Each of the six classes owns a different job. The Duelist deals flexible damage, the Marauder brings heavy explosives, the Machinist builds turrets and holds ground, the Hunter picks apart weak points, the Medic keeps everyone standing, and the Specialist is basically whatever you want him to be. In this guide we have covered all their special features and their perks. We have covered all the other parts of the game in our Aliens Fireteam Elite 2 Guide.
In This Guide:
Every class has two kit abilities that belong to it alone, one passive perk, and its own separate progression. Each ability also has upgrade paths that change how it works.
Duelist
The Duelist is the damage class and the most straightforward one in the game. If you don’t want to think about tactics too hard and want to just empty your guns on the enemy, the Duelist is for you.
It’s also the only class without a signature weapon. Instead, it carries two primary weapons, which gives it more freedom in the loadout than anyone else.
- Burst Configuration activates a special weapon with 20 rounds of high-powered ammo to dump into a target.
- Shrapnel Grenade pulls out a single-shot grenade launcher. High damage plus a bleed effect on anything it hits. It can be upgraded into a remote-detonated version or a cluster grenade that wipes out a whole pack at once.
- The passive reduces ability cooldowns by up to 10% every time you get a kill.
On the perk side, the class perk is Stay on Target. Dealing damage builds stacks worth 2% damage each, up to 20%. But as soon as you stop shooting the stack falls off, so the Duelist wants you aggressive and constantly firing. There’s a second perk, Mobility, that stacks right into it: 10% movement speed, 20% stun recovery, and it makes your Stay on Target stacks last 50% longer.
Two primaries plus two abilities means you almost never stop putting out damage. If you want to be the one-man army with the highest raw DPS on the team, this is your class.
Marauder
The Marauder is the heavy. When a corridor fills up with Xenomorphs, he is the person who gets you out of trouble.
It starts with the iconic smart gun and gets access to rocket launchers and flamethrowers.
- Titan Rockets fires a barrage of small missiles that explode on impact for AoE damage. Upgrades push it toward phosphorus damage or give the rockets homing.
- Blast Cannon is one of the best crowd control abilities in the game. It fires a short concussive wave that damages, knocks back, and staggers most elites. Upgrades lean into burning or thermal damage.
- Dead Eye, the passive, gives you a ramping bonus to stopping power and reduced recoil as you land hits. Fast-firing weapons keep this up almost permanently. Slow weapons barely see it.
Marauder has two perk. Reactive Charges triggers a knockback blast when a melee attack hits you, on a 30-second cooldown, so treat it as an emergency button rather than a rotation. Rampage is the real one: every kill adds a stack, and at 25 stacks your fire rate, reload speed and movement speed all jump for 8 seconds. The cost is weapon stability. That perk tells you exactly how the Marauder wants to be played, which is forward, loudly, and without stopping.
Machinist
The Machinist is the techy guy, and the one that holds ground. It fills gaps, covers blind spots, and plays as a mid-range controller rather than a front-liner.
It also gets plasma weapons, which generate heat instead of burning through magazines. Managed properly, they have the best ammo economy in the game, and they deal thermal damage, which the early Xenomorphs really hate.
- Sentry Turret is a deployable that fires at enemies on its own. It can be picked up and moved. Upgrades turn it into a gas turret or a rumble turret.
- Bodyguard does exactly what its name suggests; It’s a flying drone that follows you around and shoots nearby enemies with its built-in rifle. It splits into an artillery version or a shredder version.
- Dual Targeting, the passive, gives you a base 10% damage increase against enemies that were recently hit by your abilities or a turret item.
What makes the Machinist worth bringing is what the turrets do for everyone else. Allies standing near your turret get 10% damage resistance, and when you stand near it yourself, it regenerates 5 health per second. Another perk gives you 10% reload speed and stability whenever your machines get kills, stacking up to five times. The developers also confirmed your sentry guns don’t cause friendly fire damage.
The turret tip nobody tells you: if you recall your turret from a distance, you eat a 20-second cooldown. If you physically walk over and pick it up, that drops to around 7 seconds. The same applies to the drone. On higher difficulties, where you’re constantly repositioning to cover your team, that difference is enormous.
Hunter
The Hunter is the precision class. It slows the fight down so you can hit exactly where it hurts.
It carries long-range rifles and beam weapons, including a personal rail gun and a particle emitter. The design director specifically pointed to the rail gun as the counter to armored mini-bosses.
- Particle Pulse can be charged, and the damage scales with how long you hold it. A full charge also deals AoE damage. Upgrades turn it into a particle beam or a cryopulse.
- Stasis Bolt sticks to enemies or surfaces and slows everything inside its area. It splits into a quad bolt or an arc bolt.
- Puncture, the passive, lets you create up to one new weak spot on an enemy by concentrating damage into a specific area. That’s a lifesaver against Xenos and synths with awkward or hidden weak points, and you’ll feel it more the higher you push the difficulty.
Basically everything you should know about this class is summed up in its perks. No Mercy raises weak point stopping power by 50%, and No Rest raises weak point damage by 50%. If you aim carefully instead of spraying, this is your class. If big armored targets are the thing that keeps killing your run, it’s also your class.
Medic
This one is actually much better than what it looks on your screen.
The Medic keeps the squad alive and gets close-range weapons like shotguns and SMGs, so it can stay in the fight instead of hiding behind everyone.
- Advanced Trauma Station restores temporary health to allies inside its area. Enemies that die in that same area recharge the ability faster.
- Combat Stims give the whole fire team temporary health and reduce everyone’s ability cooldowns at the same time.
- Guardian, the passive, triggers when you defend an ally: both of you get temporary health and a base 20% damage resistance for 3 seconds.
You won’t top the kill charts. You will be the reason the squad walks out.
If pure healing bores you, the Medic can pivot hard. Swap the trauma station for a poison station and trade Combat Stims for an overclock buff, and you turn into an aggressive buffing support that also does real damage.
No Revives at Launch (and Why It Changes Everything)
This is the single most important thing in this guide, so let me be exact about it.
You can still pick a teammate back up when they go down. What you cannot do is bring somebody back once they fully die. The developers confirmed in their own community channel that resurrecting dead teammates was discussed but didn’t make the launch feature set. A dead player spectates until the mission ends.
That one detail flips the value of the whole Medic kit. Preventing damage is now worth far more than healing it afterwards, and a Medic who stops a death is worth more than a fourth gun that adds damage. If you’re running with a group, you definitely need a medic.
Specialist
The Specialist is what makes the class system really fun. To build a Specialist, you have to level the other classes first. Once you’re playing as one, you can mix and match any ability, perk or weapon you’ve unlocked. All the normal rules still apply: a primary, a signature, a sidearm, two active abilities, one passive and a customizable grid. The difference is that you get all the building blocks and decide what your marine is.
The catch is that abilities have to be unlocked on the class they came from. Then you combine it with anything else you’ve unlocked elsewhere. The team showed builds mixing Duelist guns with Machinist turrets and Marauder rockets.
Playing as the Specialist also raises your Specialist rank, which unlocks unique perks and items and gives you more room on the perk board.
Which Class Should You Pick?
There’s no single best class here. It depends entirely on how you like to fight and who you’re playing with.
Quick version:
- New players: Duelist
- Solo players: Machinist
- Full squads: make sure somebody is on Medic
- Struggling with armored enemies: Hunter
- Thinking about the endgame: level everything, because the Specialist needs all of it
If you’re completely new to the series, start Duelist. It asks the least of you and it teaches you the game. Its damage perk rewards the thing you’re already doing, which is shooting. You don’t have to manage a turret or watch anyone else’s health bar. The mobility perk also makes recovering from a stun far less punishing.
The Marauder is the other reasonable beginner pick. Big weapons are forgiving when a swarm closes in and your aim falls apart. Just be aware that friendly fire switches on at Intense difficulty and above, so a rocket launcher becomes a shared responsibility.
If you’re mostly playing solo, go Machinist. You’ll have AI teammates, and early word on the bots is genuinely good. A turret is a teammate that always does exactly what you expect, the plasma weapons deal thermal damage that early enemies hate, and since plasma only spends ammo when you overheat it, patient bursts never leave you dry.
The Hunter is the other solo pick worth considering. Stasis Bolt buys you time, and nothing is more valuable when you’re alone than time.
If you’re running a full squad of four, the math changes. That extra slot is exactly what makes a dedicated support player affordable, so get somebody on Medic. With no revives at launch, a Medic who prevents a death is the whole difference between a clear and a wipe. From there, take a Machinist for turrets and a Marauder for heavy clearing, and leave a Hunter or Duelist to handle armored targets. That covers healing, area control and single-target damage.
