With the official Season 1 of Marvel Rivals rapidly approaching, the plan for seasonal buffs moving forward is finally going to be established. The mechanic itself was left obscure during Marvel Rivals' launch, with more information on how exactly it works being uncovered as the season progressed. With the "seasonal" prefix in its name, players are finally going to see how these buffs are going to function on a seasonal basis.

Players may expect some buffs, and their corresponding team-up abilities, to be cycled out in favor of fresh options with season 1's release. With the advent of the new season, the loss and gain of certain seasonal buffs may create a truly chaotic balancing shift. With many characters and additional team-ups on the way for season 1, the effect of seasonal buffs on the overall balance of the game could create a situation that makes Marvel Rivals nearly impossible to properly balance.

How Seasonal Buffs Work In Marvel Rivals

An Unusual System That Shifts Stats

Seasonal buffs are somewhat confusingly laid out in Marvel Rivals' UI. Within the team-up menu, a line divides the character on the left from the rest. This is the anchor character who actually activates the team-up ability, assuming one or more of the receiving characters have also been chosen. Unlike the receiving characters, the anchors receive no actual gameplay ability but rather gain a chunk of stats that persist throughout, presumably, the season.

The stat-based anchor buffs are permanently active rather than only applying during team-ups, giving anchor characters massive bonuses for simply existing. On vanguards, this could come in the form of health, with Groot, Venom, Thor, and Hulk receiving a range of 100-150 bonus health. Similarly, strategist and duelist anchors gain percentage increases to healing or damage, respectively. Similar to the fluctuating power of team-up abilities in Marvel Rivals, these bonus stats do vary in effectiveness, such as Hela's massive 20% damage increase.

These bonus stats, for those new to the genre, are nothing to scoff at. If an Overwatch character were to receive an extra 150 health or an extra 20% damage, their value and effectiveness would certainly be reconsidered within the meta. Competitive games tend to balance in the single digits, tweaking characters to have a more appropriate level of balance to a set baseline. The sometimes double-digit levels of stats are, by comparison, gargantuan.

Seasonal Buffs Could Have A Massive Impact

Balance Is A Delicate Thing

As players only know the characters with this level of buff active, the players who main these anchors may be in for a rude awakening when Season 1 officially drops. Vanguard players in particular may find their mains feeling substantially weaker in the next few weeks with the loss of, in some cases, a whopping 150 health. For context, that would be over half the health pool of many other characters in the game, an undeniably huge decrease in survivability that will certainly shake up the vanguard meta in Marvel Rivals.

Some DPS characters may also take a hit, but damage bonus changes can certainly be more negligible than a flat health decrease. Increased damage is primarily beneficial in two ways: dealing more damage to Vanguards, whose large health pool will always feel that extra percentage while under fire, and hitting certain breakpoints on squishier characters.

A breakpoint is when damage changes modify the shots required to kill. For instance, if a 20% buff allows Hela to two shot instead of three, and a 19% increase doesn't, that one percent gains much more weight.

While it's unknown how many of these seasonal buffs are going to rotate, if any at all, they have the potential to entirely reshape the balancing of Marvel Rivals. Typically, a competitive game will have a baseline of effectiveness, with general balancing coming around to push characters closer to symmetry. Marvel Rivals, and its seasonal buff systems, potentially presents a baseline that is in perpetual motion.

Standard Balancing May Need To Overcompensate

Marvel Rivals Has A Complicated Path To Balance

With a perpetually moving baseline, the more standard form of balancing may need to compensate rather heavily. For instance, certain tanks may receive massive health buffs to keep them relevant. Extrapolating that relationship over multiple seasons could create some cause for concern. If Hulk receives a health buff in season 1 to compensate for an anchor buff loss, but then receives a new anchor buff multiple seasons later, another baseline health change may be needed. The balancing of the game needs to be maintained on multiple levels, which could incur balance changes at a more frequent pace than most competitive games.

Higher levels of play, such as the budding esports scene, will likely feel this system choice. Balancing around seasonal buffs feels simply feels more arbitrary. For instance, more than half of the vanguards may become an entire health bar squishier, a change that could completely alter team composition meta on a whim. Once a cycling of team-ups occurs, there will certainly be an unavoidable pain period across the entire player base. Perhaps there is a plan behind the scenes for Marvel Rivals, but as of now, it's likely that players will see a truly chaotic meta-change when season 1 drops.