Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Dr. Strange Character Guide

Opening portals and wielding ancient spells allows Doctor Strange to Control the front lines of any battlefield. The Sorcerer Supreme’s Shield of the Seraphim protects himself and all allies behind him. The shield dictates where and how his entire team fights, as well as where the enemy team is allowed to deal damage from.

While not a very mobile Vanguard, Strange makes up for this lack with his ability to hold his ground in one position. The more he deals damage the stronger he becomes as he’ll be charging up the burst damage of Maelstrom of Madness faster and faster! Doctor Strange is an excellent choice for players who want their allies to follow their positioning, and focus more on supporting than being a flashy solo carry.

Find out where Dr. Strange ranks in our Marvel Rivals tier list.

TLDR

As

• When your shield health is low, play more passive and near cover. When your shield health is high, you can be more aggressive and push forward.
• Practice your Portal execution in Practice Mode, every second matters and can turn the tide.
• Try to use your ult falling down from Shift or high ground, or from flanks to catch enemies by surprise

Against

• Dr. Strange excels in front-to-back fights, use flankers or off angles   to prevent him from being able to block your attacks
• If it's taking a while for his team to show up, a Portal is likely on the way. Be ready to adapt your positioning as they’ll usually Portal behind your team. 
• If Dr. Strange is walking past your team's Vanguards, he may be looking to ult. Spread out your team when it's up to reduce his playmaking potential.

Strengths

Huge Shield

By far his greatest strength, the massive shield with its own health pool enables Strange to take space, initiate fights, and shut down enemy aggression. Many enemy ultimates can be completely negated simply by holding up Shield of the Seraphim.

Balanced Offense & Defense

Weaving in primary fire and his melee whip between uses of shield has the sorcerer making huge contributions of damage over the course of a match. Once Maelstrom of Madness is full, Strange gets an incredibly strong burst of damage in a large circle all around him.

Fight Winning Ultimate

Covering a whopping 20 meter diameter, The Eye of Agamotto separates soul from body, leaving enemies stunned and completely vulnerable to follow up damage! Even when a fight looks lost, one big Strange ult can instantly win a round for your team.

Weaknesses

Weak to Melee

Due to shield being his best ability, Strange is actually very weak against melee heroes. As a reminder, melee attacks penetrate shields and simultaneously damage the shield HP and his own HP. If you see Hulk and Wolverine jump on you, fly away because you cannot stop them.

Team Reliant

Having a huge shield is great for mitigating damage, but blocking damage in itself won’t be winning games. In the end, Strange needs his team to be using the cover of his shield, and following up on his ultimate stun in order to actually be victorious.

Slow

When the enemy team gets too close for comfort and Strange can’t hold them back, he has a very difficult time repositioning to a safe area. He can fly, which is very useful and can help escape. Unfortunately, the long cast time of Cloak of Levitation leaves him completely vulnerable to all attacks. Neither his walk speed or speed of flight is really sufficient to reliably escape an enemy assault.

Primary Fire: Dagger of Denak

Tips for Dagger of Denak

A slow rate of fire

• Repeated shot fire rate is quite slow, so you always have time to weave in melee or shield in between shots.
• Whenever you are not at full health, or you should be alternating between Shield and Primary fire
• When you want to maximize damage, ult charge, and Dark Magic points, always alternate between Primary Fire and Melee. (Assuming your target is in melee range).

Slow projectile speed

• Because of the slow travel time, Strange spends most of his time attacking large body enemies like Vanguards.
• Very difficult to hit high-mobility heroes, so only focus on them if their health is already low or if no other targets present themselves.

Good for finishing off low HP targets.

• Often as the frontline Vanguard, you’ll see enemies with low HP trying to retreat and get healed up. The range of Daggers of Denak combined with the forward position of Strange make him very good for getting those final hits in.

Secondary Fire: Shield of The Seraphim

Tips for Shield of The Seraphim

Try not to let the shield break.

• When his shield breaks, it goes on a 3 second cool down before beginning to recover health from zero. With his shield down, Strange becomes a free kill as no one is going to be afraid of his primary fire damage by itself.
• Blocking certain abilities like Scarlet Witch’s ultimate will break the shield but is definitely worth it.

Constantly be recovering shield health.

• Many strange players with flash shield for reason, or block meaningless spam damage. Everytime you activate shield, there is a 1 second delay before its health will regenerate. If you are not purposely giving your shield time to recover its health, you will find it breaking when you need it the most!

Watch for key enemy abilities.

• The way Strange hard carries games is by blocking key enemy abilities. Examples include, every stun projectile like Luna Snow’s, Winter Soldier Bionic Hook, Namor’s Secondary Fire, etc.
• Blocking these high impact abilities completely takes away the enemies strongest tools from them, and enables your team to fight extremely aggressively.

Shielding cancels Primary Fire reload.

• Unless you are definitely going to die, do not activate Shield of The Seraphim when you are reloading as it will cause the reload animation to start over from the beginning even if it was nearly complete.

[E]: Maelstrom of Madness

Tips for Maelstrom of Madness

Both Primary Fire and Melee build up Dark Magic points for Maelstrom of Madness, and strange’s Melee whip is his best friend when it comes to quickly full charging his [E].

• Whenever multiple enemies are in whip range, you should be whipping them as each target hit generates 10 dark magic points.
• Fully charged deals 130 dmg.

Best Combo

Primary Fire → Melee → Maelstrom of Madness

• Each ability cancels into the next giving Strange a massive burst of 250 damage!
• Eliminates 250hp heroes like Rocket Raccoon.

Passive: Price of Magic

Tips for Price of Magic

Anti-Heal means you won’t be able to receive any healing while center icon is glowing purple.

• Anti-Heal only activates at 100 points.

Don’t be too concerned with this passive, as most of the time you will be activating Maelstrom as soon as it hits 100.

• Can’t hold onto charge for extended periods.

[F]: Pentagram of Farallah

Tips for Pentagram of Farallah

• Many viral clips have been shared of placing the portal at spawn and leading the enemy team off a cliff. While this sometimes works, the insanely long, three minute cool down means this technique is strategically viable.

Reposition Team

• Useful for by passing choke points where the defending team has a strong hold.
• In overtime, can provide quick passage to the objective area for respawning allies.

Comboing ally abilities.

• Opening a portal in front of an ally with a powerful but unsafe or long startup ability.
• Example: Friendly Scarlet Witch activates her ultimate just before the portal opens, then is suddenly on top of the enemy team as her ultimate explodes.
• This combo takes Scarlet Witch’s ultimate from being a nearly useless self death ability, to a huge team wiping ultimate.

Creating off angles

• If your team has poke or sniper duelist, you can open a portal on an off angle to the enemy and singly have your duelist shooting through the portal rather than moving through it.

[SHIFT]: Cloak of Levitation

Tips for Cloak of Levitation

Only movement ability, and has a long cooldown, so be careful not to waste it.

• Save for escaping when life is truly threatened.

Useful to reposition yourself to set up a big Eye of Agamotto Ultimate.

Great for getting over walls, including when walled off by enemy Groot.

Ultimate [Q]: Eye of Agamotto

Tips for Eye of Agamotto

• Both the soul projection and the physical body of the enemy can be damaged
• Always stand between a soul and a body when activating Maelstrom of Madness as the AoE will hit both, dealing double damage.

Slow Startup animation is react-able

• Remember, shields and walls block the stun, so watch for when the enemy vanguards have already used those abilities.
• Also take note that Strange can be stunned out of the start up animation, so be sure to position where enemies with stuns will not be able to target you in time.

Team-up ability [E]: Gamma Maelstrom

Tips for Gamma Maelstrom

• Simple team up and increase the range and damage of Maelstrom of Madness
• Focus on farming Dark Magic points in order to benefit from the Team-up as often as possible.
• Not strong enough to force teammates to swap onto Hulk if they weren’t already choosing him.

Playing with Hulk

• Since Hulk is needed for the Team-up, you’ll want to think about how to best synergize with him as another Vanguard.
• Hulk can activate the bubble shield on Strange when he goes for Eye of Agamotto.
• Strange can shield Hulk between engagements when Hulk drops back to recover health.

Team Comp Synergies

The ideal comp built around Doctor wants to position behind him in order to get the most benefit of Shield of the Seraphim. Poke heroes are great for this as they can safely output damage while being protected by the shield. Strange also works best with another frontline Vanguard because it makes it easier for him to hold positions and stay in his ideal range.

Team Comp Example

• Vanguards: Doctor Strange, Magneto
• Duelists: Punisher, Hela
• Strategists: Luna Snow, Rocket Racoon

Hero Synergies

Vanguards: Magneto

The ultimate damage mitigation comp. Cycling between shield uses means the enemy team will only have tiny windows of time to land any ranged damage on your team. Magneto’s allied shield also guarantees that Strange won’t be killed or stunned while channeling his ultimate.

The range and positioning of both of these Vanguards also match perfectly. Together they make a very frustrating frontline for the enemy to deal with. If the enemy team is destroying your team a poke-heavy comp, swap to double shield for a hard counter.

Duelists: The Punisher

The Punisher’s kit was practically made to be used with Strange. Not only is he a great poke Duelist, but his shotgun and smoke bomb are good for countering enemy melee engages. These abilities help to cover Doctor Strange’s weakness against melee heroes. Additionally, placing a portal in front of The Punisher's turret and behind the enemy team makes for a lethal surprise flank attack.

Both his Turret and His ult deal gigantic damage per second but can be difficult to use in a chaotic team fight. Whipping out Judge, Jury, and Executioner with Strange walking in front of you with his massive shield leaves the enemy with only two options: retreat or be killed.

Strategists: Rocket Racoon

Rocket Raccoon wants to play directly behind his frontline. Team's tend to group up behind Strange for his shield so Rocket pumps huge amounts of AoE healing into their team.

Moreover, Rocket and his team get protected from so much poke damage that he has more opportunities to deal damage and doesn't get forced to heal bot.

Setting up a wombo combo of both of their ults should be enough damage to eliminate even the highest HP enemies. Even if it's just Strange and Rocket, the damage boost from his ult enables them to wipe multiple stunned targets.