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Season 3 of Marvel Rivals is right around the corner starting July 11, 2025, and with it comes the next wave of major balance changes. While nothing official has been announced yet, there are some characters that deserve a nerf, and others that desperately need a buff.
As we wait for its arrival, let's look at some of Marvel Rival's most likely characters to be buffed, nerfed, or have Team-Up abilities adjusted. This is based on metagame data in the Celestial and higher ranks, where characters are being used to their fullest potential.
Season 3 Preview
Based on the recent Developer Update for Season 3, we can expect these changes coming to the season. While the full post is still pending, how did we do in the predictions?
Buffs
- Venom
- The Thing: Getting a new "battle blitz" ability that lets him jump directly to selected. enemies.
- Namor
- Mantis
- Invisible Woman: Healing efficiency improved.
- Scarlet Witch
Nerfs
- Emma Frost
- Iron Man: Poke potential slightly reduced.
- The Punisher: Turret power and ultimate charge rate decreased.
- Mister Fantastic: Survivability in inflated state turned down.
- Loki: Ultimate ability charge rate nerfed.
- Ultron: Slight nerf to survivability and protective capabilities.
Team-Ups
Guardian Revival is getting nerfed while making Mantis stronger independently.
Nerfs
Vanguard
The 2 biggest Vanguard likely to see some nerfs are Emma Frost and Captain America. Despite both of them seeing nerfs in Season 2.5, these tanks have been dominating the meta. They both share the common theme of survivability, letting them stick it out in high pressure situations when the healers can't afford to focus heal them constantly.
Emma's Diamond form can now only let her stall a point, but her grab and kick is a incredibly strong kill stun and kill confirm. This makes a strong balance point for the character. By nerfing the grab time and kick impact damage, her peak effectiveness is toned down a bit to match the other tanks.
Cap's ultimate and maneuverability make him often impossible to get off an objective. Having him jump around like a bullet sponge on a pogo stick is simply too effective. He could reasonably see either a nerf to his HP gain in his ultimate, or add a short cooldown to his jumping.
Duelist
Iron Man has been buffed or nerfed nearly every patch. In the current meta, he's a bit overturned, causing him to be a frequent ban target. Specifically, his primary fire damage output needs a nerf at long ranges. He isn't difficult to deal with at a close to medium range, but when he is super high up or very far back, it makes him hard to counter. He doesn't have to be super accurate thanks to the splash damage of his shots, and he can simply fly away the moment he starts to take damage. A simple fix could be making his damage falloff a higher percentage at long range.
Strategist
One of Rival's top healers has consistently been Invisible Woman, yet she has received minimal nerfs since her launch. Two major factors are making her perform so well: Her attacks can provide an incredible amount of healing, but also gives out a high amount of damage at the same time. Her ability to disappear and regain HP is also consistently keeping her alive when other healers would have died.
The simplest, but effective nerf would be shortening the range of her primary fire to force her into a more risk/reward role. Her self-healing will naturally balance out this way since she will have to be more exposed to heal effectively.
Buffs
Vanguard
The obvious pick here is Thor. The God of Thunder got butchered with his rework in Season 2.5, and his small buff in the mini-balance patch hasn't improved things nearly enough. He simply lost his versatility as a brawler and is forced to constantly use his Awakened State to get any kills.
Since he likely won't get a revert to his former self, his best buff would be to increase his mobility while in the Awakened State. This would let him keep his aggressive playstyle without giving up his new identity the developers want him to have.
Duelist
Despite the flyer meta, Human Torch has failed to be a major part of it. He has returned to his former identity of the flyer who can't kill anyone. He just litters the battlefield with poke damage. Healers have a much easier time surviving now, so that damage style just feeds their ultimates. Besides being countered by Hela and Hawkeye, Iron Man can easily 1v1 him thanks to the Unibeam. Torch really just needs a new ability (or Team-Up) that gives him an actual kill move. Anything that can do a small chunk of damage instead of constant ticks of damage can give him a way to secure kills on his targets.
This will sound crazy, but Namor needs a buff/rework. While his Gamma Monstro Team-Up is super strong, right now he is viewed as useless without it. Hulk sees frequent bans because he takes out Namor without a direct ban, which highlights a problem. The Team-Up needs to be removed outright, and replaced with a better ability or Team-Up. Maybe this is just giving him a 3rd basic squid or buffing the existing two, but a character shouldn't be considered ineffective without their Team-Up.
Strategist
Ultron released with surprising success at his launch, but he has quickly fallen off in popularity. His biggest weakness is a lack of healing strength. You can only safely run Ultron as a third healer since he has no real burst potential outside of his ultimate or his Team-Up. All he needs is a small increase in his drone passive healing. Not enough to be like a pocket healer, but enough to actually make a difference.
Jeff the Land Shark also got a big rework in Season 2.5, and it's put him in an overall better place in the meta. Unfortunately, his ultimate is too inconsistent and risky to make him usable (outside of his Storm Team-Up). Rival's leans heavily on strategist ultimate abilities every match, and Jeff's is just too unfocused and risky. It has those cool team wipe moments, but players have learned how to easily avoid it. The moment he fails to eat someone, he gets heavily punished by an animation of him thinking, which he can be quickly killed out of.
That animation needs to go first of all, missing an ult is punishing enough. Second, he needs a toggle over if he wants to eat allies or enemies. If someone on your team is ult-ing (let's say Iron Man), Jeff can eat him mid animation and cancel his own team's ult. Letting players choose one or the other (or toggle on/off teammates) will make him much more flexible when ult-ing.
Team-Ups
Should Be Removed
Atlas Bond has reached its expiration date. It's one of the most forgettable Team-Ups in the game, and very rarely is worth seeking out. It's time to retire it and replace it with an actually useful Team-Up for both Luna Snow and Iron Fist.
Similarly, Lunar Force just hasn't worked out the way it should have. Moon Knight having his own healing option and cloak to hide behind sounds great, but it never seems to find it's way into the meta in any meaningful way. It's another easy contender for removal so a new Team-Up can make an appearance.
Stars Aligned was a cool nod to the brotherhood of Captain America and [Winter Soldier/item]. Unfortunately, it's really hard for these two characters to make good use of the Team-Up when Bucky wants range, and Cap wants to jump around the objective constantly. A different ability with the same characters would also be great, but this one just is a waste of a slot.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Needs a Change</h3> <div class="wp-block-columns is-not-stacked-on-mobile is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-995f960e wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full has-custom-border"><a href="https://marvelrivals.gg/fantastic-four/"><img src="https://marvelrivals.gg/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2024/11/FANTASTIC-FOUR-Marvel-Rivals-Team-Up-Icon.png" alt="FANTASTIC FOUR Marvel Rivals Team-Up Icon" class="has-border-color has-palette-color-1-border-color wp-image-2667" style="border-width:1px;border-radius:15px;object-fit:cover"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://marvelrivals.gg/fantastic-four/">Fantastic Four</a></figcaption></figure> </div> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full has-custom-border"><a href="https://marvelrivals.gg/jeff-nado/"><img src="https://marvelrivals.gg/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2024/11/Marvel-Rivals-Jeff-Nado.png" alt="Marvel Rivals Jeff-Nado" class="has-border-color wp-image-7250" style="border-color:var(--theme-palette-color-2, rgba(252, 218, 45, 0.8));border-width:1px;border-radius:15px"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://marvelrivals.gg/jeff-nado/">Jeff-Nado</a></figcaption></figure> </div> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full has-custom-border is-style-rectangular"><a href="https://marvelrivals.gg/rocket-network/"><img src="https://marvelrivals.gg/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2024/11/Marvel-Rivals-Rocket-Network.png" alt="Marvel Rivals Rocket Network" class="has-border-color wp-image-7247" style="border-color:var(--theme-palette-color-1, #fcd92d);border-width:1px;border-radius:15px;object-fit:cover"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://marvelrivals.gg/rocket-network/">Rocket Network</a></figcaption></figure> </div> </div> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">While [item]Invisible Woman needs a nerf outright, the Fantastic Four Team-Up is way too consistent to go untouched. Besides giving the other three characters a self-healing ability, it gives Sue a buff to her healing output if just one of those three characters are picked. That's a huge range of team comps that she can benefit from since all three characters fit different roles. Either her healing buff needs to be adjusted, or the healing amount on the allies needs to be reduced. Considering it is constantly active with so many characters to trigger it, Invisible Woman basically is getting a constant buff every game.
Jeff-Nado was a silly new team-up added alongside Jeff's rework, but it's quite overpowered. The fact that Jeff can not only extend the time Storm's ult lasts, but he can swallow people out of any healing ult and kill them is uncounterable. It is forcing Storm to he a permanent ban, despite her being a well balanced character on her own. The idea is fun enough to stay in the game, but it needs to be toned down a bit to be balanced.
Peni Parker and Rocket Raccoon's Team-Up Rocket Network also clearly needs a nerf. The extra Spider-Nest is good enough by itself. It doesn't need to also give armor, and also give the B.R.B. station its own nest. It's too many perks packed into one Team-Up, and its forcing bans on characters they don't really need bans. The ult will likely be dialed back a little to keep it balanced, but keep Peni's play rate up like it has been.
Wrap Up
With Season 3 just weeks away, what are your balance predictions? Let us know in the comments!
