Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Captain America Character Guide

Avengers, Assemble!!! Captain America leaves behind him a trail of stars and stripes as he rushes behind enemy lines. The Super-Soldier Vanguard doesn’t just hold down the frontline - instead, Steve Rogers exists to be a constant annoyance to the enemy's backline.

The Season 2 Team-Up Anchor buffs he has with Bucky have helped his damage and overall performance. Lead the charge to fill your team with hope and freedom by unleashing an all-out offensive attack.

Find out where Captain America ranks in our Marvel Rivals tier list.

TLDR

As

• Cap's primary objective is to force the enemy's Strategists to fight him instead of supporting the rest of their team. Be a constant annoyance to them.
• Ignore the enemy's Vanguards. Use your mobility to run past them and attack everyone else.
• Most importantly, stay alive. Use your mobility and Shield to minimize the damage you take. When you're low on resources, run to a health pack, or retreat and get healed.

Against

• Force him to retreat by focusing him down. Cap has no self-sustain other than his ultimate, so if he takes enough damage, he has to run away.
• Don't panic when he's attacking because his damage is rather easy to out-heal.  
• Stay near your team and don’t get isolated. He can outduel most heroes, especially if he gets well-timed reflects with his shield.

Strengths

Running shield

Cap’s ability to rush down the backline while simultaneously being protected by his Vibranium shield is his greatest strength. Along with his regular shield and sprint, he also becomes completely CC immune during his dash.

Stubborn Survivability

Between his sprint, jump, shield, slam, and ultimate, Steve Rogers cannot be taken down easily. He leads the charge and doesn’t just go in and die. The high level of survivability buys his team a ton of time to follow up on his aggression, or stall objectives.

Supportive ultimate as a Vanguard

Defensive ultimates control the pace of fights in this game. The high amount of healing makes your team essentially unkillable for the duration of your ult. Combine that with more than 20 seconds of Strategists healing ultimates like Luna and Cloak, and your team has a huge amount of time where they are nearly unkillable.

Weaknesses

Low Damage

The main reason you don’t see Cap in a ton of your games is his low damage. Getting KOs on his own is extremely difficult as none of his abilities deal high amounts of damage. You need to rely on combos and isolating targets if you hope to kill anything.

Can’t frontline

Even Thor with his high amounts of burst damage and Bonus Health can frontline much better than Cap. He’s the only Vanguard who can’t afford to sit at the frontlines and battle the other Vanguards if needed. He also can’t directly prevent the enemy team from walking onto his team, so a lot of coordination is required to make him work as a Vanguard.

Difficult execution

While his game plan may sound simple - harass the backline and don’t die - actually executing this in a game is very difficult. You have to learn how to cycle his cooldowns, consistently execute his shield throw animation cancels, and track enemy abilities that you need to block to stay alive. Cap is not quick to learn and he’s challenging to master.

Primary Fire: Sentinel Strike

Tips for Primary Fire: Sentinel Strike

• Enemies and deployables enable shield throws. 
• • Cap can attack Peni’s nest, Loki clones, Groot walls, etc., to count as the two strikes needed to activate shield throws.
• Shield throws are good against mobility enemies
• • Since they auto track the closest enemy to your crosshair, they are good for attacking fast moving targets like Black Panther.
• Animation Cancel
• • Cancel the recovery animation between throws by activating Leading Dash sprint right after each throw. 
  • • Inputs (Hold to Sprint setting on). 
    • Primary fire → SHIFT → [release SHIFT] → Primary fire → SHIFT → [release SHIFT] → (repeat for 4 throws.) 
    • • Double tap SHIFT or tap move forward if Hold to Sprint is off.

Primary Fire (in-air): Super-Soldier Slam

Tips for Super-Soldier Slam

• Engagement tool
• • Slamming into the fight works best for Cap due to the rapid speed and knockback of the slam.
  • Try running in from high ground or flanks to get the jump on the enemy. 
• Combo extender
• • In the middle of combos, you can sprint→jump→slam very quickly to chase down enemies trying to get away from you.
• Season 1.5 update now allows Cap to melee mid-air and not trigger the Slam ability.

Secondary Fire: Living Legend

Tips for Living Legend

• Safely rush down enemies
• • All the other dive Vangaurds have to either bait out stuns or just get hit with them. Cap is the only one who can rush down an enemy with a stun like Luna Snow and not worry about getting frozen during his approach. 
• Deflects
• • Against enemies with projectile CDs like Mantis’ sleep, or Groot’s Spore Bomb, try to shield often and unpredictably. That way you’ll have a higher chance of blocking their ability or making them hesitant to use their abilities for fear of getting deflected. 
  • Living Legend can even reflect Ultimates like Iron Man and Groot. Deflecting Groot’s Strangling prison back at his team will truly make you a living legend.
• Cap can now shield while jumping, making engaging and diving much safer.

[SHIFT]: Leading Dash

Tips for Leading Dash

• Sprint everywhere
• • 99% of the time you should always be sprinting as it is the core of Captain America's kit. You move much faster, are harder to attack, and have access to his leap and slam.
• Sprinting is loud, so walk if you're trying to set up a sneaky flank attack.

[E]: Vibranium Saw

Tips for Vibranium Saw

• Poking tool
• • Anytime you are not in range for your primary attack, use Vibranium Saw to throw your shield and start building ult charge.
• Throw into groups
• • Shield throw hits up to three enemies so you get more damage when hitting a target near their allies. 
• Counters Invisibility
• • Even when an enemy goes invisible, (Loki, Invisible Woman, Psylocke) the ricochets of Vibranium saw will still target them, and reveal their position.
  • If you see one of them go invisible, you can bounce your shield off a nearby enemy teammate or even surfaces of the map to hit the invisible enemy.
• Melee without shield
• • While waiting for his shield to return, Cap can get in one or two melees for extra damage.

[F]: Liberty Rush

Tips for Liberty Rush

• Chase down enemies trying to escape
• • When enemies get out of your melee range, Liberty Rush to quickly close the gap and attack.
• Use during sprint
• • You don't have to stop sprinting or shielding before activating Liberty Rush. You can dash at any time
• Immune to CC
• • Cap is completely immune to all CC during Liberty Rush so you can use it to make yourself safe against all crowd control attacks like Jeff the Landshark’s ult and any stuns.

[Q] Ultimate: Freedom Charge

Tips for Freedom Charge

• Enable aggressive attacks
• • Most of the time you'll want to use your ultimate to give the speed and sustain necessary for your team to rush into the enemy for an all-out attack.
  •  Also functions as a great “GO!” signal for when your team is being too passive.
• Cycle with your Strategist's defensive ults
• • Freedom charge is also good when used as an extra defensive ultimate in cycle with your Strategist ultimates. You essentially get the benefit of running triple support without having to sacrifice another role.
  • Make sure to use comms or pings to coordinate with your strategists so that you guys don't accidentally stack defensive ults on top of each other

[C] Team-up: Captain's Spirit

Tips for Captain's Spirit

• Coordinate with your Winter Soldier
• • For Cap, he only gains the ability to confirm the shockwave closeline with Bucky, so communicating with your ally will make the Team-Up much more useful.
  • Call out when and where you are looking to activate.
• Huge AoE slow debuff
• • Not only does it deal damage, but equally as useful is the slow debuff. Cap's speed allows him to easily follow up on any enemies caught in the blast radius.
• Rescue Bucky
• • Bucky is a hero with very limited mobility. The Team-Up can be used as an extra escape tool for him. Additionally, since Cap is now right on top of him, he can walk in front and Shield Winter Soldier.
  • Especially useful after Bucky goes deep with his ult, or if he gets displaced by abilities like an enemy Bucky hook.

Team Comp Synergies

Team comps built around Captain America can quickly take out the rest of the enemy team while he’s battling their Strategists. If five of his teammates are attacking four enemies who are getting zero healing, his team should easily win the exchange.

Cap has a few counters that give him a lot of trouble, so having allies who can target things like turrets and Spider-Nests makes his job much easier. Duelists who can add their damage to his, either from range or by diving with him, makes converting KOs much more consistent.

As the symbol of American freedom, he’s happy to be the solo diver. But if you build an entire team centered around dividing with him you’ll overwhelm the enemies and force them to make quick counterattacks or get steamrolled.

Team Comp Example

• Vanguards: Captain America, Thor
• Duelists: Storm, Star-Lord
• Strategists: Cloak & Dagger, Loki

Hero Synergies

Vanguards: Thor

Thor and Cap aren’t a traditional frontline but can pair well together if your team plays super aggressively. The way to synergize with Thor is to quickly go in and blow up any non-Vanguard enemy. Instantly turning the fight into a 5v6 is the key to their electrifying success.

With Thor's Season 2.5 rework, he has the option to dive with Cap, or to soft flank and use Awakening Rune to attack Cap's Strategist target from a distance. Another option is that your team could sub out one Duelist and run: Cap + Thor, + a frontline Vanguard (like Magneto) + 1 Duelist + 2 Strategists.

Duelists: Star-Lord

One of the few Duelists who can keep up with Cap's mobility and assist him in backline dives. Star-Lord takes a position on the edge of the enemy team, where he creates crossfire with Captain America. Together, the two have a much better chance of securing elims on the backline enemies than either one does on their own.

Strategists: Cloak and Dagger

Dagger’s ranged abilities support Cap’s aggressive playstyle. When team fights get more scrambly, Cloak’s blind and 28% damage boost can give Cap the advantage he needs to get his team some eliminations.

Dagger’s phase ability also gives their team the extra survivability needed to make up for their lack of frontline presence. Most importantly, their ultimate lays out a trail for Cap to sprint through and become truly unkillable during his attack. Their ult is a much better fit for Cap than other Strategist's ults like Invisible Woman that stay in one fixed location.