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Marvel Rival's competitive climb can be quite a challenge, but those rewards for reaching milestones make it worth the grind. While climbing ranks does have a lot to do with your skill at your character, there is actually a lot of tricks that can help you climb ranks faster than ever before! In this guide, I will go over everything you need to know to help you hit that rank you want.
My Credentials
I am a Grand Master player who primarily plays Invisible Woman as a main. I also main Peni Parker for a Vanguard and Punisher for a Duelist. I also study top level streamers, tournaments, and data published by first and third party sources to help deliver the most accurate information I can.
The Impact of Character Picks
This section dives into how your specific character pick can influence a match. Every player's performance matters, so ensuring you have a character that works well with your team will elevate your success.
Learning the Meta Comps:
Just because you want to play your favorite character, it doesn't mean your team needs that character. There are a few standard team compositions that help structure your team. We have a guide here that breaks down meta comps in detail, but here is a rough overview of good comps:
- 2-2-2 Comp: Evenly spread between each roll. The standard format for most games.
- 3 Healers, 1 Tank: If your opponents are singling out your tank, this comp lets your team get an extra healer to outlast your opponent.
- 3 DPS, 1 Tank: If you are struggling to get past a strong defense, you might need one DPS to dive while your other two push with your tank.
Straying outside of these comps will often put your team at a disadvantage. You may not want to swap your character, but filling a role that is needed can make the difference in winning or losing the match.
Knowing When to Swap Characters:
The best skill to learn in Rivals is knowing when your character isn't working. Being stubborn and insisting you are playing your best character or blaming your healers isn't going to turn the match around. A basic way of knowing if you should swap is monitoring your kill death ratio. If you have more deaths than kills, it's time to see if you are getting countered. A good example is if you are playing Iron Man and have 7 kills and 10 deaths, why are you dying so much? Perhaps the other team is playing Punisher or Hawkeye, who directly counters Iron Man. You have nothing to prove by continuing to play a countered hero, so its a good time to swap out for someone like Squirrel Girl or a diver to counter pick them.
As mentioned above, watching your team comp is also a good way to see if you should swap characters. Swapping to a different one based on how your match is playing out can turn the tides with just your swap. Every individual player can make or break any team, so you stepping up and jumping to another character could give your team that missing piece they needed.
Your team doesn't have to be losing for you to need a swap. Your team may be carrying you or staggering your opponents spawns, but your may not be contributing to that push. If the opponents get their footing, it can stall out your push quickly. Get ahead of it and try something else to keep that snowball rolling. You could even pick based on countering someone on the enemy team, which would definitely help your team.
What Characters Should You Learn?
With team comp and character swapping being so important, it's very important you learn to play a range of characters. Knowing how to play 5 DPS characters or 4 different healers doesn't make you versatile. You don't have to learn any specific characters, but I would recommend a soft guideline:
- Learn 1 Tank, 1 DPS, and 1 Healer at a minimum so you can cover all roles effectively.
- Learn characters that are ranked highly. We offer up-to-date tier lists if you want guidance on what Characters are best. Learning Black Widow won't be as effective as learning Hawkeye for example.
- Know how to play an anti-dive character. These are characters like Namor, Peni, or Mister Fantastic who can protect your back line.
Obviously, if you have your heart set on a character, make sure to master them. Just be sure you can play other characters and roles well so you have flexibility.
Know the Maps
Knowing where the objective is isn't always enough to win the game. Every map in Marvel Rivals offers lots of alternate routes you can take to shake up the direction of your attack. This could be changing routes to flank behind the objective, to reach a perched opponent, or simply to walk through a different door than the opponent has on watch.
I am building a collection of map guides to help highlight all of the ways you can take advantage of each map. Be sure to check them out to get a better look at your options every game!
Banning Characters (Diamond Rank and Above)
While banning characters isn't available until you reach Diamond Rank, plenty of players still are trying to climb to get those crest rewards (or simply for clout). Banning characters is a crucial point that your team can alter the outcome of a match before it even starts. Many players pick purely off what their favorite streamer says to ban, but there are times when you should point your bans in other directions.
For starters, stop banning characters your team has clearly shown you they want to play. The game lets you pre-pick characters before banning to give your team an idea of your team comp. If you see your teammates have pre-selected Hulk, Iron Man, and Doctor Strange, don't auto ban Hulk because the meta says you should. Your team clearly wants to take advantage of it, so use it to your advantage too. Often times letting them play the character will net a better outcome than banning the character altogether.
Focus your bans on characters that may be extra strong on a particular map. For example, Groot and Peni Parker are especially potent on domination maps since the entire goal is to hunker down. Banning them could really interfere with your opponent's gameplans. But again, if your team shows they want to play those characters, don't ban them.
Ban characters that counter your team's strategy. If you plan to run a hard dive comp, you may want to ban Namor so his Octopus turrets don't constantly point you out and deal damage. If you want to play Human Torch or Iron Man, perhaps ban Winter Soldier, Punisher, or Namor (again). The enemy team may or may not be affected by your bans right away, but they can prevent counter picking that can slow your roll down.
Last but not least, don't instantly lock in your bans! The game offers the ability to hover over a character and select "Request to ban". This gives your team a chance to effectively communicate about potential bans when you don't have voice coms. Once you lock your ban in, you can't swap it, so communicating can lessen those rounds where you just hope your 40% ban is enough to win it.
The Chat
If you have any experience in this game already, you know how toxic the chat can be. Players shouting "you suck, swap characters" or "throwing" or the classic "where are my heals???". While players may think they are calling you out so you step up (or just raging), it really just brings the team down. There's an added pressure to anyone when you feel like your team is judging you, even if it isn't a legitimate criticism. There are much more effective ways to communicate that changes need to happen in your team:
- Spin your comments more positively. Something like "Iron Man got another DPS to try?" is a much calmer way of telling them they should swap without tilting your team.
- Throw out some compliments when you can. "nice ult" or "nice round guys" can really make your team feel accomplished and keep their head in the game
- Call out toxic teammates. If a diver is yelling at their healers even though they keep running off alone to die, call it out. "Healers are fine, stop diving maybe?" It probably won't calm the diver down, but the healers will feel much better about someone defending them if they are indeed doing poorly.
- You can offer to swap roles with someone underperforming. If your healer is actually bad, say "can I have Jeff? You take DPS?". You will be surprised how often players will pick characters they don't know just to fill a role, so your offer to swap might be a warm welcome.
These things might sound silly, but they really do make a difference. We're all humans, so believe it or not, your chat toxicity might be making your teammate give up. Why try anymore, they suck and don't know what to do. Simple, positive chats can keep the vibe up and keep your team working together, not against each other.
Summary
Climbing ranks isn't just about being good at your main. You need to be flexible in your role, know when to swap characters, pick and ban wisely, and keep your team positive and united. This is a team game, so just doing your own thing every match won't always work. Even if you exclusively play a diver that solo kills the entire game, your team may not always need a diver, or you may get countered at times. Being well rounded and educated about the characters, maps, and game mechanics will elevate your overall gameplay and give you more opportunities to master your mains.
If you have some tips that have helped you climb, but I didn't mention it here, be sure to let me know in the comments!
