When it comes to team shooters, there are a couple of things that players focus on more than anything else. The first is whether they can be the character they want to be and then whether the character they choose is actually good. The developers of such titles try and keep everything “balanced,” but when you’re dealing with players who do anything and everything to win sometimes, new ideas and strategies can turn the tides in ways that the dev team never expected. Marvel Rivals is an excellent example of that, as it’s had plenty to talk about amongst its player base since its release, including the topic of “Which character is best to use in a fight?”
On Reddit, one player decided to break that down across a nice sample size of 75,000 matches. Their results were surprising in more ways than one. Among all the current heroes, The Hulk is the one with the best win percentage at 54.36%. However, when you look at the top ten as a whole, the difference between No.1 and No.10 is less than 2%. That’s a tight set of margins, and it proves how these ones have been dominant in their matches. Rounding out the top ten were both “classic choices” and surprising characters. From 2-10, the other best heroes were Wolverine, Mantis, Magik, Adam Warlock, Peni Parker, Loki, Psylocke, Rocket Raccoon, and Hela.
That’s quite a roster of characters, and that leaves out plenty of iconic Marvel heroes from the top ranks. Granted, this is across just these 75K battles, but that’s a good size to try and get certain data from. Plus, if you think about it, many of these character trends would likely carry over to other points of data, even if it doesn’t directly translate 1-to-1.
Oh, but the surprises don’t end there. What heroes were at the bottom of the Reddit list? Surprisingly, it was Scarlet Witch, Cloak and Dagger…and Jeff The Shark! Yes, the infamous Jeff The Shark isn’t a guaranteed “you lose” scenario like the internet makes him out to be. He might sometimes steal from other franchises, but he’s not the golden goose of victory.
Still not enough data for you? Well, across this dataset, Marvel Rivals had a surprising “most picked” character in Luna Snow, with over 59% of matches having her. In contrast, some of the biggest bans among the characters featured Hela, Hawkeye, and Psylocke.
It’ll be curious to see how these numbers change over time.
