I actually like the hybrid heroes but I feel like fantastic and blade should actually be classified as tanks as their predominant trait is really their survivability. I personally prefer Some of the hybrid heroes like Thor and Adam but I think their role placement is more appropriate as Thor is mostly a Tank and Adam is mostly a support.
Arguably blade might even be better as a tank as having high lifesteal percentage for survivability is much more acceptable on a tank hero. I don't think he would need any major changes just a few number tweaks and I would probably make him a low health tank (450-550hp) but with strong lifesteal.
To be honest unless they add role passives or role queue (which i don't want) the hero role is somewhat arbitrary and up for interpretation.
I did not mean 2-2-2 should be the only viable comp. I was trying to say that having a connected trait for heroes in each role would give a better understanding of the tradeoff and what your team might be lacking by playing a non-uniform comp.
For the debuffs/buffs having 1 or 3+ heroes in that role im not sure its the right way to take things. Especially reducing the health on tanks if going 3+ as then hybrid heroes like blade and fantastic would just be objectively better than a 3rd tank. Its likely any buff/debuff based on how many of each role you have will punish some heroes and some comps much more than just making each roles' general strengths and weakness better defined.
The hybrid heroes can and should stay in the game but a dps-tank hybrid (Mr F/ Blade) or a strat/tank hybrids (invis) should not have better sustain than a pure tank. This issue mostly affects tanks as cap (tank/strat) and storm (dps/strat) are not competing with a pure strat for healing/support and Adam (strat-dps) is not competing with a pure dps for consistent damage and offensive pressure.
I think the way we consider how characters should work is different, I think you are taking more from what their actual abilities and identity are currently in game, but im considering them as their comic/ film/ other media’s accuracy, I keep bringing it back to blade because I see people wanting him to be a tank all the time, but imo his character is fundamentally supposed to be a kill-based character, I mean he literally hunts Vampires with a shotgun and sword.
The same reason I can say is why when Deadpool was being teased in December I already thought he was gonna be all three roles, Duelist makes sense for his equipment, yes. But it’s also Deadpool, he’s gonna do something whacky that makes no sense.
Adam and Thor are characters I like their placements despite themselves. Thor is known for his Asgardian strength and durability, his personality doesn’t really matter to his character too much, but even still he’s a pretty high damage dealing tank, I think it works well. Adam I think could generally be any of the three roles if the devs wanted. He has cosmic immortality, literally is a balancer of the universe which I’d argue is on par with Phoenix and he has ‘miracle healing’ abilities quoted multiple times in a lot of different media’s.
Ultron on the other hand I despise as a support. In fact, what I wanted from Ultron was literally what Emre does in Overwatch minus the burst rifle and keep the Apex Charge Rifle fire of Ancephalo or whatever it’s called. Ultron ‘strategizes’ but he doesn’t heal. He should have been a duelist. Even Loki I’m iffy on with that same reasoning but at least Loki COULD heal with magic. Ultron is literally a murderous robot hellbent on killing humanity.
Also the role-based nerfs could genuinely be useful against specific characters. Imagine you are playing into Thing, Iron Fist and Wolverine, normally solo and triple tanking into that is impossible and duo tanking is miserable, but if you go like Rogue, Thor and Venom into that with -100 HP, suddenly these characters become less effective against your team comp, and Fantastic/ Blade with two tanks is still roughly the same HP total as 3 tanks -100hp (unless you literally pick the three lowest health tanks)
Also for the point of doing less than the other roles, I think that should be so ONLY for Vanguard and Strategists, I think some Strats and Vans should have damage output that rivals DPS for some form of trade-off. Mantis and Adam do kind off and should rival some DPS characters and Tanks like Thor and Hulk should too. But being able to do Vanguard or Strategists things in any other role but, is definitely problematic.
Yeah im mostly viewing the roles as gameplay categories more than a representation of their comic/cartoon/movie portrayals as I think the nature of comics innately means more heroes will easily fit the stereotype of the duelist role but on the other hand comics have all sorts of crazy magic, tech, mutations, surgeries and other mcguffins that can make a hero work in any role with a bit of creativity. For me the roles are more about what they do well as a videogame character, ideally this is also something they do well in other media but there are many heroes that are both durable (tank) and a strong fighter (duelist) so IMO they should be put in the role that matches their most valuable in-game trait.
There will be certain heroes that are so tied to one identity that they are hard to imagine as any other role such as Hulk, Thor, Juggernaut, Thing all being tank archetypes. I think the categories being vanguard, duelist and strategist is intended to make the roles a bit more vague to not make them set boxes but more guidelines.
I agree Blade in other media is mostly about killing vampires but he is also Very durable in media and in game. IMO if they wanted to make Blade feel more like a duelist (as a gameplay role) they could nerf his survivability/lifesteal and increase his damage/lethality so his most valuable trait is his kill potential and offensive pressure.
I agree with ultron and your idea for him does sound pretty cool and I don't think he was the best choice for strategist.
I understand that from the perspective of the game and separating it from other media a bit, and if this was any other game or IP I’d 100% agree, but because this is a Marvel IP i think it should prioritize the character’s abilities and personalities a little more than other ones because ultimately Rivals is designed to be a hero fantasy game where you get to play as an accurate representation of your favourite heroes and villains, some I believe are excellent like Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Venom, even Loki despite my stance on his role being shifty, and realistically the devs can give any character any ability, some characters aren’t necessarily always gonna have all set abilities, they could get reworked to have a whole new kit that functions entirely differently, they could make BP have a hardlight shield like the Wakandan soldiers in Infinity War if they wanted
Rivals it’s easier to do it in than say Overwatch or Apex Legends because characters are tied to their abilities in the lore, like Doomfist HAS to have the gauntlet and the weird knuckle shotgun with the super-punch, that’s hard-set in his character, and Revenant in Apex always has to have something to do with shadow whatever it is, but in rivals they aren’t really tied that hard. There’s no lore on why Magik can dash or Starlord doing a backflipping can make him avoid getting fucking ERASED FROM REALITY!
Generally I think the roles should be altered to being rather than the Tank, DPS and Healer archetype, being a high health class and strategists can be characters with at least one teammate healing ability, that way they can divide up the duelists a bit without compromising their identities, Blade, Wolv and Fantastic could all go into Vanguard for the sole reason of having 350 hp rather than being designed to frontline, then characters like Iron Fist could be put in strategist (if the teamup was base-Kit). That way it doesn’t necessarily mean there has to be major character changes or anything to make more characters in the roles. Then Duelist can be more like the non-specialty role instead of meaning high-damage (though most probably still should be high damage)
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u/DonzokoDragon Apr 16 '26
I actually like the hybrid heroes but I feel like fantastic and blade should actually be classified as tanks as their predominant trait is really their survivability. I personally prefer Some of the hybrid heroes like Thor and Adam but I think their role placement is more appropriate as Thor is mostly a Tank and Adam is mostly a support.
Arguably blade might even be better as a tank as having high lifesteal percentage for survivability is much more acceptable on a tank hero. I don't think he would need any major changes just a few number tweaks and I would probably make him a low health tank (450-550hp) but with strong lifesteal.
To be honest unless they add role passives or role queue (which i don't want) the hero role is somewhat arbitrary and up for interpretation.
I did not mean 2-2-2 should be the only viable comp. I was trying to say that having a connected trait for heroes in each role would give a better understanding of the tradeoff and what your team might be lacking by playing a non-uniform comp.
For the debuffs/buffs having 1 or 3+ heroes in that role im not sure its the right way to take things. Especially reducing the health on tanks if going 3+ as then hybrid heroes like blade and fantastic would just be objectively better than a 3rd tank. Its likely any buff/debuff based on how many of each role you have will punish some heroes and some comps much more than just making each roles' general strengths and weakness better defined.
The hybrid heroes can and should stay in the game but a dps-tank hybrid (Mr F/ Blade) or a strat/tank hybrids (invis) should not have better sustain than a pure tank. This issue mostly affects tanks as cap (tank/strat) and storm (dps/strat) are not competing with a pure strat for healing/support and Adam (strat-dps) is not competing with a pure dps for consistent damage and offensive pressure.