Marathon: How to Play as Triage

The Shell you pick in Marathon can determine your entire playstyle due to each having unique abilities and traits. One of the most important Shells in the game is Triage, a class that acts as a medic. Having a Triage on your team increases your chances of extracting exponentially.

However, fully understanding Triage's abilities and utilizing him properly can be challenging. It takes some practice to become a good Triage, but once you do, your entire team (and yourself) will thank you for it.

If you are interested in using Triage as your main Shell, this guide has you covered. Read further to learn how to play Triage in Marathon as this guide will explain its abilities, the best strategies to focus on, and the best team composition when creating a squad.

Triage Abilities, Explained

Triage is a field medic in Marathon, coming equipped with abilities that focus on healing teammates and keeping everyone in the fight. Properly using this Shell will lead to using fewer health kits and shield rechargers, which can make a massive difference when encountering waves of AI enemies or other players.

You can learn about Triage's abilities and traits from the bullet point below:

• Damage Mitigation (Tech): Triage saves lives. Deployable healing drones and onboard reboot abilities allow Triage Runners and their crews to keep running after taking damage.
• Reboot+ (Prime): Ready your shell's emergency defibrillator systems. Lock on to downed crew members or hostile targets and fire your Reboot+ device at them, which revives crew members and EMPs hostiles.
• Med-Drone (Tactical): Deploy a floating medical drone that attaches to crew members and restores health or recharges shields, and prevents them from bleeding out while downed.
• Shareware.exe (Trait): Benefits from medical consumables are shared between crew members with Med-Drone attached to them.
• Battery Overcharge (Trait): Divert energy from your cooling systems to boost the performance of your weapons at the cost of generating additional heat. While active, breaking a target's shield with a volt weapon EMPs them.

As you can see, Triage's abilities are super beneficial, focusing on healing, reviving, and even increasing the performance of weapons. Like I said, every team needs a Triage in Marathon.

Triage Strategies

When playing as a Triage, you want to play cautiously during firefights against other players or AI enemies. The last thing you want to do is get downed, leaving your teammates without a medic during an intense combat encounter. Shoot from behind cover and be careful when rushing into buildings where other players are.

Throughout the entire match, it's essential to keep an eye on your teammate's health bar in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. This will tell you when it's the appropriate time to send out a Med-Drone to provide them with some health or shield.

Remember, benefits from medical consumables are shared between crew members who have the Med-Drone. Communicate with your teammates when you're about to use consumables, so they don't end up using theirs and wasting them. Since all consumables are shared within the team (considering they have a Med-Drone), everyone essentially has tripled the amount.

When it comes to the Reboot+ ability, you only want to use it when it's absolutely necessary. For example, you are in the middle of a firefight with another team and your teammate is down, leaving you with an uneven fight. Get behind cover and use Reboot+ to revive your teammate from afar.

Never use Reboot+ during downtime. The cooldown is very long and using it when you don't need it can put you in a tough spot for an upcoming battle.

In the midst of battle, don't forget to use your Battery Overcharge ability to increase your weapon's performance. This will allow you to deal more damage to other players, increasing your chances of survival.

Best Team Composition

After playing as Triage for numerous hours, I can confidently say that the best Shells to pair with it are Assassin and Destroyer. These two Shells have abilities that can help Triage excel as a medic.

For starters, Destroyer comes equipped with the Riot Barricade ability, which summons a shield that deflects all incoming fire. This can be used to block Triage from enemy attacks, allowing you to either heal or revive a teammate who needs it badly.

The same principle applies to Assassin, except with this Shell, it has the Smoke Screen ability that completely covers the surrounding area in dark smoke. This ability can help Triage heal and revive teammates as the smoke makes it significantly harder for other players or AI enemies to land shots on you.

While Destroyer and Assassin are my two main recommendations, you could also pair Triage with another Triage, if you'd like. More healing is always a good thing and having two Triages on the battlefield can ensure that you never run out of Med-Drones.