Marvel Rivals offers 3 distinct classes for players to experiment with – Vanguards, Duelists and Strategists – with each class offering their own unique strengths and weaknesses. While Strategists behave more or less like a Support class would, there is a fair bit of overlap between the Vanguard and Duelist classes.
In particular, this has caused some serious balancing issues within the game, with many players outright refusing to use more than a single Vanguard in a team – even if it ensures an easy victory.
Marvel Rivals players are choosing Duelists over Vanguards
Interestingly, it would appear that most Marvel Rivals players avoid using Vanguards. While Vanguards are more of a ‘tank’ class, they are also capable of DPS, and effectively dealing with larger groups, aka – crowd control.
In fact, most of the teams one would find themselves paired with consist of barely 2 Vanguards, with the number dropping down to 1 or even 0 in some cases. Vanguards in a team are crucial to victory, and it should come as no surprise when many of these comps fail to secure a win.
On the other hand, Duelists are a lot more flashy, which could be attributed as to why they remain so popular still. Characters such as Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch) are a perfect example of this – with many characters opting to choose him over The Thing, who is a more well-rounded hero.
Coupled with their relative ease of use, and low skill ceiling, it makes total sense as to why players would seem to prefer Duelists over Vanguards in Marvel Rivals, even when characters such as Venom can wipe the floor with most matches.
Not a whole lot of people want to play tank, and Netease Games is perhaps at fault here too – after all, the game does not incentivize players to use tanks in any way. The game desperately needs a role queue of sorts, without which things could only get worse in the long run. After all, Rivals is not without its issues.
Vanguards, while powerful, are a lot more complicated to handle
While unfortunate, the whole scenario can be linked to one reason in particular – Vanguards, unlike Duelists, are a lot more complicated. Tanks in Marvel Rivals have an immense amount of flexibility, at the cost of being simple to use.
For example, Venom can easily demolish backlines, Thor can act as a pseudo-DPS and Magneto can persist for a long time on the field thanks to his massive HP pool and abilities. These are just some of the examples showcasing how potent Vanguards can be, and of their multi-role nature.
Duelists, on the other hand, are a lot more straightforward, and are very easy to play. This is a double edged sword, and results in more players picking the class over any other alternative – which ruins the game balance in matches as a result.
After all, Vanguards require a fair bit more investment to shine, and with the ever persistent dopamine-induced nature of games, less and less players resort to tactical options. Regardless, Vanguard usage should be most definitely encouraged, and Netease could introduce a mechanic that promotes pairing up different classes in a team.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
