Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Winter Soldier Character Guide

Empowered by his bionic arm, there isn’t anything Bucky can’t do. The perfect choice for a Duelist main who wants to “one-trick” as there aren’t any scenarios where the only answer is to swap off.

The combination of his reload passive and three-round pistol makes this brainwashed assassin extremely lethal. The Winter Soldier wants to be right in the heat of battle, up front with his Vanguards. While his gun has decent range, you always want to be in range to use Bionic Hook and Trooper’s Fist.

Proper use of Bionic Hook forces the enemy team to adjust their entire game plan to counter this one ability. Bucky has insane carry potential and fits well into any team comp with his team wiping ult resets and displacement abilities.

Find out where Winter Soldier ranks in our Marvel Rivals tier list.

TLDR

As

• After landing a Hook, turn and uppercut the enemy into your for an easy pick.
• 8 seconds is a long time to reactivate your ult! When you get a reset, use that time to carefully select your next target before triggering it again.
• Every ability generates shields and reloads your gun. Spread out their uses and try to never be caught with all three on cooldown.

Against

• Shield, heal, and otherwise peel for your allies that are marked by Bucky's ult to deny resets.
• If you notice you suddenly don’t see Bucky, he’s likely charging his hook behind cover. Get behind cover yourself, to avoid being pulled into his team.
• Avoid standing directly behind a target he's shooting at as his Primary fire splashes 5m past them, and Hook pulls grouped up targets..

Strengths

High Burst and Consistent Damage

Most heroes favor one or the other, but Winter Soldier excels at both consistent damage and burst damage. Depending on what his team and the situation call for, he can focus on constant spam damage or focus on dumping all his cooldowns into confirming one elim.

Team Wiping Ultimate

On his own, he can quickly combo a sub 300hp enemy to death and reset his ult. Even better is to combo Kraken Impact with any other ult that heavily damages but doesn’t eliminate the enemy (Venom ult, Thor Ult, etc). Do this, and you’ll certainly be filling the sound space with, “Again! Again! Again! Again!”

Enemy Displacement

Bionic Hook is simply one the best abilities in all of Marvel Rivals. It can be used to yank a seemingly unkillable Vanguard into a kill circle of your allies. Landing hook on any Duelist or Strategist essentially guarantees an elimination. The threat of Bionic Hook means advancing forward is always a risk to the enemy.

Weaknesses

Poor Mobility

Trooper’s fist being his only mobility tool, and covering a pathetically short distance, means Bucky isn’t really gonna be moving much. Whether you are trying to return from spawn, chase down a target, or escape an attack, he doesn’t have can’t effectively do any of those.

Needs Vanguards to Play Around

Winter Soldier struggles to position and play aggressively without a strong front line to protect him. He wants to be right on top of his Vanguards and help destroy the enemy front line. If his Vanguards aren’t frontlining or are going on long flanks, Bucky gets overwhelmed by enemy attacks and advances.

Always in Danger

The short to medium range of his main abilities has Winter Soldier trying to always stay very close to the enemy team. But because he has only 250hp and no real escape tool, he’s always putting himself in a vulnerable position whenever he’s trying to make a play.

Primary Fire: Roterstern

Tips for Roterstern

Don’t Reload Manually

• Given all three of his regular cooldowns reload Roterstern, you should very rarely be reloading manually. Try to cycle the rest of your cooldowns between the three rounds of your Primary Fire.

Reload Manually for Spam

• When you are not ready to commit your cooldowns and are just blasting spam damage, then it is better to simply hit the reload button.

Splash Damage

• Targeting enemies who have teammates close behind them allows you to farm ult faster from Roterstern’s splash damage.
• AoE of splash damage only hits directly behind your hit target.

Travel projectile

• Remember, you have a very fast projectile, but it does not have hitscan. You’ll have to lead your shots, but not by very much.

Secondary Fire: Bionic Hook

Tips for Bionic Hook

Learn how to “hook & turn.”

• Immediately after landing the hook and before the target is pulled in, you can rotate your crosshairs left or right by 90°. This will drag the enemy around to your side, instead of in front of you.
• Pull around corners with hook & turn.
• • This makes it more difficult for the enemy to escape and can cut off their team's LoS.

Prioritize Duelists and Strategists

• Most Vanguards will be able to survive getting hooked, but to any non-Vanguard, a well-positioned Bionic Hook means certain death.

Jump Shot

• Jumping while the enemy is being pulled in, then aiming down at their head, can help make a follow-up headshot more consistent.

[SHIFT]: Trooper’s Fist

Tips For Trooper’s Fist

Generates 50 bonus health

• Very useful when attacking aggressively to make yourself more tanky.
• Great when used as an escape tool, because you are simultaneously being evasive and instantly gaining health.

Perfect for combos

• The uppercut locks the hit enemies into a fixed CC arc. If you learn the arc pattern, it makes follow-up, shots much easier.
• Activation cancels melee and primary fire, so you can instantly Trooper Fist out of them.

Try to punch people into your own team, rather than punching into theirs.

• Easy to set up with Bionic Hook & turn, then Trooper Fist further around a corner or into your team's territory.
• Remember, you only have this one single movement ability,, and it's very short. If you punch into the enemy team trying to get a kill, you will often pay for it with your own life.

[E]: Tainted Voltage

Tips for Tainted Voltage

Aim to hit multiple enemies.

• The projectile pierces through unlimited enemy bodies and its large hitbox makes hitting multiple enemies rather easy if you are aiming for it.

Penetrates shields.

• If you see someone like Doctor Strange holding up a shield and he or his allies have two ticks of health or less, Tainted Voltage is the perfect cleanup.

Self healing

• Having two charges of Tainted Voltage gives Bucky extra self-sustain. When you need health, but not the auto reload, or even damage, spam Tainted Voltage to tank damage until you can get healed or to saftey.

Passive: Ceaseless Charge

Tips for Ceaseless Charge

• Winter Soldier’s best ability is his passive. Every decision he makes needs to consider how many times he can activate Ceaseless Charge.
• When all three abilities, plus his ult (or Team-Up), are available, Bucky can generate a total of 150 bonus HP. The extra health allows him to play extra aggressively, or go for retreating attacks while healing himself.

[Q] ULTIMATE: Kraken Impact

Tips for Kraken Impact

Culling Mechanic

• All enemies hit by Kraken Impact get marked for Culling for 5 seconds (Displayed as dark red on the lower portion of their health bar.)
• If their health drops below 15% of their total health, they instantly get KO’d, and Kraken Impact gets reset, Again!

Wait until an Enemy is already at low HP

• Targeting a low health enemy makes it easier to secure the KO before Culling mark expires

Have Trooper’s Fist Available

• Finishing off Culling marked target is significantly easier if you have Trooper Fist ready to combo.

All of Bucky’s teammates can see the Culling mark.

• Call for help eliminating a specific marked target to raise your chances of getting a reset.

8 Second Reset

• Whenever Bucky earns an ultimate reset from eliminating an enemy marked for Culling, he has a full 8 seconds before he needs to use the ult AGAIN.
• • Don’t just mash [Q], take your time to decide who your next target is before reactivating your ultimate.

Team-Up Ability: Stellar Impact

Tips for Stellar Impact

Best disengage

• Similar to how The Thing uses his Leap to an ally to get out of danger, Bucky can use his ally lock-on slam to disengage defensively, rather than attacking with it.

Keep each other alive

• Bucky is a hero with very limited mobility. The Team-Up can be used as an extra escape tool for him.
• Especially useful after Bucky goes deep with his ult, or if he gets displaced by abilities like an enemy Bucky hook.
• Additionally, Bucky now gives Bonus Health to all allies in range. So he can use it for his own survival and help peel for his allies.

Set up combos

• The slow effect is great for setting up combos with the rest of your abilities, including primary fire, hook, and ultimate.

Use off of cooldown

• As long as Cap is in range, there aren't too many scenarios when you wouldn't want to use Stellar Impact to damage and slow nearby enemies.
• If you are at critical health and will likely die from lunging forward at Cap, then don't activate.

Advanced Tips

Bread and Butter Combos: “+” means followed by; “→ “ means cancelled into.

Bionic Hook + (Turn) + Trooper’s Fist

Great for displacing targeted enemies away from their team and into yours.

Bionic Hook + Headshot + Melee → Trooper’s Fist

Deals 275 dmg.

Jumping while the enemy is being pulled in, then aiming down at their head, can help make the headshot more consistent.

Bionic Hook + Primary Fire + melee → Trooper’s Fist + Primary Fire

Deals 275 dmg.

Kraken Impact + hold Primary Fire → Trooper’s Fist

Eliminates 250hp heroes and below.

Holding Primary Fire ensures you fire on the first available frame.

Team Comp Synergies

Ideal team comps built around Winter Soldier enable him to play as a glass cannon frontline. As a low HP duelist, he needs damage mitigation in front of him and healing from behind. Team’s with a lot of damage mitigation help Bucky to be a full-on carry pick.

Buck has mostly positive matchups against melee flankers, but gets quickly overwhelmed when two or more attack him at once. Because of this, he also benefits from having allies with anti-flanker tools such as stuns or close-ranged burst damage.

Example of Team Comp Built Around Winter Soldier:

• Vanguards: Groot, Magneto
• Duelists: Winter Soldier, Namor
• Strategists: Jeff the Land Shark, Luna Snow

Hero Synergies

Vanguards: Groot

Groot’s walls and unmatched sustain make him the perfect match for our front-lining Winter Soldier. Bucky's consistent damage helps to keep Groot healthy through Ironwood Wall's Bonus Health.

Additionally, when Bionic Hooking an enemy Vanguard, Groot can wall them off from their team's resources. Groot can also use walls to section off the enemy team while Bucky goes full aggro with his Ult to minimize the number of enemies able to target Bucky when he’s going deep behind enemy lines.

Duelists: Namor

Namor covers the long distance spam with his turrets and primary fire. More importantly, Namor’s turrets do an excellent job of protecting Winter Soldier from enemy melee flankers. Having Namor on his team enables Winter Soldier to focus purely on offensive aggression.

Strategists: Ultron

Since Bucky will likely be playing right next to one or two Vanguards, Ultron's AoE healing drone is the perfect match. He can leave it attached to any of the frontline heroes, and they'll all be constantly healed.

Moreover, when Bucky is ulting, the drone follows him around, and Ultron's damage helps to trigger ult resets. Their team can plan to use Rage of Ultron offensively with Bucky's ult, or defensively to keep him alive during the enemy's ults.