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  1. Games
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Marvel Rivals Vanguard mains say "there’s nothing we can do except hope a DPS can kill them" as the flyer meta dominates Season 2.5: "A tank exodus is probably not far from happening"

News
By Scott McCrae published 3 June 2025

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Marvel's Rivals
(Image credit: NetEase)
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Marvel Rivals tank players are currently having a rough time of it, with Season 2.5's flyer meta ruining the game in the eyes of many Vanguards.

Marvel Rivals season 2.5 has added Ultron to the roster this week, and already, players are a bit annoyed about it. Marvel Rivals' large roster of flying characters has steadily been growing with Johnny Storm in Season 1.5 and now Ultron, and given that Iron Man was already annoying enough, it only seems right his fancy robot is equally a pain. Especially when your team auto-locks all the DPS characters without knowing you can look up.

And now with Ultron's arrival, the flyer meta is well and truly in, which has drawn the ire of tank players in the Marvel Rivals community. For context, a majority of the tanks in Marvel Rivals are brawlers like Captain America, Thor, Hulk, and The Thing, and naturally, these characters don't have especially long ranges since they love to punch a lot, which becomes a problem when members of the enemy team have taken to the sky.

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Disgruntled tank players have taken to the Marvel Rivals subreddit to vent their frustration, with one user saying, "a tank exodus is probably not far from happening" if NetEase doesn't make the role impactful again. While others have expressed frustration that their experience in a match is solely determined by whether their DPS teammates can take on the flying enemies effectively.

Some members of the community have pushed back on the tanks, however, with one user saying that they should be focusing on the non-flyer enemies of the team instead, and likened it to their experience fighting against dive characters like Wolverine for the last few seasons. However, as a commenter points out, "The difference between flyers and dive is, with dive the entire team can interact and try to counter it." adding, "[with] Flyer there’s nothing we can do except hope a DPS can kill then if a Storm and Iron Man are messing up my team. That’s it, I can’t shoot them, I can’t grab them both out of the air, all I can do is shield til it breaks, and hopefully the DPS kills them. It’s not fun when you can’t interact with half the enemy team."

I've personally found the tanking experience in Marvel Rivals to be pretty rough the whole time it's been out, but the flying meta has definitely made it a far more miserable experience. Although granted, queueing up and putting your trust in randos is often a recipe for misery.

It doesn't help that Ultron and Iron Man are the newest duo to get a Marvel Rivals Team-Up ability this season.

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Scott McCrae
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Scott has been freelancing for over three years across a number of different gaming publications, first appearing on GamesRadar+ in 2024. He has also written for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, VG247, Play, TechRadar, and others. He's typically rambling about Metal Gear Solid, God Hand, or any other PS2-era titles that rarely (if ever) get sequels.

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