Marvel Rivals Tier List: Best Heroes After Season 10.5

NetEase's Season 10.5 mid-season patch landed on October 9, 2026, and it is the heaviest hero-by-hero rebalance Marvel Rivals has shipped in months. Thirteen heroes across all three roles — Vanguard, Duelist and Strategist — had numbers or kit behavior changed, and for the first time since launch the update skipped a new playable character entirely to focus on the fixes. This tier list ranks the heroes whose Season 10.5 standing actually moved, based on the official balance patch notes rather than guesswork. It's our read on the current patch, not a claim about tournament results, and it will get revisited the moment NetEase ships another pass.

01What Changed in Marvel Rivals Season 10.5

Season 10.5's official patch notes center on the new Path to Doomsday: Avengers: Infinity War PvP mode, the Infinity Finale season event, and the Alchemax Headquarters map for 6v6. No new hero joins the roster this time — instead, the version 20261009 update is built almost entirely around rebalancing. The accompanying balance post covers Devil Dinosaur, Hulk, Magneto, The Thing, Cyclops, Gorr the God Butcher, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Phoenix, Scarlet Witch, Adam Warlock, Gambit and Jubilee, touching base kits and several hero-specific Team-Up abilities at once.

The pattern is clear once you read through every change: NetEase pushed hard on mobility and burst for a handful of Duelists while quietly trimming two heroes that had been dominating queue — Devil Dinosaur on the front line and Scarlet Witch's burst damage. That's the split this list follows below.

It's also worth noting what Season 10.5 didn't touch. Winter Soldier and Gorr the God Butcher both received latency and sensitivity fixes filed under "Fixes and Optimizations" rather than balance, meaning those two changes are quality-of-life adjustments, not power shifts, and shouldn't be read into this tier list. Every number ranked below instead comes straight from the dedicated balance post, which NetEase keeps as a separate article from the general patch notes — a split worth remembering if you're trying to tell a bug fix apart from an actual rebalance in future updates.

Three roles are in play here, and the changes land unevenly across them. Vanguard got one small nerf and two Team-Up-only buffs, Duelist absorbed the bulk of both the best buffs and the worst nerfs, and Strategist came away almost entirely buffed. If you queue flex, that alone is worth knowing before you lock in a hero.

02S Tier: The Patch's Biggest Winners

Iron Man got the most dramatic rework in the patch. Both Micro-Missile Barrage and its Armor Overdrive variant now auto-track nearby enemies on release, locking up to five missiles per target, and base projectile speed on Micro-Missile Barrage quadrupled from 15 m/s to 60 m/s. Per-missile damage was cut to compensate (20 to 10 on the base version, 15 to 10 on Overdrive), but landing a full volley is now far more consistent than before. His Team-Up with Thor also got stronger, with Unibeam's outer-ring damage rising from 70 to 80 per second (90 with Thunder Overdrive).

Phoenix traded a defensive habit for more pressure: her self-heal on Spark detonations is gone, replaced by a stacking Bonus Health buff (5 per application, capped at 25 over 4 seconds), while Cosmic Flames damage rose from 60 to 65 and both Spark detonation damage values increased. Endsong Inferno, her ultimate, now applies two Sparks per hit instead of one. The net effect is a Phoenix who deals more damage and survives on short absorb shields instead of passive lifesteal — stronger in the hands of a player who tracks cooldowns rather than one leaning on free sustain.

Hulk picked up buffs on two fronts. In Banner form, Gamma Ray Gun's projectile speed jumped from 80 to 120 m/s and self-inflicted Gamma Grenade hits now generate double the Gamma energy (50 to 100), both of which shorten the time it takes to transform. His Team-Up with Wolverine is also considerably safer to use: the Furious state's Attack Speed and Movement Speed bonuses both rose from 20% to 25%, the Unstoppable health threshold climbed from 300 to 400, and its cooldown dropped from 60 to 45 seconds.

03A Tier: Still Elite, Now Sharper

Hawkeye is the clearest Duelist winner outside the S tier. Piercing Arrow's projectile speed increased across its full charge range (130–195 m/s up to 140–210 m/s), Hypersonic Arrow's hit field widened from 3 to 5 meters, and Crescent Slash's recovery animation was shortened. His Team-Up with Cloak & Dagger also gained a new effect: Moonlit Slash now heals Hawkeye for the amount of damage it deals, giving him sustain he never had solo.

Cyclops got a round of small, additive buffs rather than one headline change: Optic Blast's per-hit damage rose from 22 to 23, Ricochet Force's cooldown reduction per hit increased from 0.25 to 0.3 seconds, and his ultimate Ruby Rage's energy cost dropped from 3700 to 3400, meaning it charges noticeably faster in a full match.

Jubilee and Adam Warlock both climb as Strategist picks. Jubilee's Sparking Sprint now heals her for 25 health per second while active, Firework Finale's healing field jumped from 150 to 180 per second, and her Team-Up with Blade adds a new 15-per-second heal to nearby allies. Adam Warlock's Team-Up with Ultron got stronger too, with Cosmic Cluster's single-target heal rising from 16 to 18 and its explosion heal from 5 to 7.

04B Tier: Solid But Situational

Gambit is a wash rather than a clear gain. Healing Hearts and Breaking Spades now charge a stack every 7 seconds instead of 8, which is a real buff to his sustain uptime, but his ultimate Ragin' Royal Flush lost both range (40m down to 30m) and extra jump height (500 down to 300), making it noticeably harder to land from distance.

Magneto and The Thing only moved via their Team-Up abilities, which limits how often the buffs come up. Magneto's Team-Up with Emma Frost now projects 50% of damage taken instead of 45%, for up to 6 seconds instead of 5. The Thing's Team-Up with Invisible Woman had Unbreakable Forces' cooldown cut from 20 to 15 seconds, and its healing-trigger threshold lowered from 150 to 125 damage taken. Both heroes are stronger specifically in those pairings and essentially unchanged outside them.

05C Tier: Hit Hardest By the Nerfs

Devil Dinosaur lost 25 base health, dropping from 850 to 825. It is a small number on paper, but for a Vanguard whose entire job is soaking damage on the front line, every point counts, and NetEase's own patch notes frame it as deliberately trimming his bulk.

Gorr the God Butcher took the most changes of any hero and most of them point down: Shadow Scythe's flat damage dropped from 55 to 50, Shockwave fell from 60 to 55 damage, his ultimate Twilight of the Gods now lasts 10 seconds instead of 12, and Living Abyss' movement speed was cut from 13 to 10 m/s. The one buff — Living Abyss' cooldown shortened from 15 to 12 seconds — doesn't offset the rest.

Scarlet Witch received the smallest change on this list by line count but arguably the most painful one in practice: Chthonian Burst's single-shot damage fell from 40 to 35, a straight 12.5% cut to one of her core damage spells with nothing added elsewhere to compensate.

06Quick Adjustments for Season 10.5

Quick Adjustments for Season 10.5

1. 1Micro-Missile Barrage and Armor Overdrive now lock onto nearby enemies automatically, so landing a full volley takes less precision than before Season 10.5.This patch
2. 2Spark detonations no longer heal her directly; instead they grant stacking Bonus Health. Pop Sparks proactively rather than saving them for emergency sustain.This patch
3. 3The Unstoppable health threshold is higher and its cooldown shorter, so this Team-Up can be used more aggressively to peel for backline allies.Team comp
4. 4Target search range dropped from 40m to 30m, so ultimates thrown from max range will now miss where they used to connect.Ongoing
5. 525 less base health means he drops a fraction faster under focus fire; call out dive earlier than you did before October 9.This patch
6. 6Chthonian Burst's damage fell from 40 to 35, so combos that used to finish a kill may now leave a sliver of health.Ongoing

07How We Ranked This List

This is an opinion ranking built directly from NetEase's own balance notes, not from parsed match data or a competitive database — Marvel Rivals doesn't publish granular win-rate stats the way some other hero shooters do. We weighed how much each change affects a hero's core kit versus a situational Team-Up, and how forgiving or punishing the new numbers are for an average player rather than a top-500 one. A hero whose only change lives inside one specific Team-Up, like Magneto or The Thing here, is capped below one whose base kit moved, even if the raw percentage change looks similar on paper.

Treat the S and A tiers as heroes worth prioritizing while Season 10.5 is live, and the C tier as heroes that still work but now ask more of you to get there rather than heroes to drop outright. None of the nerfs in this patch are severe enough to make a hero unplayable — Devil Dinosaur, Gorr and Scarlet Witch are all still viable picks, just slightly less forgiving than they were before October 9. The patch runs until Season 11 arrives, so recheck this list once NetEase posts the next balance update.