Marathon Season 2 nerfs thermal snipers and counters shotguns with a new SMG

Bungie has published a detailed combat deep-dive for Marathon Season 2, and it's a rough read if your loadout revolves around shotguns or thermal snipers. The new season kicks off June 2 and brings a sweeping set of weapon balance changes alongside its new map and other features.

Shotguns — particularly the WSTR — were a balancing nightmare throughout Season 1, already picking up two separate nerfs. Season 2 doesn't add more nerfs directly, but it does introduce a hard counter: the KKV-9SD, a pistol-frame SMG with the fastest fire rate in the game. Bungie explicitly says it "excels at close range combat, specifically mowing down eager shotgun rushers." Thermal scopes on sniper rifles are gone entirely for now — Bungie felt the combination was overperforming in Season 1 and has removed their compatibility with sniper rifles. The studio calls it a temporary measure and says it's investigating an alternate solution, but standard scopes are all you're getting for the foreseeable future. On the buff side, the Overrun AR gets a significant horizontal recoil reduction and a smaller vertical kickback cut come June 2. The CE Tactical Sidearm — the one everyone calls the Halo pistol — gets a substantial overhaul: better aim assist, increased projectile magnetism, a reduced ADS accuracy error multiplier, and several other tweaks, because Bungie felt it simply wasn't performing.

Season 2 also adds new attachments and throwables. The KKV-9SD and the other new weapon, the D54 battle pistol, both get folding stock attachments that improve hip-fire accuracy when folded and ADS accuracy when unfolded. Darksight scopes are coming specifically for the new Nighttime version of Dire Marsh. New throwables include the frost mine — a claymore-style explosive that also applies a frost debuff — and the vector grenade, which highlights enemies in a large radius similar to Recon's Echo Pulse ability. Red, green, and blue signal flares round out the additions, designed for non-verbal communication between players.

Beyond Season 2, Bungie is looking further ahead. The studio confirmed it's experimenting with both a dedicated PvE mode and a more structured PvP mode, aiming to broaden Marathon beyond its current extraction shooter identity. Whether the combat rebalance lands well with the community will likely depend on how the new counters play out in practice once the season goes live.