Best Marathon Builds

Best Marathon Builds Quick Summary:

• Best Destroyer Build: Cores - Impact Siphons & Counter Attack. Implants - Ping+, Survival Kit, Solid Stance.
• Best Vandal Build: Cores - Adrenal Core & Mechanized Holsters. Implants - Aug Capacitors, Hurting Hands, Distance Runner.
• Best Recon Build: Cores - Intuition & Cluster Payload. Implants - Ping+, Hurting Hands, Distance Runner.
• Best Assassin Build: Cores - Shadow Strike & Ghost Protocol. Implants - Ping V4, Knife Fight, Distance Runner V4.
• Best Triage Build: Cores - Emergency Response & Electron Recapture Sinks. Implants - Regen, Helping Hands, Any Implant.
• Best Thief Build: Cores - Partner In Crime & Hunter Killer. Implants - Ping, Nimble Fingers, Graceful Landings.

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Best Marathon Builds for Each Shell

A little preamble. You have to understand that none of the Shells reward having a jack-of-all-trades build. You have to play into their strength, which means sometimes you gotta sacrifice your Heat Capacity when playing Destroyer to boost your Hardware and Firewall even further. Ideally, you always want to boost the important stats and abilities of your Shell. The former is done with Implants and the latter is done with Cores.

• Implants: Three slots for head, torso, and legs, which apply various additional effects to your Shell. Don’t neglect them, as even the gray ones can be strong when you understand how to use them properly.
• Cores: Two slots. Change how your abilities work. The best ones are Shell-specific. There are plenty of them, and they all have really strong effects, making your Shell much stronger and boosting their survivability.

All builds are centered around equipping the right Implants and Cores for your Shell. Though some Shells are better than others in their default state, you can push them beyond their mediocrity. There’s one important takeaway here: the build strongly influences how you will approach the run. Don’t just put whatever on your loadout and call it a day. Marathon is far more tactical than it might seem initially. Hope you got it all, cause we’re moving on straight to the best Marathon builds for each Shell.

Best Destroyer Build in Marathon

Destroyer is a tank with pretty decent mobility, thanks to its air dash and a double sprint speed, and can survive a wide range of status effects with much less stress than other Shells. His Prime is insanely strong and can deal with multiple squads easily, especially with the right Core equipped. Your goal when playing Destroyer is to drain your enemy’s resources, be it bullets or abilities. Here’s what’s included in the best Destroyer loadout:

Slot	Equipment	Explanation
Weapons	LMG / AR with a decent mag size.	Your ultimate ability directly synergizes with how many bullets you shoot and land.
Cores	Impact Siphons & Counter Attack.	Impact Siphons makes you transfer the damage your Riot Barricade takes into shield energy. Counter Attack launches a homing missile at an attacker shooting your Barricade.
Implants	Head: Ping+/Aug Capacitors. Torso: Survival Kit. Legs: Distance Runner/Solid Stance.	For your rolls, you need Balancing Act and Sympathetic Reflex.
Budget Cores	Heavy Ordnance & Bombardier	Both of these cores work with your Prime. Heavy Ordnance reduces Prime cooldown when you kill enemies with explosives (including rockets from Prime), and Bombardier extends your Prime’s duration if you kill an enemy.

Since this is an extraction shooter, you won’t always have access to the best loot, so make the best out of your current situation. Don’t get disheartened if you lack any of the mentioned gear. As a Destroyer, try to be in your opponent’s face as much as possible without dying. A common mistake is thinking that if you draw all the damage to yourself and die while draining your opponent's resources, you have done your job. That’s a huge mistake. Don’t put yourself in a losing situation just cause you’re a tank.

Best Vandal Build in Marathon

Vandal’s name of the game is being fast and annoying to deal with. You have the highest Heat Capacity out of all Shells and you can shorten the distance between you and the enemy in a matter of seconds. Playing Vandal feels exactly like playing Octane from Apex Legends. In addition to an already fast movement, you can rocket jump using your tactical ability and dash slide much further. Obviously, all of this builds a ton of heat even with your Prime active, and that’s why my build is centered around increasing your Heat Capacity as much as possible. That’s how the best Vandal loadout in Marathon works:

Slot	Equipment	Explanation
Weapons	SMGs and Shotguns	Playing Vandal is being aggressive and in your face all the time. That means you want to close the distance, and there are no better weapons for this task.
Cores	Adrenal Core & Mechanized Holsters	These two cores basically give you infinite Heat and Ammo. First makes you gain less Heat when Prime’s active. Second reloads your weapon when sliding.
Implants	Head: Aug Capacitors. Torso: Hurting Hands/Nimble Fingers. Legs: Distance Runner.	For your rolls: Checkmate, Enzyme Suppressants for insane Cardio increase that synergizes with Adrenal Core, Overclocked Cooling.
Budget Cores	Out of Dodge & Tag!	First lets you have more movement at the cost of taking damage, and the second is just a nice utility.

Vandal is best utilized in open spaces where she can circle around the enemy like a vulture. In narrow spaces, she doesn’t work that well. Some people advocate playing Vandal with a sniper rifle, and I can see that being a thing, but only if you play it like CoD, not Tarkov. Meaning you have to be fast and nimble and not sit in one place. For that, you’d better off with Assassin.

Best Recon Build in Marathon

Ah, yes. The snitch. The no-fun-allowed. If you want to make your enemies panic and die, Recon is the best Shell for that. Playing against her is a form of psychological torture. Unfortunately, Recon is only a threat at lower levels. The more people play against her, the more they realize that you can counter her by just moving together. She counters flanking and punishes isolated targets for even having the audacity to separate from the group. Recon is fun, but only for you. Here’s one of the strongest loadouts in Marathon:

Slot	Equipment	Explanation
Weapons	Precision Rifles & Snipers	Since you always know where the enemy hides during the encounter, nothing is easier than lining up a shot pre-emptively.
Cores	Intuition & Cluster Payload	The first core is just OP. Your Interrogation now works when you down a Runner, not finish them. The second core makes your Tracker Drone even more of a kamikaze grenade. It explodes with shrapnel fragments dealing even more damage.
Implants	Head: Ping+. Torso: Hurting Hands or Survival Kit. Legs: Distance Runner.	Honestly, Recon doesn’t benefit from any of the Implants in any direct way, so put whatever. For the rolls, you’ll need Chekmate, Counter Intel, and whatever you want as the third one.
Budget Cores	Hot Pursuit & Bad Cop	These cores are really good, even being budget ones, and improve your abilities to the level of Deluxe cores at least.

I realised I forgot to tell you how Recon works. So you have an ultimate that reveals and pings enemies within a set distance around you. Basically a wallhack. When you kill and finish the enemy, you highlight & ping the rest of his group, like Caveira from R6 Siege. You also have a Tracker Drone that chases the enemies and explodes when finding them. It also overheats the enemy. You can also see the tracks of a hostile when you break their shields, but this isn’t required often.

 

 

Best Assassin Build in Marathon

Assassin is probably one of the best Shells to use when playing solo. In squads, he’s not that strong. Starting with his ability to distribute smoke and hide in it. If you see a smoke cloud in Solo where it doesn’t really make sense, you can be sure it’s Assassin trying to hide cause his tac is on cooldown. None of his abilities work for a team, unlike most other Shells. In Solo, though, he’s one of the best due to his being pretty safe and being able to outrun the danger easily. Below is one of the best builds in Marathon for solo queue:

Slot	Equipment	Explanation
Weapons	Snipers, SMGs, Shotguns.	You want to play either very far away or very close and personal.
Cores	Shadow Strike & Ghost Protocol	Shadow Strike increases your knife damage when attacking from invisibility, and Ghost Protocol makes your smoke clouds hang longer.
Implants	Head: Ping V4. Torso: Knife Fight/Survival Kit V4. Legs: Distance Runner V4.	The Implants on Assassin are quite pricey, but they all stack really well with your ability to go invisible, and this can basically make you invisible all the time. The downside is that you’re easily countered by anyone who’s careful enough. They’ll hear or even see you, cause invisi
Budget Cores	Swap Shadow Strike to any core you like.	Ghost Protocol is an enhanced-rarity core, so it shouldn’t be hard to get it.

Another thing you want to include in Assassin’s loadout is Smoke Grenades. They’re cheap and easy to find. They proc your talent that makes you invisible when you’re in smoke. As an Assassin, you want to stay out of the way and play safely. You work best in closed quarters, so try to abuse that.

Best Triage Build in Marathon

Triage is a Shell whose effectiveness wholly depends on whether you play in the squad or not. While you can self-heal and electrocute your enemies with Prime, playing this Shell is better as a support. In addition, you should play him with Volt weapons and, well, not everyone likes them. You want to build this Shell as a support and debuff applier. Here’s the best I could come up with for Triage:

Slot	Equipment	Explanation
Weapons	Any Volt weapon of your liking.	Volt weapons trigger Triage’s trait that EMPs an enemy once you break their shields, which is really powerful.
Cores	Emergency Response & Electron Recapture Sinks	First lets you revive allies instantly by casting Restoration Field. The other lets you restore a weapon’s charge when killing an enemy.
Implants	Head: Regen. Torso: Helping Hands. Legs: Any Implant.	The rolls you look for are: Clean Slate, Recycler, Savior Complex. All of them are support traits.
Budget Cores	Field Medic & High Voltage	Field Medic makes your restoration field heal allies faster, and High Voltage reduces the cd of Battery Overcharge if you defeat an enemy struck by EMP.

Overall, Triage is an easy S-Tier Shell purely because of his utility, but only if you’re playing with a team. In solos, he’s pretty weak and requires very specific tailoring to become useful. You’re also extremely slow and defenseless. In the right hands, though, he becomes a saving grace.

 

 

Best Thief Build in Marathon

Another movement-heavy character, but if Vandal’s movement is all about entering the fight, Thief is mostly about escaping. You have a Grappling Hook that lets you move around quickly, and an X-Ray Visor that helps you get to the goop faster. One of the unique features of Thief is that the more loot you have in your backpack, the better her weapon handling and Grapple recharge rate are. You can push that even further with the help of some Cores and Implants. Check out what I’ve come up with for this meta Marathon build:

Slot	Equipment	Explanation
Weapons	Anything goes, but don’t pick any heavy weapons.	Thief is less about fighting and more about looting. The only skill she has for fighting is X-Ray Visor that blocks the enemy’s vision. Pick anything that helps you survive.
Cores	Partner In Crime & Hunter Killer	Great synergy here, as the first core lets your Drone ping enemies on itself and Hunter Killer grants a stacking bonus to guns equipped, reload speeds, and stability.
Implants	Head: Ping. Torso: Nimble Fingers. Legs: Graceful Landings / Bionic Leg Upgrades.	The traits you need are: Balancing Act, Haptic Feedback, and Checkmate.
Alternative Cores	Greed is Good & Boutique	Though they’re budget, I would argue that if you just want a great stat boost, you need these Cores. Greed is Good boosts sprint speed and slide distance with a full backpack, and Boutique increases weapon reload speed and Agility based on the number of items in your storage.

Thief is another amazing Solo queue Runner, but she has no offensive abilities, so all she can do if she gets ambushed first is to just run. She has good stats for Agility, Heat Capacity, and Fall Resistance, so the game almost directly tells you how you need to act in case of danger. If you want to gain fat stacks fast, choose her.

Marathon Build Tips & Tricks

Marathon has an insane potential for buildcrafting, as Cores have a significant influence on your playstyle, and you should always have a gameplan based on what you’ve picked for a run. While there aren’t enough to create whoever you want out of your favorite Shell (can’t make Thief a tanky enforcer), you pretty much can make her a Vandal-lite by boosting her stats. The same applies to other Shells. In theory, you can tweak your Runner to fit the specific role your group doesn’t cover. That’s why you can see the Cores your teammates have equipped. Now, let’s briefly discuss how you want to build your Shell and what core principles you need to follow. Here are some Marathon buildcrafting tips & tricks:

1. Fill Cores and Implants: Try not to leave them empty unless you have nothing in your storage.
2. Track Your Stats: It’s key to know what your Runner does better than others and play into it. You can see what stats will be boosted or decreased when hovering over the Implant you want to equip.
3. Don’t Equip Just Anything: A Core or an Implant usually gives benefits, but not all of them fit your Shell. Unused bonus is a slot wasted, especially considering that you can easily find Cores in the raid.
4. Have a Vision: The builds presented in this article are very basic, yet efficient. I recommend using marathondb.gg to check all available Cores and Implants, and think about what you need to get on your Shell. Theorycrafting is part of buildmaking, remember that.
5. Don’t Feel Forced to Play Meta: If the meta loadout doesn’t suit your playstyle, ditch it. You don’t need to min-max - you need to be efficient for your party.
6. Weapons Are As Important: Weapons are as important a part of your kit as Cores. Some weapons are stronger, and some are a death wish. Still, weapons have various effects with mods equipped to them, and with over 400 mods available in the game, you can make them much stronger than they are by default.
7. Experiment: The main thing you have to do. You’ll never know if your theory works out until you try it in the open. Don’t be afraid to lose your loot. It’s a part of the game. You’ll gain even more later.

The tips might be a little basic, but you know the saying: “Sometimes the simplest things are the most profound.” I don’t think the context is fitting here, but I’ll pretend it is. See you in the next guide, where I’ll cover factions.

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