Black Widow is a Duelist hero in Marvel Rivals. She is a lethal Sniper with unparalleled long-range capabilities, perfect for players who are more accustomed to FPS. Natasha Romanoff gets four stars out of five in terms of difficulty, meaning she needs to fill a very niche role in the team, and her kit requires considerable skills to understand and play correctly.
In this ultimate guide, we’ll explore how to play Black Widow in Marvel Rivals correctly, including her skills, lesser-known facts, suggestions, and how to master her.
All Black Widow Abilities In Marvel Rivals
| Name | Type | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Widow’s Bite Baton | Normal Attack | Melee attacks using her enhanced electric batons. |
| Red Room Rifle | Normal Attack | Ranged attack using her single-fire rifle. |
| Electro-Plasma Explosion | Ultimate Ability | Switch the Red Room Rifle to Destruction mode and unleash an electro-plasma blast, damaging enemies within range and leaving plasma on the ground to Slow nearby enemies |
| Fleet Foot | Traversal Ability | Dash forward and enable a powerful jump. |
| Edge Dancer | Melee Ability | Unleash a spinning kick to Knock enemies airborne. Landing the hit will allow her to zip to the target with a grappling hook for a second kick. |
| Straight Shooter | Ranged Ability | Switch the Red Room Rifle to Sniper mode to fire high-energy rounds. |
| Supersensory Hunt | Team-Up Ability | Hawkeye can share his Hunter’s Sight with Black Widow, enabling her to catch sight of and damage afterimages of enemies. |
Each ability includes crucial information necessary for maximizing Black Widow’s potential:
Widow’s Bite Baton:
- Deals 45 damage per hit.
- You need to be in a melee distance of 3m to land this attack.
- You can spam this attack twice per second.
Red Room Rifle:
- It is a semi-automatic weapon with a fire rate of 0.83 rounds per second.
- Deals 120 damage per hit.
- The shots have damage falloff at a distance. The damage starts decreasing from the 10m point, lowering all the way to 50% at 20m.
- It does have Critical Hit potential, meaning Black Widow deals double damage (depending on the distance/damage) when performing a headshot.
- It has eight rounds in a single magazine.
- This weapon shares its ammo with the Straight Shooter ability.
Electro-Plasma Explosion:
- After activating the ultimate, you must hold the Left-Mouse Button to charge the shot for maximum damage and range and increase the amount of plasma covering the ground.
- The explosion deals minimum damage of 120 and 170 when fully charged.
- The default range of the projectile is 5.6m, which rises to 8m when fully charged.
- The number of plasma that lingers afterward is 7 and goes up to 20 when fully charged.
- The plasma Slows down enemy movement by 80%.
- The plasma lingers for only 10 seconds and then disappears.
Fleet Foot:
- The initial dash gives Black Widow a 33% boost in movement speed.
- While dashing, she can perform a boosted jump.
- This ability has an energy or stamina bar that drains over time, depending on your action.
- Sprinting costs 12 energy per second.
- Power Jumping costs 24 energy per leap.
- You’ll recover this energy at 10 per second.
Edge Dancer:
- You need to be in a melee distance of 3m to land this ability.
- The initial kick deals 35 damage.
- After the enemy lands from the kick, Black Widow has a 5-second window to use the ability again to grapple hook, catch the enemy, and perform a second flying kick.
- You can grab the enemy with the grappling hook at a maximum range of 12m.
- The follow-up flying kick deals another 35 damage.
- Only the second flying kick stuns the enemy for 1 second.
- This ability has a cooldown of 15 seconds.
Straight Shooter:
- Straight Shooter triggers only after you aim down sights for a set period; if not, it will shoot using the standard Red Room Rifle.
- These high-energy rounds don’t have any falloff damage compared to the Red Room Rifle.
- Each hit deals 120 damage.
- When performing a headshot, it will deal a Critical Hit.
Supersensory Hunt:
- You need a Hawkeye in your team to use this ability.
- You have 8 seconds before it expires.
- When active, every 0.5 seconds, the enemy will leave behind an afterimage that Black Widow can attack, which will damage the actual enemy.
- You can not perform a Critical Hit on an afterimage.
- Has a cooldown of 30.
How To Play Black Widow In Marvel Rivals
This section discusses essential aspects to consider before playing as Black Widow in Marvel Rivals:
- Her primary role in the team is that of a backline sniper. Sit back and pop enemies’ heads instead of engaging them head-on.
- Even though she has melee capabilities, her batons are pretty much useless. She is better off at sniping from long range.
- Weapon switching gets cumbersome when engaged at close quarters.
- Practice aiming before playing as her. She is essentially a shooter character, so treat her as you would in an FPS. ADS strafing, quick scoping, bunny hopping and firing, and hip firing in close quarters will help you play her better.
- Find cover and follow the peak shoot repeat strategy to play to her strengths.
- Bumping up mouse sensitivity will help in quick shots.
- Flying heroes like Iron Man and Storm are prime targets for Black Widow.
Pro Tips
With an understanding of Black Widow’s abilities, it’s essential to discover the best ways to leverage her powers. We’ve gathered a collection of strategies and insights from the leading Black Widow players in Marvel Rivals:
1) Health Pack Vantage Point
When choosing a vantage point from where you can have a wide view of the arena and snipe enemies easily, try to look for a location with a Health Pack nearby. It comes in extremely handy when the enemy team is able to shoot you from afar, or they rush you, and you don’t have a Strategist close by to heal you.
Every time your HP is dangerously low, you can simply walk up to the health pack and top up your HP. This will lower your reliance on healers, and you can continue to support your team from the backline.
2) Know When To Melee
For the most part, you must stay behind and snipe while your team’s frontline Tanks and Duelist engage the enemies. However, you must know when to jump in since she has some melee potential.
The right time to run into the battle is when fewer enemies are in the fight, and you need to pick them off for your team to push quickly. When one to three enemies are left, jump into the arena and use her Batons, Edge Dancer ability, and hip firing from the rifle to make quick work of them.
3) Positioning
Black Widow thrives as a sniper, allowing your team to lure the enemies into the arena while she scopes them out from the backline. For this reason, you must always stay back with a good view of the fight. Always look for high ground that is harder to reach for the enemies.
Your strength as a sniper comes from the enemies not knowing where you are. Either sit back or take the side lanes to keep the opponents on their toes. Try not to stay in a single location for too long, or else the enemy team will try to rush you. Reposition often and keep them guessing.
You can always return to your team when the coast is clear using her Fleet Foot ability.
4) Practice Hip Firing
As you must know, the tide of battle in Marvel Rivals is constantly shifting. You never know when the enemy gets a jump on you, and your perfect ADS scoping skills drag you to an early grave. The Straight Shooter skill is impressive for long engagements but lacks close-quarter ability due to its slow aiming.
We highly urge you to start practicing the Red Room Rifle’s hip firing to counter this weakness. This regular attack deals a ton of damage when enemies are nearby, especially when you land headshots. Also, landing headshots is much easier at close range, so exploit that to your advantage. Additionally, the rifle deals maximum damage at close quarters since there is no fall-off damage.
If you are really great at hip firing, you can even confidently jump in skirmishes and take on foe head-on.
5) Retreating Strategy
If and when an enemy frontline tank or duelist rushes you, you are better off using her high mobility skill to run back and separate them from their team. Doing so will break the enemy team, weakening their charge, and you can safely engage with your pursuer.
Once you are in a safer location, confront the enemy. For fast-moving duelists like Spider-Man, you must dash around and jump while hip-firing to put an end to them. As for tanks like Captain America, you should be more mobile with your jumping and hip firing and mix in Edge Dancer, too, since it takes longer to whittle away their larger HP.
6) Ultimate Ultimate Use
Black Widow’s Electro-Plasma Explosion ultimate is pretty weak. You are less likely to score kills with it. The general use would be to fire it fully charged at a sweaty brawl and slow down the enemy team, so your team can handle it easily.
You can keep it handy until you see a bunch of squishes in front of you. Pop this off near them to slow them down, and then use your scope ability to finish off the remainder of their HP.
The best use case would be to save for any enemy that tries to dive you. Whenever you see a duelist or tank trying to rush you, start charging the ultimate and fire it when they get close. The explosion will take away a chunk of their health, and the slow-down effect will make it easier to land hip-fire shots.
You can also use it to focus on enemy Strategists. Use the side lanes to approach the enemy backline and fire this ultimate to not only deal damage but also slow them for each pickings. If you play this right, the enemy frontline will be weakened, helping your frontline a ton.
7) Black Widow’s Other Useful Team-Ups
Black Widow has a Team-Up ability with Hawkeye, which is quite helpful in shooting enemies even when they have moved away from your line of sight. However, she works really well with other heroes as well.
- Groot’s Strangling Prison ultimate can pin down enemies, giving Black Widow immobile targets for free headshots.
- Doctor Strange’s Pentagram of Farallah can be used to open a portal near the enemy. Black Widow can shoot through these portals from very odd angles, which will keep the enemies guessing.
- Mantis’s Allied Inspiration damage buff can turn Black Widow into a one-shot master. This deadly combo will annihilate any character with 250 HP or lower.
8) Dive Defend Combo
You must follow this ideal combo when you get dived into your sniper’s nest. Practice in the range, and you’ll thank us. This will make quick work of heroes like Spider-Man, whose extreme mobility is Black Widow’s biggest weakness.
Edge Dancer kick> Edge Dancer Grapple Flying Kick> ADS Straight Shooter
The initial two kicks will take away 140 HP, and the following shot will deal an additional 120 damage. If you know how to aim, pull the scope towards their head as they land, and you are looking at a whopping 240 damage from the critical hit. The last shot is effortless to pull off since the enemy will land right in front of you, giving you ample time in between as they land to ADS the rifle and take the shot.
Remember, Black Widow reloads between shots, so before you begin this combo, make sure you have chambered a round, or else your last shot will whiff, and you’ll be in a worse position.
9) Fleet Foot Jumping and Shooting
Spawn a hero in the practice range and use the Fleet Foot ability to jump over them continuously. Once you have that rhythm down, add hip firing while over their head. When you have that mastered, try to use ADS while airborne for more damage output.
If you learn this moveset, Black Widow can become a fantastic frontline soldier. She has incredible speed already with Fleet Foot, and if you utilize her hyper jumps with outstanding offensive play, then the enemies will never be able to catch you while raining down fire from above.
This kind of hopping style also comes in handy when escaping divers, all the while chipping away their HP.
Due to her inadequate DPS potential, Black Widow is usually ranked as the worst character in Marvel Rivals. However, this hero is for the professional sniper players out there. In the right hands, she’ll be popping off heads like it’s nothing. This hero demands the Call of Duty style sniper playstyle that is constantly on the move and excellent at scoping down opponents.