Marvel Rivals Season 2 and the "Support Strike"

May 4

15 min read

I really wasn't going to write about Rivals again so soon, but so much has happened in the first few weeks of the second season's launch that I couldn't help myself. Between classes, finals, internships, and other writing, my wrist is quite literally aching, but I've decided to write this anyway, because I'm insane and need to be put down.

Season 2's early days were very refreshing. The Hellfire Gala theming, which came with changes to the home screen and music, was a much needed visual shakeup. Krakoa's tropical aesthetics work well for Spring time, and the emphasis on X-Men appeals to me. The battlepass was another source of excitement. Sure, the first half is filled with skins for characters that I simply don't play, like Magik, Black Widow, and Psylocke, but the second half? Oh, mama. Hulk and Cap's skins are their best, and the Cloak and Dagger outfit cinched my purchase.

And then there's Emma. This season's new hero was Emma Frost, the White Queen, as we still call her for some reason. I won't go into any discourse about her design, since I already wrote about that in the Halftone newsletter, but suffice it to say that I like it. She looks like Emma. I love that she's absolutely huge. What's more important is that she's a blast to play. When it came to tanks, I dabbled with Cap and Thor but mostly stuck with Strange, but with the dear Doctor being nerfed once again, I think I've found the tank for me. Emma just has it all: ridiculous offense, a shield for defense, and even a mode-switching gimmick—I'm a Cloak & Dagger main, of course I like mode-switching. She's just pure fun, and she shuts down a lot of divers, so she's a check to the current meta in a few ways.

This is where I'll talk about her design. Not her base design, but her X-Revolution skin, which is one of my least favorite in the game. You won't catch me pearl clutching, so this isn't about the amount of skin she's showing, but Rivals' nasty habit of advertising one thing and designing another. Again, its not really her outfit from that era, and I should know, since that's when I started reading X-Men comics. I'm also not really into the color scheme of this one. Her swoopy 50's hair is a turn-off and its just overall kind of gaudy. Sure, Emma is known for being extravagant, but she's still elegant. I'm hoping for another skin for her later down the line, but with 2 heroes getting skins every week or so, who knows when that will be. Punisher hasn't gotten a new look since the Season 0 battlepass.

Shortly after the Season 2 reveal trailer, it was confirmed that Ultron will be the second character dropping this season. In fact, season 2 heralds the new release strategy of heroes in seasons for the game's foreseeable future. 1 hero a month, 2 heroes a season, 12 heroes a year. Woof. I can't say I'm not excited, but its a tad ambitious, yeah? We'll just have to see how it plays out. I have to say, though, I'm glad it's Ultron next, as he's the villain of the season's story. I'm hoping this season is more indicative of how future seasons will bridge the gap between story and gameplay. Dracula being absent, or even picked as the villain in the first place, in season 1 was conspicuous. The devs created a lose end with Drac and Blade that they'll have to double-dip to clean up later. So Ultron and Emma, the faces of the X-Men vs AI conflict in the story, being the new playable characters makes perfect sense.

To continue glazing, let's talk about the new map. As a huge fan of the Krakoa era, I find this to be a great adaptation of the old living island. Firstly, its just stunning. The environments convey this tropical bliss and sci-fi allure that the Dawn of X era, which the devs name check in their opening message for the season, pulled off so well. All of three of the arenas included in the Krakoa map are fun. They took a while for me to understand, but I love the use of the gates in combat, as well as the interesting use of elevation in each one. Of course, I love finding easter eggs, like Psylocke's dog in one of the starting rooms, as well as one of those rooms being the Green Lagoon. Its clear that the devs do the reading, and I will always appreciate that.

By the sound of things, Season 2 is a total slam dunk, right? Right...?

I can't lie, as a support player, this season's been tough. I've gone full DPS and tank simply because support feels downright bad. Looking back, I didn't know what the hell I was on about when discussing support last season. Sure, Thing and Torch made our lives hell, but now? When dive is at the the height of its powers? When Torch, Cap, Venom, and Iron Fist have been buffed? Yeah, I'm playing Mister Fantastic so I'll never die.

Oh, and before I complain some more, I'll say some good things about the meta. I love that Cap and and Mister Fantastic are good again. Reed's nerfs were always a head-scratcher, and Cap never quite had his moment until now. He was never bad, but the meta has shifted to let him excel. Hulk is also better, but all at the cost of Dr. Strange, the Sufferer Supreme. Every season this guy has caught nerfs, this time to his damage. He does feel worse to play, but his new team-up with Wanda is nuts. I don't play any Wanda, but I hopped on to test this thing out and its awesome. They gave her a magic mini-gun. I also think Cap and Bucky's team-up, a no-brainer pairing, is cool—in theory. I don't think its gotten much use because it requires both parties to activate it. With a slight tweak, I think it could take off. NetEase loves a move that zaps you to a teammate to give them bonus health or shields.

Overall, team-ups coming and going was a positive change. I don't think we should get too comfortable with them, and its a shame it didn't happen sooner. Sure, Storm losing out on the Voltaic Union buffs sucks, and its odd that she wasn't included in some other new team-up, but these buffs have been billed as "seasonal" since Season 0, and its high time NetEase executed on that. My final though is that Dr. Strange should have been included in the Gamma team-up. Come on, it would have been a Defenders reunion with Namor in the mix. Besides, I think team-ups being fleeting allows for more fun combinations that wouldn't be possible if they were set in stone. An Invaders comp with Namor, Bucky, and Cap would be fun, as well as something between Storm and Magneto. Iron Man, Black Panther, and Mister Fantastic would make a great Illimunati team-up, and one with Strange and Magik could take advantage of their relationship. Put Thor in a team-up with anybody and I'd buy it, he's just that friendly.

Okay, let's talk about the elephant in the room, this "Support Strike." Here's the link to original reddit post, if its still public by the time I release this. Rivals has been my first real hero shooter, and first live service game I've ever really played in continuity, so I'm learning new things all the time, but its good to see that some things don't change. People are still very weird on the internet. I like following the meta, watching pro-players and streamers discuss things, and watching any and every tierlist I find, but some people are still somehow more meta-posioned than I am. Credit to the original poster, I don't think their criticisms are off-base. I get it. I play support, and I stopped this season because it wasn't fun, but this gotten out of hand.

First off, if you're engaging in this "Support Strike" by literally queuing up as a support and going AFK, you're an asshole. I don't know how true reports of this happening really are, but if they are real, that's just pathetic. Secondly, this hate around Necros is so stupid. I don't watch Necros, so this isn't me sticking up for my parasocial delusion or anything. I remember when he made the "support players are boosted and brainless" comment MONTHS ago. MONTHS, I tell you. To have this comment still in the back of your head so long afterwards is more indicative of disgruntled support players than the guy himself. And I know we hate Spider-Man one-tricks, but hating on one guy for no valid reason is so, so weird. Yeah, he said a boneheaded thing, like a millions streamers do a million times a day. That's no reason to effectively manufacture him as some figurehead to an invisible anti-support movement. This shit is just sad.

I think Rivals has some great role models in the community, actually. Sure, a lot of them come from Overwatch, but Flats and Bogur are pretty much always trying to steer the community into productive methods of discourse, and I find that admirable. Cozy is making some of the slickest Rivals content (I hate that word, forgive me) out there, and at a superhuman pace. A lot of negativity seems to come from a silent majority that is passively taking part in either anti-support or anti-DPS rhetoric, depending on which side of the player base you fall on. And that's another problem.

I don't have to tell you that the world sucks and everyone has gotten a lot more tribal, but its gotten to a ridiculous degree on the Rivals community. People are using language that evokes real world oppression when talking about which video game characters they like to play, and at that point, we've lost the plot. There is no "support community," or "DPS community." You're not being oppressed when you get flamed as a healer. It sucks, but this kind of negativity is in every team shooter. Hell, any game where you can lose. Sure, it can't be denied that things that streamers say have a trickle down effect, intentional or not. It sucks that perfectly innocent support players are on the end of some pretty nasty comments and behavior from their teammates. Of course that's unacceptable. However, at the end of the day, its just a game. I know that nobody wants to hear that, but there are real issues in the world, and I can't, for one more goddamn second, be mad about whatever the hell is going on here.

My final note on this subject is that this "Support Strike" and wave of Necros hate is all just a smoke screen. The real enemy is the meta. Like I mentioned before, dive heroes have an insane advantage now, making squishy duelists, and especially support characters, particularly vulnerable. This isn't an opinion, this is just what is happening. I know it because I've experienced it on both ends. The support role has progressively felt worse and worse since Season 0 and the dreaded triple support meta, and now that we've seen the pendulum swing the other way, NetEase has seen to righting the ship. (I'm mixing metaphors, but shut up, we're having fun here.)

Already, some of season 2's support changes were....weird. For example, why did Adam Warlock need a nerf on his Soul bond ability? You know, the one that saves him from dying to dive? Cloak & Dagger's ult was fixed, but it hasn't made these two nearly as impactful as they used to be in their heyday. Luna Snow has still remained practically untouched, and with the newest patch, stands to gain more buffs. Despite my Luna-ambivalence, I'm just glad that the new patch is giving Strategist more offensive capabilities to counter dive. At a certain point, yes, dive is a skill check. Healers have had it pretty easy so far, all things considered, so this season putting them on the backfoot so heavily will obviously rub people the wrong way. Couple that with the fact that healers always get flamed for the loss even though your Scarlet Witch is 4-14, it feels bad man. Dive was overtuned, so it makes sense that after a few weeks, the devs now have the data to make choices that figure this out.

Finally, what the hell is going on with ranked? I've always had a weird relationship with ranked, as I rarely have a good time playing, but alas, I am compelled to do so anyway. Of course, a skin was on offer, and it being Emma Frost, my beloved, I had to play. I got up to gold, but my god, bronze had me pulling my hair out. Combine that with this new performance based point system, and you get me being hardstuck in bronze with toddlers as my teammates. Thankfully, I mostly played Reed and Emma at this level, so I was able to gain more points than I lost, but playing support, or more accurately, having to play support since nobody else will, is just the worst. Morale is at an all-time-low in ranked. I hate queing up, because gold games take longer with bans; I lose because of my teammates refusing to heal, or just straight up disconnecting, and even if I win, I'm going to get peanuts as a support player compared to any DPS. And I have forgotten about you, tank players. Points being based off scoreboard stats was such as bad call, especially when I didn't feel that the old system was bad at all. Hoping for a complete overhaul here. Back to the drawing board.

After the April 30th patch, I can say that, at least as a Cloak & Dagger player, things feel better. Dive is still killer, but the key is to get aggressive. Ty's damage is nothing to sneeze at. The conventional wisdom was to stay in Dagger form as much as possible to maximize healing and survivability, only switching to Ty for a few seconds at a time, but his damage output is challenging that. Dagger does a bit more damage now, but not enough to justify not switching for long periods of time. I'm glad its back to a 50/50, since I've felt how much my team suffers without Cloak's supplemental damage. He can melt an enemy support or squishy DPS on his own, but is great at mopping up kills with teammates. Being just another gun might not sound all that impactful, but I noticed how much better I was doing, and how much more I was winning, after getting active as Cloak.

Adam Warlock's headshots now speed up his healing cooldown; a great change, but unfortunately, I still can't aim for shit. On paper, it makes his hybrid status more justifiable, as being better at being a DPS should make him a better healer, a lot like Mantis. In terms of design, this was a great compromise. Simply giving him a flat boost to damage or healing would have been the lazy, uninteresting choice. And besides, those things don't always make characters better or more fun to play. In the case of C&D, the new changes made me remember why I enjoyed playing them, because all they needed was to be brought up to speed with their competition in order for them to flourish. Adam, though, doesn't need more damage, only a way to do what he's already good at more often.

While the general health of the meta is in better shape, I'm very much burned out about talking bout it, and in times like this, I yearn for a PvE mode. I know Rivals is still super young, but in times like these, I wish there was another way to engage with the game outside of competitive. What the devs have been able to do with these characters in the hero shooter environment is Herculean, but I'd love a team horde mode, or hell, an actual story mode, so I can enjoy the game in another context.

I understand how much work that would take (I don't, actually. I assume its a lot, though,) but I think it could resolve the debate that the community is having around the casual audience. I get where people are coming from. The game is getting harder, and it sucks to lose a few games in a row, and because of how awful the matchmaking is, have the game throw you a bone just to keep you coming back. Casual fans that want to load up and heal as Rocket or Sue but get dove to hell aren't going to stick around if they don't think the new changes are effective. Its most casual role, so it has the most casual players, and why play a game if its no longer fun? Must the superhero fantasy the game is selling be shackled to competitive mode? What about the fantasy of assembling a team to take on a certain task or mission? To defeat a specific foe? Rivals has endangered its casual audience, and a PvE mode could the perfect new home for them. And me when I get pissed.

Let's move in a more positive direction, yeah? So far, the general experience of this game has been good. Sure, the meta has been a mess, but that can be fixed. A great indicator of this game's values has been how willing NetEase has been in giving out free shit. Scarlet Witch's "Chaos Gown," Mantis' "Floral Maiden," and now Wolverine's "Patch" skins are entirely free, earned by simply playing the in-game challenges in the Cerebro Database and Hellfire Gala Moments sets. And with how many credits and chrono-tokens you can earn, you can buy a skin from the shop pretty easily, depending on how you've stockpiled, of course. I waited on buying the battlepass, despite my enthusiasm for it, because I was too busy with the free stuff to really notice, and that's a huge win in my opinion.

There's also the new recolor options. Many were disappointed that you couldn't basically make your own color palettes, but we're kidding ourselves if we ever thought that was a realistic option. Having some other colors for some popular skins is a great idea, its just that the ones on offer don't apply to any characters I play or skins I own. Its got potential, I just want to see the idea better fleshed out and executed in the future. We have recolors of base skins, some more interesting than others, so recolors of bought skins opens up some interesting doors, but I struggle to see how it'd be anything more than a novelty. If that's all it ends up being, that's fine, but they need to work out some kinks in the future. Still, I can't belive that there were some people genuinely disappointed that the recolors weren't their own skins. Of course they'd be a feature for those who already own them. Unserious people.

On a similar note, Bucky's serendipitous popularity in this game has tied into his appearance in Thunderbolts*, producing a themed skin in Rivals. This is the first time an MCU actor has promoted Rivals in an official capacity, and Sebastian Stan looked absolutely thrilled to do it. Sure, there are plenty of MCU skins in-game already, and there was the brief, very ignorable tie-in to Captain America 4, but this is a new skin for one of the game's most popular characters. My hope is that with the game's closer proximity to the comics, we can get some of this love for the funny books, too, and we're already kinda there?

A new Jeff the Landshark comic is coming out in June thanks to his popularity in-game. Typically, I'm not into such a gratuitous tie-in, but I won't argue here. If it helps Jeff, maybe it'll help other cast members who are also in comic limbo, like Cloak & Dagger, my beloveds. It doesn't surprise me that Luna Snow and Tiger Division have reared their heads during the current big comic event, One World Under Doom, either. There is also the Rivals Infinity comic on Marvel Unlimited, which tries to flesh out story stuff, and even previews future skins, but is anybody actually reading it? It doesn't help that the art isn't the best, and is frequently off-model. (Drake-Namor can't hurt me, he's not real) We need some real creative muscle behind a Rivals tie-in book. Why isn't a flagship writer and artist on this? Get Jed MacKay and Carlos Gomez and then we're cooking. I respect Rivals' close collaboration with Peach Momoko, tho, a partnership I hope other artists gets to have with the game in the future. Imagine skins designed by Kris Anka, Lucas Werneck, or Marco Checchetto? A closer relationships between this game and comics can produce great stuff for both mediums.

Finally, let's look to the future. Ultron is confirmed to be the next addition to the roster, and he'll fill a few niches upon his arrival. Not only will he be a new support character character, he'll be one of the few villains in the cast. We can only speculate how he'll actually play, but since his drones have played a part in the marketing, perhaps they'll factor in. Sending body doubles to tank damage for teammates? Or giving them bonus health like Reed? Maybe he'll be the first flying support? The possibilities are infinite, and that's what excites me.

The game has anti-heroes like Magneto, Loki, and Namor, but too few bona fide bad guys. We have Hela...and that's it. I'd love a "Bring on the Bad Guys" season that introduces exclusively villains for a change. I've discussed some options I think would be interesting before (Doc Ock, Bullseye, Thanos) but I hope Ultron encourages NetEase to include more. Ultron being a healer is funny, considering he hates all human life, but that kind of hair-brained wit is what I come to expect from these devs. If they can make Rocket Raccoon a believable healer and Emma Frost a tank, they can do anything.

Yes, the Rivals community is in shambles, but let's keep our eyes on the prize. This is still a game with stunning graphics, amazing gameplay, and tons of free content that won't slow down anytime soon. Plus, Wolverine and Hulk are in it, so that's cool, too. Season 2 has been defined by shaking things up, sometimes for good, like in the case of the team-ups, but others times for ill, like the dive meta. Ultimately, the future is still bright, and when the problems are solved and shiny new heroes and game modes drop, we'll all forget about this Support Strike business like it was a bad dream.

I once more leave you with a list, this time, some team-ups combinations I'd like to see in the future, given our current cast of present and confirmed heroes. Oh, and another list of villains I'd like to see, and what roles they'd play. Enjoy!

Team-ups: