Marvel Rivals Psylocke Guide – Tips to Get Started

One of my favorite mutants, Psylocke, is an insanely strong flanker in Marvel Rivals. As one would expect, she’s a ninja who specializes in flanking the enemy team, deleting squishy targets, and slipping back to safety before anyone can get her. If that sounds like your type of character, here are a few tips to help you get started!

Psylocke’s Playstyle in a Nutshell

Psylocke’s whole thing is that she can go in and burst people down quickly before disappearing into the shadows with her invisibility or dashing away to safety. Her abilities are very straightforward, so I believe most of the difficulty of playing as her comes from requiring proper positioning and patience.

With decent aim, she can delete squishy targets in no time, and she can somewhat sustain herself with Wing Shurikens. The best way I can describe her main weapon is that it’s a two-shot shotgun that has a set pattern and a tight spread.

Having said that, she still has to be pretty close as her damage will already start falling off at around mid-range distances. Same as her ultimate, which targets everything within a pretty sizeable radius around her.

Let’s take a closer look at her abilities…

Psylocke’s Abilities & Team-Ups

As with all of my other hero guides, this section is done in list format so I can insert some little tips with each ability:

• Psionic Crossbow (Primary attack) – As mentioned earlier, her primary is essentially a two-shot shotgun that can deal a lot of damage up close and hurts even more with headshots.
  • Have a hard time going for the head? Aim at around neck or upper torso level. This way, some of your projectiles will still get a critical hit.
  • Each burst fires four projectiles. One projectile hits at the center of your crosshair, while the other three form a triangle around it. Shoot at a wall to see for yourself!
  • Each hit reduces the cooldown of all her abilities.
    • As far as I can tell, each projectile applies a small amount of cooldown reduction. If you hit all four per burst, it drops cooldowns by a whole second.
• Wing Shurikens (Secondary attack) – Sai fires five shurikens that stick to whichever surface they hit, granting a bit of bonus health for each projectile that hits an enemy.
  • After a few seconds or when cast again, the shurikens will return to her. Once they fly back to Sai, the projectiles will deal damage again.
    • Shurikens stuck to an enemy player will deal significantly more damage after they leave the target compared to when it originally sticks to them. You’ll want to recall them immediately if you want to maximize your damage output in a short span of time.
    • For a brief moment, the shurikens will travel to where your crosshair is pointed before flying back to you. This means you can aim at nearby enemies and potentially deal damage to them as the shurikens fly back.
  • Weave this in between your two-shot attacks and recall it quickly to deal a ton of burst damage.
    • It goes something like this: Psionic Crossbow -> Wing Shurikens (recall immediately) -> Psionic Crossbow. If everything lands, even without headshots, this can delete a non-vanguard almost instantly.
• Psi-Blade Dash (Shift) – She will dash towards the target direction and deal a bit of damage to enemies she passes through.
  • You can hold up to two charges of this. Each charge takes 8 seconds to replenish, and this can be sped up by landing Psionic Crossbow shots.
  • Try to save at least one charge whenever you dive in so you can quickly get out regardless of whether or not your flank was successful.
  • There’s a mechanic not mentioned ingame where dashing will automatically recall Wing Shurikens. These will fly to the location where Psylocke initiated her dash before returning to her.
• Psychic Stealth (E) – Psylocke becomes invisible for a few seconds and gains a movement speed boost while it’s active.
  • Pretty self-explanatory. Use it to escape or to sneak around and safely approach the other team’s backline.
  • It has a long cooldown, which only starts after the invisibility ends. Don’t spam it randomly!
  • Attacking or using any abilities will cancel you out of this immediately.
  • Getting hit while invisible will not cancel it, but this will reveal you for a brief moment. She basically flickers for a split second.
• Dance of the Butterfly (Ultimate) – Psylocke will start automatically targeting enemies within a large ring around her. For the next few seconds, she’ll rapidly slash one target at a time, dealing a ton of damage each hit.
  • Contrary to what the large radius might imply, it’s actually better to have fewer targets when using it.
    • If you’re trying to hit a full team, competent players can do enough healing to keep everyone alive as Psylocke goes after each person one by one.
    • Adam Warlock in particular can use Soul Bond to make her ultimate a mere tickle.
  • Psylocke can move the ring.
  • Enemies require line of sight to be hit by this. If there is a wall between the center of the ring and potential targets, she won’t dash to them.
    • Shields, like Dr. Strange’s, or Groot’s walls work here too.
      • The shields and bubbles (Magneto/Hulk) themselves will get targeted, which is mostly a waste of a slash.
    • Invisibility also has the same effect. Loki, Invisible Woman, an enemy Psylocke, or even Moon Knight with his Cloak & Dagger team-up can avoid damage this way.

Her only team-up at the moment is with Magik. When she is in the same team, Psylocke can use the Psionic Disc ability. When used, she will travel back in time a few seconds prior while also gaining bonus health based on how much HP she is missing.

This does not heal the lost HP. She just gains a fraction of her missing HP as temporary health, which in most cases should be enough to let you survive a potentially lethal hit if somebody is actively chasing you.

Patience is the Key

The key to getting picks while flanking as Psylocke is to be patient and wait for an opportunity to catch somebody off-guard. You don’t have to dive straight into the backline the second you see the enemy team. In some cases, that will just lead to a very swift death… for you.

When you’re flanking, take a moment to stand behind a corner and assess the situation. If the other team’s currently distracted and/or engaging with the rest of your team, then it’s time for you to pounce on an unsuspecting strategist or even duelist in the back.

Isolated players are typically the best ones to go for, but if that’s not an option, try to aim for the nearest strategist. If you can delete a healer or at least divert their attention long enough, your team (in theory) should be able to capitalize on that.

This becomes a lot harder as you play against better players, which brings us to the next point…

Don’t Flank 24/7

If the other team starts becoming more aware of your flanking attempts or there just isn’t any room to even try, don’t shy away from playing alongside your team. The damage you can do is far from negligible, even at around mid-range. Don’t forget to throw some Wing Shurikens while you’re on the frontlines too.

You can also aim for vanguards if you can find an odd angle to shoot around them if they’re shielding, and for tanks like Thor or Peni Parker, you don’t even have to go around. By dishing out a lot of damage with your team, you’ll notice that your ultimate will build up rather quickly.

Once you have your ultimate ready, reposition yourself using your dashes and/or invisibility to reach the backline. Your main targets with it should be the strategists, and if it forces them to pop a defensive ultimate (e.g. Luna Snow‘s) or a long cooldown like Loki’s Regeneration Domain, that can still be a pretty good trade in some cases.

Who To Watch Out For?

Whether you’re flanking or duking it out with the others up front, there’s a few people you might want to try and be a little more careful with. A good Winter Soldier is one of them, because he can mitigate your one-shot combos with his bonus health and destroy you faster if his aim is on point. He can also hook you back in if you try to dash out.

Mantis and Luna Snow are two strategists who are easy for you to kill, but they’re also ones who can counter you with a sleep or freeze. They still have to land it, of course, so it isn’t always a threat. Just be mindful of the possibility that you might get rooted in place.

Rocket Raccoon is another one, but not because he can kill you. The little rat is just way too hard to kill if he can dash and climb away fast enough. He’s one of my favorites to play in grandmaster lobbies at the moment, so yeah, I’ve been on both ends of this interaction. Try to find and break his B.R.B (revive device) though.

Namor in general will be a pain to deal with. He’s the anti-dive character of the game right now, and ones who can consistently buff their turrets will make your life a living hell if you try to flank.

Wrapping Up

These are mainly based on my experiences playing as her casually, as well as things I’ve observed from much better Psylocke mains in my ranked games (I’m chilling at GM right now). She’s basically a high risk high reward dive character, but you can also play her as a relatively safe short to mid-range DPS if the situation calls for it.

I feel like she’s one of the more well-rounded DPS characters in the game right now. She’s a strong pick overall and can work with almost any composition, but she’s also got a lot of counters. Hopefully these tips can help you on your learning journey with Psylocke!

Wanna learn more? I have a more general guide on which duelist is right for you that can help you pick more DPS characters to try out!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go read the comic that this version of her is based on…