Marvel Rivals – Which Strategist Should You Play?

As somebody who mainly plays strategists in Marvel Rivals‘ competitive mode, it’s become apparent that certain characters are just straight up better in higher level lobbies. However, that doesn’t mean you should lock yourself into those, especially if you’re just climbing through the metal ranks or playing casually.

Here, I’ll be categorizing each of the current strategists in the roster based on how well they would work with particular playstyles/skill levels. There’s not a lot of them right now, so this won’t be too long!

The Best Strategists Right Now

The sections following this will have more detailed categories for each strategist currently in the roster. To be honest, all of them are completely viable, but not everybody can make all of the strategists work in every level of play.

If you’re only looking for the absolute best strategists that almost anyone can easily pick and carry games with right now, it’s currently a toss-up among these four:

1. Luna Snow – Great healing if you can aim, and deals good single target and group damage with Ice Arts. She has a very strong defensive ultimate.
2. Mantis – Decent healing, but really good utility and damage if you can consistently land headshots. Also has a strong defensive ultimate.
3. Cloak & Dagger – Great healing potential with little mechanical skill required. They also have a decent ultimate for both healing & zone control.
4. Invisible Woman – Has a lot of tools for initiating and/or disengaging and has pretty good group heals if allies are clumping up.

In a nutshell, the meta right now is to pick at least 1-2 healers with defensive ultimates due to how overtuned they currently are, and all four above have such an ability. Some of them tend to get banned in high rank games because of this.

Barring one-shot ultimates or a bunch of combined utility, taking down any of these strategists and their teammates while their ults are active is almost impossible.

However, if you’re still in a relatively low rank, then this meta won’t really matter that much because anything can work outside of the top tiers. If you’re still climbing out of the metal ranks or are just a quick match warrior, let’s go over the different types of strategists you can pick:

Type #1 – No Aim? No Problem!

If you’re struggling with aim-centric characters, you have a bunch of options that can bring a lot of value to the team without the need for good aiming skills. They are the following:

• Cloak & Dagger – Dagger’s main healing ability homes in on your target. Basically, you just need to aim close to your allies and hold down the fire button. The daggers will find their way as long as the reticle is on your allies.
  • Dagger can also boost healing and has an on-demand area of effect heal that can be used to sustain herself as well.
  • Cloak can use Dark Teleportation to save himself from deadly ults or flankers. This works on your teammates too, but most people tend to cancel out of the shroud immediately (unintentionally).
• Jeff the Land Shark – Jeff is quite literally a “spray and pray” healer. All you need to do is wave your beam of healing around damaged allies and you’ll keep them in tip-top shape with very little effort. His deceptively long range makes it impossible to not be helpful to some degree.
  • He can also provide burst healing or sustain himself with Healing Bubbles.
  • Even with poor aim, his secondary fire can still contribute some damage as it explodes in a small area.
• Rocket Raccoon – His healing orbs bounce, so as long as you’re firing in the general direction of your allies or at walls nearby, you’ll be helping people without thinking too much about it.
  • While it’s true that his gun does require decent aim, you can get by without firing a single bullet. This won’t really work in higher ranks, so don’t make a habit out of it (and before you bring it up, the guy who reached Celestial without doing damage was exposed as a fraud lol).
  • With smart placement, his B.R.B can bring a lot of value to the team. His ultimate is also a bit underrated, as the damage boost it provides is insanely good.

Type #2 – Experienced With Shooters? Pick These!

If you’re a pretty decent shot, or even just straight up good at shooters, you’ll get much more value out of the following strategists:

• Luna Snow – Everything Luna Snow does outside of her (currently) busted ultimate requires decent aim. Whether it’s healing allies, poking enemies, or freezing divers, all of it needs her aim to be pretty on point.
  • She can be a huge nuisance to flying characters as her fast projectiles can do enough damage to force a disengage.
  • With good aim, she can easily top up allies from long distances as long as they’re within her line of sight.
• Mantis – Although her healing doesn’t require any mechanical skill at all, her passive benefits greatly from it. Basically, all of her abilities require Life Orbs, which are recharged over time or instantly gained by landing a headshot.
  • By using her Natural Anger and constantly hitting enemies in the face, she can be a pseudo DPS while also keeping allies alive or even buffing their damage output with Allied Inspiration.
• Adam Warlock – Adam’s a bit of an “off healer“, which means that healing isn’t his main thing. He has great burst healing, but it comes with a fairly lengthy cooldown that makes it unreliable for prolonged fights.
  • His main value comes with his poking/burst capabilities. He can deal a ton of damage with both of his firing styles, and if you can land headshots with his primary (which are hitscan, by the way), you may as well be a DPS hero.
  • Outside of his damage, his utility can protect people from otherwise lethal ultimates or he can use his own ult to bring people back if he couldn’t save them.
• Invisible Woman – Sue requires both good aim and positioning in order to do any healing or damage, as she has fairly limited range. She can build up her (pretty good) ultimate quickly as long as her piercing projectiles are landing.
  • With quick reaction times, her abilities can also come in clutch in many situations. Whether it be saving herself or others, or even pulling in enemies to confirm kills for the team, her kit can do it all.

Type #3 – Err… Just Loki

I’m putting Loki in his own category as he’s a bit of an odd one. As far as his primary fire goes, he doesn’t need mechanical skill, but it certainly helps in certain situations. His attacks/heals have a small area of effect, so firing at people’s feet can work most of the time.

He’s both one of the strongest while also potentially the weakest strategist in the game, and all of it hinges on how well his clones are positioned. On his lonesome, his damage/healing output sucks. With both of his clones active and within range, though, he suddenly becomes a monster with high burst healing and conditional “invulnerability” of sorts.

Loki‘s incredibly fun to play, but he requires a lot more practice and game sense to perform well with. On top of that, his ultimate requires a bit of knowledge on everyone’s kit. A Loki who knows when to borrow and use a defensive ult is annoying, and one who also happens to be a competent DPS can be terrifying if they copy a damage dealer.

If you’re looking for a challenge, then he’s the perfect pick. Even if you’re just playing casually, though, he’s just really fun to mess around with. Just don’t forget to use his clones whenever you can!

To Sum Things Up…

There’s only a handful of strategists in the game at the moment, and outside of picking them for their ultimates, I like to think that most of them fall under two very distinct categories. Loki is the only weird one in the (currently) small lineup, and he’s honestly pretty hard to rate due to how he works.

If you’re still fairly new to the game/genre or just want to learn a couple of support heroes in case you need to flex, then the lists above should hopefully help you pick a few new mains! If you want my very biased take, I would recommend learning Rocket Raccoon if you’re solo queueing, as his mobility often lets him escape flankers without your team’s help!

I’ll continue to edit this in the future if new characters get released or old ones get reworked, so if you’re reading this now, you can assume that it applies to the current season!

Wanna be a damage dealer instead? I got a similar blog post that will answer the question “Which duelists should I try out?” that you should check out!