Mass Effect 3: Marksman vs Adrenaline Rush

Mass Effect 3 reintroduced a few skills from the first born of the trilogy, Mass Effect 1. They have been reworked to fit in with the new game play of course, but it’s nice to see how the developers tried to bring the best from the first two games into the third. Marksman is one of these skills.

Marksman increases your fire rate and accuracy but doesn’t stack with Adrenaline rush, therefore you are left with a question: Which one is best? Here’s my test. In the first half of the video I am using Marksman, in the second half I am using Adrenaline Rush. Weapon used is Saber with Disruptor Ammo (for the stun mainly), while the squad uses Cryo Ammo.

I find Adrenaline Rush wins by a long shot. It’s easier to position yourself around the map since everything is slowed down, it does more damage (I one shotted a Guardian with a shield and I didn’t try to aim at the little space that shows his head) and generally it’s just easier to control the field because of the slow. On top of that you can fire a skill while using Adrenaline Rush, which allows me to spam Concussive Shot should I choose to. My cooldown bonus is 200% since I maxed the skills that improve weapon weight and I am only using one weapon. Adrenaline Rush also offer some damage protection, while Marksman doesn’t. Another thing that makes Marksman a bit luckluster compared to AR is the fact that the time dilation from the latter gives you indirect accuracy, which is one of the things that Marskman offers as well. That means that the only different thing that Marskman offers is fire rate.  While sometimes it feels like this makes you kill faster with Marskman, the number of added benefits that AR gives puts it at a disadvantage.

This is of course single player discussion. In multiplayer Adrenaline Rush doesn’t give you any time dilation, making Marksman a good competitor.