing as vanguard, basically nothing can touch me because my shield are getting instantly restored all the time.  I can just spam my abilities without dying and I dont even have to use my guns most of the time.

Nova only depletes shield if u spec it to do so.

If u spec Nova to prime, it is very useful if u charge into a bunch and Nova ~ that will prime a bunch of targets for u and squad to detonate..

surprisingly, it can be.

For some reason I cant make singularity work that well, the cooldown is very long and the damage and radius is not good enough, I get better results using energy drain as prime and charge as detonator and nova as a shield destroyer.