The "Strategist Strike" throughout the community of Marvel Rivals has seen players refuse to play characters in the ive role due to frustrations with how they play. With the strength of the "dive" meta encouraging team comps where aggressive characters target Strategists, many characters in that archetype have been struggling. However, one character's tools may offer a solution for all disgruntled Strategist mains.

The lack of Strategist players can partially be attributed to how many characters in that role have limited mobility or offensive options. Unlike Duelist characters in Marvel Rivals, Strategists oftentimes struggle to secure eliminations on their own, with their abilities being geared toward healing and nothing else. This is a far cry from other hero shooters, which tend to feature characters in ive roles who have focuses beyond pure healing.

Ultron Might Change How Strategists Play

The Relentless Machine Could Fix Complaints

The next character in Marvel Rivals set to release in Season 2.5 is Ultron, who is rumored to be a Strategist. The inclusion of this character could easily fix Strategist complaints if rumors and leaks are to be believed about the character's abilities. According to different sources, Ultron is said to be a character with high mobility and aggressive tools that can overcome many weaknesses of Strategist heroes.

Although Ultron is expected to have healing skills as well, it would be odd for the ruthless villain not to have attacks geared to eliminate opponents. Ultron is also a character who flies freely in many of his appearances, so players may see another flying character through him. To have a Strategist with freely controlled flight similar to Iron Man or The Human Torch in Marvel Rivals would be very different from other heroes of the same archetype.

As of this time of writing, many Strategist characters with mobility options were nerfed as of Season 2, with Rocket Raccoon's jetpack being a prime example. With Ultron, Strategist players may have a character whose mobility allows them to avoid incoming attackers.

While pure speculation, Ultron's status as an Avengers-level villain may give him significantly more damage on his attacks than other Strategists. Ultron could be the one Strategist whose healing is much lower than Luna Snow, The Invisible Woman, or Adam Warlock, but whose damage balances the character out.

Having Ultron as a high-damage Strategist would give the character a unique role in many team comps. If he turns out to be as mobile and damaging as Iron Man, Ultron could easily dart around battlefields instead of staying in the backline to over-aggressive teammates. Teams may need more Strategists to heal alongside Ultron, but his design could allow him to win solo fights more often than others in the role.

Damage-Focused Strategists May Counter Dive Characters

Stop Aggressive Heroes In Their Tracks

If Ultron has as much mobility and damaging tools as rumors may suggest, he could be perfect for countering "dive" characters. Dive comps in Marvel Rivals usually consist of characters with high mobility, such as Captain America or Magik, who excel at aggressively "diving" in and out of enemy teams. When these characters attack like this, they typically target Strategists to get rid of a source of recovery from their opponents.

As the game is right now, very few Strategists have tools for getting away from aggressive characters, especially if more than one attacks at a time. For example, Loki has two abilities that allow him to disappear or teleport to one of his clones, but his normal movement speed is somewhat slow. If either of those options is countered or unavailable, Loki is easily taken down by "dive" characters.

Every Strategist character has at least one way of dealing with an aggressive pursuer, but these abilities are secondary with fairly long cooldowns. For example, Luna Snow can freeze opponents, but these characters are released from ice if they're hit again.

Any Strategist whose kit trades high healing for skills with better damage will have innate tools for dealing with "dive" heroes. Characters like Adam Warlock already deal high damage with their primary attack, but only when landing critical hits. A Strategist who has an above-average damage output from the beginning will have the means to repel characters who try to hunt them down.

Having at least one Strategist in the game whose damage output can repel "dive" characters will change how teams approach large-scale fights as well. Iron Fist or Spider-Man players will have to think twice about hunting down Strategists if they know at least one of them can fight back effectively. This will likely change team comps in Marvel Rivals into something more careful, instead of the emphasis on being as aggressive as possible.

Less Healing Abilities Could Fix Complaints

Not Every Strategist Ultimate Has To Continuously Heal

I believe one of the reasons why the Strategist Strike happened is that many Strategists play in extremely similar ways. To give an example, both Luna Snow and Mantis have Ultimate abilities that create large restorative fields, preventing most of their teammates from dying. While this does keep a team in a fight for longer, both Ultimates are largely uninteresting to engage with, as they mainly serve to prolong battles.

The same can be said about many Strategists' skills, which can mostly be broken down into a few categories, including:

• Primary attack that heals allies and damages enemies
• Lock-down ability that impacts an enemy's mobility
• Healing ability with a long cooldown
• AoE Ultimate that makes your team unkillable

This homogenizing of Strategists may deter players from picking up characters in the role, leading to less ive heroes in a team comp. The frustrations of playing without a Strategist are well-known, usually leading players to encourage others to pick up someone from the archetype for the team's sake. With a Strategist who uses less healing, they may be more appealing to those who normally don't play within the role.

Any Strategist who has a higher focus on damage or mobility will be far more interesting than another pure healer. Similar to how Mister Fantastic in Marvel Rivals acts like a Vanguard in the Duelist role, the game could benefit from a Strategist who acts like a Duelist or Vanguard.

With a new character coming to the game every month when Season 3 starts, we could easily see multiple Strategist characters who break the mold. Whether Ultron is the one to prevent another strike or not, Marvel Rivals will retain players by introducing more unique concepts, even to established roles that have clear strengths and weaknesses.