Storm has swiftly taken the throne as the strongest character in Marvel Rivals season 1. A recent round of buffs catapulted her from one of the least powerful damage dealers to a menace at all skill levels in the hero shooter’s ranked mode.
According to stats tracker site RivalsMeta, which gets its data from the game’s robust API, she has the highest win rate out of all 35 heroes, at around 57%. Last season, she was only at 51%, and generally considered one of the weakest duelists, compared to popular picks like Hela, Hawkeye, and Psylocke. But a slight buff to her damage output and survivability during her hurricane ultimate tipped the scale.
It isn’t just the fact that she can rule the skies without ever having to touch down, it’s the team-wide damage boost she provides that makes her extremely potent. Storm is a support character disguised as a damage-dealer, transforming any team she’s on into a sharpened knife. And because actual support heroes with their own damage boosts, like Mantis, are tremendously popular already, teams with both of them are unstoppable.
In the highest ranks, Storm’s presence has raised the win rates of heroes who benefit from her the most, like Magik and Wolverine. Both of them have to get close to enemies to do anything and the damage boost makes it much easier for them to get in and out unscathed — much to every support players’ chagrin. Even heroes like Black Widow, who used to struggle securing kills on characters who could survive her sniper shots, are starting to climb up from the bottom of the tier lists.
That’s how a handful of buffs can change the shape of a meta, even when they don’t look like much. Nobody is calling for Storm to be nerfed just yet, but I suspect that demand will be on the way as more players figure out the impact of a hard-to-reach flying hero with team-wide benefits. Game director Guangyun Chen recently told Metro that the team wants to let players experiment rather than impose rules on them, like limiting the number of heroes in each role on a team. If that also means it won’t do another balance pass this season, you might want to start practicing the psionic goddess immediately.
