Marvel Rivals Winter Soldier Character Guide

Marvel Rivals Winter Soldier Hero Guide

Empowered by his bionic arm, there isn’t anything Bucky can’t do. The perfect choice for Duelist 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 make this brainwashed assassin extremely lethal.

The Winter Soldier wants to be right in the heat of battle, upfront 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 the 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 high total damage and high pick potential.

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 (Think Venom ult, Moon Knight ult, etc.). Do this, and you’ll certainly be filling the sound space with, “Again! Again! Again! Again!”

Enemy Displacement

Bionic Hook simply is 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 really doesn’t have the capability to do any of those effectively.

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.

Abilities

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.

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 cross hairs 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 for making 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 clean up.

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 Ultimate are available, Buck can generate 160 bonus HP. The extra health and speed of APM allows him to play extra aggressively or go for retreating attacks while healing himself.

Team-up ability: Infinite Grit

Tips for Infinite Grit

Activation:

• Stand within the 10-meter radius AoE of Rocket deployable Ammo Overload Device.

Cooldown:

• Rocket Racoon has a cooldown of 45 seconds which begins the moment the device is deployed

Duration:

• 12 seconds

Use Tips

• When A.O.D. is active, spamming Primary Fire without using any of his cooldowns maximizes damage per second.
• Use Bionic Hook immediately when the power up activates to CC an enemy into your range.
  • Long duration of Team-up means you’ll have Bionic Hook back online as soon as the buff ends.
• If possible, coordinate with the Rocket Player on when and where they plan on using the Team-up.
• Best used as a response to enemy aggression, when they push forward.
  • Because the range is limited, enemies near cover can easily avoid you. It is best to wait for the enemy to expose itself and use defensively instead of offensively.

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 300hp heroes and below.

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

Synergy

Team comp Synergies

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

Buck has mostly neutral 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

Synergy With Other Heroes

Vanguards: Groot

Groot’s walls and unmatched sustain make him the perfect match for our front lining Winter Soldier. Due to forward positioning, Bucky typically is in range of Ironwood Wall’s healing.

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 in order to minimize the number of enemies able to target Bucky when he’s going 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 a Namor on his team enables Winter Soldier to focus purely on offensive aggression.

Strategists: Jeff the Land Shark

Adorably spitting out incredible amounts of healing minimizes the amount of time Winter Soldier has to spend hiding and waiting to be healed back to full health. Healing Bubble’s speed boost is where the real power of this duo lies.

Winter Soldier is only really held back by his poor mobility, so giving him that 60% movement speed buff allows Bucky to make plays not possible with any other support.

Pro tip: When there isn’t a ledge around, the damage of a full It’s Jeff! Ultimate combo’d with Kraken impact is enough to eliminate any enemies with 300HP or lower health pools.

Simply spit have Jeff spit the enemies into a wall and give ‘em the Armed and Dangerous for a quick kill and ult reset!