Are new Marvel Rivals buffs and nerfs working? Here’s what stats reveal
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The latest Marvel Rivals update brought a couple of big buffs and nerfs in order to balance the game. According to NetEase, the competitive system favored Duelists, which was adjusted with the update. Furthermore, several underperforming heroes were buffed, while those who were deemed too strong received slight downgrades.
Three days after the balance patch came out, let’s see how it’s affected the game so far. We will take a look at the win rate of heroes before and after the patch, showing just how it shook things up.
Latest Marvel Rivals buffs made heroes more effective
The latest Marvel Rivals update, which came out on April 30, aimed to make the game more balanced with buffs and nerfs. NetEase specifically brought up Strategists, who were at a slight disadvantage against other heroes. Not only were they underperforming in certain situations, but their individual performance rating was usually lower than the rating of other heroes.
In total, the latest update brought six nerfs, so let’s take a look at the comparison between competitive win rates before it and now.
| Hero | Win rate before the patch | Win rate now | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doctor Strange | 48.56% | 48.70% | +0.14% |
| Winter Soldier | 44.31% | 44.85% | +0.54% |
| Adam Warlock | 49.01% | 49.16% | +0.15% |
| Cloak & Dagger | 47.89% | 47.97% | +0.08% |
| Luna Snow | 45.17% | 45.23% | +0.06% |
| Mantis | 52.28% | 52.48% | +0.20% |
Winter Soldier has taken advantage of his buff, drastically improving his win rate. He is still one of the worst-performing heroes in the game, but he’ll likely rise the leaderboard in the future. All the other heroes have been positively affected by the buffs, although we will need to analyze this data in the future to see how it’s affected the heroes in the long term.
Several heroes were negatively affected by the nerfs
The latest update also nerfed three Marvel Rivals heroes: Spider-Man, Captain America, and Groot. Let’s check how they’ve performed since the update came out!
| Hero | Win rate before the patch | Win rate now | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Captain America | 52.82% | 52.60% | -0.22% |
| Groot | 49.66% | 49.72% | +0.06% |
| Spider-Man | 48.60% | 48.41% | -0.19% |
Interestingly, Groot hasn’t been affected by the nerf of his Ironwood Wall, as his win rate has slightly increased. On the other hand, the nerfs for Captain America and Spider-Man seem to be working. They made these two heroes slightly less effective, which was the goal.
It will be interesting to see how these changes will affect Marvel Rivals in the future. For now, it appears that NetEase has done a great job with them. The next big update should drop at the end of May, bringing Ultron as a new Strategist and shaking up meta once again.
Marvel Rivals
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Platform(s):
macOS, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X -
Genre(s):
Fighting, Shooter
