Marathon's most popular shotgun is getting nerfed a second time, as Bungie worries it is 'eclipsing a lot of the other short range options that exist in the game'

Best Marathon guns: A close-up shot of the WSTR Combat Shotgun in a player's hands. — (Image credit: Bungie)

Since Marathon launched, one gun has dominated both the battlefield and the discourse. No, I don't mean the Biotoxic Disinjector, which while ferociously powerful, is unlikely to appear outside of Cryo Archive due to its rarity. I'm instead referring to the almighty WSTR shotgun, by far the best weapon to carry in your back pocket as you explore Tau Ceti IV

Marathon's double-barrelled delete key is so powerful that it has already been nerfed once, with a dramatic reduction in range making it virtually useless outside of close encounters. But it remains the most effective solution to any encounter where you can see the decals beneath an enemy runner's eyes.

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As such, Tuesday's update will tweak the WSTR so that it can no longer down an enemy runner equipped with a blue shield (or above) in two shots. Ziegler explained his reasoning: "The ideal is that in the majority of cases this will force a reload in scenarios where the target has a blue shield, allowing for more counterplay in these scenarios."

Ziegler notes that the WSTR will still be able to knock down players equipped with green shields in two shots, meaning it will remain a powerful option for players exploring the earlier maps where green shields are most common. Frankly, I think this is the right call. The WSTR a great weapon for leveling the playing field as a newer player, and a real treat when you get one. But you shouldn't be relying on it by the time you're exploring places like Outpost. You need to be able to adapt.

Bungie has shown it isn't afraid to take big swings with Marathon's meta, and I'm enjoying watching it shift and evolve enormously. Its ongoing sponsored kits only experiment has been a ton of fun so far, limiting all players to a free loadout for a more carefree extraction experience. It's also grimly amusing how its recently added Mercy Kits—designed to let players revive downed rivals—are instead being used to murder players twice. That's Marathon, folks.

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Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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