Marvel Rivals has had a bit of a support problem in its latest season. Amid the glitz and glamor of Emma Frost’s arrival and the Hellfire Gala, the hero shooter’s sophomore season aimed to try and reign in a meta that had seen the game’s cast of strategists—the healing and support heroes in the game’s riff on the classic Tank/Healer/DPS triangle—become dominantly powerful, with balance updates that saw support characters face longer cooldowns, smaller health pools, and even a rebalancing of how the game weighted support contributions to end-of-match rewards. That and the general hero-shooter-reputation of support players feeling undervalued by their teams caused a lot of ire (and even calls for a strike), to the point that developer NetEase began reverting some of the tweaks it made.
But while those have somewhat calmed the ire of angsty strategist mains, it seems like they’re getting a big bone thrown to them with Rivals‘ latest addition, Ultron, a strategist who seemingly asks: aren’t you tired of being nice? Don’t you just want to go apeshit?
Although we’ve known since the start of the season that Ultron would be Rivals‘ mid-season addition to the roster, today NetEase lifted the lid on our first proper look at him in action, and it seems like he’s going to be a maligned support player’s dream. First up, he’s pretty aggressive, with both his primary fire looking quite mean and his nature as the first flying strategist hero letting him chase down foolhardy duelists who wanted to try and pick off a support. That flight also gives him a nifty escape option, as we get to see him boost out of and away from being pinned by Wolverine’s perpetually annoying leap attack, too.
But all that aggro doesn’t mean Rivals players will seemingly have to fear “DPS Ultrons” who don’t balance their damaging abilities with healing output. Ultron will be able to tag allies with a healing drone that provides sustained healing over time in a radius around the tagged teammate, while he keeps attacking, and what looks like a temporary shield buff that grants overhealth to mitigate incoming damage. And if that wasn’t enough, his ultimate lets Ultron call in a host of drones to fire a volley of beam blasts that simultaneously heal allies and and harm foes. Sometimes the best way to heal your friends is to obliterate anything that threatens to damage them in the first place!
Time will tell just how Ultron slots into Marvel Rivals‘ meta, but you can probably to expect to suddenly see a lot more support mains in your lobbies when he arrives alongside the season 2.5 update next week starting May 30.
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