Marquis: Or How I Learned Not To Be An Idiot And Stay In My Backfield

I am going to attempt to make a guide that will help convince people to use a character that I almost never see and even more rarely see used effectively. Marquis is a Sniper. Let that sink in. He Snipes. WHY ARE YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAP? Anyway, let's continue.

The Basics

Marquis is a unique character from the rest of the Battleborn cast in that this section is going to be your bread and butter. Mastery of Marquis basics will exponentially increase your success with him. Conversely this is also not an easy thing to do. The basics of course being: shoot the enemy player, preferably in the head. That is it. Battleborn is a unique hybrid FPS that feels like a Heroe based RPG, except for Marquis where Battleborn really needs to fall back on its shooter chops. Luckily for all of us Marquis players, Battleborn actually has shooter chops. Now the next few sentences are probably going to be FPS gobbulty gook to most of you and if it is, please feel free to skip it as it won't directly impact your play except at the cognitive level. Marquis' sniper rifle is a hitscan weapon, unlike some other characters' weapons (Toby for instance). This can lead to interesting things, like being able to head-glitch, but if your connection is bad this can also lead to extremely frustrating play, or extremely good play depending on how Battleborn's netcode is set up.

Now let's talk about his gun. The Bindlebane! This is the weapon of gentlemen. On one end it is a pistol that puts out a surprising amount of damage and on the other end is a sniper rifle that does an incredible amount of damage. Now despite the fact I said the pistol does a surprising amount of damage, if you ever need to use the pistol, you're already in trouble and should retreat immediately. Any character that is going to force you into that range is probably much, much stronger than you at that range and your best course of action is egress. Don't become food for the enemy team.

The sniper rifle part of your weapon is the meat and potatoes of this meal. By using your secondary attack you switch from your pistol and immediately aim down your scope. The sniper rifle does absurd damage and seems to deal equal damage to shields and health, which is good. That means you'll be effective regardless of the enemies you'll be facing. This also lets you replace gear that gives you Shield Penetration with other gear, especially since not all enemy characters have a shield. As a sniper your best tool against your enemies is not the powerful rifle in your hands, it is the distance between you and them. These maps are not particularly large when it comes to actual combat spaces. Sure it might take 30 or more seconds to run from one end to the other, but the fighting doesn't happen in the back field (usually), it happens in the middle. This is where you should NOT be. A good Marquis should have an innate understanding of where the line of skirmish is during a match. The line of skirmish is essentially how far your team can go forward and how far the enemy team can go forward before they hit each other. Luckily for us, we have minions to help us determine that. Minions tend to be very good indicators where the line of skirmish is in a particular lane. You should always be well behind that line, somewhere that gets you a great view of the action. For you, being in the thick of the action means looking at the fighting through your scope. Remember, you don't need to kill enemies to get EXP, I haven't tested it yet, but I believe that even getting assists nets you full EXP, so never, ever be shy to help your team mate fighting in the thick of it. This also has the dual benefit of you being able to possible kill an enemy that is retreating from battle and thinks it has escaped successfully. Far too often I pick up kills from enemies that are running from the fight, having forgot that a Marquis was present.

In addition your melee attack does 2 slaps per attack and has a knock back effect that can greatly help disengaging from enemy assassins.

Marquis' Abilities

Now Marquis is in the strange position where his abilities are the side show act instead of the main play. This isn't strange to hear if you're a veteran FPS player, but if you're coming from a game like DOTA, LOL or (more likely) SMITE, then you'll find that you use abilities maybe 30% of the time. Not to say they are bad, rather that they are icing on an already great cake. I'll start by going over his abilities:

Temporal Distortion: This ability creates a spherical AOE that slows enemies inside of it. This is normally not very useful to you. This is incredibly useful to your team. With an acceptable casting range you can walk to the very edges of a team fight, drop the Temporal Distortion and back up and plink away while your team gets some much loved extra damage because the enemy can no longer dodge. Upgrading it to deal damage over time (DoT) is just icing on this cake. The only time you will really ever use this to directly benefit you is if you need to retreat from a melee character who has come to gank your squishy ass. Personally I find the most useful upgrade to this ability is the DoT and the increase time limit of the ability. They synergize very well together and are great for dealing with minion waves as you're debilitating enemy characters. Most other helix upgrades are personal preference as they are essentially the same level of power.

Predatory Strike: This ability is actually much better than it looks. You send out what is essentially a flying grenade. Most of Marquis' helix deals with Predatory Strike, which is good because it needs the love to go from useful to necessary. Again, much like Temporal Distortion, this will help your team much more than it will help you, simply because your optimal engagement range is far outside this ability's cast range, but if you find yourself going toe to toe with a mid range fighter than it is more than acceptable to drop this on their head in between snipes and pistol shots. The extra damage has won me more fights than I can count. If you fancy yourself a trap master you can have up to 3 owls flying about at any given time. Personally I find the most useful upgrades for this ability are the extended casting range and napalm DoT effect. Everything is pretty much personal preference as they are essentially the same level of power.

Bindleblast: This is your baby when it is pissed the fuck off. You charge up an xboxhueg shot that, when it collides with an enemy, fucking hurts them, a lot. It has a neat bonus to damage the longer it travels but be warned. This thing is hard as fuck to hit with. Unlike your weapons, this is not a hit scan shot. It has travel time and can be dodged much, much easier as well as just simply missed altogether. I tend to use this ability when engaged in medium range where I am less likely to miss and more likely to need the help killing the enemy fast enough to survive the fight. The only upgrade to this ability is at level 10 and your choices are to add a second shot OR be able to shoot through walls. I go for the walls because I don't want reduced damage and I love the idea of enemies freaking out when a random projectile comes out of the wall to fuck their shit up. However, this is basically personal preference.

Ein, Zwei, Die: This is the passive ability, which means it is always active. This one is cool and if you are a good shot really beefs up your DPS. Basically every third shot you land on an enemy does EVEN MOAR DAMAGE. It's cool.

Marquis' Helix

Marquis' helix is a very well done helix. There are very few things that are auto takes, but on the flip side not many of his choices are also standouts.

Level 1: Increase Predatory Strike damage by +15% OR hasten allies in you Temporal Distortion by +30%. This one is personal preference as they are both good for exactly the right reasons. I personally prefer Predatory Strike damage, but only because there are too many idiots in the beta right now for me to be sure I'm actually helping the team by hastening my allies. On an actual team the haste effect might just be the better effect here. The mutator here reduces the amount of time Predatory Strike actually attacks targets by cutting the time in half. If you use Predatory strike a lot this could be better than +15% damage. Especially since your cooldowns are low enough to not notice them.

Level 2: Predatory Strike owls go through world terrain, guaranteeing they will not blow up by hitting that pesky rock OR they are invisible. Not colliding with terrain is really the better option here, but if you like leaving your owls up as traps then I guess you can go for invisible owls. The mutator makes owls reveal invisble stuff near them. Cool, but remember the owls are basically flying grenades that auto seek enemies. How long is that reveal going to last for?

Level 3: Gives you +50% extra zoom OR -60% recoil on Bindlebane. Recoil is easily the way to go here. The mutator gives you +2 clip size and if you have it unlocked should easily be your auto-take at this level.

Level 4: Give Temporal Distortion a DoT OR increase the size by +25%. This one is really personal preference and my personal preference is the DoT for clearing minions and dealing some extra damage in team fights. I have killed with the DoT before.

Level 5: Your passive now procs every 2 shots instead of 3 (potentially doubling damage potential if you get the +2 clip size mutator) OR your passive deals +25% damage when it does proc. This one is personal preference, but the left helix has the potential for more damage if you can land 8 shots on an enemy. Obviously that is not a particularly common occurrence, but it is something to think about. The mutator gives your passive's bonus damage +100% shield pen, which sounds great, except by the time you're procing Ein, Zwei, Die your enemy shouldn't have a shield left. Here is some math for you guys by u/irul12.

Level 6: Increase casting distance for Predatory Strike OR increase casting distance for Temporal Distorion. Both get a +30% increase so just pick whichever you use more. I go with predatory strike so I can throw grenades at people to dissuade them from closing the distance on me while I snipe them. The Mutator grants you the ability to have 2 more owls out on the field at any given time, bringing you up to a staggering 5 owls. I never use Predatory Strike to make traps so I never take it.

Level 7: Increase your reload and attack speed by +25% OR increase your base damage by +18%. This, to me is a no brainer. Base damage is king in this class. Doesn't matter if you shoot faster if you can't hit what you're shooting at.

Level 8: Owls explode and leave a small DoT that deals 360 damage over 6 seconds OR owls will fire on nearby enemies twice before kamikaze-ing themselves. This one really is personal preference. I personally prefer the DoT as it lets me fight minion waves more effectively.

Level 9: Increases the duration of Temporal Distortion by 2 seconds OR increases the slowing properties by an additional +30%. Either one is pretty good and this one is totally personal preference. The extra slow might have an edge over extended duration, but they are both very good. I take extended duration for using the DoT on minion waves better.

Level 10: Your two Bindleblast upgrades. See Bindleblast ability.

Gear:

There are 2 essential pieces of gear that you need. Damage increase and recoil reduction. I personally add an attack speed increase to squeeze out an extra shot per second, but the 3rd piece is really up to you. Maybe you're okay with the recoil, then I'd say damage increase and attack speed increase would be your 2 go to upgrades.

I hope you found this guide to be helpful and informative. Remember, do not let the unwashed masses escape!

Now there is another way to play Marquis, as a mid-range skirmisher/assassin that this guide is not designed to cover. I have very little experience with that style of play with him, so take this guide as a "How to be a better Sniper" Marquis guide.

Edit: Formatting is hard; Math