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Peni Parker, Magik, and Rocket Raccoon hold the highest win rates in Marvel Rivals right now, but if you are Diamond or above, none of them is the best pick in their role. Season 9 rewrote the Team-Up system, added a new health type, and cut ultimate energy across the board, and the gap between what wins games in solo queue and what wins games in coordinated play has never been wider.
This tier list ranks every hero twice: once by the raw win rate the whole ladder produces, and once by how the hero actually performs in Diamond and above. Where those two answers disagree, we say so, because picking the wrong one is how players stay hard-stuck.
Everything below reflects the Season 9 launch patch and the July 11 hotfix that followed it.
Season 9 Tier List at a Glance
The short version, split by role. Full tables with movement indicators follow further down.
Role | Best in coordinated play (Diamond+) | Best by raw win rate (all ranks) | Trap pick |
|---|---|---|---|
Vanguard | Bruce Banner, The Thing, Deadpool, Venom | Peni Parker (56.1%) | Captain America |
Duelist | Daredevil, Hela, Black Panther, Phoenix, The Punisher | Magik (55.4%) | Cyclops |
Strategist | Cloak & Dagger, Gambit, Invisible Woman, Mantis | Rocket Raccoon (54.7%) | Adam Warlock |
If you only take one thing from this page: Gambit and Phoenix sit near the bottom of every win-rate chart on the internet and are both top-tier picks in real competitive play. That is not a contradiction, and the next section explains why.
How This Tier List Is Built
Most Marvel Rivals tier lists are a win-rate table with tier letters glued on top. That is the easiest list to make and the least useful one to read, because win rate measures the average outcome of everyone who picks a hero, not how strong the hero is.
A hero with a simple kit and a forgiving skill floor posts a high win rate because thousands of average players can pilot them competently. A hero with a punishing skill floor posts a low win rate because most of the people picking them are learning. Neither number tells you what the hero is capable of in the hands of someone who knows the matchup.
So this list uses two inputs and keeps them separate:
- All-ranks win rate. A snapshot from the Season 9 launch window across millions of tracked matches. This is the best guide to what will carry you in Bronze through Platinum, where coordination is thin and self-sufficient heroes shine.
- Diamond and above. How the hero performs in the competitive metagame, where team compositions are deliberate, ultimates get tracked, and the enemy will punish a bad pick. This is the read that matters if you are pushing Celestial, Eternity, or One Above All.
Season 9 is also unusually volatile. The patch touched roughly 80% of the roster and the meta is still settling, so treat the middle tiers as fluid and the extremes as reliable. If you want the mechanics behind the ladder these tiers apply to, see our Marvel Rivals ranks and competitive system guide.
What Season 9 Changed
Three systemic changes drive almost every tier movement on this page. Read these before you argue with a placement.
Change | What it does | Who it helps |
|---|---|---|
Team-Up overhaul | Every hero now carries two independent Team-Up loadouts. The base effect fires with or without the partner hero on your team; bringing the partner upgrades it to an enhanced effect. Team-Up Anchors and their bonus health are gone. | Heroes whose new loadouts add real power, and anyone who was previously locked out of a Team-Up because the partner was not picked |
Regenerative Shield | A new health type that recovers after about 5 seconds without taking damage. A 300 pool refills at 60 per second, a 150 pool at 30 per second. Several heroes had flat health converted into it. | Patient, cover-using frontliners. It punishes anyone who stands in the open expecting a healer to top them up. |
Ultimate energy nerf | Ultimate energy generation was cut across all roles, slowing the rhythm of fights. The July 11 hotfix partially walked this back for Strategists, raising healing-to-energy conversion from 60% to 70%. | Teams that win with cooldowns and positioning rather than ultimate trading |
The Team-Up rebuild is the single biggest factor here. It is now a per-hero loadout decision made before the match and swappable in the spawn room, and it changes how strong a hero is more than any stat line does. We break down all of it, loadout by loadout, in the Team-Up abilities guide.
Vanguard Tier List
The frontline took the heaviest hit from the Regenerative Shield conversions. Heroes who trade flat health for shields get stronger the more disciplined you are with cover, and weaker the more you W-key into five people. That is why the Diamond+ list looks nothing like the win-rate list here.
Tier | Heroes | Movement |
|---|---|---|
S | Bruce Banner, The Thing, Deadpool, Venom | The Thing and Deadpool both climbed |
A | Thor, Devil Dinosaur, Peni Parker, Groot | Thor, Peni Parker, and Groot all climbed |
B | Angela, Doctor Strange, Emma Frost, Magneto | All four dropped |
C | Rogue, Captain America | Both dropped |
Bruce Banner and Venom anchor the top because their pressure does not depend on a Team-Up partner showing up. The Thing is the biggest riser: he sits around a 48.6% all-ranks win rate, which reads as mediocre, yet he is a premier Diamond+ pick. The reason is simple. He is slow, he needs a support to enable him, and in a random lobby he gets kited to death. Give him a team that plays with him and he is close to unkillable.
Deadpool deserves a line of his own. He is the only hero in the game who flexes into all three roles, and his Vanguard form is S-tier at Diamond+ despite carrying the second-worst win rate in the entire game at 46.6%. That number is not a verdict on the hero; it is a verdict on the average person picking him. His kit has a high ceiling and rewards coordination, so the same hero is a liability in Gold and a menace in Celestial.
Captain America is the cautionary tale. He lost 300 of his 600 base health to a 300 Regenerative Shield pool and dropped to C tier in competitive play, even though his all-ranks win rate still reads a comfortable 52.2%. Low-rank lobbies do not punish his new weakness. Diamond ones do, every single fight.
Duelist Tier List
Damage got the widest spread in Season 9. Several Duelists had baseline numbers shaved down specifically because their new Team-Up loadouts tested as overpowered, which means their raw stats now understate them.
Tier | Heroes | Movement |
|---|---|---|
S | Daredevil, Hela, Black Panther, Phoenix, The Punisher | Black Panther climbed |
A | Elsa Bloodstone, Namor, Magik, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Star-Lord, Spider-Man, Winter Soldier | Elsa Bloodstone, Namor, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, and Winter Soldier climbed; Iron Man dropped |
B | Black Cat, Blade, Black Widow, Deadpool, Human Torch, Psylocke, Moon Knight, Wolverine | Blade and Black Widow climbed; Psylocke, Moon Knight, and Wolverine dropped |
C | Cyclops, Iron Fist, Hawkeye, Storm, Mister Fantastic, Squirrel Girl | Cyclops, Iron Fist, Hawkeye, and Storm all dropped |
Phoenix is the most misread hero in the game right now. She sits in the bottom five by win rate at 47.0%, and she is S tier in competitive play. She lost value when Team-Up Anchors were removed, the developers noticed, and the July 11 hotfix pushed her Cosmic Flames damage from 55 to 60 per hit and sharpened her Rogue Team-Up. Anyone still quoting her launch-day win rate is quoting a number from before she was buffed.
Black Widow is the other story worth knowing. She was the worst hero in Marvel Rivals for most of the game's life and received a complete rework in Season 9: a full-auto hipfire, a charged Electro-Plasma Blast usable outside her ultimate, a new airborne dive, and an ultimate that turns into a burst of piercing sniper shots. The July 11 hotfix then buffed her again, raising Red Room Rifle damage from 40 to 45 and Electro-Plasma Blast from a 40 to 60 range up to 50 to 70. She still carries the lowest win rate on the ladder at 43.9%, because the entire playerbase is learning a brand-new kit from scratch. In competitive play she has already climbed to B tier and is trending up. She is the single best value pick to learn this season.
Cyclops went the other way. He reads fine at 51.8% and he is C tier at Diamond+, having dropped hard after the Anchor removal. He got a small hotfix buff, but he has not recovered.
Strategist Tier List
Support is the most consequential role in Season 9 and the one where the two lists diverge most violently. The ultimate energy nerf hit Strategists hardest, which is why the July 11 hotfix specifically raised their healing-to-energy conversion from 60% to 70%.
Tier | Heroes | Movement |
|---|---|---|
S | Cloak & Dagger, Gambit, Invisible Woman, Mantis | Cloak & Dagger and Mantis climbed |
A | Jeff the Land Shark, Luna Snow, Rocket Raccoon, Ultron | Luna Snow and Ultron climbed; Rocket Raccoon dropped |
B | Deadpool, Loki, White Fox | Loki and White Fox dropped |
C | Adam Warlock | Dropped |
Gambit is the headline. Every win-rate list on the internet buries him near the bottom at 47.6%, and several of them openly mock anyone who picks him. He is S tier at Diamond and above. The July 11 hotfix then buffed him again: self-healing after Healing Hearts went from 20 to 30 per second, and Bridge Boost healing per bounce went from 50 to 65. If you play Strategist and you want the most underpriced pick in the game, this is it.
Invisible Woman and Cloak & Dagger tell the same story with quieter numbers. Both sit under 49% across all ranks and both are S tier in competitive play. Invisible Woman was buffed twice over in the hotfix, with orb retrieval healing up from 40 to 45, Guardian Shield self-healing up from 15 to 20 per second, and her ultimate lifted from 180 to 200 healing per second while costing less energy to fire.
Rocket Raccoon is the inverse. He has the highest Strategist win rate at 54.7% and gets crowned best support by every list built on that stat alone, but in competitive play he is only A tier and trending down. He is genuinely excellent in solo queue, where his uptime carries disorganized teams. Against a team that focuses him, he is not the answer.
Mantis is the one high-win-rate Strategist who is genuinely elite at both levels. She is S tier and 53.3%, though the hotfix trimmed her Healing Flower output, so expect that number to settle.
Jubilee, the new Season 9 Strategist, is deliberately unranked here. She has not been in the game long enough for a trustworthy sample, and ranking a fresh hero off launch-week noise is exactly the mistake this guide exists to avoid. What we can say is that the hotfix buffed her three times: her ultimate got cheaper, Blooming Ball now needs 250 charge instead of 300, its base healing rose from 30 to 35 per second, and her Blade Team-Up lifesteal went from 25% to 30%. She is trending in the right direction.
Win Rate Versus Competitive Reality
This is the table the other tier lists do not print. Every hero here has a public win rate that points one way and a competitive placement that points the other. If you have been picking off a win-rate chart, these are the picks you have been getting wrong.
Hero | Role | All-ranks win rate | Diamond+ tier | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Gambit | Strategist | 47.6% | S | Massively underrated |
Phoenix | Duelist | 47.0% | S | Massively underrated |
Deadpool (Vanguard) | Vanguard | 46.6% | S | Massively underrated |
The Thing | Vanguard | 48.6% | S | Underrated |
Cloak & Dagger | Strategist | 48.6% | S | Underrated |
Invisible Woman | Strategist | 48.9% | S | Underrated |
The Punisher | Duelist | 48.8% | S | Underrated |
Peni Parker | Vanguard | 56.1% | A | Great in solo queue, not the best at the top |
Rocket Raccoon | Strategist | 54.7% | A | Great in solo queue, falling in competitive |
Magik | Duelist | 55.4% | A | Great in solo queue, not the best at the top |
Captain America | Vanguard | 52.2% | C | Overrated by the numbers |
Cyclops | Duelist | 51.8% | C | Overrated by the numbers |
Storm | Duelist | 51.7% | C | Overrated by the numbers |
Rogue | Vanguard | 51.5% | C | Overrated by the numbers |
Mister Fantastic | Duelist | 52.0% | C | Overrated by the numbers |
The pattern is consistent and it is not random. Heroes that reward coordination are undervalued by a stat that averages in every uncoordinated game they appear in. Heroes that are easy to pilot are overvalued by that same stat. The higher you climb, the more the second column matters and the less the third one does.
Best Heroes by Rank
Pick from the column that matches where you actually play, not the column that matches where you want to be.
Bracket | What wins games | Safest picks |
|---|---|---|
Bronze to Platinum | Self-sufficient heroes who do their job whether or not the team groups up. Nobody is tracking your ultimate or setting up your dive. | Peni Parker, Magik, Rocket Raccoon, Devil Dinosaur, Ultron, Mantis |
Diamond to Celestial | Heroes with real ceilings and Team-Up value. Compositions are deliberate and mistakes get punished. | Bruce Banner, Venom, Daredevil, Hela, Cloak & Dagger, Invisible Woman |
Eternity and One Above All | Everything above, plus a tight pool. Hero bans come into play and one-tricks get exposed. | Gambit, Phoenix, The Thing, Deadpool, Black Panther, Mantis |
The uncomfortable truth is that the heroes carrying you through Gold are frequently the heroes holding you back in Diamond. If you have plateaued at a rank and cannot work out why, the pick is often the reason. A session with a high-rank coach will usually find it in one game, and a rank boost will get you past the wall while you learn the pool that holds up on the other side of it.
Save -20% on your boost ⚡
Winners and Losers of the July 11 Hotfix
The hotfix landed one day after Season 9 launched and it moved real numbers. Most tier lists published on launch day, including the ones still ranking near the top of search, do not include any of this.
Hero | Change | Direction |
|---|---|---|
All Strategists | Healing-to-ultimate-energy conversion raised from 60% to 70% | Buffed |
Gambit | Self-healing 20 to 30 per second; Bridge Boost 50 to 65 per bounce | Buffed |
Invisible Woman | Orb healing 40 to 45; Guardian Shield self-heal 15 to 20 per second; ultimate 180 to 200 per second and cheaper | Buffed |
Jubilee | Cheaper ultimate; Blooming Ball charge 300 to 250 and base healing 30 to 35 per second; Blade lifesteal 25% to 30% | Buffed |
Black Widow | Red Room Rifle 40 to 45 per hit; Electro-Plasma Blast raised to a 50 to 70 range | Buffed |
Phoenix | Cosmic Flames 55 to 60 per hit; Rogue Team-Up damage and cooldown improved | Buffed |
Cyclops | Optic Blast 21 to 22 per tick; Ricochet Force 70 to 75; Gambit Team-Up cooldown 18s to 15s | Buffed |
Luna Snow | Ultimate cost 5000 to 4800 | Buffed |
Mantis | Healing Flower output reduced | Nerfed |
Psylocke | Crossbow damage 13 to 12; falloff now starts at 8m instead of 15m; Team-Up values cut | Nerfed |
Ultron | Peni Parker Team-Up drone healing 35 to 15 per second; cooldown 15s to 20s | Nerfed |
Iron Man | Thor Team-Up Unibeam outer ring damage reduced | Nerfed |
Black Panther | Shield-restoration damage boost bug fixed | Nerfed |
Note how many of these changes are Team-Up specific rather than baseline. That is the shape of Season 9 balance: the developers are tuning loadouts, not heroes. Two players on the same hero can now be running measurably different power levels depending on what they equipped.
What to Pick and What to Skip
If you are choosing what to invest your time in this season, here is the order.
- Learn first: Black Widow. Brand-new kit, buffed twice in two days, already climbing in competitive play, and almost nobody has learned her yet. The lowest win rate in the game is a learning curve, not a verdict.
- Pick up immediately: Gambit or Phoenix. Both are top tier at the level that matters, both are dismissed by every list built on win rate, and both got buffed on July 11. You will be picking a hero nobody is prepared for.
- Keep if you already play them: Bruce Banner, Venom, Daredevil, Hela, Mantis. Strong at every level, no caveats.
- Reconsider: Captain America, Cyclops, Rogue, Storm. All still post respectable win rates and all fell in competitive play. If you are climbing past Diamond, they will stop working before you get there.
- Do not chase: a hero based on a launch-day tier list. Season 9 touched most of the roster, the hotfix landed a day later, and the meta is still moving. The extremes on this page are reliable; the middle will shuffle.
One last piece of advice worth more than any placement on this page: a tight pool of two or three heroes you know deeply beats a wide pool of meta picks you half-know. Hero bans start appearing at the top of the ladder, so having a second hero in your role is not optional forever. If you want the mastery rewards while you are at it, the Proficiency track runs alongside everything you play anyway.
FAQ
Who is the best hero in Marvel Rivals right now?
It depends on where you play. By raw win rate across all ranks, Peni Parker leads at 56.1%, followed by Magik at 55.4% and Rocket Raccoon at 54.7%. In Diamond and above, none of the three is the best pick in their role. Coordinated play favors Bruce Banner and Venom on the frontline, Daredevil and Hela for damage, and Cloak & Dagger and Gambit in support.
Why do tier lists disagree with win rate charts?
Win rate measures the average result of everyone who picks a hero, not how strong that hero can be. Easy heroes post high win rates because most of their players pilot them competently. Difficult heroes post low win rates because most of their players are still learning. That is why Gambit can sit at 47.6% across all ranks and still be a top-tier Strategist in competitive play.
Is Black Widow worth playing after the Season 9 rework?
Yes, and she is arguably the best hero to learn this season. Her kit was completely rebuilt with a full-auto hipfire, a charged Electro-Plasma Blast usable outside her ultimate, an airborne dive, and a piercing sniper ultimate. The July 11 hotfix buffed her further, raising Red Room Rifle damage from 40 to 45. Her all-ranks win rate is still the lowest in the game at 43.9% purely because the playerbase is learning a new kit, and she has already climbed to B tier in competitive play.
What changed in the Season 9 Team-Up rework?
Every hero now carries two independent Team-Up loadouts instead of being locked to a fixed partner. The base effect works whether or not the partner hero is on your team, and bringing the partner upgrades it to an enhanced version. Team-Up Anchors and their bonus health were removed entirely, and you can swap between your two loadouts in the spawn room mid-match.
What is Regenerative Shield in Marvel Rivals?
A new health type introduced in Season 9 that recovers after roughly 5 seconds without taking damage. Recovery scales with the pool size: a 300 shield refills at 60 per second, a 150 shield at 30 per second. Several heroes had flat health converted into it, most notably Captain America, who lost 300 of his 600 base health to a 300 Regenerative Shield pool.
Which heroes should I avoid in Season 9?
Avoid picking off a launch-day win-rate chart. The heroes that fell hardest in competitive play are Captain America, Cyclops, Rogue, and Storm, all of which still post win rates above 51% because low-rank lobbies do not punish their weaknesses. Adam Warlock is the weakest Strategist in the competitive meta. None of them is unplayable, but they stop working as you climb.
How often does the Marvel Rivals meta change?
Constantly, and Season 9 more than most. The launch patch touched roughly 80% of the roster, a hotfix followed one day later, and the mid-season update brings another hero and further balance changes. Treat the top and bottom of any tier list as reliable and the middle as fluid, and check the patch notes before committing to a new main.
