Marvel Rivals Rocket Raccoon Quick Guide – Tips & Tricks

As a flex player who often picks support, Rocket Raccoon has been one of my go-to picks in Marvel Rivals’ competitive mode (Grandmaster II as of the latest edit). His healing output can potentially be insane, and he has ample tools at his disposal to escape from or dispose of flankers. Here, I’ll be going over the basics of what he’s capable of and throw in a few tips to help you get started!

Rocket Raccoon’s Playstyle in a Nutshell

Despite having a gun that can absolutely shred at close range, Rocket Raccoon is typically best used as a pure healer. He can rack up some insane healing numbers as long as he plays alongside the team, and under certain conditions, he can even assist friendly divers in ways that the other strategists just can’t.

In case of emergencies or close fights, his gun can be amazing against nearby threats (such as a diving Venom or Black Panther), but his damage output is pathetic at mid to long range. For the most part, he can also easily lose them with his wall climb and/or dashes instead.

In addition to his healing, Rocket also has a ton of utility through his B.R.B device and ultimate. To add even more to that, he can also give Punisher or Winter Soldier (Bucky’s removed in season 2) some extra firepower through his Ammo Overload device, though this does have a pretty long cooldown.

With all of that in mind, let’s take a closer look at Rocket’s kit…

Rocket Raccoon’s Abilities & Team-Ups

As with all my other hero guides, I’ll be going over Rocket Raccoon‘s kit in list format so I can insert some tips for each individual skill:

• Bombard Mode (primary attack) – Rocket rapidly fires his gun. Plain and simple.
  • Its damage falls off hard and fast. You really only want to use this against flankers or tanks that are literally up in your face.
    • If you see stuff like Moon Knight‘s ankhs or Namor‘s spawns, try to take them out quickly if nobody else is doing so.
    • Damaging shields like Dr Strange’s or even Groot’s walls can be good value too, as long as nobody urgently needs health and/or you are still throwing out heals.
  • This is not hitscan, which means that each bullet has a fairly slow travel time.
• Repair Mode (secondary attack) – Rocket shoots bouncing healing orbs that will heal a bit of health per second (and half to himself).
  • Season 2 added a new direct healing mechanic and made these orbs faster. This means that you should try your best to hit allies with them too, rather than just having orbs fly beside them.
  • The orbs can affect multiple allies at once, and they will slow down while actively healing somebody.
    • Multiple orbs do not stack. Additional orbs will simply fly away at full speed if you fire it at people currently being healed by one.
    • It’s still generally a good idea to spam them at your team, as each orb has a relatively small radius.
  • Since these bounce, try to fire it at walls if you don’t have direct line of sight.
    • Banking your shots can be helpful if your teammates pushed way ahead of you or are behind a corner.
    • This is especially useful when your team is at a chokepoint.
  • Although it has a separate ammo pool, it shares reloads with your main weapon.
• Jetpack Dash (Shift) – Dash around 10m towards the direction of your crosshair.
  • This can hold two charges, and you regain one every few seconds.
  • Dashing is obviously a great way to escape divers, but you can also use it to reach high ground or to hover in the air for better heal coverage.
  • Don’t be afraid to use it purely for mobility, as the recharge time is pretty quick. If you want to be extra safe, you can always save one charge for emergencies.
• B.R.B (E) – His E ability will drop a B.R.B device on the ground, which will last a really long time until destroyed, used, or reclaimed by recasting the abilty.
  • Every few seconds, it will spit out either an armor pack (orange) or some rocket boots (blue).
    • Armor packs will grant you and your teammates 25 bonus health, though these do not stack.
    • Rocket boots will give you or your teammates the one-time use ability to double jump, with the second leap sending the user very high up.
  • The main draw of this ability is that it will revive one ally if they die within a 50m radius while it is active.
    • The device is destroyed when it revives somebody.
    • It does not work on Rocket himself, and the device is destroyed if he dies.
  • Try to deploy it in a spot that is out of sight from enemies but not too far from the action.
  • The full cooldown is 45 seconds, though this is drastically reduced if it is reclaimed by pressing E again. The reclaim cooldown will depend on how much health the device has, with 5 seconds being the fastest it can be.
    • Don’t forget to reclaim it if it’s still active and the objective has already moved way past the device’s effective range.
  • At the start of a match, if you are behind closed doors, throw it at the front so people can get free armor packs before the round begins. Reclaim it once the doors open.
• C.Y.A (Ultimate) – Rocket Raccoon’s ultimate is a deployable device that will amplify damage dealt by nearby teammates.
  • Affected allies will have a visible tether on them. This grants them damage amplification and also gives bonus health every second.
    • Allies need to be in its line of sight to be buffed. Even if within the radius, allies won’t be buffed if there is any solid object between them and the device.
  • This lasts for around 12 seconds and can be destroyed by enemies.
  • Using it is purely situational, so you’ll just have to figure things out on the go depending on what’s happening in the round.
    • Personally, I like to use it whenever we really need to push the objective or force enemies off it.
    • It’s also decent for melting enemies that are stacking a lot of bonus health, such as Venom or Captain America.
    • In higher ranked lobbies where players typically have good aim, it can be a viable counter against defensive ultimates as the damage buff is significant.
• Wild Crawl (Passive #1) – By holding space while facing a wall, Rocket can run on it.
  • In some maps, you can actually get to the point faster by running sideways along a wall (e.g. spawn to first objective as defender in Hall of Djalia).
  • This is a great repositioning or even escape tool that you’ll likely be using often, even if just to reach high ground.
  • Tech: You can shoot yourself straight up into the air by using Jetpack Dash while crawling up. This gets you higher than just dashing upwards normally.
• Flying Ace (Passive #2) – By holding space while in the air, Rocket will use his jetpack to slow down his descent.
  • Combined with Wild Crawl and/or Jetpack Dash, you can stay up high for longer and get a better view to heal your team, which might come in clutch in certain situations.

Rocket Raccoon currently has two team-ups, which are the following:

• Old Friends (Groot) – When Groot is in the team, you can latch onto him by running close and pressing C. This will grant you a bit of damage reduction, but you can’t move independently.
  • Personally, I only find this useful whenever Rocket has really low HP and only has his own orbs to heal himself. Don’t stick to him for long, because it makes you an easy target.
  • You can also use this for mobility, since you can attach yourself to him from around the same (if not longer) distance that your Jetpack Dash can reach.
• Ammo Invention (Winter Soldier & Punisher) – When Punisher is around, you gain an extra ability to deploy a device that grants them infinite ammo and faster fire rate.
  • This has a fairly long cooldown of over half a minute, so don’t spam it randomly.
  • Just like his ultimate, this is purely situational. You’ll just have to figure out when it makes sense to use as you play through a round.
    • As somebody who’s on the receiving end of this buff sometimes, it’s really good for melting anyone, even tanks.
    • Combining this with your ultimate can lead to a quick ace, depending on how your DPS is performing.

Abuse Your Mobility!

Rocket Raccoon has so many ways to traverse the map that you should have no trouble staying mobile, which makes you an even harder target to hit. Remember, you’re already annoying to focus on because of your size, so make it worse for the enemies by moving around a lot.

Your Jetpack Dash works in literally any direction, and you can easily lose flankers by zipping around and making sharp turns with this ability. In some cases, you can even dash right into a wall and immediately start climbing to escape. Very few heroes can actually keep up with you if you react to their dive fast enough.

Hell, there’s even rare situations where you can use it aggressively and dive a duelist/strategist who’s either perched up high or just flying. I wouldn’t advise it unless you really have to fight them, as it’s usually not worth the risk. I’m not even gonna pretend that it isn’t tempting in general, though, cause I occasionally do stuff like this:

Try to Get on High Ground

On the topic of mobility, you can make it easier to target players who urgently need healing by getting on high ground whenever possible. Your kit lets you easily get onto vantage points around the map, which will make it easier for you to focus fire healing orbs onto teammates that need them ASAP (even flankers deep in the enemy backline).

Of course, firing at ground level can work too, but there’ll be a few occasions where chip damage will constantly slow down your orbs, which can lead to somebody further up dying unnecessarily.

If there’s no high ground nearby, you can use Jetpack Dash to get into the air (maybe even two dashes) and then hold Flying Ace while firing orbs at your dying frontliners. Either way, just be mindful of duelists like Hela or Hawkeye as they can easily take you out if they’re a good shot.

Focus on Healing!

I can’t stress this enough: Healing is your priority as Rocket Raccoon! Yes, he can deal a decent amount of sustained damage at close range, but duelists (and even some vanguards) can still do that way better than you, especially if your tracking isn’t great. Stick to the basics and focus on heals until you build up your game sense to the point where you can determine when’s the appropriate time to do damage.

Unless you’re absolutely confident that your team will survive, try not to weave in some shots while healing because you’ll likely get somebody killed, especially if your other healer is someone like Adam Warlock or Mantis. It also doesn’t help that you’re going to be at the backline most of the time, which means your damage would be abysmal anyway.

Your healing is consistent but relatively weaker/slower than the others. Rocket’s main strength as a strategist is that he can have almost 100% uptime on his AOE heals as long as he keeps pumping out orbs.

He can’t outheal constant heavy burst damage, but in these cases, he can sustain people long enough that another healer can chip in and quickly finish topping people up. With recent changes, it should be a little easier to keep up with high damage.

That’s all I’ve got for Rocket Raccoon, at least as far as the basics go. He’s probably the most consistent healer across the board, as he doesn’t really need good aim nor does he have to stay at a certain distance to be good at his job.

I’ll still pick Luna Snow over him in some cases (due to her ult), but Rocket has been a fun alternative as I climb through Diamond while making this. SEASON 1 EDIT: Funnily enough, I think he’s my most played character now and continues to be as I slowly climb past grandmaster rank (I don’t have much time for comp at the moment).

Wanna learn more? My guide on which strategist is right for you goes through all of the support characters in the game and includes links to more in-depth guides for each. It’s something that I’ll be updating regularly, so check it out if you want to start branching out to other strategists!