Marathon is looking to save you from grenade spam and being one-shot by the Ares

Marathon update 1.0.6.2 has dropped, and it's a great time to be a WSTR enjoyer. The latest patch has rectified the overzealous nerf the combat shotty previously received. Though, to be fair, it was for good reason. Bungie's generally been hot on its changes since the FPS game launched, and the studio's already planning ahead for future updates. Alongside offering up an extension to the Sponsored Dire Marsh queue, Bungie's working on remedying two of the most egregious gameplay issues facing players: being barraged with grenades like you're in a World War II trench is an all-too-common occurrence, and the Ares with a Prestige mod installed is absolutely eviscerating everyone in sight.

Marathon has fallen into a similar situation as Arc Raiders did earlier this year, with throwables being far too prominent, to the point that gunplay is almost secondary to big kaboom. Technically, it makes sense: why aim when you can just drop a squad with the power of AoE? It's gotten past the point of silliness, however, and is genuinely making it difficult to enjoy my springtime outings. Bungie acknowledges this, noting it's "not a good experience." The dev says it's "looking to push some changes to stock counts and stack sizes before the end of the season," so help is on the way.

It's funny how a weapon can go from being perceived as borderline useless to completely overpowered almost overnight. The Ares railgun has typically been considered an unpopular option for PvP, with the Longshot being the preferred choice for ranged encounters. This is partly down to the latter's faster fire rate, as well as the fact that the Ares is quite loud, and is likely to attract a third, fourth, or even fifth party to the fray.

Bungie recently buffed railguns as a class, allowing you to indefinitely hold their charge, while bumping the stats on the Ares and Zeus. These are great changes, with the charge tweak drastically improving the experience. However, the big issue is that players have discovered that the Ares' Prestige mod, Impact Shockwave, can now one-tap players, even if they're wearing purple or gold shields. Bungie says this is "unintentional," and that a fix will be issued in an upcoming update. "We want it to feel strong and fun to use without being so effective it becomes overly frustrating to play against," the studio says.

In yesterday's patch, the WSTR received a set of changes that brought it back from the dead. Bungie says that the original damage nerf was only ever meant to be temporary, and that it intends to maintain its two-shot-kill breakpoint. The WSTR should now be roughly as effective against AI enemies as it was before the nerf, though hopefully it won't go back to being as dominant in PvP - shudders.

A final thing of note in the dev message is that the popular Sponsored queue for Dire Marsh will be extended by "at least another week," currently until Wednesday, May 6. Here, duos or trios head into the Marathon map with only a free kit, ensuring total gear parity across the lobby. It's a much lower cortisol way of experiencing Marathon, especially at this point in the season, so definitely give it a whirl if you're getting tired of being blasted by grenades and players with modded Ares.