The best characters in Marvel Rivals season 0

There are 33 different characters in Marvel Rivals, but not every hero (or villain) is equal. In the competitive shooter’s season 0, which is called Doom’s Rise and is significantly shorter than a regular season, every character is viable but there are some who are obviously more powerful than the rest.

Below, we’ve compiled a breakdown of the current Marvel Rivals meta by noting the nine best characters (three from each role: duelist, vanguard, and strategist) who are performing very well in season 0. And while the meta will of course continue to shift, with new heroes rising to the top, all of these are great characters you can take into any match once you’ve mastered them in order to increase your chances of winning.

In this Marvel Rivals guide, we’ll walk you through the best characters in Marvel Rivals, tell you what makes each of them so powerful, and how you should (ideally) build your team with them.

The best characters in Marvel Rivals season 0 meta

The best characters in Marvel Rivals right now (in alphabetical order) are:

1. Cloak & Dagger (Strategist)
2. Doctor Strange (Vanguard)
3. Iron Fist (Duelist)
4. Jeff the Land Shark (Strategist)
5. Mantis (Strategist)
6. Moon Knight (Duelist)
7. Thor (Vanguard)
8. Venom (Vanguard)
9. Winter Soldier (Duelist)

After testing out each hero in the game, we’ve put together the above list of best heroes based on the power of each character’s kit (their active and passive abilities), their consistency, their ease of use, and their ability to carry a team. There are some other incredible heroes in Marvel Rivals that will likely make it onto this list in the future, but they are currently only really dominating at higher levels, and are therefore higher skill floor heroes that are difficult to recommend unless you’re an incredible shot (such as Hawkeye and Hela).

As far as how these characters fit into a team, let’s take a quick look at the current composition meta in season 0.

The best team comp seems to be that solid 2-2-2 — two of each class — which gives you a nice balance of everything. This allows you to have a beefy main tank like Doctor Strange and an off-tank like Thor, a powerful throughput healer like Jeff the Land Shark paired with a healer that also increases damage like Mantis, and a group damage dealer like Moon Knight paired with an assassin like Iron Fist. The 2-2-2 seems to be the most consistent composition because it offers the broadest coverage in terms of what a team generally needs. And before we get the meta settles with a season 1 balance patch, you need to be prepared for anything. This comp will do it for you.

The one alternative team composition that we’ve seen do well is the 1-3-2 comp, with just one tank, three damage-dealers, and two healers. This forces you to dedicate a healer almost entirely to your one tank to keep them alive, but gives you the flexibility of a bonus damage dealer to deal with a problem player on the other team, like a sneaky Scarlet Witch or a sniping Hawkeye. This team composition does rely heavily on the duelists to capitalize on opportunities quickly, and will likely fall off at higher ranks when teams are coordinated enough to just burn the one tank down as quickly as possible, giving them a lot of room to navigate objectives.

Below, we’ve broken down what makes each of the nine best heroes in the game so good.

Cloak & Dagger (Strategist)

Cloak & Dagger are two very simple heroes in one, making them more complex to play than either Jeff or Mantis. However, Cloak & Dagger’s abilities — when woven together — can create a very powerful storm of healing and damage, which can be difficult to overcome for most enemies.

What makes Cloak & Dagger a stellar support, however, isn’t even their ultimate ability, but Cloak’s Dark Teleportation ability, which makes allies briefly invisible and untargetable. This single ability can negate ultimates like Jeff’s It’s Jeff! or even Scarlet Witch’s Reality Erasure. Even better, it requires nothing from Cloak’s allies other than to be close to him, so it’s a potentially game-saving ability that you can pull off without any voice chat or coordination.

Doctor Strange (Vanguard)

Doctor Strange is a tank who seems weak on an initial look, but is actually extremely powerful in the right hands. Where Thor and Venom allow you to drag your team to victory by killing squishier characters, Doctor Strange is able to lead the team where he wants them to go with his powerful shield and massive stun ultimate.

But the real power of Doctor Strange — especially when you’re playing with friends over voice — is the Pentagram of Farallah portal. This thing allows your entire team to move to another area of the map in seconds, allowing for a powerful flank. You can even shoot powerful attacks like Iron Man’s ultimate through the portal and onto an unsuspecting team below.

Doctor Strange is a very high-skill tank, but if you know how to play him, you can lead your team to victory without much effort.

Iron Fist (Duelist)

Iron Fist is a damage-dealing machine, specifically very good at diving into the backlines of enemy teams and wiping squishy duelists and strategists off the map. This is usually due to his Yat Jee Chung Kuen enhanced melee attacks, which deal extremely high damage in a short amount of time.

His triple jump, kick, and wall-run abilities also make him very difficult to escape for most characters, and impossible to catch for most vanguards.

Jeff the Land Shark (Strategist)

In season 0, Jeff the Land Shark is the best character in Marvel Rivals, largely due to his ease of play. His Joyful Splash healing waters have unlimited range and can heal multiple characters at once if they’re stacked up, making Jeff one of the most efficient healers out there. His Aqua Burst primary attack also does very high damage for a strategist, making him difficult to take on solo if you can’t get the drop on him.

But the reason most people hate playing against Jeff — and what makes a Jeff with good map knowledge so dangerous — is his It’s Jeff! ultimate, which sees the shark swallow everyone in a small area. Jeff can then safely spit out his allies before carrying everyone from the enemy team off a cliff. This is a potentially game-winning ultimate that is very difficult for you and your teammates to counter or escape.

Mantis (Strategist)

Mantis is a potent healer in Marvel Rivals, capable of enabling both herself and her allies to deal high amounts of damage. Her kit is relatively straightforward, as she uses healing orbs to either heal allies or significantly boost ally damage. But those two abilities — paired with her powerful stun — give you incredible tools to work through almost any situation.

On top of her raw healing throughout and damage capabilities, Mantis’ ult essentially makes your allies invulnerable with how powerful its healing is, and the bonus health it brings can help counter many other powerful ultimate abilities if timed correctly.

Moon Knight (Duelist)

Moon Knight’s sheer ability to deal damage in a large group of heroes makes him extremely potent in the current meta. A well-thrown Ankh paired with an accurate Moon Blade and some Crescent Darts can eliminate entire teams of low-health characters in seconds. Moon Knight users who are able to hide their Ankh’s in unpredictable or difficult-to-reach spots can create a kill box that is very difficult to avoid for strategists, and can make incoming damage unpredictable.

Moon Knight’s Hand of Khonshu ult also charges very quickly, does a ton of damage, and can be difficult to escape for slow-moving characters.

Thor (Vanguard)

Thor is an absolute powerhouse of a tank, capable of soloing squishy targets in seconds while using his Awakening Rune ability. But Thor is a lot more than just his awakened state, and all of his abilities can generate team wins very regularly if you know what you’re doing.

All of his tools make him significantly more complex than a tank like Venom, so not every Thor on your team means a free win. But a Thor on a rampage is capable of diving into a team, eliminating strategists, and diving back to their allies without even getting close to going down.

Venom (Vanguard)

Venom gets the award for simple but powerful. Just by being in the fray, he’s a massive threat, and learning the timing on his Symbiotic Resilience ability — which gives him a massive bonus health shield based on his missing health — takes very little practice to master.

Beyond just being easy to get online, Venom has a decently high skill ceiling with his swing and ground pound, and he’s capable of acting as both frontline tank and surprise backline assassin depending on what you need in the moment.

Winter Soldier (Duelist)

Winter Solider has a lot of things going for him, which makes him both difficult to master, and extremely powerful. His primary attack deals so much damage that it can kill several low-health strategists and DPS in two shots. His hook ability also makes him great for surprise eliminating characters like Adam Warlock or Mantis.

But what really makes Winter Soldier scary is his Kraken Impact ultimate, which not only enables a powerful execute that can make all heroes easier to take down, but resets on each kill. An effective Winter Soldier can chain ultimate after ultimate until the entire team is eliminated, allowing you to clean up the objective and win the match.

For more Marvel Rivals guides, here’s a list of all known codes, all Team-Up abilities, all maps and modes, and a look at the game’s roadmap.