Season 1 of Marathon barely had time to settle before Bungie started pulling at the threads. The WSTR Combat Shotgun absorbed two separate nerfs across the season, thermal snipers quietly dominated long-range engagements, and the extraction loop left certain loadout choices feeling less like decisions and more like obvious defaults. Heading into Season 2, Bungie has published a detailed combat deep-dive that signals a clear intent: make every weapon choice actually mean something.
KKV-9SD weapon inspect view
Thermal snipers are out, at least for now
The headline change is the removal of thermal scope compatibility with sniper rifles. Bungie flagged thermal snipers as "overperforming" in Season 1, and rather than nudge the numbers, the studio has pulled the combination entirely for the Season 2 wipe. This isn't framed as a permanent fix. Bungie has explicitly said it wants to find an alternate solution for thermal optics on long-range platforms, but for the foreseeable future, players who relied on that setup will need to adapt to standard scopes.
Here's the thing: removing an optic entirely is a blunt instrument, and it will frustrate players who built their playstyle around it. But the thermal sniper problem in Season 1 was real. The combination gave snipers a significant information advantage that compressed the gap between skilled and opportunistic play.
The new SMG built specifically to punish shotgun rushers
Shotguns themselves aren't receiving further direct nerfs in Season 2, but Bungie has introduced a counter in the form of the KKV-9SD, a pistol-frame SMG with the fastest fire rate of any weapon currently in the game. Bungie specifically calls out its effectiveness against close-range aggression, describing it as purpose-built for "mowing down eager shotgun rushers." The WSTR already had its damage and range trimmed twice in Season 1. Now there's a dedicated tool in the sandbox designed to punish the playstyle it enabled.
The KKV-9SD also ships with a folding stock attachment that improves hip-fire accuracy when folded and ADS accuracy when unfolded, giving it flexibility across engagement distances.
The D54 battle pistol, the other new weapon arriving in Season 2, gets the same folding stock treatment. Bungie sees these attachments as a way to support multiple playstyles on a single weapon frame, which is a reasonable design goal, though it does raise questions about whether the attachment system adds genuine depth or just creates a new default configuration everyone runs.
Weapons getting a lift for the new season
Not everything in the Season 2 combat update is a takedown. Two existing weapons are getting meaningful buffs.
- The Overrun AR is receiving a significant reduction in horizontal recoil and a smaller cut to vertical kickback, making it a more consistent choice at range.
- The CE Tactical Sidearm (the weapon Marathon players have been calling the Halo pistol) is getting a broader stat overhaul: better aim assist, increased projectile magnetism, and a reduced ADS accuracy error multiplier. Bungie felt the sidearm simply wasn't performing to its intended role.
The CE Tactical Sidearm buff is the more interesting of the two. Sidearms in extraction shooters tend to sit in an awkward position where they're not quite reliable enough to justify the slot, and if Bungie can push it into genuine secondary viability, that opens up more varied loadout construction.
Overrun AR recoil tuning stats
New throwables and darksight scopes round out the changes
Season 2 is also adding three new throwables to the mix. The frost mine functions like a claymore but applies a frost debuff alongside moderate damage. The vector grenade echoes Recon's Echo Pulse ability, highlighting enemies and spaces within a large radius. Signal flares in red, green, and blue round out the additions, designed for non-verbal communication between runners.
For the new Nighttime version of Dire Marsh, Bungie is introducing darksight scopes, optics built specifically for low-visibility engagements on that map.
Season 2 drops June 2. For a full breakdown of everything else arriving alongside these combat changes, including the new runner upgrade system and the new shell, the Marathon Season 2 everything you need to know guide has the complete picture. If you want to figure out how the weapon shifts affect your current setup before the wipe, the best weapons and loadouts guide is worth checking before you commit to a build.
