Jonathan Almaguer
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14 Min read Welcome to our tier list of the best heroes in Marvel Rivals!
This list is based on the game’s Alpha, so expect changes to hit before the beta and its December 6th release date.
As always with our tier list, we recommend starting with whatever you feel most comfortable with within your personal playstyle and strengths.
Without further adieu, here are our rankings for the best heroes in Marvel Rivals:
| Tier | Marvel Rivals Tier List |
|---|---|
| S | Venom, The Punisher, Luna Snow, Spiderman |
| A | Hela, Mantis, Star-Lord, Magneto, Groot, Loki, Magik |
| B | Dr. Strange, Thor, Rocket Raccoon, Iron Man, Adam Warlock, Namor, Scarlet Witch |
| C | Jeff, Hulk, Peni Parker, Storm |
| D | Black Panther |
For a visual reference of our Marvel Rivals tier list, check out our infographic below:
The top-tier heroes are the strongest not only in their own roles but also the strongest overall in Marvel Rivals. Having multiple S-tier heroes is practically a requirement of every competitive team composition.
Expect to see them in most of your ranked matches as their kits have the highest potential and provide the most consistent value of the entire roster.
Venom dropped as insanely overpowered and is the most unkillable character in Marvel Rivals. Symbiotic Resilience instantly takes a near-death 100hp Venom and turns him into a 1500hp killing machine!
The symbiote has unbelievably good mobility from his 8 second Venom Swing which allows him to instantly engage the enemies backline, slamming down and popping everyone into the air with Frenzied Arrival.
After he’s had his fun smacking his enemies around with primary fire and the slow effect of Cellular Corrosion, almost dying but then miraculously living with his E, he safely swings back to his team to start the process all over again.
If one crazy strong machine gun just isn’t enough for you, press Q while playing as The Punisher and enjoy melting your enemies’ health bars. Punisher makes for easy wins and easy climbing in ranked mode as his first-person-shooter type kit is simple to understand but incredibly powerful.
The pairing of his assault rifle and shotgun allows him to be effective at any range and in every situation. When Punisher has Rocket Racoon on his team (as he typically will), fast fire and infinite ammo shotgun obliterates Vanguards.
While going for kills and damage is great, every team needs sustain and utility to even have a hope of winning. Luna Snow provides the highest amount of average healing to both herself and her allies.
When she has a high mobility hero on her team or someone who wants to play behind enemy lines, Share the Stage’s healing aura allows her ally to stay in the fight longer and gain a crucial advantage in dueling their targets.
Fate of Both Worlds is by far the best defensive ult in the game and can counter almost every other ult that threatens Luna’s team. Ice Arts damage boost and self healing paired with her freeze stun make Luna difficult to kill and dangerous to aggress upon.
Everyone’s favorite web-slinger, your friendly neighborhood Spider-man swings his way into the action. Spider-man has the highest skill floor and skill ceiling out of every hero currently in Marvel Rivals.
He has more abilities than average, difficult movement, needs to get into melee range and be able to land his Spider-Tracer on enemies. Although he was viewed as weak during the alpha test, as players have had time to optimize his gameplay loop, and now with the addition of a symbiotic Team-Up with Venom, Spiderman has become one of the best Duelists in ranked play.
Mastering his swing mechanics will be the crucial deciding factor in Spiderman carrying your team, or carrying the enemy team by feeding. He is unmatched in his ability to engage without taking damage, execute his one-shot combo, and quickly escape before the enemy has time to respond.
While it was not in the patch notes, Spiderman’s Get Over Here X Amazing Combo animation cancel was changed from the Alpha so now players can simply hold F to automatically time the animation cancel for a huge burst of damage.
Heroes placed in A-tier tend to be just as popular as the top heroes but tend to have slightly less impactful utility. The high-tier ranked heroes are notably stronger than the rest of the cast placed below them.
The power gap between A-tier and B-tier is the largest of any two tiers in our list of the best Marvel Rivals heroes.
Hela has the most carry potential of any hero in Marvel Rivals. For mechanically skilled players who are confident in their aim, there simply is not a better pick than Hela. Landing headshots deals massive damage, two shots every non-Vanguard hero and she still gets AoE damage as well.
Contesting her long-range damage is nearly impossible for any other hero. The Goddess of Death ult gives her a get-out-of-jail-free card which instantly activates and places Hela in a first-person bird’s eye view with its own 800 extra HP.
She also has one of the strongest Team-Up abilities because when paired with Loki, Hela instantly resurrects him if she lands a final hit during his respawn timer.
Mantis is a resource-focused hero with strong ally-empowering abilities. Where she struggles is the fact that landing headshots with her primary fire is the requirement to farm her Life Orbs
Every hero is technically better when they land a lot of critical hits, but Mantis relies on them to enable herself and her allies. Soul Resurgence provides a good amount of healing but is basically a weaker version of Luna Snow’s Fate of Both Worlds.
For players with lightning-fast reflexes who love to skill diff their opponents, Star-Lord is absolutely lethal! When the enemy has a skilled Star-Lord on their team, it feels like there is nothing anyone can do to stop them.
The fact that Stellar Shift instantly reloads his guns while providing a burst of movement and brief invulnerability makes it a totally broken ability.
Consider this in light of knowing that good tracking on a target’s head can one clip in a game where securing kills in a team fight can feel like it takes forever.
Add an ult that is literally flying aimbot and you have the recipe for an extremely oppressive hero in the skilled hands.
As one of the most powerful mutants in existence, Magneto makes his presence known on the battlefield. Magneto has great mid-range damage, and his primary fire’s AoE explosions allow him to excel at dealing with grouped-up teams.
Metallic Curtain has been reworked to a 2 second cooldown and is now resource-based, which has made it much much stronger in comparison to its alpha iteration.
On his own, Magneto is just a bit lackluster, and struggles to get kills as reliably as some of the other vanguards. When paired with Scarlet Witch, their Team-Up ability gives Magneto a chaos energy sword and makes Magneto possibly the strongest Vanguard in Rivals.
Scarlet Witch is very weak, however, and swapping her for a more optimal Duelist may not always be a wise choice.
Groot has decent damage output but his power lies in his incredible survivability and unique ability to manipulate the environment.
When only one team has a Groot selected and is using wood walls to cut off choke points and isolate heroes from their allies that team is at a major advantage.
Moreover, Groot can use his walls to protect and save his teammates from enemy attacks while simultaneously healing himself and damaging the attackers.
Even if the rest of Loki’s kit was weak, being able to become any hero on either team in a match with instant access to all their abilities including their ult would still make Loki a strong pick. The rest of his abilities are also crazy good.
Regen Domain not only provides temporary immortality but converts would-be damage into healing! The ability to put out a single Regen Domain would be good, but Loki can also use his Illusions to put out multiple at separate locations.
Don’t worry if you are bad and die a lot if you have a Hela carry on your team, you’ll just keep getting brought back to life!
The Soulsword wielder slashes through the enemies she slays – for a melee hero, Magik has huge hitboxes and is really strong, but is rather difficult to use. Some of her moves require the use of her Stepping Discs portal to prime, but each of her abilities are powerful.
The only thing Magik can’t do is afford to make mistakes or miss her initial attacks on her target. Magik needs to be constantly generating shields from inflicting damage or she gets destroyed in a fight.
Melee heroes are struggling right now and Magik’s movement ability doesn’t give her enough distance to reliably escape from danger and if the enemy lands a stun on her, it’s a death sentence. If one correctly paths and sets up surprise attacks with Magik, she can hard carry games.
In B-tier for our Marvel Rivals tier list, we have heroes who are strong but not broken, overpowered, nor cheap. These heroes get substituted in place of the top and high tier based on team synergy, map, or preference. They also each make for good specialist choices.
Dr. Strange’s Shield of the Seraphim is the only 1 second damage mitigation cooldown in the game and can be used on reaction to survive entire ults from the enemy team. Strange remains the best Vanguard to counter enemy poke comps.
If the enemy team has long range duelists destroying your allies, a swap to Strange can save the game.The animation cancel of his primary fire with shield has been altered from the Alpha which significantly lowered Strange’s damage output.
Players can still shoot Daggers of Denak and instantly bring up the shield which only leaves brief moments of not blocking woven in between shots. Even given the 3 minute cooldown, having the unique ability to reposition himself and his entire team anywhere on the map allows for playmaking that is simply not possible without him.
If you hear his voice line, “The Eye of Agamotto!” and you weren’t preemptively ready for it, you can pretty much go AFK and wait for respawn.
Wielding Mjolnir, Thor swings the mighty hammer across the battlefield. All of his abilities share the same resource called Thorforce, displayed as hammers just below the crosshairs.
Players need to manage their Thorforce to be effective with the god of Thunder, but when used properly Thor has some of the highest burst potential of any Vanguard. When three Thorforce hammers are available, Awakening Rune gives Thor a mid-range attack as well as a burst of overhealth.
Awakening Rune is Thor’s best ability and is a great way to get kills on Strategists. Storm Surge also gives Thor decent mobility and can be a strong crowd control ability which can cancel enemy movement abilities.
The only areas Thor struggles in compared to the other Vanguards are not being very tanky, so he can’t absorb much damage for his team and his melee kit limits his attack options.
Do you want to be a team player while maintaining the ability to aggressively go on the offense? Rocket Racoon is the Strategist with the ability to quickly switch between offensive and defensive gameplay.
The strongest aspect of his kit is the way he provides multiple types of utility for his team. Deploy B.R.B. just behind some cover near the objective to resurrect an eliminated ally without having to even notice they were defeated.
His ult gives a huge damage boost to every ally in its AoE allowing them to make huge plays. Additionally, Rocket has great Team-UP abilities with two of the strongest and most commonly played heroes.
Due to his movement and primary fire he also excels at following up on team damage to secure kills. Additionally, Rocket has great Team-UP abilities with two of the strongest and most commonly played heroes.
Iron Man’s main weakness is being a flying hero in a game where flight movement is slow, and hitscans are meta. In map areas that have vertical cover for Iron Man to play around, he becomes very strong and much more difficult to eliminate.
The Beta damage buffs to his primary fire give Iron Man more of a fighting chance against hitscans, and when the enemy team doesn’t have picks that counter fliers, Iron Man can feel unstoppable.
He has good mobility and can create strong off angles of attack. The Invincible Pulse Cannon ultimate is one of better Duelist ults and is fairly easy to get kills with given its large death zone blast radius.
Using Quantum Magic to connect the souls of his allies together, Adam Warlock excels at prolonging team fights. He can instantly resurrect himself once every two minutes, resurrect his Team-up heroes Mantis and Starload, and use his ult to bring his entire team back to life if they all die quickly.
For a Strategist, Warlock has good damage output and a good burst damage ability in Cosmic Cluster. Where he struggles is the limited stocks of healing abilities between Soul Bound and Avatar Life Stream. When his team needs a lot of healing at once, he can quickly give everyone life, but then can’t heal at all until his cooldowns come back online.
Namor, the trident-throwing king of the seas received much-needed buffs coming into the Beta test. Even with the buffs, compare Namor to Hela who serves a very similar function in a team, and one quickly notices just how inconsistent his damage is in comparison.
Thankfully his escape ability, Blessing of the Deep now has some movement control which makes it actually useful. The main power of his kit still resides in his octopus turret, Aquatic Dominion, but the slow fire rate and low hp make it relatively easy for enemies to destroy. Namor benefits from having a Team-Up ability with Luna which gives him a single ice-infused turret.
The best part of Namor’s kit really is his ult, Horns of Proteus, which inflicts heavy damage and knocks down everyone in its AoE.
Players who struggle mechanically can pick Scarlet Witch and instantly do really well in games. In lower ranks, Wanda is one of the best heroes who quickly and dramatically falls off in power level the higher up the skill ladder you climb.
Equipped with a very forgiving self-tracking primary fire and AoE lingering stun, she can be a good choice to counter the crazy movement of flankers like Spiderman. She also has two stores of Mystic Projection to escape, so she isn’t easy to kill.
When Wanda catches enemies off guard, her ult instantly kills any hero in its large blast radius, but she is easily killable while channeling it, and the long cast time gives enemies plenty of time to escape its blast radius.
The damage of her primary fire, Chaos Control, is super low and won’t be out damaging any enemy receiving healing or using a sustain ability.
The heroes placed in the C-tier are situationally competitively viable but struggle to find value in many scenarios. They fulfill very specific functions but are strong in their niche.
Jeff, the cute and lovable shark provides massive amounts of healing to his entire team. He pairs best with teams that want to play grouped together since his healing abilities is short-ranged AoE abilities.
Healing Bubbles are great for teams to play around and keep their health topped off and even give allies some agency on getting healed whenever they need it.
The damage of Aqua Burst can help finish off targets and is even stronger with Luna’s Team-up ability! He lacks a good escape ability, however, because Hide and Seek leaves his dorsal fin exposed as a target that can’t shoot back.
Jeff is weak against flanks and dives and relies on positioning and teammates to keep him alive. Transform into a beast of a shark with, “It’s Jeff!,” and make some creative plays on how to reposition all allies and enemies caught in his mouth.
The Incredible Hulk smashes enemies with his fists while quickly traversing great distances with his Incredible Leap. A well-timed Indestructible Guard can not only save himself and his allies, but also build ult charge to become Monster Hulk with a ridiculous 1550 HP.
He also has access to a stun while in both Hero and Monster Hulk form. Where Hulk struggles in every match-up against the rest of the Vanguards is being a Melee hero.
In most scenarios Hulk takes a good amount of damage before he is able to deal his own and needs to effectively utilize Incredible Leap to get into strong positions and even then most heroes can escape his assault.
When paired with Thor or Venom, Hulk’s power level rises significantly as their kits pair well together diving deep into enemy territory and making use of Hulk’s bubble shields.
Sp//dr and Peni Parker transform the map into a literal minefield. Understanding where the enemies want to be is crucial for Peni to get max value from her various traps.
Although she lags behind a bit in pick potential and damage output, her ability to control space and battle on the objective is unmatched.
Having the time to set traps before the enemy team arrives at a location is a very tough resource to acquire, but when the opportunity presents itself, Peni’s mines become extremely annoying to have to deal with.
She doesn’t have great mobility, but her self-heal from Cyber-Webs and ability to damage opponents with mines from safety are a fair trade-off.
Storm currently holds the spot as the only Duelist with strong team-empowering abilities. She can use Weather Control to provide an AoE speed boost or damage boost to her allies.
Both auras can have huge power potential in a match, though when considering the reality of solo queue and casual experience, it can be difficult to get meaningful value from either.
Omega Hurricane is one of the best ults in the game and is strong on its own but even stronger when allies take advantage of its trapping effect.
Flying as a primary ability is just not very strong at this moment as the air mobility Storm has is a bit slow which makes her an easy target for the meta picks like Hela and The Punisher.
Storm’s Team-Up ability with Thor is a strong chain lighting effect and might make her worth picking when your team is already running the son of Odin.
Struggle and frustration await users of the D-tier heroes. In general, these heroes need a variety of buffs in order to be ranked among the best heroes in Marvel Rivals, let alone be seen on a level playing field.
They can still be a lot of fun to play as but need to work much harder than average and tend to be inconsistent in their ability to provide value to their team.
You can still absolutely win tons of games with these heroes so don’t let their placement discourage you from playing them if they are who you enjoy!
The king of Wakanda, but certainly not the king of Marvel Rivals. Black Panther unfortunately takes the title of weakest hero. High risk and low reward pretty much sums up T’Challa’s playstyle.
He actually has great movement but heavily relies on his Vibranium Mark mechanic to be effective in battle. Mistakes as small as landing a hit on someone without the Vibranium Mark can be fatal for Black Panther.
Nevertheless, you will still undoubtedly run into Panther users who will be demolishing you as his hard-to-use kit still has great potential if you don’t mind having to work way harder than average to get similar value as the rest of the heroes.
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