Marvel Rivals Season 2 is set to launch on April 11th, bringing a plethora of new changes to the wildly popular multiplayer title. Seasons will be shortened down from three months to two months starting with Season 3, but there will still be plenty of new content to explore over the next few months.
Here’s the full breakdown of the changes coming to Marvel Rivals in Season 2, including the new heroes, new features, and gameplay changes.
New Heroes: Emma Frost and Ultron
When Season 2 launches, Emma Frost will join the roster of heroes in the Vanguard role. Emma Frost will be able to “adeptly utilize her telepathic and diamond abilities” while “standing at the fore front to shield her allies and obliterate her foes.”
Ultron will join a month and a half after the launch of Season 2, during the Season 2.5 update. Details about Ultron have not been released yet, but he will most likely join the roster as either a Vanguard or Duelist.
Costume Colors and Costume Sharing
New color options for some of the “more popular costumes” are being added in Season 2. Psylocke’s Vengeance costume and Luna Snow’s Mirae 2099 costume are just two examples of costumes that will have new color options.
A new feature that allows players to gift costumes and bundles to their friends is also going live with Season 2. When at the checkout screen for a costume bundle, players can select the “Gift” option instead of buying it for themselves. It appears that players will be limited to sending only five gifts a day.
Team-Up Ability and Hero Balance Changes
For the first time since the game’s release, Team-Up Abilities are being either altered or removed. Since Marvel Rivals launched, Team-Up Abilities have only been added to compliment new hero arrivals. Here are the changes coming to Team-Up Abilities in Season 2:
- New: Emma Frost can team up with Psylocke and/or Magneto to form Mental Projection. Emma creates illusory clones of Psylocke and Magneto.
- New: Doctor Strange can share his arcane magic with Scarlet Witch to form Arcane Order, which transforms her right-click into a rapid-fire, long-range projectile that doesn’t consume energy.
- New: Captain America and Winter Soldier (finally) can team up with Stars Aligned. Winter Soldier can pounce forward and deal a shockwave pulse. He and Captain can pounce together to cause more damage and debuff nearby enemies.
- Metallic Chaos (Scarlet Witch and Magneto) has been removed.
- Voltaic Union (Storm, Captain America, and Thor) has been removed.
- Psylocke has been removed from Dimensional Shortcut (Black Panther and Magik).
- Winter Soldier has been removed from Ammo Overload (The Punisher and Rocket Raccoon).
- Namor has been removed from Chilling Charisma (Luna Snow and Jeff).
- Doctor Strange has been replaced with Namor in Gamma Charge (Iron Man and Hulk).
Without giving specific details yet, the Marvel Rivals team also provided some information on who’s getting buffed or nerf in the next balance update. Here are the changes players can expect to hero balance in Season 2:
- Peni Parker, Scarlet Witch, Mister Fantastic, Black Widow, Rocket Raccoon, Jeff the Land Shark, Captain America, Winter Soldier, Moon Knight will receive buffs, either via increases to their power or through Team-Up Abilities.
- Doctor Strange will get a nerf to his offensive power, but a buff to his survivability (health).
- Loki and Adam Warlock are getting nerfs to their area-of-effect healing abilities.
A deeper dive in the balance changes coming to Season 2 will be coming soon.
Changes to Missions, Competitive
Starting in Season 2, Marvel Rivals will implement weekly missions alongside the existing daily missions and challenges. Players won’t be able to earn more Chrono Tokens, instead those will be rebalanced across all three mission types.
On the Competitive side, some players might be disappointed to learn that ranked players will drop nine divisions at the start of Season 2. For example, a player that ends Season 1.5 at Diamond 1 will start Season 2 at Silver 1. The new map, Hellfire Gala: Krakoa, will enter the competitive pool, while Yggsgard: Royal Palace and Tokyo 2099: Shin-Shibuya will be “retired” from competitive play.
The minimum level requirement for competitive play is being increased from level 10 to level 15. The hero pick and ban system will also be implemented starting at Gold 3. Only duo queueing will be allowed when a team includes players that are Eternity or One Above All. And finally, the rank rating players receive will now be more weighed by individual performance.
The full Dev Vision video can be viewed here, and full patch notes will release closer to the April 11th launch date for Season 2 of Marvel Rivals.
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