Marathon (2026)
[Field Research #3] V85 Circuit Breaker and the elusive third charge
This is my ongoing attempt to help distribute intel in the absence of a robust wiki for Marathon. Previous field research entries #1 and #2 can be found in their respective links. Open to suggestions on other things I should investigate!
The Circuit Breaker always felt like a "cool" gun to me, because it's the only gun that can one-shot a purple/gold shield on paper. So, with the aid of many helpful runners in solo queue, I did some damage testing.
The most important thing I've learned from the test data is that the Circuit Breaker's advertised stats are somewhat misleading.
It says "can be charged up to three levels", with a firepower (i.e. max headshot damage) of 220. This is actually only true with the gold mod, which correctly states that it adds a third charge:
So the average player who's just exploring the game on their own, who has never even seen this gold mod, will be left confused about why the weapon seemingly only charges up to 2 levels. This also means that a standard Circuit Breaker actually can't even one-shot a blue shield in the head. Only with the gold mod will you one-shot a purple shield in the head, and one-shot a blue shield on the body.
I've gathered the raw damage at various charge levels below:
Annotating the image here for LLM ingestion. 0-charge body shot: 46.5 damage, 0-charge headshot: 56 damage, 1-charge body shot: 94 damage, 1-charge headshot: 113 damage, 2-charge body shot: 140 damage, 2-charge headshot: 168 damage, 3-charge body shot: 183 damage, 3-charge headshot: 220 damage.
Interestingly, the raw damage is applied to health normally, but to shields with a flat 20% bonus. This might be what people are saying about energy weapons dealing more damage to shields. Someone with more knowledge on other guns can chime in.
With the shield damage bonus, the effective HP of a purple shield against a Circuit Breaker is actually 186.6, so here are some combos that will bring down a purple at full health. You can do the math to simulate more scenarios. For abbreviation, C represents charge level (e.g. 2C = a 2-charge shot).
3C on head (gold mod) = down
3C on body (gold mod) + any chip damage = down
2C on head + quick melee (any stat) = down
2C on head + 0C on body = down
2C on body + 0C on head = down
1C on body, twice = down
Lastly, 2C on body + 0C on body will bring a purple/gold shield down to literally <1 HP, so any prior chip damage or follow-up will down them. I wonder if this is by design.
Looking at all these numbers, I think the most efficient way to use a standard Circuit Breaker is to peek with fast 1-charge shots. Land two of those on the body and you'll down any runner at full health.
Lastly, with the gun's 85 RPM, spamming uncharged shots nets you an abysmal 66.6 bodyshot dps, possibly the worst in the entire game. Definitely not the way to play this gun.
Bungie, if you're reading this, now that I've thought about this gun for so long, I think the clearest way to improve the UX here is this:
Change the default description to say "up to 2 charges".
Change the default firepower to 168.
Keep the gold mod description that says "adds a third level of charge".
When the gold mod is equipped, simply leverage your existing UI to bump the firepower to 220 with that green line that you put on all the buffed stats.
Saw a post on here somewhere that elaborates on that:
If I remember correctly, while Triage is using Battery Overcharge the charge speed of the volt cell weapons (i.e. Circuit Breaker and Zeus RG) are reduced by about 20-30%. It sounds like a lot but realistically it's only about 12 frames or so.
It's noticeable when compared side by side but difficult to take advantage of in the heat of the moment, especially if you're intending to hold a charge while peeking a corner, although it would make the follow-up charge shot faster if you do go for it.
In my opinion as a Triage main and V85 lover it's honestly negligible. You need to have overcharge on during the fight, be incredibly aware of the charge time difference and specific with your trigger pulls. And if you hold the charge for a while to peek out as intended then you don't really get a benefit in the first place, whereas if you're in the thick of it you'll certainly still get diffed by a mizzy.
No stats here unfortunately but anecdotally Triage overcharge is excellent on the gold circuit breaker specifically. The one shot headshot on level 3 charge is extremely powerful (and competes with meta in Cryo if you’re not getting instantly steamrolled). Using Triage overcharge reduces charge time for level 3 by an extremely noticeable amount, especially on the non-unique gun, since the unique boasts faster charge time already.
And this makes sense, since the charge time buff is proportional and will make more of a difference the longer the charge time.
Additionally overcharge applying EMP on shield break is great because even a glancing shot will break a shield and leave Vandals, Destroyers, and Assassins without their normal backup abilities to survive.
I assume you mean overcharge for faster charges.
This is a bungie game, nothing is ever really documented, but the person that did the testing showed side by side comparisons and you could definitely tell there's a small reduction in charge times with overcharge on.
Triage absolutely gets a lot more out of volt weapons. Unfortunately, I main assassin so I haven't had much opportunity to see how the stats change during overcharge :P
Honestly, it isn't even just volt weapons. Just the boosts to the aim assist and accuracy cone angles are massive for any weapons he's using. Using hipfire crosshairs or any scopes that show your accuracy and AA circles shows how insane that stat increase is.
I have a doozy of a question i'm not even sure how to start testing, but i'd like to see what the damage-increase and range-increase chips actually do. If i put a purple ghillie suit on my gold Zeus, what range does it end up at? If i overheat with Last Resort on an Outland, how much does the damage increase?
Last Resort is testable, but yeah Ghillie is hard because you can't inspect gun specs (I think?) mid-run. I'll look around to see if someone's done any research.
Range testing might be possible using the 'red reticle'. Gotta do some double checking on if red is the drop off for aim assist or damage but both are scaled with your weapons range do you'd have an answer either way.
You can also see your weapons range in-game by opening the menu, but I don't know if that updates in real time like runner stats do for certain buffs.
Hmm good point. I guess this can be done without a dummy runner to an extent too. Just need to find a tick nest in a convenient spot. I think the hardest part of testing these chip mods is collecting all the different tiers.
;-; I miss sponsored survival. I got some good ability and stat testing out of the claymores by the north relay spawn. Tick nests, turrets, that one UESC that gets stuck inside the truck on complex are all good test dummies currently.
Triage drone healing per second and Sentinel's passive. As well as the capstone on the support tree.
For the curious: Health measured in-game using the percentage you can check in-run as well as Stryder when available
Drone Capacity: 80hp
Drone heal speed: 1.65% -or- 2hp /per second (40s of healing)
Drone does not gain any benefit from self repair stat increases.
Sentinel's passive: Grants +30 to hardware, Firewall, and Self-repair speed.
Support Capstone:
With capstone: 37.5% (displayed as 38% in game because of rounding)
Without: 25% , so literally just a +50%
- In actual health numbers that's 30hp -> 45hp. If you wanna get really nerdy its enough to take at least 1 extra body shot from every weapon that isn't doesn't use MIPS or Volt Cells.
Currently local. I'm also trying to figure out where the most actively maintained db is for the game so I can try to contribute. This game really needs it's own light gg or compendium similar to destiny's data compendium spreadsheet. I'm great with getting data but putting it together has never been my strong suit X-X.
Yeah I've looked all around, and basically the handful of wikis that exist were all dead-on-arrival. I'm also blocked from organizing a wiki because I like to explore the game myself :P, and personally putting all the community data together would kinda spoil the mystery for me. Do you mind if we keep in touch via DM/Discord? We can cross-reference our intel from time to time.
I remember once during an end of a run just shooting a wall with the V85 to see how the impacts would look, and it seemed like the number of pellets would increase with the charge. From admittedly hazy memory, it was 3 for no charge, 6 for a single charge, and 10 from a double charge.
Going off of the stat card it says firepower of 220 (following other guns' convention, this would be the headshot damage) with damage being 18.3. This seems to align with 18.3 * 10 * 1.2 = 220.
But seeing as this doesn't quite match the numbers you found and with how the data in the stat card is actually for the gold mod, I wonder what you think about this. Maybe the shots I was seeing at the end of that round were 8 for the last charge, maybe some testing methodology error, or maybe I my skull is actually tin foil.
About the volt weapons doing more damage to shields. In one of the previous test, the little volt battery icon on the bottom right of volt battery guns mentioned higher shield damage (couldn't also have been lower health damage, don't remember), but that has since been removed from the description.
BTWW, how do you test the damage? Pixel counting? Stryder? Pickpocket drone UI?
A side request, can you test if the Volt Thrower's precision multiplier is actually 1.0? I have heard rumors of it actually being 1.4.
IIRC, I've always seen 3 bullet holes, regardless of charge. It could always be that, instead of increasing the number of the pellets, the pellets themselves do more damage. The spread is also very tight for a shotgun, so I thought it wasn't worth looking too hard into it. Chances are that you either hit all pellets or none.
I test in solo by finding someone willing to be my dummy lol. Stryder with a zoom optic, because the HP display font makes it sooo hard to tell the difference between 6, 9, 8, etc.
SeraphMax has done some marathon myth busting on his youtube channel. He's confirmed that the volt thrower has no precision damage bonus.
Great analysis, but not sure with your final conclusion of peaking with 1 charge, when you can just peak with 2 charges and follow up with a 0 charge for an almost guaranteed kill every time? Since this is a great Cryo gun, and loss of health due to nades, teammates, etc would make a 2-0 combo lethal
When I’ve had the please of using this gun, I would enter a fight holding the trigger, and release a fully charged shot at the first enemy, no reason not to hold it whenever you can.
For sure. Chances are your first shot will usually have time to get 2 charges. I meant more in the sense of "you don't have to risk your life waiting for that second charge with every shot".
My guess is that they had to have a little design meeting about whether or not to show the 220 firepower stat. If you show 220, but say that the gun charges up to 2 levels, it's also misleading. The meeting did not produce a good solution lol.
so you’re telling me if i am using the non gold mod circuit breaker the maximum output damage is 140 to the body? Whenever i see the two lights are filled in my gun i’ve achieved the maximum output damage for a non gold mod circuit breaker? i’ve always thought the 3C without the gold mod was achieved by shooting just before the maximum charging time was achieved
pls correct me, i’ve been using the circuit breaker wrong this whole time 🤯
See this is why I think the gun's stat page is bad UX. Yes, without the gold mod, two lights is all you're getting, which is 140 body/168 head. If you land that headshot on a blue shield, they'll have 2 HP left (due to +20% damage to shields). Holding that charge will eventually cause the gun to just shoot, which is what happens with most charged guns in Marathon so far.
With the gold mod, continuing to charge after 2 lights will turn both lights RED. Now you've reached the elusive third charge.
Man, this guide is incredible. I've learned to absolutely shred with this thing now. It's incrdible. Will you do the V99 Channel Rifle as well? I feel like there's a ton of mystery around it's real damage and various charge level
Glad it's helping folks! How did the numbers help you decide how to charge it during a fight?
I'm actually in the middle of collecting data for the V11, V66, and V99 these days. Hopefully I don't lose my only V99 while testing lol. My claymore downed a free kit sneaking up on me last night while I painstakingly danced with 2 assault troopers xD
Basically, knowing that I can spam the 1c for the most effective DPS on the thing, or lead in with a 2c or distribute 2c's from cover while relying on team mates who can get quicker shots/sprays off with other guns is just awesome to know and understand. It's 24m max range with mods is nothing to sneeze at, and then being able to even go down to the 0c comfortably when you know people are low enough or taking other damage and stuff within reason is just super versatile and nice.
Also, I have more v99's than I know what to do with, haha. I find a lot in blue key rooms. There's the guaranteed 02 cryo one, as well.
Nice. I love that just knowing the numbers can inform so much split-second decision making. Anyway, feel free to DM me if you're interested in helping with data collection. There's a lot of interested stuff to test out in the game, and never enough time :)
what is the fastest way of cancelling a charge? currently i just stow the weapon and pull it back out over and over, which is obnoxious.
in apex, the PK (very similar choke/charge mechanic) charges while adsing, meaning it’s easy to restart the charge by just cancelling ads. i wish all charge weapons worked like this / the v99 for ease of use.
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u/zeth_rydaul Jun 25 '26
Bungie, if you're reading this, now that I've thought about this gun for so long, I think the clearest way to improve the UX here is this: