Marvel Rivals seems to have fixed its big Vanguard problem, but it may have opened the door to a new issue

If you're a Marvel Rivals player of any regularity, you've probably noticed that the game has had a bit of a Vanguard problem in the first half of Season One. In Quick Match and lower level Ranked play, where personal satisfaction is often a bigger priority for many players than hewing closely to the prevalent game-winning strategies, it can feel rare to see more than one Vanguard per side in a match. Yet in higher level ranked play, where sticking to meta can be the key to maintaining one's status, players can feel locked into just a few character choices out of the already small Vanguard roster.

Luckily, NetEase has pulled a few arrows out of its quiver for the game's first major mid-season patch all aimed at changing up the Vanguard experience with more viable competitive character choices and more incentives to play the under-loved class in the first place.

The problem with Vanguards

Minor nerfs and changes for Doctor Strange and Magneto, considered to be nigh-ubiquitous Vanguard choices in higher ranks, de-emphasized the need for their inclusion in a team. Simultaneously, two of the game's top brawling Vanguards, Captain America and Thor, got some serious buffs that make their playstyles both more fluid and more viable. And of course there's the addition of The Thing, a new Vanguard with a clobberin' melee style that gives tankier players more options for battlefield control.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest changes to the Marvel Rivals competitive Vanguard meta actually comes from changes to one of its current reigning Duelist heroes, Iron Man, which buffed his Unibeam attack to damage output levels that were previously only achievable when paired with the Hulk, thanks to their Gamma-sharing team-up power. Now, that team-up benefits both heroes less – meaning that players who may have once felt pressured to play Hulk are freed up to pick from among the other characters, and Iron Man mains are still left feasting on the increased power of his Unibeam.

But this points to the emergence of a new, potentially problematic meta that is rapidly swirling to the top of nearly every match – one in which flying heroes such as Iron Man, Storm, and the newly added Human Torch are even more dominant, with what feels like dwindling options to fully counter them. Players are already complaining about the increased strength of Iron Man's Unibeam, which was previously possible to counter in the character select stage of high-level ranked matches where up to four characters can be banned from selection on either team.

Without Hulk as the necessary anchor for the team-up, more fluid team rosters are springing up around Tony Stark, usually with a second flyer as the team's other Duelist. If you're playing in lower ranks or in Quick Match, the problem with flyers may feel even more dire, as you're more likely to encounter all three free-floating Marvel Rivals heroes – Iron Man, Storm, and Human Torch – in a single game. With Storm and Human Torch sharing their own powerful team-up ability, which ignites Storm's already potent Ultimate Ability into a full-on flaming tornado, that kind of firepower can quickly feel oppressive.

This begs the question: is a dual (or even triple) flyer meta actually that problematic, or even that big a shift for the game?

Yes and no – and there are a lot of moving parts to that already vague answer, so bear with me as I stand in front of a yarn-board covered in pictures of Doctor Strange and Wolverine like Charlie Kelly hollering about Pepe Silvia.

Look to the skies

The potential problems of a dual flyer Duelist meta are a little more ephemeral than the concretely obvious issue with Marvel Rivals having a low pool of Vanguard characters, many of whom have been a hard sell for players craving a fast-paced, high-powered type of gameplay – but the two concepts are also inextricably intertwined. As flying Duelists are being buffed and added to the game, remember that tanks like Doctor Strange and Magneto, who have traditionally been strong counters for flying Duelists, have been nerfed, while several brawl tanks – those more focused on close-up encounters – have been buffed and added to the roster.

This creates a split style of play where brawl Vanguards, who often have less tools to deal with flying Duelists and more vulnerabilities to their attacks, are emphasized, while brawling Duelists such as Wolverine and Iron Fist are becoming less ubiquitous thanks to their difficulty in dealing with the type of long-range encounters created by flyers. In turn, Duelist players are left facing a similar potential bottleneck of viable characters as the one recently faced by Vanguard players due to the presence of only three flying Duelists.

Likewise, while there are myriad potential counters to flying heroes among the game's roster of highly powerful Strategist heroes, nearly all of whom have strong potential in any skill rank. But turning your attention to the skies for too long can increase the risk that your ground-level team will choose that exact moment to make crucial mistakes without necessary support.

Finally – and this is the hottest of hot takes – hero shooters start to feel bad the more skill they require to play casually. We all love landing a solid headshot, cleaning up a difficult fight with a major skill diff, and sending our opponents home packing in disgrace. But it's a different story when we're on the receiving end of that kind of pressure. With dual flyer meta waiting in the wings, players who struggle with the characters best equipped to take down soaring Duelists may find themselves having to sweat harder than they might like. Storm, Human Torch, and Iron Man may generally fly pretty slowly outside of their boost abilities, but if you don't have a knack for landing long distance headshots, the skill equation can feel fairly one-sided in favor of the flyers.

What's worse, the very nature of how flying characters fight and move can make them the epitome of the type of heroes who feel like deadly, unstoppable forces in the hands of higher skilled enemy players and big soft potatoes when a new player first takes a crack at them, which can be incredibly discouraging.

Air traffic control

Nonetheless, there are silver linings to the looming cloud of dual flyer meta, some baked into the very patch that may solidify it as the go-to strategy for the current meta.

Some of the buffs and changes in the most recent Marvel Rivals patch stood out like sore spots when the notes were first released, with some updates seemingly turning already powerful heroes into potential menaces. But with the understanding that flying Duelists are likely to be extremely prevalent for the rest of the season at least, they start to make a lot more sense.

Hela's damage fall-off range was buffed, meaning it's easier for her to finish off enemies that are farther away. At the same time, Star-Lord's free-flying ability was buffed to last longer, allowing more time for him to temporarily take to the skies. On their faces, these changes feel like buffs to characters that frankly didn't need them – especially Hela, who underwent nerfs at the start of Marvel Rivals Season One to make her damage output less oppressive. But when weighed against the increased focus on flying Duelists as a meta strategy, these changes make total sense as ways to combat the power of flyers by giving non-flyer Duelists some better options to help deal with them.

Likewise, the changes to the game's roster have opened up some potential options for high level players as they ban heroes at the start of their games, making the choice of which characters to prevent from being picked a bit more calculated, with less obvious go-to bans - and potentially targeting flyers as a primary concern.

More than anything, we can look at these changes as prescient examples of Marvel Rivals' developer NetEase knowing what it's doing, and that it seems to be well aware of the potential for flyers to become an un-fun force to be reckoned with in the second half of Season One. While we shouldn't expect another patch before the end of the season, we can likely rest assured that, if the dual flyer meta does indeed become a serious issue for players, NetEase will have some more tricks up its sleeves to bring flyer meta back down to Earth.

Figuring out which characters might work best for you? Check out our Marvel Rivals tier list.