Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Devs Reveal Most Popular Class—and the Least Played

If you've dived into Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 beyond the campaign, maybe trying out the excellent PvE Operations, you might have wondered which of the seven classes is the fan favorite. Well, wonder no more: to celebrate the game's two-year anniversary, publisher Focus Entertainment has spilled all the details.

In a forum post, Focus revealed that Tactical was the top choice in PvE over the past year, selected 44.4 million times. It beat out Bulwark in second, Assault in third, Heavy in fourth, Vanguard in fifth, and Techmarine in sixth.

Looking at the image above, you might ask: what about the Sniper class? It's oddly missing from the list. Space Marine 2's ranged specialist has a Camo Cloak ability that makes him nearly invisible. Is the Sniper 'cloaked' in the image?

Sadly, no. I asked Focus what happened, and they said they wanted to highlight the top six PvE classes, and Sniper came in just behind Techmarine with 20 million picks. Poor Sniper! I would have thought Techmarine would be last since it's a DLC class, but it just shows how unpopular Sniper is (or how popular Techmarine is?) that it lands in sixth place.

The thing is, Sniper is actually a powerful class, but it's not as accessible as the others and can be tricky to master. While it can deal massive damage to single targets, Space Marine 2 is fundamentally about diving in and smashing hordes of enemies. Sniper feels a bit out of place.

Bulwark being near the top doesn't surprise me at all, given its crucial role in keeping your squad alive with recovery and healing abilities (also, it's just damn cool—yes, I'm a Bulwark player). But why is Tactical number one? There are a few reasons. It has access to melta weapons, which are amazing in this game, as well as the boss-melting Pyreblaster primary weapon. But the key is Tactical's signature class ability, the Auspex Scan, which reveals and heavily debuffs enemies in a targeted area. This is a game-changing ability, especially on higher difficulties, and for many players it's essential for any high-level PvE group.

So, Tactical wins out, even though I'll always favor my beloved Bulwark.

While there are clear winners on this list, I think Space Marine 2 does a decent job of making each class viable at most difficulty levels. Part of the fun is trying out the various classes and their special abilities, so it's great that you can get by with any combo most of the time.

This time next year the list may look different, as Space Marine 2's Year 3 roadmap includes the Apothecary class for early 2027. It will be interesting to see if it can nudge ahead of Techmarine when the dust settles.

Meanwhile, developer Saber recently admitted that Chaos enemies are harder to fight than the Tyranids in Space Marine 2, and confirmed plans to address it.