In this post, I will provide a detailed explanation of the hero Marco & Eri, covering how to obtain them, upgrade their skills and talent tree, and how to pair them with other heroes.
How to obtain them?
Marco & Eri is a special hero from the Metal Slug 3 event or Doomsday Slug event. It’s a 60-day-long event, and after this, you won’t be able to unlock this hero anymore. You can obtain this hero by buying packs in the Army Fighters tab of that event. Alternatively, you might be lucky enough to get enough puzzle pieces to unlock them in the Metal Puzzle tab or gather enough Medals to buy fragments in the Military Store.
Talent Tree
Marco & Eri is an infantry hero with Skills and General as secondary abilities. The recommended build for Marco & Eri is to max out the Skills talent tree and use the remaining points in the Infantry tree. You can also invest some points in the Siege branch of the General tree if you’re planning to participate in sieges. However, for sieges, it’s generally better to use ranged heroes like Julia. My talent tree for Marco & Eri looks like this:
Skills
Marco & Eri has a unique passive skill called Soaring Birds. This skill does not require any upgrades; it is inherent to the hero. It increases damage to Rider squads by 5% but increases the damage taken from Ranged squads by 3%.
- Explosive Shots: It deals damage to a single target with a damage factor of up to 13,000 and reduces Rage of up to 5 enemy squads by up to 80. This effect can only be triggered once every 5 seconds.
- Electronic Interference: Counter attacks have 30% chance to reduce HP of up to 5 squads by up to 47% for 3 seconds. This effect can be triggered once every 5 seconds. This skill will not be triggered if no squad attack your squad but if they do you have 83% to 90% chance that this skill will be triggered every rounds (5-6 basic attacks + skill damage).
- Steel Armor: Every 10 seconds, this skill grants a shield to Marco & Eri’s squad with a shield factor of up to 3,300. It also reduces traveling speed and damage dealt of up to 5 squads by up to 35% and 16% respectively for 3 seconds.
- Slug Firepower: During field battles, squad increases by up to 27% and traveling speed by up to 22%
- Rescue Reward: When taking a Skill damage, there’s a 50% chance to heal up to 3 allied squad with a healing factor of 1,600. This effect can be triggered only once every 5 seconds.
How to upgrade their skills
For every combat hero, the first skill, the raging skill, needs to be upgraded first. I recommend upgrading the 2nd skill next, followed by the 3rd, and finally the 4th. The order would be 1, 2, 3, 4. This is going to be a debuff/buffing squad so you want to focus on the debuffing skills.
How to combine them with other heroes
Marco & Eri is an infantry hero, so they pair best with other infantry heroes. However, you could also pair them with Bianca to create a buffing/debuffing squad. Since they have a Skills talent tree, I recommend using Marco & Eri as the leader, although they can also function as the assistant.
If you want to focus on speed, pairing them with Adut or Miyamoto is an option. However, I would suggest keeping Adut with Miyamoto.
Another option is to pair Marco & Eri with a tanky hero like Riven, Thunder, or Eddie. My preferred option is Eddie to combine HP debuffs and maximize counter damage when people target your squad.
Conclusion
Marco & Eri is definitely a paid hero, and you’ll need to spend double the legendary fragments at the end of the Metal Slug 3 event to awaken them. I wouldn’t recommend using your legendary fragments on them unless you can afford it. If you’re interested in awakening them, consider buying packs during the Metal Slug event, but be prepared to spend around 800 USD to unlock all the armaments and fragments from the puzzles.