Jonathan Almaguer
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18 Min read Welcome to our tier list of the best heroes in Marvel Rivals!
This list is based on the game’s Season 0 and will continue to be updated as the meta develops and balance changes are added.
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 | Hela, Mantis, Luna Snow, Dr. Strange, Psylocke, Winter Soldier |
| A | Hawkeye, Cloak & Dagger, Magneto, Thor, The Punisher, Venom, Moon Knight, Black Panther |
| B | Namor, Groot, Jeff the Land Shark, Rocket Raccoon, Spider-Man, Adam Warlock, Magik, Loki, Star-Lord |
| C | Iron Fist, Squirrel Girl, Captain America, Hulk, Storm, Iron Man |
| D | Scarlet Witch, Peni Parker, Black Widow, Wolverine |
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.
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 secondary fire 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 1000 shield HP. For 10 full seconds Hela reigns death on the battlefield with high AoE damage.
She also has a great Team-Up abilities when paired with Loki or Thor, Hela instantly resurrects them if she lands a final hit during his respawn timer.
Mantis is a resource focused hero with strong ally empowering abilities. Her ability to constantly give herself and her allies a damage boost is her best utility. While the 12% boost isn’t completely overpowered on an individual hero, having multiple allies and herself repeatedly given the boost compounds the impact of Allied Inspiration.
Nature’s Favor provides self-healing and speed boost for Mantis with every Life Orb ability used making her a very tanky Strategist. Moreover, Soul Resurgence pumps out enough healing to sustain her team through virtually every enemy ultimate which leaves Mantis with no exploitable weaknesses.
Luna Snow provides the highest amount of average healing for any given team comp. When she has a high mobility hero on her team or someone who wants to play behind enemy lines, Share the Stage 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 the best Strategist ult in the game and can counter almost every other ult that threatens Luna’s team, or provide a massive 40% damage boost to all allies in it’s AoE. Ice Arts damage boost and self healing paired with her freeze stun make Luna a very dangerous target to flank or dive as she can outplay any enemy attacker.
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. Currently dominating all levels of play, Strange stands out as the best, and only S-tier Vanguard in the early meta.
Players can shoot Daggers of Denak and instantly bring up the shield which only leaves brief moments of not blocking woven in between shots, greatly reducing the amount of damage STrange exposes himself to. 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 as the huge AoE stun gives his team easy clean up eliminations.
The best flanker in all of Marvel Rivals, Psylocke combos her targets for quick eliminations. When caught, she instantly turns invisible with Psychic Stealth to escape. An even stronger use of stealth is sneaking up on enemy backlines for her quick bursts of close range dash combos.
Wing Shurikens not only deal multiple instances of damage but also give self-healing for every round hit. Her ultimate, Dance of the Butterfly, is great for comboing with allies abilities due to its slow debuff, but can also be used to escape as Psylocke is invincible for its duration.
Again! Again! Again! If you haven’t already been victim to a barrage of Kraken Impacts, brace yourself because Winter Soldier’s entire kit is overpowered.
The Ultimate not only deals 100 impact damage, and instantly eliminates any affected target who’s HP falls to 20% for the next 5 seconds, but any elimination secured through the impact or Culling, fully recharges his Ult Charge for 8 seconds.
During a teamfight, Bionic Hook is one of the best abilities available to any hero to quickly turn the tides of a fight. Having the ability to quickly displace any individual enemy in a 20m range cannot be overstated as a game winning interaction.
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.
The only hero capable of one-shotting every Duelist and Strategist lands himself at the top of our High Tier. Hawkeye excels at long range burst damage. The only thing holding him back from being completely overpowered is the fire rate, arc, and projectile speed of his primary fire. As an archer he must draw and carefully aim each shot.
Those who master his aim are highly rewarded. He can even deflect enemy projectiles with a well times melee slash. Not horrible or great against melee flankers as he always has the threat of landing a headshot, and his dash uppercut has a long cooldown.
A very powerful combination of offensive and defensive capabilities, there is nothing the duo of Cloak & Dagger can’t do. They are extremely versatile in choosing when to go for aggressive plays, and more passive supporting plays.
Even their ult, Eternal Bond can be used as an escape tool, confirming kills, or for team healing. With its relatively short cooldown, Dark Teleportation has to be named as one of the absolute best defensive abilities in Rivals as Cloak phases themselves and their team into momentary invulnerability.
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.
Compared to the other Vanguard shields, Magneto’s Metallic Curtain has infinite health and is time resource based. The infinite health makes it the perfect counter against heavy poke comps with lots of ranged damage.
Combined his shield with either his ally or self bubble and Magneto makes for a great counter pick when your team is getting rolled by enemy snipers.
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 and Duelists. 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, and not having any damage mitigating abilities so he can’t absorb much damage for his team and his melee kit limits his attack options.
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 bar. 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.
If you get the chance to barrel stuff an enemy with a critical hit from his shotgun, you’ll delete any 275hp or below hero in just one shot. The pairing of his assault rifle and shotgun allow him to be effective at any range and in every situation.
When Punisher has Rocket Racoon on his team the fast fire and infinite ammo shotgun obliterates Vanguards. Against a heavy frontline team like Venom, Hulk or Groot, Punisher is a great Duelist answer.
Venom dropped insanely overpowered and is the most unkillable character in Marvel Rivals. Symbiotic Resilience instantly gives Venom back all of the health he has lost plus a bonus 100 hp of temporary health.
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 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.
After becoming the avatar of the Egyption god, Khonshu, Moon Knight dishes out vengeance upon his foes! His kit revolves primarily around his Ancient Ankh which first pulls enemies into it, then allows his primary fire to bounce off the Ankh and auto lock onto any targets in the AoE.
Due to the slower travel time of Crescent Dart and Moon Blade, enemies can’t react to the sudden burst of damage from Ankh → Blade → Primary Fire, and if they don’t escape before a second primary fire comes out, any heroe below 300hp is gone.
The two areas holding Moon Knight back compared to the top tier Duelists are his reliance on the Ankh, and the long 10 seconds between uses, and his ultimate is very weak compared to the meta Duelists.
The king of Wakanda and king of melee heroes in Marvel Rivals. High risk and high reward sums up T’Challa’s playstyle. For the dedicated players who master his Vibranium Mark dash reset mechanic, Black Panther is a team wiping machine.
Unfortunately for most players and the reality of even the best, messing up just one time essentially means T’Challa becomes completely useless and dies.
Between two types of dash attacks, wall running and a double jump, he has some of the best movement of any Duelist. If you don’t mind putting in the work, Black Panther’s gameplay is very rewarding.
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.
The power of the trident-throwing king of the seas, Namor, resides in his octopus turret, Aquatic Dominion. While their slow fire rate and low hp make them relatively easy for enemies to destroy in theory, they are either being effective at dealing damage or taking up enemy attention and resources.
Namor also greatly benefits from having a Team-Up ability with the most popularly picked Strategist, Luna Snow, which gives him an extra ice infused turret. The turrets make Namor very strong against flankers and holding down choke points. Compare Namor to other heroes who serve a very similar function in a team, however, and one quickly notices just how inconsistent his damage is in comparison.
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. Groot’s ultimate, Strangling Prison, also enables huge team wiping ult combos depending on what allies he’s paired with.
The cute and lovable shark provides massive amounts of healing to his entire team. Jeff pairs best with teams that want to play grouped together since his healing abilities both have great AoE effects.
Healing Bubble’s are good 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 fill up the kill feed by taking the entire enemy team off the map!
Rocket Racoon is a solid choice for a well balanced Strategist pick. The power of his kit is the way he is able to provide 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 big plays. 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 ability with Punisher and Winter Soldier which allows them to gain the highest possible non-ultimate damage per second by increasing their fire rate and giving each of them infinite ammo.
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 sits comfortably in the average power level of the hero roster.
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 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.
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.
The Soulsword wielder slashes through the enemies she slays. For a melee hero, Magik has huge hitboxes, deals high damage, 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 tools. 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 has the potential to carry games.
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 solid 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!
For players with lightning fast reflexes and incredible aim tracking, Star-Lord can be rather 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 an incredible ability. Be careful when using Galactic Legend as a prepared hitscan enemy like Hela can quickly shut the ult down.
If you catch the enemy off guard, the ult is literally flying aimbot and quickly deletes low health targets.
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.
Empowered by Shou-Lao, Lin Lie uses his martial arts and triple jump ability to chase down his foes. The strange movement during his empowered primary fire, Yat Jee Chung Kuen, and Cane Leap can make him a bit difficult for enemies to track.
Iron Fist is seeing a lot of success in low to average ranked games, but falls way behind in ranks where players understand how to counter his linear game plan and track his movement. Iron Fist also suffers from not having a reliable escape tool as his block only lasts one single second, and he’s easy to hit if he just tries to jump away.
The girl who eats nuts and kicks butts! When taking advantage of the terrain, Squirrel Girl can utilize the bounce mechanic of her primary fire Burst Acorn to attack enemies behind cover where they cannot target her.
Squirrel Blockade traps the enemy and is her best ability. Players often use the cooldown refresh of Mammal Bond to use Squirrell Blockade twice in a row. Unfortunately, her ult is one of the worst in the game and is incredibly unreliable for securing damage or kills.
Steve Rogers, America’s super soldier. Captain America is another one of the melee based Vanguard heroes with a few unique abilities. Raising up his shield not only blocks damage but deflects all projectiles including ults like Iron Man’s Invincible Pulse Cannon.
His gameplay loop centers around using his dash, sprint or slam to cash down enemies and keep them in melee range. Cap lags behind the rest of the Vanguards in damage output and not really excelling in any particular Vanguard function.
You won’t like him when he’s angry. 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 1400 HP. Banner 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 a very slow Melee hero with a gigantic hitbox. In most scenarios Hulk takes too much damage before he is able to deal his own and needs to effectively utilize Incredible Leap to get into strong positions, but even then most heroes can still escape his assault.
When paired with Thor or Venom, Hulk’s viability rises significantly as their kits pair well together diving deep into enemy territory and making use of Hulk’s team bubble shields.
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 que and the casual experience, it can be difficult to get meaningful value from either. Omega Hurricane is a very good ult on its own and is 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 very slow which makes her an easy target for the strong hitscans. 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.
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 are still decently strong.
Peni’s mines can become extremely annoying to have to deal with, but are easily destroyed. 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.
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.
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!
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, but then 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.
A sniper who can’t kill with a headshot!? Unfortunately for our snipers, head clickers and quick scopers, landing shots with Black Widow will feel extremely unrewarding when you watch enemies escape with slivers of health.
Although she was trained to be a killer from childhood, she is essentially defenseless against melee flankers. If you are extremely mechanically gifted and can consistently land headshots in a game with countless movement abilities, and destructible environment, you can have some success as Black Widow. At that point however, you would be carrying every game had you picked Hela.
Everyone’s favorite Adamantium X-Men claws and shreds anyone he can get close to. The damage of Wolverine’s primary attack, Savage Claw, scales up with the max HP of the target meaning he deals higher damage to Vanguards.
His movement is rather terrible for a melee hero, and his only sustain ability, Regenerative Healing Factor, has a base cooldown of a minute and a half! In theory, he can sneak up behind a Vanguard and Feral Leap them into his own team for a nearly guaranteed elimination. In practice, however, he just dies before anything can happen and is being unanimously voted as the worst hero at the Launch of Marvel Rivals.
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