Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Techmarine Update Out Now — Check Out Patch 12.0

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s long-awaited Techmarine update is out now across all platforms as part of patch 12.0. It adds the new Techmarine class, a new melee weapon, a new Operation, DLCs, and balance updates.

The Techmarine is the big draw here. The new playable class — the first to hit the explosive third-person action game since launch — has a unique Servo-Gun ability that locks onto enemies in a line of sight and automatically fires at them while the Techmarine continues fighting in melee or range. It also has access to the new Omnissian Axe, which can deal massive damage to both a single target with its standard attacks and to surrounding enemies with its finishing heavy attacks.

“We hope you will really like the new class,” game director Dmitry Grigorenko said in a post on publisher Focus Entertainment’s website. “We’ve tried to make sure that this class plays differently from the rest.”

A number of changes were made based on feedback from the recent PTS, outlined in the patch notes below. “We’ve tried to address most of it, but there are some big changes that we didn’t have time to implement,” Grigorenko explained. “There will be more improvements and perks reworks in upcoming patches.”

Elsewhere, patch 12.0 heralds the addition of Space Marine 2’s first voice pack, which costs $4.99. This is not included in the Season Pass (and thus has upset some players who believe it should be part of the premium DLC package). It includes 450 re-recorded voicelines and a unique Space Marine Head cosmetic for each of the following Space Marine chapters: Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Black Templars.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Techmarine update 12.0 patch notes:

NEW FEATURES

New Class: Techmarine

We are introducing a new playable class: the Techmarine! This mighty technician specialises in crowd control and area defense, handling multiple combat tasks simultaneously. This is primarily possible with his Servo-Gun ability. When activated, it locks onto enemies in a line of sight and automatically fires at them while the Techmarine continues fighting in melee or range. Furthermore, the Servo-Gun allows executing Gun Strikes without interrupting other actions.

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Fixed “Furious Gun Strike” prestige perk not activating properly.
• “Revive Surge” prestige perk has been replaced with “Indomitable”: “You become Invulnerable to Damage while activating Tarantula Sentry Gun”
• “Chained Headshots” prestige perk now correctly increases headshot damage.
• “Volatile Sentry” prestige perk damage boost increased from 40% to 1000%.
• “Replenishing Salvo” perk cooldown reduced from 90 to 75.
• Fixed “Lethal Perimeter” perk, it now correctly reduces the energy per shot for all types of Servo-Guns.
• “Arc Cleave” perk damage bonus decreased from 25% to 20%.
• “Explosive Enfilade” perk now works with Sanctified Wrath equipment.
• “Augmented Tarantula” perk’s damage boost increased from 25% to 30%.
• “Augmented Tarantula” perk now correctly increases the turret’s ammo.
• “Methodical Destruction” perk now correctly debuffs enemies.
• “Designated target” perk now correctly debuffs enemies.
• “Omnissian Axe Deflection” perk duration increased from 5 to 10 seconds.
• “Explosives Adept” perk damage increased from 20% to 35%.
• “Lethal Perimeter” perk using 50% less energy per shot instead of 20%.
• Servo-gun damage now correctly scales with difficulty.
• Precision Servo-gun damage reduced by 10%.
• Bolter Servo-gun cooldown reduced by 20%.

Game Director’s note:

We hope you will really like the new class. We’ve tried to make sure that this class plays differently from the rest.
Thank you for your feedback on him from PTS. We’ve tried to address most of it, but there are some big changes that we didn’t have time to implement. There will be more improvements and perks reworks in upcoming patches.

New Weapon: Omnissian Axe

With the Techmarine class, you will also get the chance to try out its signature weapon, the Omnissian Axe! This weapon is capable of dealing massive damage to both a single target with its standard attacks and to surrounding enemies with its finishing heavy attacks. And as a starting heavy attack, you can perform a powerful charge attack that can hit all enemies in its path.

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Improved responsiveness of Omnissian Rush attacks.
• Sweeping Whirl damage increased by 100%.
• The third light attack in the combo now correctly breaks the enemy’s guard.
• “Armour Siphon” perk now activates properly.
• Fixed the amount of HP which taken when using the “Iron Surge” perk.
• “Executioner” perk duration increased to 5 seconds.
• Added an energy explosion effect for “Explosive Strike” perk.
• “Mighty Blast” perk second explosion deals correct damage.
• “Expose” perk is now correctly applied.
• “Cleaving Strike” perk no longer triggers environmental hazards explosions.

New PvE Content: Tarantula Sentry Gun

Techmarines can also locate and activate Sentry Turrets in PvE missions. These Tarantula-type emplacements offer automatic suppressive fire support against nearby enemies. Sentry Turrets have limited ammo and would go into standby mode after running out of it, but a Tech Marine can re-awaken them to restore their supplies.

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Fixed double HP and damage scaling by difficulties.
• Increased spawn rate of turrets by ~50%.
• Added more potential spawn areas for turrets.
• Increased range of turret outline for better visibility.

Game Director’s note:

Rest assured that turrets are still going to be very effective.

Sentries (along with lots of other cool stuff 😉) will be added in Siege in the next big content update.

New PvE Map: Disruption

Space Marine forces have been deployed to the Hive City of Avarax. Their initial mission is to reinforce the overwhelmed Cadian defenses against a massive Tyranid swarm. Subsequently, they will join a Dreadnought to eliminate Thousand Sons forces that have penetrated the city’s lower levels.

New PvE Equipment: Restorative Stimms

The Restorative Stimms, a new PvE healing Equipment, has been added, encouraging aggressive playstyles. Upon use, it restores an initial small amount of health, then a large amount of Contested Health over a period of time.

New Customisation Feature: Shared Heads for PvE / PvP Characters

Added an option to pick any face for PvE and PvP characters in Armour Customisation. Class restrictions no longer apply (i.e you can equip Assault’s head on the Heavy)

New Tech Feature: Siege Host Migration

Supported Host Migration for Siege Mode: If a server crash occurs, the game will continue on a new server from the last saved state.

New Feature: VO Selector

Added an option to pick and customise voices for PvE and PvP characters. You’ll find the Voice Selector in the “Edit Armour” menu of the Armouring Hall.

New Battlefield Conditions

21 new Battlefield Conditions have been added to expand the variety of daily and weekly Stratagems.

Custom Stratagems Mode for PvE

Players can now create private matches with any combination of Battlefield Conditions. This allows players to customize their games, set their own Stratagems or simply enjoy some light-hearted carnage (note that all rewards will be disabled in Custom Stratagems mode).

New Heroic Items

Added 3 Heroic Weapons:

• Argent Edge (Combat Knife – Fencing type)
• Ultima Ratio (Omnissian Axe – Fencing type)
• Deathwatch (Heavy Bolt Rifle with Grenade Launcher)

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Argent Edge riposte damage increased by 50%.

New DLC Content:

Included in Season Pass 2:

• Raven Guard Champion Pack (Assault Champion + Bolt Pistol)
• Carcharodons Chapter Pack (Unlike the other Cosmetic Packs, the Carcharodons Cosmetic Pack does not add a new Heraldry page to unlock the cosmetic items. Instead, the armour pieces will be automatically unlocked and added to your armour sets once you purchase the pack.)

Not included in any Season Pass:

• 3 Custom Heads + VO for PvE/ PvP Characters. (Space Wolves / Blood Angels / Black Templars)

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCING TWEAKS

PvE Perks

Tactical

Balanced Distribution: Both negative and positive effects are increased from 10% to 15%.

Kraken Penetrator Rounds: All bolter weapons now deal 50% more damage with body shots.

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Kraken Penetrator Rounds now correctly apply to bolter rounds only.

Game Director’s note:

We hear your feedback regarding bolters doing too little body damage.

This behavior is kind of intentional. The reason is that Space Marine 2’s engagement distances and recoil are extremely low, while average enemy size is rather big. It’s very difficult to completely miss your enemies. This is why the only skill element of ranged combat is to aim for the head, and this is why head shots are so important for bolt weapons.

That being said, I agree that we’ve overtuned headshots way too much, especially with how different perks and multipliers stack with each other. We will reduce the gap between body shots and head shots. But it’s not going to be as easy as applying this perk by default to everybody.

We need to adjust base damage of all bolter weapons and then adjust damage sensitivity on all enemies and do it case by case. So, a big overhaul is coming in this area rather soon, but do keep in mind that aiming for the head will remain the proper way of using bolters.

Sniper

Efficient Readiness: Now the effect lasts 5 seconds after deactivation.

Ambush: Now forces stagger to the enemies.

Vantage Point: Added an indication when ready.

Assault

Squad Cohesion: Effect is increased from 10% to 15%.

Hammer of Wrath: Is now a Prestige Perk replacing “Commendation”.

Commendation: Removed.

Strong Strike: New perk, taking the original place of “Hammer of Wrath”: “Hitting an enemy with an attack after a Jump Pack Dash restores Jump Pack Ability Charge by 1. Cooldown 10 seconds.”

Winged Fury: Now works with all stances of Power Sword.

Firearms in PvE

Bolt Rifle

Base damage is increased by 10% for versions:

• Drogos Reclamation – Beta (Artificer)
• Ophelian Liberation – Beta (Relic)

Bolt Carbine (Marksman Version)

Base damage is increased by 11% for versions:

• Drogos Reclamation Marksman (Artificer)
• Ophelian Liberation Marksman (Relic)

Inferno Pistol

Gunstrike damage is increased by 22%.

Volkite Pistol

Gunstrike damage is increased by 9%.

Sanctified Wrath Reliquary

Bonus to Melee Damage is increased from 25% to 35%.

Effect duration is increased from 15 to 20 seconds.

Melee in PvE

Damage of all Artificer and Relic Balanced type melee weapons was increased by about 15% on average.

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Heroic Chainsword and Power Sword damage increased by 10%.

PvP

• Fixed restoring armour by hitting an enemy for Power Axe.
• Fixed issue with 3rd attack in Power Sword combo dealing too much damage.
• Blindness effect from Shock Grenade is decreased from 2 sec to 1,5 sec.

Rewards

• Siege Mode: Rebalanced rewards for waves completion first 5 waves grant less XP, while later waves grant more XP.
• Stratagems: Hard difficulty Stratagems no longer grant XP.

Gameplay QoL

• Contested health no longer fades away during grab animations
• Rebalanced melee attacks that have multiple attacks: Now they restore contested health with each strike instead of just the first one.
• Slightly adjusted hitboxes of a few melee attacks so they would connect more easily against large enemies.
• Fixed an issue where Bolt Sniper Rifle and Las Fusil would miss their targets at extremely long range. Aim Assist at such distances has also been slightly increased.
• Improved properties of bullet magnetism for Chaos enemy NPC: Chaos Spawns , Rubric Marines, Tzaangors, Terminators. Making them slightly easier to headshot at medium and long ranges.

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Jump Pack dash can be used to cancel any player melee animation.
• Improved controls responsiveness after using Jump Pack Dash attacks.

CUSTOMISATION

• Added and updated a few Champion parts to the Custom Armour Set pieces:
  • Added Ultramarine Champion Tabard to Tactical
  • Added Imperial Fist Champion Tabard to Tactical
  • Added robes to Dark Angels Champion Bulwark’s chest
  • Added Dark Angels Champion shoulder pads to Heavy
  • Updated White Scars Champion chest on Tactical to include belt accessories
  • Added Black Templars Champion shoulder pads to Heavy
  • Added Blood Angels Champion shoulder pads and backpack to Bulwark
• Added the option to switch and apply Heroic Weapons skins to other weapons (not applicable to special weapons i.e combi-weapon).
• Lots of minor customisation fixes for both Loyalists and Chaos.

🟡 Changes from PTS:

• Added 4 more shared customisation slots.
• Added missing unlock conditions for Power Axe skins in PvP.

LEVELS

• Lots of minor fixes with level geometry.

ENEMIES

Lots of minor fixes with animations.

GENERAL FIXES

• Fixed: The plasma weapon perk “Fast venting” reduced the cooling by ~7.5% instead of 15% as announced in the tooltip.
• Fixed a bug with the Heroic Heavy Bolt Pistol not interrupting enemy reinforcements with body shots.
• Fixed a bug with the Controller Aim Assist strength depending on camera FOV.
• Lots of minor bug fixes.
• Lots of minor localisation bug fixes.
• Lots of minor UI and sound fixes.

TECH

• Crash fixes and general stability improvements.
• Memory optimisations.
• Minor performance improvements.
• Minor loading times optimization.
• General connectivity improvements.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.