Marvel Rivals

[one-armed dwarf]

I got my first match nerves out of the way so I'll start the thread up, but also as a way to encourage others to download it 👀. 

 

I ran online with Luna Snow, I think her name is. Did 2 matches and won both 2-0 (best of 3). Chucks healing ice at people and wears booty shorts. I think I did reasonably well with 0 experience in the genre and no idea of how to strategise. I just chucked ice at things if they looked like they were dying, if I even noticed them, and other healers did the same for me. In the second match I did here it looked like there was one Wolverine who clearly got the memo "kill the fucking healers first". Brains and brawn that guy

 

Spoiler

 

 

Seems fun but chaotic and hard to get a handle of the UI you're supposed to be looking at. Luna has a move on the shift key which increases her DPS and HPS, I think. She has a move on right click which delivers a freeze on a target and heals her, so that's her self sustain. Her ultimate gives HPS and DPS depending on pressing Q to toggle. E is a sort of tethered heal between you and another character, to give them a passive defensive buff. 

 

Very straightforward with Luna, easy to get to grips with in a game that's sort of overwhelming. Healers have always been my preference. That said I don't think she'll be a long term pick, once I get comfortable. I'm interested in the more complicated ones eventually, and I'd like to try a tank as well so I have an alt if the strat role is taken, leaning towards Steven Strange because he's voiced by Grimoire Weiss and thinks with portals, so his match chatter actually sounds good

 

I've also played Cloak and Dagger, who's harder to heal with but the stance swap thing seems interesting. Can't quite figure out the shadow powers, apparently they blind and hide people but I feel like I have to be on the receiving end of this in a match first before I even know what this means and how it impacts strategy. You can shoot a rectangle line AOE heal at people and a little healing bubble which if FFXIV has taught me anything, fucking nobody will be standing in that thing

 

Anyway two people on the first match had 0 percent accuracy on some rounds, it was hard and I was sad. But I got MVP in my 2nd match with her tho, maybe she's cool 

 

 

I'm liking what I'm seeing with Iron Fist, for DPS. He has a defensive stance which procs a stinger attack and can triple jump, all his attacks reduce the cooldown of his defense stance. He also has self sustain with E. He's really agile, just seems like the goto for that role and I don't think I'll be changing my mind

[Maryokutai]

I played some matches, too. Went into training first to go through the Strategists and decided to stick with Cloak & Dagger for these initial games as they remind me somewhat of Zenyatta from Overwatch. It's hard to gauge if they're good or not but I seemed to be doing reasonably well, also got that MVP thing a few times, including after this snowball of a game:

 

 

The way I play them is running around as Dagger most of the time considering it's only her who can heal, but swap to Cloak either if I see a good opportunity for his debuff rectangle or if I get jumped so I can use his weird floaty backjump thing to escape. Had a Venom isolate me earlier and that allowed me to turn the tables (though granted he did play that encounter rather poorly):

 

Spoiler

 

 

Speaking of Venom, I think it was pretty clever to put him, Hulk and Cap in the tank category because it means you usually have one of those in your team as the characters are super popular, despite the class itself traditionally being not. Overall the game feels good to play, a bit hectic especially since I have no idea what 99% of Ultimates do so I usually just hear someone shout and if it was close to me I'm dead. Enjoying it so far, no idea if I'm going to stick with it but very solid release – from a technical standpoint, too. No server issues or anything despite a bazillion players playing it.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

My electric is out all day today so can't play until way later which is disappointing. One struggle I had is with the amount of people who just pick DPS and I have to solo support. Also the type of player who does that tends to play their own game and wonder why they die spamming the 'heal me' shortcut as they're all isolated and spread off in different directions from the single healer. I hope this is an element of the community which improves over time cause its hard to see how that is fun for anyone

 

Just having one other co heal or a tank makes a big difference, but a co heal especially as healer self sustain seems weak. Cloak has her healing bubble thing, but you'll get burned down fast if someone is focused on you and the DPS on your team think theyre playing DMC instead of a team game where they should try and divert attention from your

 

It is interesting to me how little I know about any of the healer characters via cultural osmosis and the films, compared with tanks. Loki is in there, and so is raccoon. But I think hardly anyone would know who these other characters are. Maybe Mantis. Definitely needs more big and popular people in that role

[Maryokutai]

Part of me wants to say that'll become better when you unlock rank and people actually try to play their best, but from experience I also know that you'll always have these kinds of players on some matches, unless you're really good and manage to get to the upper echelon of the leaderboard. Haven't seen how all that works here yet as I'm only Level 6 I think (rank matches unlock at 10).

 

On console nobody's even communicating at the moment. I tried the 'fall back' command here and there, to no avail. At the moment I have no idea what this will evolve into, with how many potential matchups there are and those team actions which I haven't looked into at all (except for C&D's, which funnily enough does nothing for them but gives Moon Knight invisibility). It'll probably evolve more into a counter-pick kind of game instead one that forces specific role compositions. If you run into a strong Black Widow for example no amount of healing is going to prevent her headshots, so you might be better off having an extra damage dealer to keep her in check instead of a second Strategist. But, well, it's very early days.

[one-armed dwarf]

I wonder though if there's a healer in there that's ahead of the pack for hard carrying by themselves. I might need to see what's going on with Golden Boy cause he has that res mechanic.

 

Fuck sake tho, there's really too many DPS in this. I should really just embrace chaos I think and pick a DPS as well, become as unga. Or maybe try tanking again, I struggled with Mr Strange last night but Peni Parker seems super cool and gimmicky in a fun way with the mines and webs everywhere.

 

I read the other day that Gerard Way from MCR created this character, that's cool.

 

---

 

Tanking is tough, I'm not sure how to crack it yet. Trying to maintain awareness of where my healer is and making their job possible is tough to figure. I went on with venom and was swinging around clueless smashing gunk into the floor, crawling on walls all weird. Really terrible stuff, died ten times and barely made a dent, stepped in all the floor aoes and stuns. Dragged my team down with my oozey ass. I'm motivated though, I can figure out this puzzle.

 

Was one of those rare groups where there were two co healers so I'm glad to get the practice. I doubt my teammates were happy with it but fuck it, they could have subbed in to tank lol

[one-armed dwarf]

Hulk is great fun. I've lost every game with him and I'm a huge (green) liability, but it's the first tank to really click (even though I'm shit at him)

 

He has a great huge leap attack that you charge up with spacebar. I used it to jump up and beat the shit out of Storm. Fuck you Storm. You can stun enemies temporarily with an E projectile, and the right click is a gamma clap with good range. His ultimate is the attack where he beats the shit out of Loki from the first Avengers film, I think.

 

You can also throw Logan at people, but I couldn't get the player in the game to confirm the toss attack. But that sounds like it would be huge fun. 

 

Hulk tickles the MMO part of my brain more than the other tanks so far due to his squad damage mitigation cooldown on left shift. Also has none of that extremely disorientating swinging nonsense Venom has. I'll have to stick with Venom a bit tho cause he has a Spidey synergy, a way less cool one than Hulk&Logan but it's something.

 

Having to fall back to being Bruce Banner when Hulk dies is also interesting, you have a small health pool and shoot a gun, and can launch enemies with grenades. It's a whole other game for a little bit until you hulk out again, or just die (more likely tbh)

[Maryokutai]

The Banner thing is weird, it's one of the many things they copied from Overwatch but the character in that game can make her Mech explode before being ejected (= turning into Bruce) so people don't always have the luxury of focusing her down. Bruce on the other hand just stands where Hulk dies with a fraction of his health pool and no way to safely reposition. Seems very gimmicky and probably something they're going to change down the line, because it pretty much just delays his respawn at the moment.

 

I might look into some tanks as well, I think Magneto is the one who can summon a shield, which would have come very handy in a game where we went up against Black Widow and Hawkeye and all of us were just insta-dead all the time. The BW player seemed to be on PC though looking at the killcam which is thankfully something I won't run into anymore when playing ranked where cross-play is turned off. I wonder if Psylocke is maybe a good counter for these sniper archetypes, other than just being super nimble and avoiding sightlines, which seems really difficult when you can tear down buildings.

[one-armed dwarf]

Ye I switched to Mags. Decided having a shield on cooldown for him or a co tank makes him really versatile. Means he can be MT or an off tank support

 

Not as cool as a take on the tank archetype as I would like giving how baller he was in xmen 97 but I was getting things done with him.

[one-armed dwarf]

New rule, if bitches be bitching Imma just roll DPS

 

 

 

Magneto was right, kill them all

 

Someone told me raccoon might be a better solo healing option so I'mma test him out a bit though. tbf I think a solo heal comp should be possible with 2 tanks but if someone is not finding the HPS enough then they need to maybe get off their working-too-hard-at-the-bottom-of-the-duelist-leaderboard Iron Man and get on Luna or something and help 😠 

[Maryokutai]

I think shit-talking in the match channel is even more toxic than the heal whining, but looking at this reminded me why I turned off chat in Overwatch years ago. There's really nothing you can do here, looking at the stats of this game it seems to have been a foregone conclusion anyway (5-8 on a character with one-shot potential is abysmally bad). Nothing to do here than move on and hope those guys don't stick with the game long enough to hop into ranked.

[one-armed dwarf]

A big killer with CnD I'm finding is the runback, she's so slow. It's maybe making me rethink playing the character. Luna can ice sprint back, rocket has boosts. Jeff can uh, dig or something. 

 

I think she seems to be the best healer in a coordinated group cause she's so versatile especially if you have a co-healer that can soft carry healing for a bit so you can flex being a green DPS and debuff/support. But in quick-queue PUGs it's all a bit hectic, they don't really wait to see where the healers are.

 

Loki has his clone teleport, which might be wasteful of resources but could work there also. He seems to require some real setup though, again a lot of it relies on party awareness of what the green things are on the floor. While Jeff's bubbles are a little more obvious as to their effect. 

 

Unlocked competitive mode by doing random stuff with Peni Parker, it works like this apparently. 

 

 

Peni is cool, bounced between her and Venom for tanking and I changed a 'swinging' setting in the gameplay to make Venom more manageable. Use the swing as an escape and punish type of thing. Peni parker puts webs on the floor which boost damage mitigation and movement speed, and can stick to things and rubber band around planting hidden mines. 

 

So just be random and maybe you win or something

 

Did two matches on comp and did quite well in the first, won anyway, got smoked in the 2nd. Lack of knowledge of what DPS characters do in this game and how dangerous some are is my weakness after spending all of quick match grinding playing heals and tanks. But tbf, I'm not quite sure what to do about an Iron Man who aimed his ult at me, specifically, after I'd just returned from getting a Moon Knight ult jump scare. Seems vindictive 🤔

[Maf]

Word on the street is don’t download until they nerf Iron Fist 

[one-armed dwarf]

There's always going to be problematic characters but it's not like this is a 1v1 fighting game, if you get beat up by a triple jumping Iron Fist you can just immediately switch to him and do the exact same shit back to him, or someone else on your team can. None of this character power level stuff actually matters when you're at the scrub level because they aren't using the broken shit in exploitative ways anyway, that's for the big leagues when it actually becomes a real problem.

 

What's actually nuts is the stuff with Peni Parker, where you put webs on the floor everywhere to buff your health and with a healer who's actually awake you have so much damage soaking power. Of course, a competent Iron Fist can get behind your backline and kill your Jeff but none of these things are really big disruptions in having fun with the game. It's more people's attitudes online that can be an issue (chat screenshots above), but I can't get mad at the power levels of anyone on here like I might get mad at Leo in Strive. 

 

This game is great, it's my number 2 of the year. Balatro and FFVII are joint number 1. I've even gotten less bad at swinging with Venom (still find it shit in the Tokyo stage tho, it's like that stage hates him and Spider-Man).

 

One thing I've really gotten better at now is switching characters for counterplay purposes. Was struggling to defend against an enemy Peni as Peni myself, but then thought well if the bugs are on the floor eating my feet, then I can be Groot and stand on trees and kill her that way. I Am Groot (this means "fuck off Peni I'm on a tree")

 

Peni can also do things like this, people at the beginner level forget she's this mobile. Fuck you I am Batman I am Peni. 

 

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxbixNqB1coJK-tXz62Mn25DBZS1BB16gJ?si=H8sCJCgoJIYjg1-k

 

Download this you coward, I can tank as Venom and give Spidey a symbiote move. 

[Maryokutai]

Iron Fist's Ultimate is pretty dumb but I find it hard to properly evaluate these melee characters at the moment. Right now they seem good because they take the aiming aspect out of the skill equation, so in a 1:1 scenario they seem braindead and strong when you go up against them with a projectile character, but that'll probably change over time when people start figuring out how to stop their approach and land the stuns more consistently (I miss all of them right now). Spider-Man is the only melee character I find annoying because of invisibility and wallclimb. There's been moments where that asshole has been hanging out on the path from our spawn and just 3-shot me without any chance of it seeing coming.

 

I've been trying out some tanks but I'm really not feeling them in this game. Magneto is probably the closest I feel comfortable with because he's a mix between Overwatch's Sigma and Zarya, but at the time time I often feel like I'm really not doing much. I blocked 35k damage in one game but we still lost, and his damage output isn't good or consistent enough to carry on his own, nor can he hold the line by himself if you happen to be the only tank (which is suboptimal anyway, but some other tanks seem to do better in that scenario). Tried Strange for a bit as well, who's just a very shitty version of Magneto and I haven't seen anyone doing something with him that would convince me otherwise. I wanted to try Peni but after one look at her character page I was 'nope'. Too much colour-coded lingo.

 

I did dabble a bit with some damage dealers and really enjoyed Hela. Rather simple toolset, but very rewarding if you land her shots and her Ult is really strong. Scarlet Witch seems really strong right now as well for similar reasons as the melee characters because she has auto-aim, multiple escape options and an Ult that even if it doesn't hit works extremely well as zoning tool. Seems a bit too good of a jack-of-all-trades IMO.

 

I like the game, but it's not that mind-blowing ecstatic kind of experience Overwatch was in 2016. Part of it for me is probably because it is so very similar but not as refined, but I also think its visual language could be clearer. It's new and hectic, of course, but there are certain things where the game itself fails to properly communicate what is happening. Peni's a good example here I think, because unless you look up what her webs do, you'd have no idea. Magneto's Ult channels a circle on the ground which I thought was where it would be launched at but turns out the circle just shows the debris it's collecting to power up which is completely insignificant info. Just two examples, but there's stuff in there that needs cleaning up. 

 

It's fun though, and so far I seem to have most success with supports. C&D I think is just a really good all-rounder I think and her lock-on projectiles are good to fend off Scarlet Witches. Playing Luna I struggle a bit with survivability if I get flanked but she's also rather strong. Haven't played much of Jeff and Rocket yet but I did like these two as well and Jeff seems to have the best AOE healing which might be useful in more coordinated teams with lots of less mobile tanks.

[one-armed dwarf]

A lot of the lingo for Peni can be reduced down to webs make you fast* and heal over time, and they hide the mines you can deploy. There's a turret on shift key (dunno console) which deploys little damage over time spiders and a huge web

 

There's presumably more layers than this but that's the gist I'd say, make ground sticky and damage gets mitigated, have Jeff the good boy heal you and you'll be good

 

I think the difficulty ratings are all fucked up, Peni seems easy and Strange seems hard but the game has it as opposite. I think it's the classic thing like JP in Street Fighter where they where like 'this guy is super hard' but he kinda wasn't, not on the skill floor anyway

 

* (unless tethered, then they pull you back but I guess this has strategic use for a small web to keep you in its orbit for healing)

 

I think I'd like Black Widow as DPS main. I've been playing so many FPS recently between DOOM and others that I reckon I can rock her.

[Maryokutai]

I think Strange is just hard to play because he's sub-par. You can absolutely make some very brainy plays with his teleport but that thing has such a massive cooldown you're only going to see it twice during a round, and the rest of the time you're just flinging slow-moving projectiles with barely any range and low damage at mobile nuisances and occasionally activate the explosion to get rid of the bad karma. I dunno, maybe I'm missing something, but I find him really unrewarding and unimpactful (is that a word?). I guess his barrier is pretty good.

[one-armed dwarf]

Competitive is pretty sweaty. Definitely feel like there's improvements in the games where I win, less so the landslides where I don't and momentum impossible to generate. But people are just way less patient even at bronze 3, some dude giving out shit to a Moon Knight on mic for not getting enough kills and then got on my case for switching to tank at one bit to see if it could work out. 

 

This game doesn't have placements like SF6 does so there's this pooling up of average, good to great and new players (like me) and it's going to take a long time for it to disperse. So I think I'll just limit myself to one ranked matched per session at most, and the rest casual scrappy matches with random bullshit. Cause even with the toxicity the games are more real at least but that way leads to burnout pretty quick, I know from experience it just gets on you. 

 

But yeah, eventually might end up being a strictly casual affair cause it feels like a distillation of the worst elements of a fighting game and hardcore raiding in FFXIV. Alternatively I just find a pretty relaxed regular group somewhere, somehow, I dunno. 

 

One thing that drives me batty is people typing 'heal' in chat like this. It's so distracting  

 

 

[Maryokutai]

Not that I think it would change the attitude of Thesjo but I think Healing (and also Mitigation) should be visible on the mid-game scoreboard. You can sort of evaluate whether your support is doing something by their assists, but having the number up there would maybe help people see the bigger picture. Same for mitigation, because even if a tank might be lagging behind in kills (and some of them will depending on the composition), they can still bring value by blocking damage.

 

I'm defaulting to C&D in ranked which gives me the highest chance of having impact in a match, relatively speaking. Quick Play is good to dabble around with characters you might have to pivot to in a ranked situation your team is incapable of dealing with and I've noticed I'm just awful with every tank, which is quite the achilles heel.

 

Also one thing I hope they get rid of in the future are those stat boosts for certain heroes during a season. I don't think that makes any sense at all and it skews perception about character strength.

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah that stuff is really strange, Iron Fist is 15 percent buffed this season. Guess he really needs it

 

Then again so are the two healers I play

 

I had one bad match on QA yday where everyone left during the 'stop the spider tank' bit or whatever it is, but then the refill group I had had them locked down at the last checkpoint for ages, but not enough to stop losing (Iron Man ulted a group of us). But it really shows how much of a jam CnD can enforce with the ult which makes the ground all dark, and gives you huge regens and them damage. The ground is healing lava basically. 

 

I might need to get better at the 'this is our enemy' signal cause Iron Man is really messing me up a lot and people are like this (as am I, tbf):

 

 

If he got sniped more he wouldn't have his ult having such high uptime

[Maryokutai]

There's definitely a lot of flyers but I think the reason they mostly go unnoticed is because they're too silent or their noises get mixed with all the other stuff. Footsteps are really loud so grounded flankers are easy to locate, but I think they need to make flyers a bit more noticeably without the need of flicking the camera upwards every couple of seconds. I don't want to bring up Overwatch all the time, but that's actually something that game does pretty well, with flying character's attacks leaving a smoke trail or being able to hear their jet boosts from quite far away. They are harder to counter in that game though, so maybe it's a deliberate design decision in Rivals to keep them somewhat stealthy.

 

Roundabout-nothing kind of post, my bad.

 

Edit: I guess I can post the patch notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2767030/view/541091377173234484

Mostly bug fixes, nothing exciting.