Marvel Rivals Venom Beginner’s Guide – Diving Tank Tips & Tricks

Venom is one of the few vanguards currently in Marvel Rivals, and his whole thing is that he’s an off-tank who specializes in disrupting the backline or just generally being a nuisance in the frontline. He’s one of the vanguards that I actually kinda vibe with, so I’ve been playing him every now and then.

I used to play fairly similar tanks back in Overwatch (mainly Wrecking Ball) when I still grinded and maintained my Master rank over there, and Venom’s surprisingly not too dissimilar from their beefy divers. Here are some tips to get you started with him!

Venom’s Playstyle in a Nutshell

Venom brings value to his team by indirectly protecting them through his constant aggressive diving and deceptively high damage output. In a way, he’s like Thor, but with much better mobility and even more emphasis on decimating the other team’s backline, or at the very least being an incredibly large and annoying target that creates a ton of space.

He can be particularly difficult to learn at first as you’ll occasionally be putting yourself in situations where you’d normally just die as a different vanguard. Because of his abilities, though, Venom can get away with a lot of risky plays as long as you know when and how to disengage.

Proper cooldown management is essential to your survival, and a good healer or two will help buy you some time if your swing is still down. Simply put, he’s easy to understand, but hilariously tough to master. With all of that in mind, let’s go over his kit…

Venom’s Abilities & Team-Ups

Just like with my other guides, we’ll go through his abilities in list format so I can throw in some little tips for each of them:

• Dark Predation (primary attack) – New players think that Venom is a melee character, but his primary actually fires four tendrils that extend all the way up to around mid-range.
  • To better understand how his attacks work, think of it more like a burst fire gun that has a very short range.
  • Get used to tracking, because you can easily miss multiple hits if you can’t keep your crosshair right on top of moving targets.
  • Each tendril can crit, with each blow dealing around 40 damage per hit on the head.
  • Try to melee in between bursts! Obviously, this only works if you’re within quick melee range, but if you’re glued to an enemy’s face, it’s essentially free extra damage before your next set of tendrils pops out.
• Cellular Corrosion (secondary attack) – Upon casting, anyone close to Venom will get tentacles stuck on them. This will slow them down and detonate after a few seconds, dealing quite a bit of damage.
  • If enemies manage to reach a certain distance away from Venom, the tentacles will detach.
    • If you want to ensure that it detonates on a particular target, follow them close so that they don’t get detached.
  • This is typically something you use immediately after diving into enemies to secure kills or force them to use movement abilities.
• Venom Swing (Shift) – Venom will latch onto a surface and swing towards the direction he’s looking at for a brief moment.
  • This is your main movement ability, but be mindful of its long 8-second cooldown.
  • You can turn off “Easy Swing” in the options menu. While at the main menu, go to Settings -> Keyboard -> Combat -> Select Venom as your hero -> Scroll down to “Hero” -> uncheck “Easy Swing”.
    • This will allow you to manually target where you’d like to swing from, giving you better control over your movement.
    • Doing this will require a bit of practice, as there is a limit to how far Venom can fire his webbing. If the surface you’re targeting is too far away, nothing happens (swing does not go on cooldown if it fails this way).
    • With this setting off, you can also boost yourself forward by shooting it at the ground or a wall straight ahead. This is called a web zip, which people who have played Spider-Man games before will be familiar with.
    • For even more control over the ability, you can also turn on “Hold to Swing”. This makes it so that you can cancel out early by letting go of shift.
• Symbiotic Resilience (E) – Upon activation, Venom will gain 100 bonus health plus more depending on how much health he has lost.
  • He gains a percentage of missing health as bonus health (as of season 1, it’s over 100%) in addition to the base 100 it gives, but all of this will also decay rapidly after around 2-3 seconds.
  • This is great for giving yourself a second wind after diving, but don’t forget that it decays quickly too. If you use it when you’re too low, you need to have a healer help you out or a health pack nearby.
• Frenzied Arrival (F) – At a certain height, you can activate this ability to dive towards the target location, dealing damage to a small area around you.
  • On impact, enemies within range are knocked up into the air.
  • Usually, you’re going to want to use Cellular Corrosion immediately after diving onto enemies with this.
  • This ability has a minimum height requirement before you can use it, but it isn’t too high. In some cases, for example, you can dive down after jumping off the payload in convoy/convergence maps.
  • You can use this mid-swing. No need to wait for your swing to end, you can just point down and press F.
  • You can use it to charge towards walls too, as long as you have the “Diving Strike” prompt on your screen.
• Feast of the Abyss (Ultimate) – Venom will burrow down and can left click to resurface and bite everyone within his ultimate’s radius. While underground, he can move around freely.
  • If you don’t trigger it manually, he will automatically go for the bite when the timer runs out.
  • Enemies hit by this will take a base number of 50 damage + 50% of their current health. This makes it particularly good against healthy vanguards, should you use it to engage.
  • Venom will also get bonus health equivalent to the amount of damage he dealt.’
• Alien Biology (Passive) – When facing a wall (and essentially touching it), you can press Space to latch onto it. This will let you crawl towards any direction on that surface.
  • If you left click while holding onto a wall, you’ll start sprinting instead of crawling.
  • At the same settings interface where you can set “Easy Swing”, you can also change “Direction of Wall Crawling” to either “Advance Vertically Upwards” or “Towards Crosshair”. Either of these is based on your personal preference.
    • Advance Vertically Upwards – This one has a misleading label as it doesn’t force you to go straight up. Instead, you can freely use WASD to run around the wall, independent of your crosshair placement.
    • Advance Towards Crosshair – With this setting, Venom will instead only follow the direction of your crosshair as you hold the forward movement button.
  • Rather than swinging to get a dive off, you can use this to run up a wall and use Frenzied Arrival below you. You can even turn around while holding onto a wall to target your dive first.

His only team-up at the moment is with Spider-Man and Peni Parker, and it’s called Symbiote Bond. While Venom is in play, both of the Parkers can activate a bonus ability to create symbiote spikes all around them. While active, enemies near them will take damage every couple of seconds and also get knocked back a bit.

Disruption Is Your Duty

As pointed out at the start, Venom isn’t your traditional type of tank who sticks with the team and shields them from harm. Though there are certainly cases where you might have to play that way, the main job of Venom is to dive the enemy team and cause chaos in their backline.

Going after enemy strategists and duelists is often your main goal, but you don’t have to kill them if you can’t, which is usually the case if they hit you with a stun and run away. As long as you’re getting the attention of the other team, you’re already creating opportunities for your allies to get some picks of their own.

Try Not To Overextend

Building on from that last point, don’t overstay your welcome. Your job is to go in, force them to pay attention (and hopefully get a kill), then leave once you’re getting low. After that, heal back up and repeat.

If you’re still learning, play it safe and pop your Symbiotic Resilience at around 1/3 health to give yourself a bit of a buffer in case it fully decays right before you reach safety. You should also make sure that you’re not diving too deep, because you want your strategists to still be able to heal you.

If you have somebody like Luna Snow, Cloak & Dagger, or even Rocket Raccoon on the team, they should be able to top you up as long as they can see you. Depending on whether or not you have another vanguard, they’ll likely be safe while you’re off on disruption duty. On that note…

Be Mindful of Enemy Flankers

Sometimes, the other team will be running a dive-heavy composition. If that’s the case, you need to play a little more reactively. One match I had while writing this had me up against Magik, Black Panther, and a fellow Venom. If you’re fighting a line-up like that, counter their dives by being ready to use Frenzied Arrival whenever they engage.

An argument could be made for diving at their healers instead, but this is going to be purely situational. If your team can’t shake off the flankers attacking your backline, it’s usually better to take matters into your own hands rather than keeping the other half of their team busy.

This is especially true if the other team’s strategists aren’t the type that can help divers from a distance, like Mantis. In cases like these, flankers will likely be forced to retreat. Sometimes, enemy healers might even be a bit overzealous and put themselves in a vulnerable position to help their divers (even I’m guilty of doing this every now and then).

Some General Tips

Why Swing When You Can Climb?

Many players seem to forget that Venom (and a few other characters) has a passive ability that lets them run up walls. Depending on the map, you can save your swing and use the walls to activate Frenzied Arrival, or just reposition in general. By doing this, you’ll have a guaranteed swing/web zip in your pocket if you have to fall back early.

This also helps you catch people off-guard, at least to some degree. Most players (in lower ranks, especially) won’t think to check the top end of tall structures whenever they push up, which gives you an opportunity to safely dive right into the backline. It’s not a foolproof method, of course, since some people will eventually figure out what you’re doing.

Adjust Accordingly

If for any reason your healers aren’t able to sufficiently sustain you as you dive in and out of the backline, play a little closer to your team and focus on the objective instead. You can still create a lot of space by pushing back enemy frontliners and blocking incoming projectiles/enemy heals with your huge hitbox.

Alternatively, and this is dependent on the map and where the action’s happening at the moment, you can also try playing around health packs. These things can help you get right back into the fight if your healers are constantly out of reach. This is something you should keep in mind as any hero, really, but especially if you’re playing a dive character.

That’s all I’ve got for Venom. He’s got a fairly straightforward kit, and with enough practice, you’ll get used to being a slippery off-tank who can just jump in and out of combat with ease. If you prefer playing as a more aggressive vanguard, then this one should be right up your alley.