Marvel Rivals’ Season 9 update will affect 80% of its roster as NetEase throws balance out the window for a more ‘fun’ approach to the game

Marvel Rivals will open the doors to the “most massive overhaul to the combat system since launch” that affects roughly 80% of its hero roster when Season 9 kicks off in a couple of days. There’s hero reworks, a massive change to Team-Ups, and a substantial ultimate charge nerf.

The state of Marvel Rivals has been slightly contentious and some may say even stale over the last few seasons. Among frustrations with misdirected balance patches, suffocating Strategist strength, and barrages of ultimate contests, players didn’t have a lot of love to give for the game’s state of affairs. But it seems like NetEase went into Season 9 with the intention of taking a hammer to everything. For better or worse? It’s debatable.

I’m certainly happy to see another huge nerf to ultimate charge as Vanguard and Duelists get a decreased conversion rate of 70% down to 55%, while Strategists get a conversion rate for damage of 75% to 55% and for healing 75% to 60%. This will hopefully tone down the frequency of ultimates and stop team fights ending with whatever team has the best ults coming out on top.

There’s also been a huge change to the Team-Up system. “As the sheer number of abilities grew, our dev team gradually started feeling the strain,” lead combat designer, Zhiyong, explains in a dev diary. “Some of the newer Team-Ups started feeling a bit uninspired. Existing just for the sake of ticking an update box. Once we realised this we decided it was time to absolutely revolutionise the Team-Up system.”

NetEase has scrapped the Team-Up Anchor bonus and replaced it with each hero getting two separate Team-Ups with a base effect and an enhanced effect. The base effect will be active regardless of whether the other hero is in their team.

(Image credit: NetEase)

For example, Hulk now has a Team-Up with Captain America and Wolverine. His base perk with Captain America deals AoE and reduces cooldowns regardless of whether Cap is on his team, while the enhanced version sees him deal increased damage when Cap is on his team. Oh—and Hulk gets CC immunity as his base effect with Wolverine.

I’ve always thought that Marvel Rivals’ Team-Up abilities were one of the more creative, interesting and impressive parts of the game, so I’m glad to see it given an overhaul. Even if that does mean a slew of new and old busted abilities will come creeping out the woodwork.

It seems that Season 9 rejects previous attempts to bring heroes in line with “perfect” balance, opting to balance for fun instead. That’s great in theory, but unfortunately in practice it’s simply too chaotic to be any good.

You can see this if you look at the balance notes on each hero. Sure there have been some good, much-needed nerfs like Cyclops, who’s had his damage output dialled back, but there’s also been some weird changes like Magik being able to chain hook people together, Luna Snow being able to combo kill tanks, and whatever the hell this is.

Dive certainly seems strong with some monster one-hit combos. It’s not helped by the fact that NetEase has also added regenerating shields—which it is for some reason discussing as if regen shields aren’t already a thing and common in most shooters. It lets heroes regenerate a chunk of shield health if they don’t get hit for five seconds, perfect for sneaky flankers in the backlines.

The main problem I foresee with these changes is that, in trying to make everyone’s life easier and more fun, it’ll just make things miserable. The whole idea of ‘if everyone’s busted, no one is’ doesn’t actually work, because it just means everyone’s a nightmare to play against.

Another good example of the current state of Marvel Rivals is Black Widow and her new changes. The team have tried to make her more accessible by tuning down her one shot and upping her overall damage capability. But that removes the whole point of specialising as a sniper. High risk, high reward means a high skill ceiling which most players shouldn’t be able to master. Not everyone is good at sniping, and that’s ok. It may seem like having high-skill characters would be boring because most people can’t play them, but actually lowering the bar and homogenising heroes just makes the game boring by removing any need for skill.

But I hope I’m wrong. I hope Season 9 kicks off a resurgence for Marvel Rivals. Maybe throwing mountains of new characters, busted abilities, and cosmetics at the problem will actually work this time.