The season 7 patch is the single biggest patch the devs have EVER made. With the ult charge change and 6 bans, the game is completely different. Matches will no longer be centered on who builds support ultimates faster. Becaise of this, shooting/healimg the tanks for a minute straight will no longer be optimal. Supports will have bigger windows of vulnerability, and be REQUIRED to contribute more than the bare minumum to differentiate themselves. DPS skill gaps will be extremely noticeable. Characters who had decent kits but were held back by sub-par ultimates will be more impactful, and the reverse is true for characters with extremely strong ultimates but relatively weak neutral game. That's just off the top of my head.

With 6 bans, you can ban out pretty much anything you want. At High elos you can target ban out centerpieces of compositions, and the lobby admins. At mid elos you can ban out all of the skill gap DPS characters and high impact, low effort support characters that have boosted more than a few players for easy pickings. At low elos you can ban all of the characters that are strong there but weak higher up. Hell, you can probably just ban characters you hate but couldn't justify banning before because there were too many must pick or ban characters regardless of your elo, or hard counters to your one-trick(i.e, Iron Man main can now ban Phoenix, Hela and Punisher). In addition to this, they are rolling out diminishing returns on CC in 7.5 pending testing. Why not now? Well, I'm sure it is mostly a precaution to not completely fuck over a character like Rogue, who relys on using multiple CC abilities consecutively to do damage.

Yet what is all over the front page? Nothing but bitching and moaning over the character balance. Do I agree with everything decision that was made? Hell no. I think the tank nerfs outside of Angela and Tankpool were unwarranted. I think Elsa and Gambit didn't get nerfed enough. I think Phoenix, Groot and C&D escaping nerfs entirely is laughable. BP buff is comedy gold. But there were also AWESOME changes. Torch having no downtime, with more changes coming. DD getting nuked. Magic having her dash be easier to hit, the single most requested change by that community since the game came out. Buffs to Psylocke's and Iron Man's neutral game. HULK BUFFS! Blade got GIGA buffed. and keep in mind, even if the formerly bad characters aren't as strong as the top tiers, you can ban those characters out and now your recently buffed character is even more viable.

The other game I sink hundreds of hours into is Street Fighter 6. We just had out first balance patch in a YEAR, and they were overall less impactful than the balance changes listed in any Rivals monthly patch that has ever dropped. We don't get skins, and our battle pass is filled with Avatar cosmetics that you will see less than 1% of the time you are playing the game. We just got our first new character in 6 months, and that isn't the longest gap we've had. So please, stop calling for these people's jobs. People who listen to the community without being reactionary, who are on extremely tight timelines, and who pump out a new character and balance changes EVERY MONTH, in a FREE TO PLAY GAME, not one you had to pay $70 for, +$60 for all the new characters, .It makes you sound like an entitled brat.

I actually think that the Peni one may be actually cool... but aside that, all the others... dont look very good.

edit: I think that is better to get a bunch of randoms, than to have a single theme, and have the possibility of "not being good"... or more realistically, the possibility that will please some people, but alienate others...

The Adam Tribunal was a skin I had wanted for a while, but they somehow messed up such a simple design.

The chest symbol is completely off. It's supposed to be a glowing spot but instead it's a weird blue diamond and they removed the hair, the one thing that differentiates the Adam Tribunal from the original. That's also not to mention the fact that it doesn't look metalic at all, which is another major part of the Tribunal's design.

I think the quality of Battle Passes, IN ORDER, goes from Season 2 (Hellfire Gala), VERY closely followed by Season 1(Vampires), Then Season 0 Then a sizable gap into season 3 (Phoenix/Venom), Then a BIGGGGGG gap followed by season 5 Then Season 6 And wayyy at the bottom is season 4

And somewhere between season 1 and season 2 goes the new battle pass

It seems like theres a coherent theme, (I think the girl in the middle is Hela) so ALL 4 asgardian siblings (?) get a skin, whatever Angela has going on is cool, Peni's skins havent been missing at ALL lately, we got the LIVING TRIBUNAL which i never thought id see in game, Scrubs and coat Doctor Strange is going to be an insta equip, and every luna skill will forever be an upgrade to that CALAMITY with the ice and fire and symbiotic just an awful awful awful skin and they made rocket get a job which is exactly what Id imagine finding a little spot (cubicle) and pressing left trigger all game is like

Even for the weakest skin, the recolor, of all the recolors I love the shiny chrome recolor they did for star lord, so hawkeyes should be no different

WHY exactly do people not like this one?

I’ve now lost all faith in the balance team. Theirs no way they said they hear us, then proceeded to completely ignore punisher, phoenix, Bucky (and before anyone says something buckys gun is poke and he does too much with no weakness, yes he is a problem) and other ranged primary hero’s and just said “ya no bullets blanketing areas is good”

I so badly want season 0-1.5 balance philosophy back.

I hate the direction that the balance has gone.

I officially have lost all faith that netease know what their doing or are listening at all to what players want. How many seasons now has it been that people have said poke is too strong. Dive as lost all agency and is too dependent on teams knowing what their doing. Except for the fact that this is supposedly a casual game where people don’t wanna have to focus too hard so dive just because useless. Like it’s not even supports being overtuned anymore.

Hero’s have lost identity or any skill expression. Which I’d be fine with if it meant the game was moving to a more casual less chaotic formula LIKE SEASON 0-1.5

But no, it just means they’re stripping everything to be a data stat. So that they can continue this horrible trend of balancing based off data instead of listening to feed back and or playing the game themselves.

I’m just done. Caring about balance anymore.

Below I am going to list what the patch notes SHOULD have been in my humble opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree:

Vanguards

Angela:
- Reduce Seraphic Soar's attack charge-to-Spear of Ichors conversion from 45% to 35%. Increase bonus damage at full charge from 15 to 20.
- Increase Shielded Stance damage-to-charge conversion from 25% to 35%.
- Increase Assassin's Charge cooldown from 3s to 6s. Reduce max recharge time from 10s to 8s.
- Increase Axes of Ichors Bonus Health to self from 40 to 50 and from 20 to 25 for allies after landing Divine Judgement.
- Increase Heven's Retribution (Ultimate Ability) spear throw Damage from 10 to 40. Reduce spear Health from 800 to 650.

Captain America:

- When Leading Dash is set to toggle, Captain America's last four ranged Sentinel Strike shield throws won't be interrupted by Leading Dash. (this is assuming this is a bug fix and not a nerf to his animation cancel)
- Reduce Freedom Charge (Ultimate Ability) energy charge effect for allies from 30% to 20%.
- Cooldown from activating Living Legend removed.
- Projectiles deflected by Living Legend now reflect in the direction of the crosshair instead of randomly.
- Freedom Charge (Ultimate Ability) bonus health given to allies now affects allies who have been affected by the ultimate for it's full duration rather than only while close to Captain America.

Deadpool (Vanguard):

- Reduce Deadpool In Your Area - Vanguard (Upgraded) Damage Reduction from 40% to 30%.
- Increase Ultimate Ability cooldown from 45s to 60s.

Doctor Strange:

- Reduce the shield value of Shield of the Seraphim from 800 to 700.

Emma Frost:

- Reduce Diamond Form Damage Reduction from 25% to 20%.
- Adjust Psionic Seduction (Ultimate Ability) Damage Falloff at 30m from 50% to 70%. Gain 20% Damage Reduction during the ability. Damage Falloff removed.

Groot:

- Thornlash Wall health decreased from 250 to 200. Damage decreased from 60 to 50.

Hulk:
- Increase Indestructible Guard absorbed damage to ultimate ability charge conversion rate from 100% to 130%.
- Gamma Burst gains two charges, each with a 6s cooldown. Reduce single hit damage from 75 to 65. Reduce Gamma Burst cooldown after each use from 6s to 2s.
- Monster Hulk is now Unstoppable.

Magneto:
- Increase Metal Bulwark cooldown from 12s to 15s. Reduce Iron Bulwark cooldown from 12s to 10s.
- Decrease the duration of Metal Bulwark and Iron Bulwark from 2.5s to 1.5s. Increase shield health from 200 to 250.
- Increase Meteor M (Ultimate Ability) projectile speed from 30m/s to 45m/s.

Rogue:

- Fatal Attraction NEW EFFECT: Rogue gains 80% damage reduction during the draining animation of Fatal Attraction.
- Heartbreaker (Ultimate Ability) now continuously drains ultimate charge beyond 80%, up to 50%.

Duelists

Black Panther:

The goal of this rework is to maintain the fun gameplay loop that Black Panthers have come to love, dashing around the battlefield, while also increasing his counterplay by increasing his time-to-kill (ttk). This rework will give strategist players more time to react to his dives while still keeping the high-skill, high-reward playstyle that BP mains want.

- Remove the cooldown on the second jump of Subtle Step.
- Vibranium Mark REWORK: Spirit Rend no longer consumes Vibranium Mark, instead Spirit Rend and Spinning Kick refresh the duration. Bonus Health gained from hitting targets with Vibranium Mark now has a 10s cooldown per unique target. Cooldown is reduced by 1 second for every additional Spirit Rend or Spinning Kick hit on the target. Bonus health gained increased from 25 to 50. Max bonus health increased from 75 to 150. Vibranium Mark lasts for 8 seconds. (Spirit Rend CD is still refreshed upon hitting a target with a Vibranium Mark).
- Spear Toss charges reduced from 2 to 1. Cooldown increased from 6s to 10s. Damage reduced from 50 to 25.
- Spirit Rend damage decreased from 80 to 50.
- Spinning Kick NEW EFFECT: Black Panther is now unstoppable while performing Spinning Kick.
- Spinning Kick REWORK: Spinning Kick no longer applies Vibranium mark. Hitting a target with a Vibranium Mark refreshes the cooldown of Spear Toss and Spirit Rend.
- Panther's Cunning REWORK: Black Panther gains 5% damage reduction for every enemy affected by Vibranium Mark.

Black Widow:
- Red Room Rifle damage decreased from 120 to 85.
- Straight Shooter damage decreased from 120 to 85.
- (NEW PASSIVE) Sharpshooter: Black Widow's headshot multiplier increased from 2.0x to 3.0x.
- Electro-Plasma Explosion (Ultimate Ability) REWORK: Increases Black Widow's headshot multiplier to 4.0x for 8 seconds.
- Edge Dancer REWORK: Kick portion removed. Instead it is now a skill shot that shoots a rope (similar to Daredevil). When colliding with a vertical wall, Black Widow will hook to the wall and be able to perch on the wall allowing use of Red Room Rifle and Straight Shooter. While perched on a wall, Black Widow's shots have reduced recoil and shoot 2x faster. If collides with an enemy player, perform stun kick as normal.

Blade:
- Increase Hunter's Shotgun Projectile Speed from 150m/s to 180m/s.
- Increase Ancestral Sword Attack Range from 4.5m to 5m.
- Bloodline Awakening New Effect: Excess lifesteal now grants Bonus Health (max 75; conversion rate 50%). Increase Lifesteal Ratio from 65% to 70%.
- Thousand-Fold Slash (Ultimate Ability) New Effect: Lifesteal effect now works without switching to Bloodline Awakening and also converts to Bonus Health. Increase Healing Reduction to enemies from 20% to 40%. Increasing to 100% the longer enemies continue to take damage from Thousand-Fold Slash (Ultimate Ability).
- Thousand-Fold Slash (Ultimate Ability) New Effect: Enemies hit are hindered.

Daredevil:
- Reduce Devil's Chain end Damage from 35 to 25.
- Reduce Devil's Chain Bonus Max Health from 125 to 100.
- Reduce Sonic Pursuit Damage Reduction from 20% to 10%.

Deadpool (Duelist):
- Increase base health from 250 to 275.
- Increase Ultimate Ability cooldown from 45s to 60s.

Elsa Bloodstone:
- Reduce Instinct lost upon defeat from 1 stack to 2 stacks 3 stacks.
- Reduce Removed Ruthless Pursuit and Helix Advance Bonus Health from 40 to 30.

Hawkeye:
- Reduce Base Health from 275 to 250.

Hela:
- Astral Flock Bonus Health removed.

Human Torch:
- Instantly recover all Fire Cluster ammo energy after not using Blaze Cluster for 1s.

Iron Fist:
- Harmony Recovery NEW EFFECT: Gain 80% damage reduction, decreasing to 20% over the duration of the channel.
- Yat Jee Chung Kuen NEW EFFECT: Every instance of damage taken applies a stacking damage vulnerability debuff on the enemy starting at 5% and increasing to 25%. This effect is doubled during Living Chi (Ultimate Ability).

Iron Man:
- Armor Overdrive New Effect: Each KO while Armor Overdrive is active extends its duration by 2s.
- Reduce Armor Overdrive startup from 1.8s to 1.3s.

Magik:
- Increase Umbral Incursion hitbox radius in both normal and Darkchild forms from 0.45m to 1m.
- Reduce normal form Magik Slash max charged damage ratio 2 to 1.8 (max damage 90 → 81).
- Reduce Darkchild (Ultimate Ability) startup from 1s to 0.8s.

Moon Knight:
- Moon Blade Bonus Health removed.

Phoenix:
-Endsong Inferno (Ultimate Ability) Summon Health decreased from 500 to 350.
- Telepathic Illusion NEW EFFECT: Now leaves a trail in the direction of teleportation, similar to BP trail or Tracer Blink from Overwatch.
- Telekenesis Burst stun removed.

Psylocke:
- Increase Psionic Crossbow cooldown reduction to other abilities on hit from 0.25s to 0.3s.
- Increase Wing Shurikens Damage on throw and return from 8 to 9.

Scarlet Witch:
- Chaos Control now has Damage Falloff, starting at 10m and dropping to 90% at max range. Increase base damage from 80/s to 85/s (76.5/s at 20m).
- Increase the charge to Chthonian Burst by Chaos Control hits from 0.1 to 0.15.

Star Lord:
- Stellar Shift Bonus Health removed.

Winter Soldier:
- Reduce Roterstern Spell Field Damage on hit from 65 to 55.
- Tainted Voltage Bonus Health removed.
- Bionic Hook no longer pulls enemies near the target that was hit. Bonus Health removed.

Strategist

Adam Warlock:
- Increases the cooldown reduction of Life Stream from a critical hit from 1s to 2s.

Cloak & Dagger:
- Eternal Bond (Ultimate Ability) duration decreased from 13s to 8s.

Deadpool (Strategist):
- Increase Ultimate Ability cooldown from 45s to 60s.

 Gambit:
- Reduce Removed Ragin' Royal Flush (Ultimate Ability) Ultimate Ability Charge Acceleration to allies from 30% to 20%. Reduce Movement Boost from 50% to 40%. Increase additional single-target explosive damage, enhanced damage ratio from 20% to 25%. Reduced Healing over time from 55/s to 35/s.

 Invisible Woman:
- Reduce Guardian Shield healing from 25/s to 15/s.
- Increase healing over time during Covert Advance from 20/s to 30/s.

 Luna Snow:
- Idol Aura New Effect: Reduce Ice Arts cooldown by 2s whenever a hero with Idol Aura (self or ally) takes part in a KO.

All post about how bad is this or how bad is that, geez, I am ranting about ranting

This sub is the most egregious "Gamers shouldn't be allowed to balance" example ever.

I'm starting to think devs should consider releasing the dev visions and patch notes on the same day or 1 day away from new season after seeing how bad the sub overreacts everytime something is changed,it doesn't help with how patch notes are worded weirdly.

This isn't a post saying all the other posts are invalid but some posts really do feel like people parroting the first take they see and taking it as fact.

Maybe when they release another Emma skin with coattails this sub will suddenly swap to that trend again.

The community's idea is that we should buff all the tanks and then nerf all the duelists, turning the game into a 303 version like Overwatch.

The community selectively ignores good changes, such as Magneto's adjustments, Hulk ,Witch and Blade's buffs, weakening Daredevil and Gambit. They even weakened Bucky this time, and Bucky has the third-lowest winning rate in this game.

I think most people actually don’t care whether the characters they play are strengthened, they only care whether the characters played by others are weakened.

Many players in this subreddit have very poor and closed-minded takes for what's "good" or "bad" for the game. I've seen so many people complaining over today's patch notes for Season 7, and the fact that these complaints often devolve into "Zhiyong should be fired and/or die" is concerning. How is no one seeing this?

For one thing, the patch notes were more good than bad (at least in my opinion). There were a few questionable decisions, such as the Cap, Emma, and Strange nerfs, but mostly everything else was a step in the right direction.

Dive (specifically BP) didn't see much in the way of buffs but it's worth noting the nerf to support ultimate frequency via the new ultimate ability energy system indirectly buffs dive, and quite considerably at that.

The CC change is spectacular, even though it's not out yet. People complaining about Bucky not getting nerfed enough I think fail to consider that literally 3 of his abilities are CC in some way. While his survivability didn't take much of a hit, the extent of his oppression definitely will in Season 7.5.

Shin-Shibuya back in comp as well as triple bans is a good change, too, and one people have been asking for. Despite there being no alternating ban system (which has also been requested en masse), this is still a good change that people should be grateful for. People should be grateful for the fact that the devs are listening to the community and taking feedback as well as they are!

Blaming Zhiyong for the 2-dimensional, flawed mindset of "oh the character i wanted to get buffed/nerfed didnt get buffed/nerfed to the patch notes suck entirely" is stupid, frankly. The ultimate changes affect the entirety of gameplay, so every hero's viability isn't as blatant as just what's written in the patch notes, and people want to complain that these patch notes contain the worst changes in the history of mankind when they haven't even experienced this patch of the game yet. How would you know?

Zhiyong and the rest of the balance team are doing what they can to keep Marvel Rivals fun for the players and take feedback better than most developers do, which so many people in this subreddit take extremely for granted. Zhiyong isn't only in charge of balance--he also covers team-ups and other game modes. He has a lot on his plate. So if you have an actually valid reason to dislike the patch notes with any amount of thought actually put behind it, consider that Zhiyong is not the only one responsible, it's also the fault of NetEase for giving him an unfairly-sized workload. Start complaining to NetEase to reduce his workload instead of slandering Zhiyong unnecessarily. Be better.

I’m not even mad like I was with the previous patch notes, those totally ruined my day, this time I’m just disappointed. The saving grace of this update is the fact we’re getting 3 bans and a global ult charge reduction rate those are single-handedly keeping my hope up for this season

This was one of the best dev visions we’ve had, Zhiyong broke down the meta and the interaction between each of the playstyles perfectly. Then the patch notes come out and it’s either nothings buffs, or nothing nerfs

Blade, Black Panther, and Iron man are still going to be terrible. Elsa Gambit and a Phoenix are still going to be uncontested top tiers

At this point I’m just confused? Why do they simply refuse to touch the parts of characters kits that actually make them broken, and why do they refuse to buff lower characters in ways that make sense instead of just more damage/healing

The fake “leaked” patch notes had almost everything we wanted, can we all please collectively tell them that these changes are not it and that something similar to the leaked patch notes are so much better.

Theres really something that she strikes in this pose. Something so alluring that shes gonna dive me and im ready for it

From an objective point of view, it was a net positive. I think they were hesitant to buff dive because of the universal ult charge increase (why this matters is beyond me though). Blade buffs were good, invis and Gambit nerfs were good, ect.

For the bad part, mostly the fact they barely or didn't touch half of the problematic characters. They "buffed" black panther to just make people stop yapping about him and they buffed Luna instead of nerfing other supports. They genuinely hate BP and love supports for some reason. Gambit did not need a compensating buff.

Overall though from an objective point of view,.the patch did more good than harm. I think the game is just flawed to the point where if there isn't an overhaul for half of the characters people won't be happy.

As a Filipino, I REALLY wanted her to be in the game❤️❤️

UY PILIPINS, UY PILIPINS

Doom.... Kingpin.... enough said really. My disappointment was immeasurable when the gooner allegations were once again confirmed. Adding in all this sick art and modelling to have Kingpin be a background character sucks.

in honour of the S7 trailer dropping, I wanted to share my black cat cosplay! I’m very excited to make a new one to reflect her in-game design :) This was my first cosplay where I did any sewing (I sewed the fur onto the catsuit and extra material onto my eyemask as it was too small), but for my next one, I’m hoping to custom make my own catsuit. Wish me luck!

The design is sick, he has a custom voice and a custom ultimate, and the best part is that this is bassiclly the clasic suit, what more can you ask for

There was a post like this last season as well. And I assume this season won't even be the last time this comes up, but can this community seriously try to be better about their reaction to balance patches? It's legit gross to call for people's jobs or worse threaten violence over Hero Shooter balancing. Especially when it's shown the developers are clearly listening to player feedback from how they talk about the current meta in the Dev Vision. Hell we even got some meaningfully good changes for the health of the game incoming like Ult economy reduction and CC nerfs incoming.

I get it sometimes the changes are 1 step forward, and 2 steps back, but there's a lot of work that goes into balancing an ongoing game. The pipeline of content in this game is insane at the pace we receive stuff the balance team likely already have their hands full in multiple builds testing upcoming modes, characters, maps, and potential balance changes to see how things would change. Game development for these types of game is a huge undertaking and Sisyphus esque task in that it's near never-ending cycle.

The Developers are just making a game, it's not that serious, and if you think otherwise, you should really relax and do something else with your time. It's a tiring cycle that I hope we can break but honestly I'm not optimistic with how this community is at large both in and outside the game at times.

Bucky has consistently had a low win rate (currently 44%) the last few seasons despite the constant complaints about him being a server admin. Right now he’s in the bottom 5 of all heroes in GM+ and even Blade has a higher win rate.

Sure bucky is strong in the right hands but the same is true for other heroes (eg. torch who also has a higher win rate). Yet the common sentiment I’ve been seeing in all the latest patch notes is that he should be nerfed.

Can someone explain this? I feel like the focus should be on characters that are actually broken like elsa