Marvel Rivals: Ultimate Hawkeye Guide

Hawkeye is a Duelist hero in Marvel Rivals. He is one of the best Sniper/DPS characters who can annihilate most enemies if they dare to come into his line of sight. He can one-shot easily, thwart any attempts to dive him, and pick off opponents from his comfort zone, i.e., long range. The Ronin gets four out of five stars in terms of difficulty; although he is very easy to pick and play (considering his straightforward kit), his value is only realized when you know how to aim like a hawk.

This detailed guide will outline practical strategies for playing Hawkeye in Marvel Rivals. We will examine his abilities, reveal some lesser-known insights, provide helpful tips, and guide you in mastering his archery.

All Hawkeye Abilities In Marvel Rivals

Name	Type	Details
Piercing Arrow	Normal Attack	A basic projectile arrow shot at enemies.
Archer’s Focus	Passive Ability	When Piercing Arrow is shot while directly aiming at an enemy, it will deal bonus damage.
Blast Arrow	Normal Attack	It fires three arrows in a fan shape that explode on impact.
Crescent Slash	Melee Ability	He uses his katana to perform a wide horizontal slash that damages and launches up enemies.
Ronin Slash	Melee & Defensive Ability	His regular melee attack can also deflect projectiles if timed perfectly.
Hypersonic Arrow	Offensive & Debuff Ability	He fires a straight-line arrow that deals damage twice with a slight delay. Enemies struck will get inflicted with Slow.
Skyward Leap	Traversal Ability	He can perform a double jump by pressing the jump button again.
Hunter’s Sight	Ultimate Ability	Once activated, all enemies will leave behind afterimages of themselves as they move. Hawkeye can attack these ghosts, and the damage will be transferred to the actual enemy.
Supersensory Vision	Team-Up Ability	It allows a Black Widow in your team to use a shorter/weaker version of Hunter’s Sight, where she can also see and damage after images of enemies.

To truly understand Hawkeye, you must know more vital details about each ability.

Piercing Arrow:

It takes 0.7 seconds to charge the shot to achieve its maximum velocity and damage. The maximum charge can be seen by the purple aura building up on the bow.
The arrow has an arced trajectory. The arc depends on how long you hold the arrow before shooting.
A quick shot with no charge will only deal 8 damage. Charging the arrow for a maximum of 0.9 seconds will deal the highest damage of 80.
Has infinite arrows (ammo).
It can inflict a Critical Hit.
The damage gets a meaningful boost with Hawkeye’s passive ability, Archer’s Focus.

Archer’s Focus:

To activate this passive, you must have the crosshair aimed directly at the enemy when using the Piercing Arrow attack. The passive won’t work if you attack enemies using the arrow’s arc trajectory.
The passive’s activation is indicated by the meter below the crosshair. It will start building up to 100 when aiming at an enemy.
If you move the crosshair or the enemy walks away, the meter will start decreasing.
The Piercing Arrow will deal zero bonus damage when the meter is at its lowest. However, if you hold the aim directly at the enemy to achieve the 100 passive value (0.9 seconds to charge fully), it will deal a maximum of 70 bonus damage.
The triggering distance for this passive is 40m.
The bonus damage can also inflict a Critical Hit.

Blast Arrow:

It will fire three arrows at the same time in a cone-shaped trajectory. One is in the middle, and two are on either side, separated by 11.3 degrees.
These arrows will be fired in an arcing trajectory. There is no charging involved here to maximize their arc.
The projectile arrow itself will deal 20 damage if it hits an enemy directly.
The subsequent explosions will deal 25 damage to anyone caught in their 3m blast radius.
It has 3 charges (ammo), and each charge will take 0.5 seconds to replenish.

Crescent Slash:

The slash has a distance of 8m in front of Hawkeye.
Deals 40 damage.
Has a cooldown of 15 seconds.
Launches Up and knocks back enemies struck by this attack.

Ronin Slash:

Any projectile within 3m of the melee attack will get deflected.
However, it can not block any explosive or other effects on impact of the projectile.

Hypersonic Arrow:

The initial arrow has a slight AoE that deals damage along its path. Once the arrow reaches its end, a supersonic explosion with a bigger AoE will occur along its flight path that deals damage again.
It will always travel through the enemies to its maximum travel distance.
The arrow itself deals 50 damage, and the following supersonic explosion deals another 50 damage.
It applies the Slow debuff onto the affected enemies, which lowers their movement speed by -40% for 1 second.
Any flying enemy hero will get knocked down to the ground with this arrow.
Has a cooldown of 12 seconds.

Skyward Leap:

Press the jump button again to perform a double jump.
Has a cooldown of 6 seconds.

Hunter’s Sight:

Do note that only Hawkeye can see these afterimages and not your allies.
The ultimate stays active for 10 seconds.
Enemies will leave behind an afterimage every 0.5 seconds.
Each afterimage will only last for 3 seconds before it disappears.
Critical Hit does not work on these after images.
While the ultimate is active, the Piercing Arrow attack gets a 1.2x draw speed, meaning you can rapidly charge arrows and fire during this time.

Supersensory Vision:

You’ll need a Black Widow in your team for this.
It only unlocks an activatable ability for Black Widow. Hawkeye doesn’t receive any extra powers.
- Hawkeye does get a passive 15% damage boost from this Team-Up.

How To Play Hawkeye In Marvel Rivals

This section highlights the important aspects to keep in mind when playing as Hawkeye in Marvel Rivals:

Hawkeye’s positioning matters a lot. Ideally, you want to be perched up somewhere with a broad view of the arena or long lanes where you could see enemies coming from a mile away. The prior will give you multiple enemies to target at any given time, while the latter will provide you with the most time to hunt down enemies before they approach you.
Flicking works only when a diver has disrupted your sniping, and you must survive the close-quarter encounter. For the most part, you must rely on focusing on single targets and focusing on them before lobbing your arrow.
Unlike other heroes with multiple potent abilities, Hawkeye’s bread and butter is his Piercing Arrow ability. You need to get good at aiming and get the most out of this ability alone to make any difference with Hawkeye.
We highly recommend that you practice his particular aiming style, bow draw back, and Archer’s Focus at the range. Utilize Aimlabs to perfect your aiming and tweak mouse sensitivity to better suit your needs.
Hawkeye is nowhere near a diver-type Duelist. Play to his strengths as a backline and keep the engagements at long or, at max, medium distances.
Use his Skyward Leap ability to look for sniper nests that are hard for the enemies to get to and provide enough cover to protect him if the tables turn on him.
Hawkeye’s other abilities aren’t that effective in terms of damage. They are better used in specific scenarios rather than being part of your constant-use powers.
You need a good mix of frontline Duelists and Vanguards in your team to keep the enemy at bay and in your sight while you snipe them out from the backline.

Pro Tips

Having explored Hawkeye’s abilities, let’s focus on getting the most out of his skills. Below are valuable tips and strategies from expert Hawkeye players in Marvel Rivals:

1) One-Shot Piercing Arrow

Hawkeye’s primary attack, Piercing Arrow, can one-shot most Marvel Rivals characters, making it extremely OP if you know what you are doing. This comes from combining a fully charged up arrow, taking advantage of the Archer’s Focus passive, and headshots for Critical Hits.

If you are proficient at aiming and gluing the crosshair on the enemy, the bow draw back, and the Archer’s Focus passive will both charge up relatively simultaneously.

The Piercing Arrow’s drawback at max charge will give the arrow its highest damage output of 80, and the Archer’s Focus will also buff the arrow for extra potent damage of 70, that’s 130 damage from an arrow. Couple that with a headshot Critical Hit that doubles the damage, meaning you’ll be dealing 260 damage per shot, quickly taking out most Strategists and Dueliest in a single blow.

This requires precision aiming on your part, so get to practicing, and your team will praise you for your valiant archery. Do keep in mind that this doesn’t work well with flicking. You need to keep your target in your line of sight for a bit longer to charge the arrow and activate the passive before lobbing your arrow.

2) Clean Up With Blast Arrow

The Blast Arrow might look compelling with its explosions, but you must know it doesn’t deal much damage. Its damage is a joke compared to the Piercing Arrow. Even at point-blank, where you manage to land all three arrows on a single target, the effect isn’t anything to write about and will put you in compromised situations. For all your damage output needs, you should rely solely on the Piercing Arrow.

Nevertheless, Blast Arrow should only be reserved for two purposes: destroying the destructible parts of the map/enemy shields and using them as a kill clean-up ability. This means when you see an enemy with a sliver of health, you should use this explosion to drop them quickly.

It is extremely handy when finishing off more mobile heroes like Black Panther. Stop them from bouncing around, lob these arrows on the ground, and watch as they fly off the map, but only when they have very low HP.

Another excellent use for the Blast Arrow is combining it with the Skyward Leap. As soon as you see someone charging at you, you can perform the double jump over them and fire the Blast Arrows below while you are above their head. The sudden movement will disorient the pursuer, and all three arrows will likely land close to the target, dealing that extra bit of damage.

3) Back Off Divers

Hawkeye’s Crescent Slash is the perfect ability to deal with divers. However, don’t use it to charge into sweaty battles; he’s not good at close range. You must save this ability for when you are perched up in your sniper’s nest, picking off enemies from afar, and a lowly diver like an Iron Fist crashes your party and latches onto you.

Use the Cresent Slash quickly to not only damage the diver but also knock them back, giving you ample time to start firing your arrows at them and hopefully finish them off. Make good use of the first tip (headshot + fully charged Piercing Arrow + fully charged Archer’s Focus) to deal maximum damage.

4) No Flight Zone – Hypersonic Arrow Uses

Hawkeye’s Hypersonic Arrow isn’t the most damage-dealing ability, but it has some notable use cases that will help your team immensely.

The most quintessential use is to ground flying enemies and cancel their tactical advantage instantly. Whenever you see an Iron Man flying around bombarding your allies beneath, fire the Hypersonic Arrow at him to force him to touch the ground, from where you or your team member can pick them off easily.

Another use case is to fire it in the middle of a skirmish to not only deal the double damage from the arrow but also Slow the enemies down and give your team a leg up. However, the debuff lasts for a second only, so communicate with your team to take advantage of that window.

You can also use it to slow down zippy heroes like Spider-Man and Black Panther and turn the tables on them.

5) Quick Fire After Supersensory Vision

Activating the Supersensory Vision, Hawkeye receives a boost to his draw speed charge and the Archer’s Focus passive. This means it will take less time for you to charge both the bow and the damage boost from the passive (as seen by the meter below the crosshair since it fills up almost instantly), allowing you to deal the same damage as the regular, more focused approach but much faster.

Considering this, we suggest you shift to quick firing/tapping when the ultimate is active. This will let you pick off enemies quickly by lobbing arrows rapidly at their afterimage and turn your attention to the next target before the effect wears off. Don’t worry about headshots either cause a fully charged bow and passive will deal enough damage as it is, and you can’t even Critical Hit the afterimage.

If you stick to focus firing as normal, you’ll be missing out on getting the most out of this pretty powerful ultimate.

From the outside, Hawkeye seems like an easy hero in Marvel Rivals owing to his uncomplicated kit. However, players who know how to aim only realize his real value. This hero can take out entire teams with his exceptional damage output from just his regular attack, which is mindboggling, to say the least.