Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Venom Character Guide

We are Venom! The Symbiote devours his targets while swinging across the map. As a Vanguard, Venom has no equal in his mobility and survivability. While Venom doesn’t directly protect his team, he demands so much of the enemy’s focus that his allies can execute their game plan as they please.

Being so self-reliant makes Venom one of the best solo queue choices available when teams are all split up in a team deathmatch style. However, Venom’s true power is shown when he can coordinate his offense with his teammates.

He wants to get close to his targets, and while he’s not particularly great at frontlining against enemy Vanguards, all other heroes must respect Venom or learn the hard way.

Find out where Venom ranks in our Marvel Rivals tier list.

TLDR

As

• You're a dive tank that wants to wreak havoc. Force the enemy Vanguards to turn their backs to your team or outright kill their backline.
• Venom's kit is designed to push his limits as you'll be rewarded by activating his E at lower health. Do this within reason as if you're too greedy, you'll get punished.
• Treat your ultimate as a way to heal yourself and extend your life. Don’t start an attack by using your ult.

Against

• Venom offers no defensive utility or protection to his team, his backline will be more vulnerable as a result.
• Feel free to focus him down if he overextends, but if he has his shield ready you'll want to target other enemies in teamfights.
• His Shift web swing is his main source of mobility. Plan around its 8 second cooldown.

Strengths

Deceptive Survivability

Venom’s survivability is unparalleled! No other hero in Rivals can go on solo missions and stay alive as long as Venom can. Symbiotic Resilience gives him so much health that it’s like having 2.5 lives.

The instant activation also allows Venom to take as much damage as he likes before reacting with Overhealth. On top of Symbiotic Resilience, his ultimate also generates over health, further increasing the difficulty of killing Venom.

High Mobility

Resembling his arch nemesis, Venom can swing and slam in and out of a battle. Conjuring his symbiote suit into a web, he can suddenly launch himself across a map.

Venom Swing works equally well to position Venom onto any target on the enemy team or as a means of escaping death. Even wall climbing can be a strong positioning tool that lets Venom save his swing cool down, and slam onto unsuspecting enemies.

Crowd Control

Possibly Venom’s most underrated strength is how frequently he can use his AoE crow control ability, Frenzied Arrival. On just an 8-second cooldown, Venom pulls everyone in the AoE into the air toward himself. Not only does it allow him to grab more enemies with his tentacles, but every slam is an opportunity to combo with his allies attacks.

Weaknesses

No way to block damage for his allies

Although Venom can absorb absurd amounts of damage himself, he cannot sustain or protect his teammates outside of his offensive pressure. Venom can use the swing to escape an enemy ult, but this only gets him out, often leaving his allies to die.

Reliant on Symbiotic Resilience

If you ever see a Venom player pop Symbiotic Resilience immediately after using swing, you’ve found yourself a free kill. Without the overhealth, Venom becomes very squishy.

Even when used well, Venom needs to retreat to cover and wait for Symbiotic Resilience to come off cooldown before he can contribute to the fight again.

Weak against CC

Venom can be stunned out of his swing or while attacking and he has no way to stop it. If he's stunned after using his Bonus Health, he's likely to die. Without any way to block or counter stuns, Venom struggles against teams with high amounts of CC.

Primary Fire: Dark Predation

Tips for Dark Predation

Need to headshot

• If you’re not headshotting the enemy consistently, you’re missing out on a ton of damage and won’t be posing a lethal threat to your targets.
• Take your time to aim carefully, don’t jump around, keep your crosshair at head level, and strafe to make small adjustments.

Looks like a Melee, but is treated as a projectile

• Doesn’t go through shields like melee attacks do because it is technically a hitscan projectile.

Secondary Fire: Cellular Corrosion

Tips for Cellular Corrosion

Damage after delay

• The activation of the tentacles only deals 5dmg. Make sure to stay in range of those caught if you want to inflict the burst of damage.
• Activate as soon as you start fighting someone since you’ll have to wait a full three seconds before the damage hits.

Slow debuff

• Everyone caught in Venom’s tentacles is slowed b 15%. Anytime your teammates are using offensive ults, help them out by inflicting slow on the enemies.

[F]: Frenzied Arrival

Tips For Frenzied Arrival

CC for combos

• The best use of Frenzied Arrival is to create combos with your teammate's abilities. The inward pull effect added in Season 1.5 makes it a strong combo tool.
• • Example: Venom slams and Namor Uses his ultimate. Frenzied Arrival pulls everyone into the center, and Namor's ult locks out mobility abilities. Makes for a deadly combo that greatly increases the success rate of Namor's ult.

Mobility

• Swing and slam on your way back from spawn to move much faster. Look for routes Venom can swing around the edge of a map, and then slam back in to fight for maximum travel speed.

Need 5m of height

• The target area needs to be around Venom’s waist or lower. Venom can slam onto ledges, walls, or any floor at any height as long as the target is lower than his waist and he is 5m above the ground directly below his body.
• • Some payloads give Venom enough height to Frenzeid Arrival just by jumping off of them.

[SHIFT]: Venom Swing

Tips for Venom Swing

Easy Swing

• Go into Settings and Turn off “Easy Swing” or you won’t be able to choose where Venom swings from.

Engaging with Swing

• Only engage with swing when you have your ult or E available. Otherwise, you will have no way to survive or escape and Venom will get focused down.

Disengage with Swing

• Time your fights around your swing cooldown. You need to survive until you can swing away. Remember you don’t necessarily need to kill on every engage, you just need to get out enemy abilities and not die.

Stall with Swing

• Venom is one of the best vanguards to stall the objective with. Between his bonus health, swing, and slam, he can often survive long enough on his own for his team to return to the fight.
• When trying to stall, hold swing as long as possible and keep swinging back and forth in the air before returning to the ground. This way you’ll take less damage.

[E]: Symbiotic Resilience

Tips for Symbiotic Resilience

Don’t Waste the long cooldown

• Symbiotic Resilience is Venom's most important ability to not misuse.
• The amount of Bonus Health generated is proportional to how much health you have remaining.
• • Activating at full HP only generates 100HP, while activating with just a couple points of HP left generates a thousand Bonus Health

Bonus Health Decay

• Any Bonus Health you generate will begin to Decay after 2 seconds so use that health to soak up damage and attack ferociously while you have it.

[Q]: Feast of the Abyss

Tips for Feast of the Abyss

Cellular Corrosion persists while submerged

• Catch enemies with your tentacles just before ulting, then follow them but don’t click devour until the right before the tentacles explode for a big burst of damage.
• Make sure to devour before the tentacles damage the enemy to maximize Bonus Health Generation.

Understanding Feast of the Abyss’ Bonus Health:

1. Damage inflicted will always be half of the enemy's current health and not their max HP.
2. The amount of Bonus Health gained is based on the amount of damage you inflict.
3. Therefore, when needing a lot of bonus health be sure to target enemies who have who currently have a lot of HP.

[PASSIVE]: Alien Biology

Tips for Alien Biology

Wall crawl is your best staging ability

• Anytime the enemy team is coming from spawn, you should be sticking to a wall ready to slam down.
• Don't slam onto the first enemy you see as they likely have multiple teammates behind them who will help them kill Venom. Instead, wait until a few enemies have come through and target a Duelist or Strategist who you can quickly eliminate

[Team-Up]: Touch of Klyntar

Tips for Touch of Klyntar

• Spider-Man’s Suit Expulsion greatly increases his power on the other hand. If your team already has a good Spider-Man, consider swapping to Venom. The symbiote gives Spider-Man a super easy and fast one-shot combo against all 250HP heroes.
• For Peni Parker, this ability is not typically worth the Team-Up because it doesn't add much value to her kit and Peni and Venom don't synergize well as a frontline.

Team Comp Synergies

Venom benefits from allies that can assist him in at least one of two ways. The first way is to be able to match his aggression. Venom’s game plan can be summarized as swing, slam, attack, escape, repeat.

Heroes who can position themselves in a manner that allows them to attack at the same target simultaneously as Venom help make the attack impactful.

The other way to strengthen Venom is by assisting him with sustain, whether from healing or damage mitigation. Venom can take over a game when his allies can do one or both of these.

Example of Team Comp Built Around Venom:

• Vanguards: Venom, Magneto
• Duelists: Spider-Man, Star-Lord
• Strategists: Luna Snow, Adam Warlock

Hero Synergies

Vanguard: Magneto

Magneto lacks the mobility to keep up with Venom, but his front line presence fills the Vanguard gap Venom leaves open. Placing a Metal Bulwark shield on a Venom deep behind enemy lines forces the enemy team to charge up Magneto’s mag-Cannon, and lets Venom keep attacking for even longer which could be the crucial extra time needed to convert damage into kills.

Duelist: Spider-man

Although they may be enemies in lore, Spider-Man and Venom make one of the deadliest dive duos in all of Marvel Rivals. Exploiting their superior mobility and sudden engagements ruins the day for enemy Duelists and Strategists.

Moreover, Symbiotic Bond Team-Up gives Spidey extra survivability and burst damage. Not only does the Team-Up greatly benefit Spidey, but Venom’s presence takes a lot of attention away from the very squishy Duelist.

Strategist: Luna Snow

Luna's healing can reach Venom no matter how deep he’s diving. Between their two ults, they can stall the control points for a very long time and earn your team a ton of progress percentage.

Additionally, If Venom gets stunned Luna can shoot out a counter-stun in an attempt to keep him alive until he can swing away. Venom’s mobility also allows him to quickly fall back and peel for Luna if she starts getting focused by enemy flankers.