Marcus-The Legend (Adv Horde Cards/Tactics) by Hu1k Daddy

Gears 5
#1

Hello everyone,

This is my fifth character breakdown for Horde. If you haven’t checked out my other guides, please feel free to do so. Just type in Hu1k in the search and my guides should pop up.

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Marcus, the man killed the Queen. What can you say about him. The GOAT of all Gears, the Grizzled speaking man among boys. He is really fun to play with and I find it quite fitting they gave him an Ultimate that is literally an Aim-Bot. I find him very generous to play with and a good pick for newer players due to his all around play-style.

Now then. Let’s get this going.

*** This was put together after maxing out Marcus and playing with him on Elite to Master Difficulty***

General Playstyle and Early Levels

Marcus is a Tank. He takes a beating and keeps on ticking. His passive helps replenish his Ultimate for each bullet you take or grenade you take- to the Face! His personal skill upgrades while in game (By pressing Y after the wave’s end) are not bad. However, personally I would stay away from the ammo regin upgrade as its not worth it. The other 3 selections are fair game and good to get at least level one on each early on in the game.

As Marcus, you are like the point man for your team. Able to bring the pain, as well as help your teammates with your Ultimate. Its good to actually be near a JD or a Fahz when playing. I like to be near JD while the Ultimate is not available and then go to Fahz when it is. Teaming up with another so they can take part in the Ultimate’s “Headshot” ability is really fun and helpful.

Lets go over some early card selections/skills you can apply:

Dug In, Brutal Efficiency, Extended Rifle Mag, Score Boost

This is what you would be looking at around Rank 5. Any one of these would be ok. Dug In really helps early on as it works great with the Ultimate as well as Extended Rifle Mag. If you want to get early leveling, then score boost should help you out.

Mid Level Playstyle

“God Damn’t Son on a ■■■■■” You made it this far. Nice. You probably are starting to get a good feel for Marcus now and also his hilarious voice lines.

Once you get to the Mid level playstyle with Marcus you can actually run a lot of these Cards/Skills on higher difficulties with great success as Marcus Card unlocks are quite easily the best in their setup to unlock ratio-compared to other Hero’s.

With that, takes take a good look at what Cards/Skills you can use at Level 9:

Dug In, Extended Rifle Mag, Last Ditch, Custom Lancer, Brutal Efficiency

This 5 card selection is a good all around set. It makes Marcus pretty set for any situation on any Map. With Last Ditch, combined with Dug In-it can keep you in that damage zone longer to keep your damage increase up while below 80% health. Custom Lancer is pretty good as well as it makes all the damage from the MK3 lancer (Chainsaw) do more damage. Then also adding in Brutal Efficiency will help get your Ultimate back even faster so you can dish out more punishment. “Got that Drone!”

High Level Playstyle

Alright, you did it. You made it to high level’s. Marcus would be proud. Probably give you a punch in the face while gargling nails saying “Come on, I haven’t got all day”

The High Level paystyle for Marcus will be pretty much be your permanent selection of skills and Cards as Marcus’s Legendary is actually really good…For Once!

So now that you have a good feel for Marcus and have probably checked over many times for what cards are going to be unlocked, lets dive in.

Band of Brothers, Defensive Stim, Custom Lancer, Rifle Feedback, Extended Rifle Mag

With this set, your pretty set across the Board. Band of Brothers generates Stim while your Ultimate is active and having Defensive Stim with it, just increases your overall ability to stay up and get those Headshots.

Rifle Feedback is a great card. It adds time to your Ultimate for each rifle hit you deal. This can be any assault rifle but the Claw I find really gives you the most Bang for your buck in getting the Use-Time up.

Ok, that about covers the Cards/Skills. Now lets talk about some breakdowns and additional Help.

When using your Ultimate its a good Idea to make sure, if possible of course to be in cover before activation. As, teammates cannot use this with you if you are not in cover.

Tri-shots with Marcus are amazing almost insta kills. But, to get the most out of it its a good thing to actually Pop your Ultimate, then Use the Claw as much as you can to get your Ultimate time up. Then switch to the Tri-shot while keeping an Eye on the Ult meter. Once the meter begins to lower, go back to the Claw to get the time back up. Rinse and Repeat. You can have your Ultimate active for a while wave using this tactic.

Its important to note that using Defensive Stim before unlocking Band of Brothers, will get you nothing. As the only way to generate Stim is with Band of Brothers, so don’t use this card until your Ultimate is unlocked.

Your Legendary Card really helps in getting your Ultimate back faster due to your Passive as a Tank class character. So its a good Idea to put a good amount of effort into your personal perk that reigns your Ultimate faster per the Damage you take. As even with the Stim on you, the Damage still counts towards the passive.

Its, important to note that since the release of the COG gear, Marcus now only receives a Damage buff to the MK3 lancer with the Custom Lancer Card equipped. He no longer receives this Damage buff from the Retro or the GL. However, I would still try and get a GL from a JD at some point as this can also quickly get your Ultimate Use-Time to stay up due to the GL’s fire rate.

Ok, that about sums up everything. I hope this can help you out and of course these sets are designed for players playing in random Custom matches. If you find a better set, let it be known below.

If any questions, post them here. Good Luck Gears!

11 Likes
Marcus Fenix needs a buff
Spending more time here
Horde meta help
Could some Horde enthusiast give me a breakdown of 4.0?
#2

thanks man… Best character ever . I always play Marcus.

#3

Surething man!

I feel bad, that I’m so late in getting this out. As Marcus is a beast and a whole lotta fun.

But I agree, he is the man, hell the Legend. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#4

Correct man… I do appreciate the effort on providing this information to the community, :smile: Thanks

and I do agree man , Gears of War without Marcus its like Metal Gear Solid without SNAKE man .

#5

HAHA, so true,

I really hope that when ever they release Dom. When ever you activate his Ultimate-Mad world starts playing, and it Makes you explode, while giving a huge damage boost to Marcus-with him yelling “DOM, NOOO!”

It would have to be like a one time use I guess. But it would be sweet!

1 Like
#6

His lines are the best :joy: So much fun.

#7

Hey Jaylin,

Totally agree. I hope that when Cole comes out, he has a lot of great classic lines.

Always loved him as well.

1 Like
#8

Thanks for the valuable input man,

I’m targeting Marcus after JD, first it was Kait, now JD is almost there. I’m planning to play Marcus the most, that’s why I kept it for the last. The rest of the characters are meh for me…

Cheers,

#9

Yea man!

No prob. Not sure if you have seen them but I have guides for them as well.

Jack will be next :+1:

Thanks again for the post.

2 Likes
#10

Thanks for the guide, regarding the band of brothers card, did you experience any inconsistencies with it when using Marcus’s living legend?

I haven’t used Marcus for a while now but found that sometimes it worked & sometimes it didn’t, as other players reported the same experience at that time I was just wondering whether there was an issue but it’s now been fixed?

#11

I played with Marcus recently and his BOB along with his ULT are still inconsistent for me. Sometimes it generates stim and sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes I get consistent headshots, and sometimes it doesn’t. I still think Marcus is mostly broken for this and since he’s supposed to take damage to use his ult that he can’t TANK it like he should. Higher levels are not really good for Marcus since he can’t eat those bullets. I’m not saying he should be unkillable, but pretty damn near and instead of a health buff for his perks it should be a damage resistance. But those are my two cents.

#12

I found his ultimate to be pretty consistent against anything other than bosses, with those I seemed to still need to be hitting their critical points for it to work but for scions etc body shots always counted as headshots.

With Band of Brothers, I just couldn’t work out what I needed to do to make it work, thought it might need a minimum amount of damage or that I needed to be against cover or I needed a team mate next to me but none of those factors seemed to contribute to it actually working whilst the ultimate was active.

I actually quite enjoyed playing as Marcus & loved the challenge of keeping his living legend active for an entire wave but must admit I struggled with not getting downed regularly on anything higher than insane difficulty.

#13

I love Marcus and he’s my favorite character of the series, I have a shelf dedicated to merch of him and him alone. The fact is that he is super broken. BOB works with getting lancer damage behind cover, but it only seems to activate when it wants to. During a match I get maybe 3 or 4 stim gains per 50 waves and that’s on Inconcievable to Master since I don’t play lower ranks a lot anymore.

He could stand to be tankier than he is because he just feels like a regular player with no added benefit to take more damage like he’s supposed to. He goes down the same amount as any other character. His ult is inconsistent and it lags at times, especially when others are latched to you for the ult perk. It’s just sad what they’ve done to the Face of Gears of War.

#14

I’ve had BOB work with lancer damage out of cover so I guess it really is broken :joy:.

I agree that he needs to be tankier than he currently is, that’s one of the reasons I prefer playing as Cog Gear (plus being able to self revive).

#15

It is broken for sure and hella inconsistent. Shame too because Marcus could be a viable horde character if his kit worked properly and he was an actual tank like his class implies.

1 Like
#16

They really need to adjust the dmg of guns depending on the difficulty. Even with 50% lancer dmg I’m getting more kills with the chainsaw on higher difficulties.

So whose next? CoG? Fahz is “suppose” to get a rework so it makes sense to put his guide off till afterwards. I just hope it’s an actual rework and not something insignificant to give off the illusion they did something. Sarah, Grace, Kat and Emile have so few perks a guide may not be called for.

#17

In any games that have the increased enemy health modifier I don’t bother using lancer ammo unless I absolutely have to. Early game I’ll get into standing cover, chainsaw rejects, drones etc & leave the ammo boxes for JD & Kait.

Once I’ve got a claw I’ll then use that as I get more kills for less ammo but ultimately will switch to using Tri-shots if/when they become available.

Just completed a 50 wave match as Marcus and found BOB to be just as inconsistent as it was previously, I did find that using a claw/lancer combo did get it to work sometimes whereas it didn’t work at all once I’d moved on to using tri-shots.

Maybe BOB kicks in once the living legend has been active beyond the minimum amount of time you get to use it & the time extension via rifle feedback (which doesn’t work with a tri-shot) allows BOB to activate? :thinking:

#18

Hey Evil,

Cog is next, but Fahz guide was already done mate :slight_smile:

It will be re-worked when he gets his steroids from TC.

1 Like
#19

Cool. Let me know what you think of pistol stim, regen+stim on revive during masters. I feel even with stim and regen cards on your ult people still get dropped in a micro second if they arent behind something.

#20

Hey FireStorm,

Good question on the end there. I always did the Claw combo into a Tri and never really had an issue with the STIM. But I was also, always in cover when doing it and always started with a Claw first. So, maybe it has to be with a Assault Rifle equipped or something? I dunno, but honestly didn’t experience any issues unless I was out of cover.

So yea, I know that doesn’t help but I will try looking into it.

Thanks for the Post.