There are lots of Marvel Rivals characters to choose from and our ranked tier list should help you decide which superheroes/villains are best for you. The latest Marvel Rivals beta featured an eclectic mix of 23 characters, including well-known Avengers and X-Men, such as Thor, Spider-Man, Storm, and Magneto, fighting alongside or against Marvel oddities like Jeff the Land-Shark. Almost every character in the game has the potential to be great in the right hands, but there are some clear heavy hitters that you'll want to prioritize, so look at my Marvel Rivals character tier list below.
Marvel Rivals characters and heroes explained
All Marvel Rivals characters have at least one main attack and several abilities that have limited charges and cooldowns. Most abilities also offer some sort of synergy with another aspect of the characters kit or can form part of a combo for massive damage. One of these abilities is also a powerful Overwatch-Ultimate-style power that charges up as you play and can turn the tide of a fight when unleashed.
Each character also belongs to one of three roles that you'll want to bear in mind when forming your team, particularly if you're playing Marvel Rivals ranked – there's no role-locking but two of each is ideal!
- Vanguard – These are the tanks of Marvel Rivals, packing abilities that suit fighting on the frontline and protecting allies and massive health pools.
- Duelists - Varied, damage-focused characters whose main job is to pick off key enemies and disrupt the opposing team.
- Strategists – These Marvel Rivals characters are the healers and support characters, providing healing and other buffs to allies but can often still hold their own in combat.
The characters your team picks can also determine which Marvel Rivals Team-Up abilities are available. These are either passive or active abilities with one or both heroes gaining some sort of benefit. For example, having Venom on your team grants Spider-Man and Peni Parker an entirely new symbiote spike ability. Meanwhile, when Black Panther and Magik are on the same team, both heroes gain the ability to create a Limbo Disc, which acts as a teleporter.
Marvel Rivals character tier list
With lots of different abilities, character roles, and Team-Ups, choosing good Marvel Rivals characters and getting a good team together can be tricky. Below, I've ranked every character based on my time testing them in matches, from the mightiest heroes in S-tier, to the more average supes at C-tier:
- S-Tier: Supremely powerful and versatile characters that work in almost any team composition and aren't difficult to use effectively
- Doctor Strange
- Groot
- Mantis
- Punisher
- Rocket Raccoon
- Scarlet Witch
- Storm
- A-Tier: Great heroes who bring plenty of power but either require a bit of support or practice for maximum effect.
- Adam Warlock
- Bruce Banner
- Hela
- Iron Man
- Jeff the Land Shark
- Spider-Man
- Venom
- B-Tier: Good characters with solid abilities that are effective in the right hands but can be situational
- Loki
- Magneto
- Star-Lord
- Thor
- C-Tier: Middling heroes that can still contribute to the team effort but either lack overall power or are easily countered.
- Black Panther
- Luna Snow
- Magik
- Namor
- Peni Parker
Adam Warlock
A-tier Strategist
With his quantum magic powers, Adam Warlock has solid healing abilities that let him keep several allies topped up at once, but longer cooldowns mean you must use these powers wisely. His Regenerative Cocoon and Karmic Revival abilities, which let him resurrect himself and his allies respectively, are hugely useful in any match too.
Black Panther
C-tier Duelist
T'Challa is an acrobatic, melee-focused hero with solid mobility. His kit revolves around applying Vibranium Marks to enemies and then hitting them with Sprint Rend to gain bonus health and fully recharge the ability. It's an interesting loop but one that can be incredibly difficult to pull off without getting caught with your Vibranium trousers down.
Bruce Banner/Hulk
A-tier Vanguard
Banner is basically three heroes in one – Bruce Banner, Hero Hulk, and Monster Hulk. That means there's a lot to know about, but the Hulk brings plenty of aggressive melee power to the team and is very resilient, making him a great pick to act as the team's frontline.
Doctor Strange
S-tier Vanguard
A jack-of-all trades tank, Doctor Strange provides ample protection, fires precise ranged attacks, releases short-range, area-of-effect blasts, creates portals to teleport the team, and can fly – is there anything he can't do? His Daggers of Denak can be tricky to aim and Dark Magic buildup needs to be carefully managed, but his versatility makes him fit to lead any team.
Groot
S-tier Vanguard
Specializing in placing several plant-based barriers at once, Groot is arguably the most defensive Vanguard hero there is and can fight capably right at the front thanks to buffs provided by those barriers. He's easy to use and quite strong, but a bit one-note. Be prepared to hear "I am Groot!" a lot too.
Hela
A-tier Duelist
The Norse Goddess of Death is a sharpshooter amongst the Marvel Rivals characters. Her Nightsword Thorns, Piercing Night, and Queen of Hel abilities reward accuracy with massive damage. A good Hela player can be a huge asset to a team, easily shutting down weaker Duelists and Strategists. However, she lacks solid defensive or movement abilities, so more mobile characters can easily hunt her down.
Iron Man
A-tier Duelist
While Iron Man isn't as manoeuvrable as you'd think, effective use of his flight powers allows him to massively disrupt the enemy team, particularly if they don’t' have heroes like Punisher and Hela who can easily take him down. Gain aerial superiority and rain down destruction on the enemy team with high-damage blasts and precise unibeam fire.
Jeff the Land Shark
A-tier Strategist
Jeff is a simple healer with decent healing output. He's a solid all-rounder but is great when supporting Vanguard heroes up at the front, using his Hide And Seek ability to evade danger. The "It's Jeff!" ultimate ability is also great as you can gobble enemies and then spit them off the map for easy kills but you can also rip teammates out of position and ruin a fight – definitely one to coordinate with your team.
Loki
B-tier Strategist
Loki is a great support character in Marvel Rivals but can be as confusing to use as he is to the enemy team. His healing output is modest but can be massively increased with effective use of his doppelgangers, making him a vital part of the team. These decoys make the God of Mischief a hugely disruptive force in combat, but he's a challenge to master.
Luna Snow
C-tier Strategist
K-Pop sensation Luna Snow packs both good healing and damage with her ice powers, meaning she can really hold her own. However, while her Fate Of Both Worlds ability can be crucial for big team fights and objective pushes, I found her kit lacking overall. I've seen plenty of good Luna Snows in matches, but she's far from exceptional.
Magik
C-tier Duelist
Like Black Panther, Magik is a melee-focused Marvel Rivals character, delivering slow but powerful attacks with her Soulsword. The variety of attacks, including a dashing uppercut and a wide spinning slice, means Magik has the potential to deal great damage with the right combos, but these can be incredibly difficult to pull off in the heat of battle, and more agile heroes can easily outmanoeuvre her.
Magneto
B-tier Vanguard
Magneto's slow-firing iron projectiles make him one of the better ranged Vanguard characters, suited more to defending from the middle of the team with either his Metallic Curtain shield or Bulwark bubbles, though some of his abilities, particularly his Meteor M, are a little underwhelming.
Mantis
S-tier Strategist
Mantis is a great all-round support character, capable of providing plenty of healing and other buffs to herself and allies with almost all her abilities – as a bonus, she can even briefly stun enemies with Spore Slumber. She's easy to use and a highly effective support character in almost any team composition.
Namor
C-tier Duelist
Namor is one of the less complicated Marvel Rivals characters, having only a few attacks and abilities, but I think that's also one of his main weaknesses. Like Hela, his trident attacks reward good aim with high damage hits, and his Monstro turrets are good for dealing damage and distracting opponents, but that's about it. Namor feels like he's missing an ability to give him that extra oomph.
Peni Parker
C-tier Vanguard
Thanks to her SP//dr mech suit, Peni Parker is the Vanguard hero with the most range, but her abilities are all to do with creating buffing Cyber-Webs and traps. It's a bit of an odd playstyle for a tank character and takes some getting used to – her Bionic Spider-Nest, which is creates a large Cyber-Web and spits out Spider-Drones, is useful but can be easily destroyed. She can absolutely be effective but feels like she can be easily countered and perhaps works best for certain objectives only.
Punisher
S-tier Duelist
The Punisher is the basic rifleman of Marvel Rivals but he's also one of the best characters in the game. He packs a versatile assault rifle, a decent shotgun, smoke grenades, a zipline for fast movement, and a deployable mounted turret – that's pretty much everything you need in a DPS character. He's very easy to play and packs plenty of power for minimal effort. He also becomes downright vicious when powered up by Rocket Raccoon's Team-Up Ammo Overload Device.
Rocket Raccoon
S-tier Strategist
With a range of deployable gadgets, Rocket Raccoon supports the team with healing projectiles, revives, armor packs, damage boosts, and jet packs. Pair all that with his surprisingly punchy machine gun, jetpack dash ability, and climbing and Rocket Raccoon is one of the most varied Strategist characters in Marvel Rivals, capable of supporting the team in the most important ways – best of all, he's quite easy to play too.
Scarlet Witch
S-tier Duelist
Wanda Maximoff is very powerful and easy to use – a lethal combination in Marvel Rivals. Her abilities have some nice synergy and can help the team, particularly the Dark Seal's stun effects. Additionally, her Mystic Projection ability makes her hard to pin down and adds extra mobility, allowing her to reposition to cause maximum disruption to the opposing team and unleash her ludicrously powerful Reality Erasure ability.
Spider-Man
A-tier Duelist
Spider-Man is the ultimate hit-and-run flanker in Marvel Rivals. He's easily the most mobile character in the game thanks to his web-swing, double-jump, and wall crawl, which allows him to get over and around enemies with ease (though they can be a bit janky to use). From here, you can use his Web-Cluster to target one foe, then follow up with a range of melee attacks to form a devastating combo. Spider-Man has a high skill cap but mastering his kit allows you to break apart the enemy team by getting crucial eliminations.
Star-Lord
B-tier Duelist
Tracer players in Overwatch will definitely gravitate towards picking Star-Lord as his entire kit focuses on movement tricks and his short-range Element Guns. He's easy to learn, thanks to his simple abilities, but feels like a bit of a one-trick flanker hero compared to the similarly positioned Spider-Man. That perhaps makes Star-Lord a bit more situational, but he's still a good choice in most matches.
Storm
S-tier Duelist
Combining the buffing power of some of the Strategists with the aerial focus of Iron Man, Storm is one of the best Duelists in Marvel Rivals by quite a way. She can deal solid damage herself, but her ability to buff allies with extra movement or damage, and then improve that even further with Goddess Boost makes her incredibly valuable and worth including in any team. When paired with Thor, she even gains an entirely new chain-lightning attack, making her even better.
Thor
B-tier Vanguard
Wielding Mjolnir, Thor is a good brawler tank with potent melee combos and a few ranged attacks that all synergize nicely, but he's not as resilient as you'd hope the God of Thunder would be. His health is on the lower end for a Vanguard character and the fact that his three Mjolnir-based abilities all go on a short cooldown after using just one of them means you've got to make every hit count. That all means Thor should act as more of an off-tank and needs allies to back him up.
Venom
A-tier Vanguard
Venom is fantastically robust, even for a Vanguard character, due to his Symbiotic Resilience ability, which is arguably his best. It instantly generates bonus health, buying Venom time to get a kill, escape a fight, or wait for a healer to arrive, and it makes him very annoying to fight against. Additionally, his Venom Swing keeps him agile, and his other abilities limit enemy movement, making him a highly disruptive tank who can easily drop in and out of combat.
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