Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play 6v6 hero shooter featuring all the characters from the Marvel franchise. Heroes are split into one of three categories; each archetype has an important role in every match. The composition of your team is fundamental to winning matches. You take these hero teams across different objective-based matches.
With a ton of heroes and match types to choose from, you can have fun in casual skirmishes or compete against the best in the challenging competitive modes. There is something for everyone here. There is so much unique to this hero shooter, which we’ll cover in this beginner’s guide.
1. Game Modes
First, let’s go over all the game modes you can dive into:
- Quick Match: Quick Match is an instant way to get into the action that lets you experience most of the game in a controlled and casual environment. The objective for each game will change depending on the maps you get. Quick matches only last one round in modes with Attackers and Defenders, making the matches shorter overall.
- Competitive: Once you reach level 10, unlock the Competitive game mode. This is the ranked mode where your performance allows you to climb the rank ladder. Before diving into this mode, you must know the game mechanics and how to play your heroes. These matches are longer, and the teams will switch between Attacking and Defending. If you reach Gold rank and hold this spot, you’ll receive exclusive rewards like skins at the end of each season.
- Tournament: This mode consists of live esports competitions you and your friends can sign up for, where you’ll face off against the best players worldwide. To participate, you must sign up as a team by creating your faction of 12 players, and each tournament has its own rule set. The top teams in each tournament can even win real cash prizes, making this the ultimate game mode for those who want to compete seriously.
2. Match Objective
Now that we know which game mode to choose, here are all the styles of matches in Marvel Rivals:
- Conquest: This is an arena-style deathmatch mode where you have to kill enemy members and pick up their dropped coins to score a point for your team. The first team to reach 50 points wins. This mode is great for casual play with your friends and testing new heroes against actual players.
- Convoy: In Convoy, players are split into Attackers and Defenders teams. Attackers escort a convoy by standing near it and pushing it through the map to reach the endpoint. There are checkpoints along the way, which adds time to continue advancing. On the other hand, Defenders must stop this at all costs by delaying the attackers until the time runs out. Defenders get a 30-second head start to prepare defenses and strategize before Attackers spawn. If the defenders wipe out the opposing team, they push the Convoy back to the last checkpoint. It’s a continuous tug of war!
- Domination: In this King of the Hill-style game mode, the goal is to capture and control the center of the map by standing within the designated area for a few seconds. However, capturing can be stalled if an enemy team member contests the point before it’s fully captured. Once a team successfully claims the point, it wins the round. The first team to win two rounds wins.
- Convergence: This mode combines elements of Convoy and Domination, where teams are divided into Attackers and Defenders. Attackers must first secure a point defended by the opposing team before pushing a convoy. The capture progress consists of three segments, which means once progress is achieved, it cannot be reversed by the defenders. After capturing the point, a convoy spawns for the attackers, transitioning the match into the Convoy game mode.
3. Other Game Modes
Marvel Rivals also includes game modes that cater more to messing around with friends, practicing, and learning the game:
- Private: These private lobbies allow you to play and customize any modes available in the game. You can even fill empty slots with bots if you want to.
- Practice vs. AI: This mode pits a human team against three different difficulty levels of AI, and it’s a great starting point for anyone who doesn’t feel confident enough to face human players.
- Practice Range: This training area has everything you need to test different heroes, their abilities, and even team-ups.
- Tutorial: Different tutorial modes allow you to go through the absolute basics of the game, from controlling your character to demonstrating some of the core game types. We recommend trying these out if you’re unfamiliar with a hero shooter.
4. Character Roles or Archetypes
Heroes are divided into three distinct roles in Marvel Rivals. Each role serves a particular purpose in a team, and playing to their strength will ensure the team’s success:
- Vanguard: These heroes are the team’s front-line tanks. They can take a hit owing to their extensive health pools while protecting your team. Their job is to push the team forward safely. This is usually done through abilities like Magneto’s shields or barriers or by disrupting the enemy team and forcing them to focus on the Vanguard.
- Duelist: These DPS characters are designed to crush other heroes quickly and efficiently. They are a mixed bag of characters, some ranged and others melee. Some are best on the front line alongside the Vanguards, while others may have abilities more tailored toward flanking the enemy team, catching key targets, or even playing at the back of your team as snipers.
- Strategist: These are utility-based heroes, usually fulfilling some support role. This is often done through healing injured teammates. However, many strategists have potent abilities to disrupt the enemy team with crowd control effects or help push your team further with various buffs.
5. Beginner Friendly Heroes
If you don’t know which heroes to choose, here are a few picks from each role that we found to be easy to use:
- Magneto (Vanguard): He is a quintessential tank, having access to everything you need to protect your team. He has barriers and shields to help you push forward, great damage to ward off any assassins that try to engage your backline, and his ultimate is a high-impact ability that protects your team from incoming shots and deals a ton of damage once released.
- Scarlet Witch (Duelist): Her primary attack doesn’t require you to aim, and she has ways to survive in various sticky by phasing out. Her ultimate is also incredibly potent, even capable of wiping out the enemy team if used correctly. She also has a Team Up effect with Magneto.
- Rocket Racoon (Strategist): He can deal a ton of damage, has some potent and easy-to-understand abilities that are super helpful to your team, and even has an instant revival mechanic ability. His healing ability is a fire-and-forget, and his ultimate directly improves your team’s effectiveness.
If you forget your character’s abilities, you can always hit Up on the D-Pad mid-match to read exactly what they are.
6. Team-Up
Team Up is a fantastic, unique mechanic in Marvel Rivals. It lets specific character combinations aid each other, giving them new abilities, buffs, or mechanics.
For example, when you pair Rocket Racoon with the Punisher or Winter Soldier, you’ll unlock the Ammo Invention ability. This allows Rocket to throw a special device on the ground. Upon entering the device’s range, the Punisher and Winter Soldier receive the buffs of Infinite Ammo and Faster Firing.
In addition, Team-Ups also receive a passive bonus. As of the current season, this buff is a flat bonus to health for Vanguards, damage for Duelists, and healing for Strategists.
7. Overlooked Mechanics
When you begin a match, you’ll usually start at your team’s spawn point, and these green doors will mark boundaries. This is a safe area that enemies cannot enter, and you can freely change the hero you’re currently playing while inside and quickly heal up any damage you’ve taken.
Each match also features several health pickups, which will significantly heal you. These are especially important for flanking characters, so learning the locations of these will be good, as a lot of the time, you’ll be out of the range of your team’s healer.
By pressing B or Right on the D-pad, you can activate Chrono Vision. This lets you see parts of the environment that can be destroyed, opening up new routes and, in some cases, even changing the map’s layout. This is an excellent tool for flanking the enemy team or finding a safer route past chokepoints where the enemy is holding.
Utilizing the Ping system is the best to work as a team. This lets you convey important information to your team instantly. By pressing the middle mouse button or Down on the D-pad, you can do a contextual ping to mark a location you’re aiming at in the environment or point out an enemy. By holding down this button, you can communicate more advanced concepts, such as your ultimate status, whether you should attack, retreat, or need healing.
8. Best Settings To Change
The number of settings in Marvel Rivals is daunting. However, if you’re willing to look through it, you’ll find some excellent quality-of-life features buried here. Here are some settings we recommend to give you the best experience:
Under your audio settings, turn on 3D enhancement if you’re using headphones. This gives you better directional audio, making identifying where sounds and enemies are coming from easier.
In the Combat Mix audio tab, turn on KO Sound Cue. Doing so will announce whenever a teammate or enemy is KO’d. This is a valuable way to know which way a team fight is going, just from the sound alone.
In Keyboard Combat settings, change the HUD Widget Size to small. This will free up more space on your screen’s peripheral vision.
Setting Allied Health Bars to “on” is a great way to see where your team stands and whether a fight is worth it. This information is usually only visible if you’re playing a strategist.
Regarding strategists, it’s a good idea to turn on the Healing Reticule Feedback option for each. This makes it more evident when your healing is effective. To do this, click on the “All Heroes” button, filter the list by strategists, and change the setting for every hero individually.
Every hero features unique settings, so we recommend exploring them and adjusting them for improved control.
9. Better Spider-Man and Venom Movement
Speaking of unique settings, one notable option that Spider-Man and Venom share is their automatic swing mechanic. By default, swinging will automatically anchor your web to the nearest point available. While this helps you swing anywhere, it loses out on precise control of your web-slinger.
Turning off Automatic Swing for Spider-Man and Easy Swing for Venom allows you to shoot the web wherever you aim. This lets you pick your anchor points, zip toward walls, and even use it on the ground to land faster. This gives you much more control over these characters, and we highly recommend toggling these options.
10. Important Tips and Tricks
First things first, remember this is a team game. Playing around your team’s strengths and covering their weaknesses is the best way to be effective. This can come in many forms, like comboing abilities together.
For example, Scarlet Witch’s ultimate can one-shot anyone in range, but she’s incredibly vulnerable while charging it and will likely be gunned down. However, using abilities like Magneto’s Metal Bulwark, you can keep her safe while she charges up and wipes out the enemy squad.
Being thoughtful about your team composition is another thing to keep in mind. While it might be very tempting to lock in your favorite hero, consider swapping to another role. For example, if four members have already locked in a duelist, you’ll have a much better chance at winning if at least one of each role is on the team.
You also want to understand how to use line of sight to your advantage. You don’t want to be in the sights of an enemy duelist if you’re playing a strategist. This is because you can still effectively heal your team from behind a corner, wall, or barrier. It’s equally important to consider line of sight when asking for heals.
If you’re pushed deep into the enemy lines, the chances are your team’s healer won’t be able to heal you, so your best choice will be to try and get out alive and go over to them.
You should also never be afraid of switching heroes in the middle of a match if it’s just not working out. Some characters will do well against one team and terribly against another, so consider the enemy’s heroes before playing vulnerable characters like Iron Man or Storm, who are amazing against teams that lack hitscan heroes like The Punisher.
Marvel Rivals is not just a cash grab that lures you in with your favorite heroes. It is actually a competent hero shooter that demands a lot of technical knowledge and strategy to get better at it. Hopefully, with the help of our beginner’s guide, your Marvel Rivals career will get a head start, and you might end up winning a tournament!