Marvel Rivals Strategy Guide · Cosmo Strategy Guides

01 · Season 10 In Its Current Shape

What is true as of the 11 September 2026 patch, and what stopped being true before it.

54 heroes, three roles, nothing forcing a shape 14 Vanguards, 27 Duelists and 12 Strategists, plus Deadpool, who is listed as a multi-role pick rather than slotted into one of the three. There is no role queue, so the game will happily let six of you lock Duelists and lose in eight minutes. The draft is a conversation, and somebody has to start it.
Season 10 landed on 11 September 2026 Butcher’s Blasphemy went live on 11 September, UTC, on client version 20260911; the seasonal reward track that ships alongside it is named The Godbomb, which is why you will see both names used for the same season. It is the first season with only one new hero, breaking a 17-month run of two per season that started back in Season 2.
Gorr the God Butcher is a melee Duelist He carries the all-black Necrosword, which morphs into a bow, a scythe and other forms, summons minions called Black Berserkers, and uses Symbiote Assimilation to cross ground fast. Assume he is a back-line threat until you have played ten games against him, not a front-line brawler.
God Quarry joins the Domination pool on 24 September 2026 A graveyard-of-gods layout. New maps are the one thing worth grinding in casual queues: you want your first ten games on it to be games where the rank does not move.
Scarlet Witch was rebuilt, not tuned Her kit now revolves around applying Chaos Mark, with a brand-new Scarlet Hex shockwave and a passive that feeds off marked targets. If your Wanda muscle memory is from Season 8, it is wrong now. Numbers are in section 10.
Every Strategist lost ultimate generation Healing-to-energy conversion dropped from 70 to 65 percent and damage-to-energy from 55 to 50 percent, across the whole role. Support ultimates now arrive measurably later in every round, which shifts the first big fight of a map later too.
47 of the 54 heroes were adjusted The 20260911 balance post touched 47 characters across all three roles. That is not a spot fix, it is a re-baseline, and it means roughly six in seven players opened the season on a hero whose numbers had changed. Read the post before you lock in, rather than losing three games working out why your combo stopped killing.
Seasons run about two months and split in half Season 9 ran 10 July to 11 September 2026, with 9.0 up to 7 August and 9.5 after it. Plan a climb around the halves: the meta you learn in the first four weeks gets retuned in week five.

02 · Reading The Three Roles

The full current roster, sorted the way the hero select screen sorts it.

Vanguard 14 heroes · roughly 500 to 850 health

Angela
Captain America
Devil Dinosaur
Doctor Strange
Emma Frost
Groot
Hulk
Magneto
Peni Parker
Rogue
The Hood
The Thing
Thor
Venom

Bring: The decision about where the fight happens. You pick the address; everyone else picks their angle on it.
Take: Space, crowd control, and the first three seconds of damage your 250-health teammates cannot survive.

One is the floor, two is the default. Going Vanguard-less on a Convoy map is a decision to lose the point and win the scoreboard.

Duelist 27 heroes · mostly 250 to 300 health

Black Cat
Black Panther
Black Widow
Blade
Cyclops
Daredevil
Elsa Bloodstone
Gorr
Hawkeye
Hela
Human Torch
Iron Fist
Iron Man
Magik
Mister Fantastic
Moon Knight
Namor
Phoenix
Psylocke
Scarlet Witch
Spider-Man
Squirrel Girl
Star-Lord
Storm
The Punisher
Winter Soldier
Wolverine

Bring: Aim, and the discipline to sit at your hero’s effective range instead of the range that feels exciting.
Take: Picks, and the energy those picks convert into. Half the roster is here, so the Duelist slot is where over-picking happens.

Mister Fantastic is the outlier at 375 health. Everyone else in this column dies to a single committed Vanguard, which is why the flank timing matters more than the flank route.

Strategist 12 heroes · the scarcest role in the game

Adam Warlock
Cloak & Dagger
Gambit
Invisible Woman
Jeff the Land Shark
Jubilee
Loki
Luna Snow
Mantis
Rocket Raccoon
Ultron
White Fox

Bring: An escape line. Line of sight to your team is the job; surviving the diver who wants that line of sight is the skill.
Take: Fight duration. Twelve heroes cover this for a 54-hero roster, so learning two of them is the fastest queue-time fix there is.

Two is standard. After the Season 10 energy nerf, a solo Strategist does not just heal less, they build their ultimate noticeably slower, which is the part people miss.

03 · Team-Up Loadouts After The Rework

The single biggest reason to ignore any Marvel Rivals guide written before July 2026.

The anchor and partner model is gone On 10 July 2026, NetEase removed every Team-Up in the game and shipped a replacement system in the same patch. Nineteen of the old pairings did not come back. If a guide tells you to identify the anchor first, it is describing a version of the game you cannot play.
Two loadouts per hero, and you choose one Every hero carries two selectable Team-Up loadouts, each naming a specific partner. Around 106 pairings existed across the roster as of mid-August 2026. You commit to one loadout at a time, not both.
The Base Effect is unconditional Pick the loadout and you get its core mechanic whether or not the named partner is in your lobby. This is the entire point of the rework: a ban can no longer delete a third of your kit, and a teammate switching off Hulk no longer takes an ability away from you mid-match.
The Enhanced Effect is the reward for drafting together When the named partner is actually on your team, the base ability gets upgraded: more damage, a debuff, a longer window. It is an upgrade to something you already have, not a new button, so the marginal value of forcing a pair is smaller than it was in Season 8.
Swap loadouts from the spawn room Change them in the Heroes menu before a match, or from the hero select screen in the spawn room during one. This matters: swapping loadout is a mid-match adjustment that costs you nothing, while swapping hero costs you half your ultimate charge.
Worked example: Emma Frost Her Luna Snow loadout grants Iced Out Diamond, a wall of ice and diamond that blocks incoming fire or traps an opponent behind it. That wall exists with or without Luna. With Luna on the team, the Enhanced Effect adds a 25 percent slow to her Diamond Form attacks.
Worked example: Winter Soldier Timeless Veterans (partner The Punisher) unlocks Burst Spike, a forward electric discharge from the bionic arm that damages and knocks back; with Punisher present it also applies Grounded and knocks back further. Expert Instinct (partner Elsa Bloodstone) banks a Culling Instinct stack on every KO you secure or take part in, and each stack cuts his other cooldowns.
Loadouts get balanced like abilities now Because they are permanent parts of a kit, they are patch targets. Season 10 pushed the Magneto and Scarlet Witch pairing from a 12-second to an 18-second cooldown. Check your two loadouts after every half-season note, not just your hero.

04 · The Energy Ledger

Ultimates are a currency with a published exchange rate. Learn the rate.

Three sources, and only three Damage dealt, healing dealt (self-healing counts), and a passive trickle that starts when the round starts. Nothing else fills the bar, which is why a Strategist who never shoots is building slower than one who does.
Vanguards and Duelists: 55 percent, 11 per second They convert 55 percent of damage dealt into energy and gain 11 per second passively. The passive trickle is the reason a Vanguard who does nothing but hold a corner still arrives at the next fight with something.
Strategists: 8 per second, and worse rates since Season 10 Passive gain is 8 per second, healing converts at 65 percent (down from 70) and damage at 50 percent (down from 55). Over a full round that is several seconds of delay on the ultimate you were planning the defence around.
The bar does not bank past 100 Once you are full, every point of damage and healing you generate is wasted energy. Sitting on a ready ultimate for a whole point is not patience, it is throwing away the charge on your next one.
A hero swap costs you half the bar At most 50 percent of your charge carries across a swap. At 100 percent you keep 50. This is the real price of the counter-pick, and it is why you swap on a death at low charge rather than the moment you notice a bad matchup.
An interrupted ultimate refunds 50 percent Get stunned out of a channel and you get half of it back. That cuts both ways: stunning an enemy mid-ultimate does not delete it, it costs them half a bar. Do not celebrate too early.
Costs are per-hero and they move Season 10 cut Iron Fist from 3,400 to 3,100 and pushed Black Widow from 2,800 to 3,100. Two heroes whose ultimates used to arrive at different times now arrive at the same time. That changes who you save your own for.
Track the enemy bars, not yours You always know your own state. The information that wins a fight is which of their six is ready. Open the scoreboard once between fights and call the names, not percentages: "Luna has it" is actionable, "Luna is at 80" is not.

05 · Objective Rules Worth Memorizing

Nine numbers that decide rounds more reliably than aim does.

Convoy opens with a 30-second setup Defenders can leave spawn during it. If your defence spends the setup standing in spawn adjusting a loadout, you have already handed over the first angle and the high ground behind it. Move at second one, argue about the comp while walking.
Convoy starts on a 5-minute clock Reaching the first checkpoint adds 3 minutes, the second adds 2. A stall that eats 90 seconds before the first checkpoint is worth more than a team wipe later, because it compounds against every extension.
Past a checkpoint, the convoy stops rolling back Attackers should treat each checkpoint as the actual objective, not the end of the track. Defenders should stop fighting for ground that is already banked and fall back to the next natural choke instead.
Three bodies is the payload speed cap One attacker moves it at 1.67 m/s, two at 1.93 m/s, three or more at 2.26 m/s. The fourth person standing on it adds exactly zero speed and one more target for a single area ultimate. Two escort, the rest take the next angle.
Domination is a best of three Each Domination map ships three sub-maps, each with its own mission area, and the first team to two takes the match. Losing the first sub-map costs you nothing but information, so spend it learning their comp rather than tilting.
The area arms 30 seconds after the gates open Nobody can capture during that window. Use it to take the high ground you want to fight from, not to run at the circle and stand in it doing nothing while the timer counts.
Score ticks about 1 percent every 1.2 seconds Which means a clean hold of roughly two minutes takes the sub-map. Framed that way, a 15-second delay you force by contesting is over 12 percent of their round, and it costs you one body.
Overtime does not drain while somebody contests Get anyone into the area and the bar freezes until they are removed. The lowest-value player on your team touching the point is worth more in that moment than your best player getting a kill 30 metres away.
Convergence is capture, then escort Attackers take a mission area, then walk a convoy to the goal, which makes it the longest format and the one where a comp that only works on defence gets exposed. As of Season 9.0 the ranked pool held 16 maps: 6 Convergence, 5 Convoy and 5 Domination, with Thebes added to Convoy in Season 9.

06 · Chrono Vision & Broken Geometry

The map is a consumable. There is a button that tells you which parts.

Press B to see what breaks Chrono Vision (B on keyboard, right on the d-pad) greys out the map and highlights destructible terrain in yellow and Recursive Destruction objects in red. Most players never press it once. Press it on your first walk out of spawn on any map you do not know.
Yellow is cover with an expiry date Planning a defence behind a yellow wall works for exactly one push. Build the plan around the geometry that is still grey, and use the yellow for the first engagement only.
Red is specific to Midtown Recursive Destruction, where structures you break can be brought back on your terms, lives on Empire of Eternal Night: Midtown. On every other map, red is not a thing you are looking for.
The Midtown triggers are gated by checkpoints The rubble pile at Central Station only wakes up after the convoy clears the first checkpoint, and the collapsed buildings appear after the second. The broken Iron Man suit roughly halfway along the route is the easiest one to set off.
Destruction is bounded by design The developers deliberately capped it so layouts do not fully collapse, and broken structures regenerate after a time. You cannot flatten a map into an open field, so stop planning as if you can.
Removing the floor beats removing the sniper If a Hawkeye or a Black Widow has an entrenched perch and you have no dive hero, check whether the ledge itself is yellow. Dropping the surface someone is standing on is a legitimate answer and it costs you no cooldowns that matter.

07 · The Ban Phase Is Now A Vote

Season 10 rewrote this. If you learned it last season, relearn it.

Bans begin at Gold III Below that there is no ban phase at all, which is why the jump from Gold to Platinum feels like a different game: you suddenly lose access to the hero you have been coasting on.
Three per team, alternating in a 1-2-2-1 order The turns alternate rather than resolving simultaneously, so the later bans are reactions to what has already been taken. The team banning second gets the last word and should hold something back for it.
Your team votes on each ban Bans are decided by a majority vote of the five other people in your lobby, not by one player clicking fast. One person can no longer spend the team’s ban on a personal grudge, and equally, your correct ban needs two other people to agree with it.
Double bans were removed Both teams can no longer spend a ban on the same hero, so six distinct names leave the pool before the first pick. That is roughly a ninth of the roster gone every ranked game at Gold III and up.
A ban removes the hero for everyone It does not matter which side banned it. If you ban the enemy’s best Duelist, you have also banned it from your own flex player, which is exactly the mistake people make when they copy a ban list off a chart.
Ban what your team cannot answer The highest win rate hero on a public chart is not automatically your ban. If your group has two people comfortable on a diving Vanguard, the dive-vulnerable Strategist is not your problem and banning it wastes a turn. Ban the hero that beats your comfort picks.
Read their bans as a plan A team that bans two Strategists is telling you they intend to dive. A team that bans shields is telling you they have a long-range comp queued up. You get that information for nothing; use it before you lock.

08 · The Ladder & The Season Reset

Nine tiers, 100 points per division, and two tiers taken back from you every season.

Nine tiers, in order Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Grandmaster, Celestial, Eternity, One Above All. The first seven behave like a normal ladder; the last two do not, and people plan badly because they assume they do.
Three divisions each up to Celestial Every tier from Bronze to Celestial splits into III, II and I, and each division takes 100 points. A full tier is therefore 300 points, which is the useful unit for setting a session goal.
Eternity has no divisions You stop promoting and simply accumulate points. The ladder turns from a staircase into a leaderboard, and the strategy turns from climbing into volume plus consistency.
One Above All is the top 500 It is not a rank you promote into. It is the 500 highest point totals in the region at any moment, so it can be taken from you by someone else winning while you are asleep.
The Season 10 reset took six divisions Two full tiers. Diamond III restarted at Gold III; Grandmaster III restarted at Platinum III. That is the baseline for a full new season, and it means the first fortnight of every season is spent re-earning ground you already held.
Chrono Shield absorbs the first bad game It blocks the point loss that would demote you, then needs time to recharge, and the higher your rank the more losses it takes to get it back. Treat it as a one-shot insurance policy, not a safety net you can lean on all evening.
Competitive unlocks at account level 15 Use the levelling as its intended purpose: get through it on the two or three heroes you actually want to play ranked, not on whoever is unlocked and fun.
No five-stacks, and solo or duo from Celestial Below Celestial you can queue in any party size except a full five. From Celestial upward it is solo or duo only, and parties are also held to a narrow division spread. Build a trio or a four, not a five, if you want to keep queueing together.

09 · Diagnosing A Losing Session

Nine symptoms, what each one is actually caused by, and the one change to make.

Symptom	What is actually happening	The change to make
You die two seconds into every fight	You are entering ahead of the Vanguard and outside your Strategist’s line of sight, so the first cooldown that lands on you is unanswerable.	Enter second. Before you commit, confirm one healer can physically see the spot you are about to stand in.
Your ultimate is never ready	You are pouring chip damage into shields and bonus health, which are temporary pools, instead of into bodies.	Shoot whatever is not shielded. Stop feeding a Doctor Strange barrier for 20 seconds because it is the easiest thing to hit.
You have your ultimate every fight and still lose them	You are firing it alone into six people who are all healthy.	Hold until one teammate confirms a second ultimate, then call yours by name before you press the key.
The enemy always holds the high ground	Your team rotates through the same ground-level choke every single round, so they only have to hold one angle.	Take the long flank once per round even when it costs 15 seconds. Making them cover two entrances is worth more than arriving early at one.
You win the fight and lose the point	You chased the last two kills instead of standing in the mission area while the round clock ran.	The moment a fight tips, the nearest body walks to the objective. Kills that happen off the point are decoration.
The convoy crawls with five people on it	Only three bodies contribute speed; the other two are grouped up for a single area ultimate.	Two escort, four hold the next angle. The speed is identical and the wipe risk is not.
Your Strategist dies first, every fight	Nobody is peeling and the Strategist has no exit route, at 250 to 300 health against a diver built to kill exactly that.	Assign one named player to peel before the round starts. Not "someone", a name.
Counter-picking is not helping	You are swapping at high charge, so each swap silently burns up to half an ultimate.	Swap on a death at low charge. Mid-round at 90 percent, change your Team-Up loadout instead, which costs nothing.
You climb every week and give it back	You keep queueing after losses, and the reset already takes six divisions a season without your help.	Hard stop at two consecutive losses. Come back with the map and the ban list still in your head, not the last fight.

10 · Positioning By Role

Where to stand, with the Season 10 numbers that explain why.

Vanguard: you choose the address Your team fights wherever you are standing, whether or not it is a good place. Walk to the ground you want before you engage, because five people will follow you into a bad one without noticing.
Vanguard: a shield is a timer Season 10 cut Magneto from 650 to 600 health and his shield from 250 to 200, and The Hood from 600 to 550 with his projectile damage reduction halved from 35 to 20 percent. Barriers buy seconds for a rotation; they are not a wall to stand behind and trade under.
Vanguard: The Thing pays for a longer cooldown He went from 750 to 725 health with a cooldown stretched from 10 to 12 seconds, while Emma Frost went up from 650 to 675. Two seconds is a whole re-engage window; if you played Thing on a rhythm, the rhythm changed.
Duelist: play the range, not the fantasy Most of the column sits at 250 to 300 health. Wolverine’s claws went from 15 to 18 damage per hit and Iron Fist’s opening strikes from 35 to 38 with the fifth at 60, which makes the brawl column better but does not make you durable.
Duelist: a slow flank is still a good flank Twenty seconds walking a long route is 20 seconds your team spends in a 5v6. Take it only when the objective clock allows it, and never when the point is being captured. Black Cat, in particular, lost the invincibility on Phantom Pursuit in Season 10 and now gets 50 percent damage reduction instead, so the escape you relied on is survivable damage now.
Strategist: hold an exit, not just a sightline The common failure is a healer with perfect line of sight and no route out of it. Pick a pocket with two ways to leave. Being briefly unable to heal is recoverable; being dead is not.
Strategist: the blue bar is not a buffer Bonus health, the blue segment on the right, decays within seconds, with Rocket Raccoon’s armour packs as the exception. Jeff’s healing went from 130 to 140 per second and Loki’s missile healing from 10 to 15, while Cloak and Dagger’s Vulnerable dropped from 28 to 20 percent.
Everyone: respawns stretch in overtime Normal respawns sit roughly in the 5 to 10 second band, and they lengthen for both teams once a contested overtime triggers. A death in overtime therefore costs more than the same death at the start of a round. Play the last 20 seconds of a round more carefully than the first three minutes.

11 · Habits That Bleed Points

Nine repeatable mistakes, in rough order of how much rank they cost.

Locking a Duelist third Twenty-seven of the 54 heroes are Duelists, so the role fills itself. The person who locks the third one has decided the team will run one Strategist, which after the Season 10 energy nerf is a heavier handicap than it was last season.
Topping up one target while two others fall Tunnel-healing the teammate you can see is the most common Strategist error. Sweep the health bars on a rhythm, the way you sweep the minimap, rather than when somebody types.
Playing a Strategist as a pure healer Damage converts to energy too, at 50 percent for the role. A Strategist who never shoots is choosing to have their ultimate late in every round, which is exactly the ultimate the team is planning around.
Waiting for a Vanguard to save you When a diver lands on you, your Vanguard is 20 metres away holding a choke. Turn and use your own crowd control immediately. Self-peel is a skill you practise, not a favour you request.
Pressing the ultimate after two teammates are down A reactive ultimate into a 4v6 usually buys a slower loss. The same button pressed 10 seconds earlier, as the fight escalates, wins it. If you are consistently late, you are watching health bars instead of the fight.
One-tricking through a wide patch Season 10 adjusted 47 of the 54 heroes. If you refuse to read a balance post, you will spend a week losing to changes you could have read in four minutes.
Chasing a kill toward their spawn A wounded enemy running home is running toward five teammates and a fast respawn. Let them go. Their 10 seconds out of the fight is the same to you whether they die or not.
Typing when you could ping Text takes your hands off the controls for several seconds, which is longer than most engagements. Pings do not, and they work across every language in the lobby. Save the keyboard for the setup phase.
Queueing angry A tilted session undoes a good one at roughly the same rate, and the Chrono Shield only covers the first loss. Stop at two in a row. This is the single cheapest rank you will ever gain.

12 · Audio, Video & Input

A short setup pass that pays back on every hero.

Headphones, and plain stereo Ultimate voice lines announce themselves before the effect lands, and they are directional. A stereo headset beats a virtual surround profile for working out which side a Hela or a Jeff is calling from.
Leave headroom on master volume Around half to two thirds is enough. Pushed to maximum, a team fight becomes a wall of sound and the one cue you needed disappears into it.
Motion blur and chromatic aberration off Both smear hero silhouettes at exactly the moment you are trying to identify one. Turn them off before your first ranked game of a season, not after a patch resets them.
Raise field of view in steps Push it up a few points at a time and stop at the value where you can still track your own hero during a dive. A field of view you cannot read is worse than a narrow one you can.
Colour options are a readability setting The alternate palettes sharpen ability outlines and team outlines for everyone, not only players with a colour deficiency. Try both and keep whichever makes enemy zones pop faster.
Bind the ping wheel within reach If you have to move your hand to ping, you will not ping. Put it somewhere you can hit while still holding your movement keys and aiming.
Keep Chrono Vision bound comfortably It is on B by default and most people never touch it. If B is awkward on your layout, move it, then actually use it on the walk out of spawn on unfamiliar maps.
Re-check settings after a season patch Season 10 shipped engine-level work including Intel XeSS 3 support. Large graphics updates are exactly when a preference quietly reverts, so spend two minutes in the menu before you queue.

13 · A Two-Week Practice Plan

One season half is about five weeks. Here is how to spend the first two.

Most players practise by queueing. That works for aim and for nothing else, and it is why the same three mistakes survive hundreds of hours. Marvel Rivals gives you four practice surfaces, and only one of them is a ranked match: the Tutorial set, the Practice Range with its simulation pads and shooting gallery, Practice vs AI at Easy, Medium and Hard, and Doom Match. Use them in that order and the ranked games stop being where you learn.

Step 1. Days 1 and 2: pick three heroes, not nine

Choose one Vanguard, one Duelist and one Strategist and commit to them for the fortnight. Three heroes played deeply will carry you further than nine played shallowly, and with six distinct names banned in every game from Gold III upward, a one-trick is a liability while a three-trick almost never gets locked out. Pick a Strategist you genuinely like: twelve heroes cover the role for the entire 54-hero roster, and queue times reward you for it.

Step 2. Days 3 and 4: read both loadouts for all three

Open the Heroes menu and read the Base Effect and Enhanced Effect on each of your six Team-Up loadouts. Write down, in one line each, what you get without the partner. That line is the version you will have in most games. Then take each hero into the Practice Range, spawn the named partner on a simulation pad, and watch what the Enhanced Effect actually changes. Guessing at this from a video is how people end up drafting for a bonus that turns out to be a 25 percent slow.

Step 3. Days 5 and 6: learn one map properly

Take the map you lose on most. Walk it in a custom game or an early casual queue with Chrono Vision on, and mark three things: the high ground you can reach without a mobility cooldown, the cover that turns yellow, and the two entrances to the mission area furthest from the obvious one. That is 20 minutes of work that survives the whole season, because map knowledge does not get patched.

Step 4. Days 7 to 10: play with one rule per session

Queue normally, but hold yourself to a single rule for the whole session. Session one: never enter a fight first unless you are the Vanguard. Session two: call every ultimate by name before pressing it. Session three: touch the objective the moment a fight tips. One rule is enforceable; a list of seven is not, which is why "play better" never works.

Step 5. Days 11 and 12: run the fault-finding table

Go back to section 09 and find the symptom that matches your last ten games. Be honest about which row you are: the answer is almost always "entered first" or "chased kills off the point", and almost never "my team". Apply that one change for two full sessions before you look at another.

Step 6. Days 13 and 14: build the swap rule

Decide, before you queue, what you will do when a matchup goes wrong. The rule that works: at low charge, swap hero on your next death; at high charge, swap Team-Up loadout instead and keep the bar. Half your ultimate is a real cost, and people pay it every game without ever noticing they did.

What to expect

Two weeks of this will not move you two tiers, and anyone promising that is selling something. It will remove the deaths that are not outplays, which is most of them, and it will mean the next balance patch finds you reading a list of numbers rather than losing five games to figure them out. The season reset takes six divisions back every time regardless; the only thing that compounds across seasons is the part you actually learned.