Cloak and Dagger are Strategist heroes in Marvel Rivals. This dual-hero acts as the team’s Healer/Buffer/Debuffer using their myriad abilities. The duo gets three stars out of five in terms of difficulty, meaning you will have to spend some time understanding their character-switching mechanic.
In this ultimate guide, we’ll go over how to play Cloak and Dagger in Marvel Rivals correctly. We’ll delve into their abilities, lesser-known details, tips, and how to play with them like a pro.
All Cloak and Dagger Abilities In Marvel Rivals
Cloak’s Abilities
| Name | Type | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Darkforce Cloak | Normal Attack | A continuous stream or laser that deals damage over time. |
| Light’s Embrace | Transform Ability | Switch to Dagger |
| Terror Cape | Offensive Debuff Ability | Deploy a Veil of Darkforce to damage enemies upon touch, applying Blind to narrow their sight and Vulnerability to amplify damage received. |
| Dark Teleportation | Ally Buff Ability | Enshroud nearby allies in the Darkforce Dimension, plunging them into the Phased state, making them untargetable and invisible to enemies and granting them a Movement Boost. |
Dagger’s Abilities
| Name | Type | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Lightforce Dagger | Normal Attack | Unleash a bouncing Lightforce Dagger to damage enemies and heal nearby allies. |
| Shadows Embrace | Transform Ability | Switch to Cloak |
| Veil of Lightforce | Healing Ability | Deploy a Veil of Lightforce to heal allies upon touch and grant them a Healing Boost. |
| Dagger Storm | Healing Ability | Launch a volley of daggers, creating a Healing Over Time field in the impact area. |
Cloak And Dagger Shared Abilities
| Name | Type | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Eternal Bond | Ultimate Ability | Perform four rapid dashes, healing allies and damaging enemies along the path. |
| From Shadow to Light | Team-Up Ability | Cloak & Dagger can inject light and dark energy into Moon Knight to create a Light & Dark Realm where Moon Knight can become Invisible. |
Each ability has more relevant details that you must know to fully understand how to play Cloak and Dagger in Marvel Rivals:
Cloak’s Abilities
Darkforce Cloak:
- This attack has infinite ammo.
- It deals 75 damage per second.
- It will automatically target the nearest enemy to the crosshair.
- The maximum target range is 20m.
- Does not Critical Hit.
Terror Cape:
- The attack travels 25m and has a 6m width and 4.5m height.
- The projectile deals 55 damage to all enemies standing in its path.
- The projectile also applies two debuffs upon impacted enemies: Blind and Vulnerability.
- Blindness will lower the affectee’s visibility to just 10m. It lasts for 1.5 seconds.
- Vulnerability increases all damage received by the affected by 20%. It lasts for 3 seconds.
- The ability has a cooldown of 12 seconds.
Dark Teleportation:
- It casts a 10m wide circular radius that buffs all allies with Invisibility and gains Movement Boost.
- Allies will remain invisible for 2 seconds.
- Has a cooldown of 12 seconds.
Dagger’s Abilities
Lightforce Dagger:
- Has an ammo count of 12.
- The projectile deals damage when hurled at an enemy and heals when targeting allies.
- Deals 15 damage per round.
- When it hits an ally, the projectile casts an 8m radius that heals all teammates. A blue circle around the target indicates the healing radius.
- If Dagger is within the range of the healing radius, she gets healed, too.
- Directly hitting an ally heals them for 10 HP per hit. The healing radius heals nearby allies for 18 HP per hit.
- The projectile can bounce off surfaces as well. The ricochet will automatically target nearby allies to heal. However, the ricochet does not automatically target and damage enemies.
- Even when hitting enemies, the projectile still casts the healing radius. Any ally near the targetted enemy receives healing, including yourself.
- Does not Critical Hit.
Veil of Lightforce:
- The projectile travels 25m and has a 6m width and 4.5m height.
- Any teammate impacted by the projectile gets healed for 45 HP.
- Affected allies will also gain a Healing Boost that increases healing from all sources by 15%.
- The Healing Boost lasts for 4 seconds.
- Has a cooldown of 12 seconds.
Dagger Storm:
- Throws a projectile that casts a 5m spherical healing radius upon impact.
- The AoE lasts for 6 seconds.
- It heals anyone standing in it for 55 HP per second.
- It can be used to heal yourself.
- It has a 12-second cooldown.
Cloak And Dagger Shared Ability
Eternal Bond:
- Performs three successive dashes that leave behind an AoE or spell field.
- The AoE deals damage to enemies and heals allies.
- The AoE lasts for 5 seconds for each dash.
- The dashes can be stacked for increased effect.
- It deals 30 damage per second on enemies standing within the AoE. If all three dashes are stacked, it can deal a maximum of 90 damage per second.
- It heals allies for 220 HP per second. If all dashes are stacked, it can heal up to 660 HP per second.
- Cloak and Dagger are vulnerable while dashing.
From Shadow to Light:
- Unlocks an activatable ability for a Moon Knight player on your team that makes him invisible when triggered.
- Cloak and Dagger do not receive the same ability. They only receive a passive 15% Healing Boost.
How To Play Cloak and Dagger In Marvel Rivals
This section will cover what things you need to consider before you start playing as Cloak and Dagger in Marvel Rivals:
- Most of your time should be spent playing with Dagger and less with Cloak. Dagger healing capabilities serve the team more effectively by increasing their survivability. Cloak’s debuffs are better suited for sweaty skirmishes, where taking down enemies quickly is the highest priority.
- Cloak and Dagger’s relatively low shared health bar does pose a threat when engaging enemies head-on.
- Besides their Ultimate, they lack mobility options, making them susceptible to enemy divers.
- Cloak and Dagger thrive in narrow spaces and help protect the team near objectives, especially in Convoy matches. Their ultimate can easily force the enemy team away from the convoy.
- The constant character switching and longer ability cooldowns can get cumbersome, and need a bit of practice to understand this unique playstyle.
- You should reserve each ability for the right moment, as you won’t have the chance to use it again for a long time. Playing this character can be quite punishing, and wasting even a single spell can leave you exposed.
Pro Tips
Having understood Cloak and Dagger’s abilities, let’s explore how to utilize their powers optimally. Here are some valuable tips and tricks from the leading Cloak and Dagger players in Marvel Rivals:
1) Dagger’s Healing Combo
Dagger’s kit is chock full of healing abilities to help your team withstand even the most dire engagements. You should use her abilities in tandem to further enhance her healing powers and essentially bring back your team from the brink of total annihilation.
The best combo is to use the Veil of Lightforce to heal your frontline and buff them with the Healing Boost. Next, you should utilize the Dagger Storm to throw the healing bubble to grant a healing over time effect to your team in action, which gets boosted by the healing boost. Couple that with other Strategists’ healing; your frontline will never have to back out from the battle.
If available, the Eternal Bond ultimate can also be used while the healing buff is active to provide your team with unprecedented HP recovery.
2) Group Healing
Dagger’s Lightforce Dagger doesn’t heal for that much. However, the projectiles have an AoE that will heal all caught in its radius. This effect is handy when a group of allies are clumped together while fighting the enemy team.
Start lobbing them at the ally in the middle of the huddle, and you’ll heal the entire frontline. Aid this healing with the Veil of Lightforce’s healing buff, and your team will recover more HP than they are losing.
3) Instant Reload
Dagger’s Lightforce Dagger primary is her bread and butter, but the measly 12 ammo severely limits it. Running out of ammo in the middle of a skirmish will put her and her team in a bad place. Nevertheless, there is a tactic to replenish ammo and counter the downtime in the meanwhile.
As soon as her primary is out of ammo, quickly switch to Cloak and then switch back. Doing so will fill her ammo back up, and you can continue to heal/damage.
To mitigate the inactivity between switching, when you turn into Cloak, swiftly cast the Terror Cape ability to aid your frontline with the debuff and then switch to Dagger to resume supporting your team.
4) Dark Teleportation Climb
While using Dark Teleportation, you can hold the jump button, and Cloak will keep on ascending for the ability’s duration. You can use this ability to reach higher ground that is impossible to reach for this hero and aid your team from a vantage point or escape enemy divers.
A side trick: use the Dark Teleportation when your team spawns at the start of the match to give them a slight Movement Speed buff. This will help them reach the objective faster, giving them a leg up in the game.
5) Lightforce Dagger Tips
The Lightforce Dagger auto aims towards your allies. This feature makes it the ideal candidate to heal your team’s smaller and flying heroes, compared to other healers. Leave the bigger Vanguards for the other healers on your team while you top up the high-damage dealer fliers like Iron Man and Star-Lord. Aim roughly towards them and lob the dagger, and it will seek them out and heal them.
The Lightforce Dagger will auto-aim allies even after bouncing off a wall. You can use this to stand at an off angle or behind a corner and fire the dagger towards a wall, and it will target the nearest ally and heal them. It is excellent for holding a tight corridor.
6) Self Healing To Survive Duels
When Dagger gets dived and has no backup to protect her, she has a few tricks up her sleeve to sustain her until your team arrives or even outlive the opponent.
She can throw the Dagger Storm healing bubble near her to continually top up her health while she gets ambushed. While the healing bubble is active, you can switch to Cloak to use his Darkforce Cloak to deal persistent damage and even debuff the enemy with Terror Cape to increase the damage they receive.
Additionally, you can engage the enemy up close with the Lightforce Dagger to deal damage while healing her in the process if you are close enough for the AoE.
7) Eternal Bond For Zoning
The Eternal Bond dashes are the perfect tool to create a perimeter around an objective or stack them before a chock point to deny enemies access. The persistent damage effect the dashes leave behind can deal up to 90 damage per second when stacked, eating away enemies’ HP at a staggering rate if they dare to step over it.
If all three are stacked, the dashes can also heal allies for a whopping 660 HP per second. This can help your frontline withstand a lethal enemy onslaught, especially when holding them back from an objective.
8) Dark Teleportation Savior
Cloak’s Dark Teleportation is an exceptional tool for repositioning when things get sweaty. However, if you can time it right, this ability can be a lifesaver and change the match’s outcome.
When you see an enemy, Jeff the Land Shark or Black Widow, getting ready to unleash their ultimate, which can decimate your entire frontline, cast this ability to give your team the movement boost and invisibility (which turns allies invincible for a short time) to live through the ultimate and render it useless. Make sure to keep your ears and eyes open to audio and visual cues of enemy ultimate use and time your ability accordingly.
The invisibility can also hide your ally, like Iron Man, who is preparing to activate their ultimate. Enemies won’t be able to gun them down while the teammate is invisible, and they could wind up the ultimate in peace and unleash to turn the tide of battle.
9) Eternal Bond For Diving
The Eternal Bond dashes accelerate the movement of this hero to quickly propel through the enemy ranks and break their formation with the damage AoE left behind. The enemies will try to stay clear of the damage over time effect, forcing them into a panic, ready to be capitalized.
After the final dash behind enemy lines, you can stand over the AoE yourself and get counter-healed without worrying about getting bombarded by enemy fire. You can even put up a Dagger Storm healing bubble under your feet to get an additional source of healing. From here, you can switch to Cloak to use his attacks to deal continuous damage.
This massive play will also encourage your allies to push and take advantage of the Eternal Bond’s incredible healing potential. Communicate with your team before you pull this manoeuvre since Cloak and Dagger can’t withstand the punishment for too long and will for sure need their team to push back the enemies.
Once you get over the switching mechanics of Cloak and Dagger, this pair of heroes can help sustain your squad against most odds in Marvel Rivals. What they lack in damage potential, they more than make up for it with the unique kit that allows them to heal other heroes and debuff enemies to change the tide of battle in your favour.