GamesThird Person ShooterMarvel RivalsMarvel Rivals players are complaining that nobody is playing healer, and the grizzled Overwatch vets knowingly nod in solidarityWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesThird Person ShooterMarvel RivalsMarvel Rivals players are complaining that nobody is playing healer, and the grizzled Overwatch vets knowingly nod in solidarityWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: NetEase)
You know NetEase has managed to make a competent hero shooter in Marvel Rivals when the number one complaint among players feels like a repeat of 2016 Overwatch discourse: Not enough players are picking healers, and teams are suffering for it.
Less than a day after launch, the Marvel Rivals subreddit is abuzz with discussion about the Strategist role, Rivals' closest equivalent of Overwatch’s Support role. This is where all the healers are, like Jeff the Land Shark, Rocket Racoon, and Adam Warlock, but asnumerousmemesare calling attention to, most folks are gravitating toward Duelists (raw damage dealers) and Vanguards (tankier damage dealers).
I can back that up, at least anecdotally, with my first night of Marvel Rivals and past alpha sessions. If I jump into a match and do my usual thing of watching everybody else pick their heroes and then filling in what gaps are left, 99% of the time that gap is a healer. I’ve been playing a lot of Rocket Racoon so far, who despite being a healer, has a cool minigun that can melt through any hero in seconds.
Oh, the healer woes. It’s like stepping into a portal to 2016 and watching our three tanks flip out in chat that we need more healers, but definitely aren’t planning to make the switch themselves.
The tension between picking the hero you want vs. what the team currently needs was a constant presence in Overwatch matches for years, and it got so bad that Blizzard first tried to address it with an opt-in, role-based LFG party system that allowed you to pick a preferred role and match into a squad that needs it. Nobody really used that useful feature, so eventually Blizzard chose the nuclear option of forced role queue—since 2019, the game has enforced an even balance between roles, ensuring that teams always have two supports no matter what.
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Some Marvel Rivals fans have argued the game needs a role queue since alpha tests, but for now, NetEase hopes players won’t take team comp all that seriously in Rivals. An on-screen message during hero selection warns when a team is imbalanced, but it doesn’t force anyone to switch, and like pre-role queue Overwatch, it’s not like imbalanced teams lose 100% of the time.
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