The Marvel Rivals roles are divided into three main categories: Vanguard, Duelist, and Strategist. While every hero within each of these roles varies greatly from one another, there are overarching themes in their designs and abilities.
Below, we’ll break down each role, their shared qualities, how they function in their respective role, and what qualities separate the three roles from one another.
Based on what type of play style you prefer, knowing the purpose each role serves in any given match can help you narrow down your choice of what heroes you’d most enjoy taking the time to learn.
How Marvel Rivals Roles Work (FAQ)
Are roles locked?
As of now, Marvel Rivals roles are NOT locked. This makes it similar to the early days of Overwatch when you could have no limits in choosing heroes as long as everyone on your team chose a different hero.
This means you can play with six Vanguards, five Strategists + one Duelist, and so on.
Can I swap to a different role?
Unlike VALORANT where you are stuck with your agent choice for the duration of a match, you can switch to a different hero (that isn't selected by your team) when you die.
Will more roles be added to Marvel Rivals?
The likely answer is no, as the game is mirroring the roles of Overwatch. DPS is Duelist, Tank is Vanguard, and Support is Strategist.
Vanguards = Tanks
Vanguards are the tanks of Marvel Rivals. These heroes tend to be physically bigger and have significantly larger health pools than Duelists and Strategists.
Their large health pools allow Vanguards to stay alive longer and soak up damage from the enemy team without dying. To give them further survivability, each of these heroes also has at least one form of self-sustain via damage mitigation, barriers, or bonus health generation.
Frontline Vanguards
The most basic function of the tank role is to position in front of the team, and be the first line of offense and defense against the enemy team. Frontline Vanguards do this by literally standing in front of their allies and taking up enemy attention.
These Vanguards have limited mobility, but excel at holding positions and make it difficult for the enemy to walk past. They spend most of their time directly fighting the enemies Vangurds.
The Vanguards who want to bypass the enemy frontline to harass and eliminate the Supports and Duelists are known as Dive Vanguards. High mobility defines their kits and enables them to quickly dive onto a target who is positioned away from them.
Abilities like Groot's Ironwood Wall, Dr. Strange's Shield of Seraphim, and Hulk’s Indestructible Guard can completely protect heroes from sustaining any damage. Huge amounts of HP and these damage-mitigating abilities make Vanguards the perfect front line in a team's assault against their enemies.
At the beginning of every match, both teams come out of spawn and generally have 30 seconds to fight for position before the objective becomes active. During this crucial time, whichever team's Vanguards are able to take more space or control more areas of the map will have a massive advantage in winning both the team fight and the objective.
The heroes advancing forward first naturally take the most amount of damage as they are the first targets the enemies can attack. That is why it is crucial to have a minimum of at least one Vanguard in every team composition because if a Duelist or Strategist is the frontal focus of the enemy's attack, they will be instantly sent back to spawn.
The responsibility of contesting the objective and controlling choke points typically falls onto the Vanguards. When both teams are contesting a Domination control point, Vanguard survivability allows them to stay on an objective to continue making capture progress or prevent the enemy team from making capture progress.
No Duelist or Strategist hero can compete with the gargantuan 1550 health of Monster Hulk as he boops the enemy off the objective to gain complete control.
Furthermore, damage mitigation abilities like Magneto’s Magnetic Curtain can save their entire team from certain death by ults like Scarlet Witch’s Reality Erasure.
Peni Parker and Groot excel at creating advantageous positions through environment-manipulating abilities. The ability to create walls at will to section off enemy teams or create cover to hide behind allows Groot to make the battlefield itself be an asset to his allies.
Peni Parker's mines turn the floor into a hazard which forces enemies to waste their cooldowns to bypass the hazard, give up time breathing, or use their resources to destroy them.
Duelists = DPS
The heroes whose design centers around maximum damage output are called Duelists. They typically have abilities that only affect themselves. Players will normally find that Duelist heroes are best positioned in front of their team's Strategists but behind their team's Vanguards, or on the enemy's flank. All of their ultimate abilities are also focused on damage and eliminations.
Marvel Rivals has a lot of damage mitigation from Vanguard abilities like Groot’s Vine Walls and Magneto’s shield. If a Duelist stands immediately behind their Vanguard allies, the majority of their team's projectiles and attacks will be coming from one single direction. The enemy Vanguard's will then be able to mitigate all incoming damage by pointing their barriers in that one direction.
Due to all the ways to block damage, it is more effective for Duelist heroes to play on off angles from their teams.
The pool of selectable Duelist heroes is more than double that of available Vanguard or Strategist heroes. Due to the higher number of options, it can be helpful to organize Duelists into smaller subcategories.
The kits of each Duelist emphasize either ranged or melee abilities. Ranged damage simply means a hero can best output damage on their enemies from a distance and melee damage requires super close striking range.
Based on their abilities, we can categorize them under ranged poke, ranged flying, ranged flanker, melee, and frontline Duelist. Heroes who position themselves in the frontline like a Vanguard have high sustain and a specialized role against the enemy Vanguards fall into the frontline Duelist subcategory. Approaching a hero through the lense of their archetype will help you to understand the playstyle they are best at.
Here's a full list of every Duelist organized into their sub-category:
Every hero can technically be used in any style, and every hero can flank or choose to play at range, but each hero’s kit is primarily optimized for one of these styles. Flankers have good movement abilities and ways to quickly reposition during an engagement like Star-Lord's Stellar Shift.
The best flankers have escape tools such as Scarlet Witch’s Mystic Projection to get out of a fight alive after effectively confirming a kill or taking up the attention and resources of the enemy team. Melee heroes are inherently designed for some type of flanking since they are forced to get in close to their opponents and a frontal assault often results in them losing half their life before they even have a chance to deal damage themselves. Spider-Man can use Web Swing to quickly approach the enemy while making himself a difficult target to hit.
Strategists = Supports
The primary function of a Strategist hero is to enable and support their allies. Typically, they will be positioned behind the rest of their team. The main way Strategists support their team is to heal the damage dealt by the enemy.
Luna Snow’s ult outputs such an immense amount of healing that it is nearly impossible to die, no matter how much damage one takes while in its area of effect.
Strategist is a fitting name for the function these heroes serve because strategy is of the utmost importance when choosing when, where, and on whom to use their abilities. When Loki has his ult available, he can choose to become any hero on either team. Depending on the specific situation and which heroes are in his current LOS (line of sight), the best target for God of Mischief can completely change.
While often referred to colloquially as "healers," the functions of the Support role in any hero shooter go far beyond providing sustain. Carried over from previously established hero shooters, the Strategists in Marvel Rivals can be categorized as "Main" and "Off / Flex" Strategists.
Main Strategists
Heroes who fall under the "Main Strategist" category generally provide constant sustain and utility to their team. They don't always have the highest value cooldowns, but their base kit will be enough to sustain their team through enemy damage (outside of ultimates).
The heroes who fall under the "Flex Strategists" category typically provide value through damage or high-impact abilities that have long cooldowns. In Marvel Rivals, the Flex Strategists work best in Triple Support comps or other specific strategies like the Triple Rez Comp.
Loki is the only Flex Strategist that doesn't need a third because his healing output and Immortality Rune are more than sufficient healing, and he typically copies a Main Strategist's ult for defense. His value, however, is completely dependent on Clone and Rune cooldown use, and copy target, so he would not be categorized as a Main Strategist.
Although healing remains an important component of a Strategist’s kit, their true power lies in properly combining every supportive ability in their arsenal. Mantis, Luna Snow, and Rocket Raccoon all have ways to damage boost their allies. There are many occasions where enabling an ally by damage boosting their abilities is far stronger than spamming heals.
Additionally, Mantis and Luna both have a stun ability, which creates opportunities for their allies to easily land attacks on the immobilized target. A single ability like Rocket’s B.R.B. which resurrects a fallen ally can change the outcome of an entire match all on its own.
Does the team need Loki to use a huge Duelist ult like The Punisher? Perhaps the enemy is retreating, and becoming Mantis will provide the speed needed to pursue and finish off the enemy. Maybe the final fight for the objective in Domination means using Peni Parker's ult to cover the battlefield in mines would be the strongest move. Strategists have to make complex split-second decisions like these over and over again throughout a match.
