Captain America’s Vanguard Role Denies His Coolest Feature

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 22, 2024 12 Views 6 Min Read
Captain America’s Vanguard Role Denies His Coolest Feature



It will be interesting to see which roles Marvel icons will be adapted into as Marvel Rivals evolves with subsequent patches and new characters. Thanks to leaks and at least one official tease, for example, it appears as if the Fantastic Four will be joining the roster at some point in the future and where they’re each sorted will hopefully have a fun and positive impact on creative team compositions. It may be easy to presume what role each Fantastic Four member may have, but there’s always a chance that Marvel Rivals surprises players with how a possible character like Jean Grey, Ant-Man, Ghost Rider, or Colossus might be categorized.

In particular, Marvel Rivals’ Vanguard role seems like a simple enough category to slot a handful of Marvel characters. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Juggernaut, Luke Cage, or Armor debut with beefy health bars, while Doctor Strange being a Vanguard arguably seems like an odd choice, especially if it’s mainly due to a tanky shield projection he can conjure. Similarly, even though Steve Rogers’ Captain America may be right at home as a Vanguard, the role seems quite limiting. The super soldier bearing a vibranium shield makes perfect sense for a tanky Vanguard in Marvel Rivals, but unfortunately his shield’s common-sense means of blocking takes precedence over possible long-ranged shield-ricocheting.

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Marvel Rivals’ Captain America Trades Flashy Shield-Throws for a Lackluster Defense

Shield-throwing isn’t absent in Captain America’s kit and yet it is suboptimal and underwhelming when he’s basically required to either be rushing opponents or blocking whatever frontline or backline opposition he has sprinted into.

Like Spider-Man’s Get Over Here! web-yank ability, Captain America’s Vibranium Energy Saw shield-hurl ability has a relatively long cooldown. This might have been reasonable if the shield bounced between enemies and surfaces for a time, and yet it seems more like a standard, futile projectile rather than a deadly saw carving through opponents. Players need to have decent aim with this ability to make it worthwhile, and not being able to throw the shield more liberally—say, if it was his right-click ability or had a far shorter cooldown—makes a massive, detrimental difference when Captain America is a melee-heavy character otherwise.

Of course, Captain America’s melee strikes do become mid-ranged projectile strikes with the shield once consecutive hits have landed, allowing players to continue attacking with their normal left click at a distance. However, like every other Vanguard in Marvel Rivals, players only get true value out of Captain America if they have a healer nearby who can keep them at high health while they chase down an opponent and bash them endlessly to sustain an effective succession of ricocheting melee blows.

Captain America is Both Style and Substance, But Marvel Rivals Forgets That

The MCU may not be of the same distinguished quality it boasted a decade ago and its initial saga is certainly to be commended for excellent Captain America fight choreography. Captain America’s trilogy alone has some of the MCU’s greatest fight scenes, and how Steve wields the vibranium shield is inspired as it soars incredible distances or is flung and bounced in extremely satisfying ways—as Spider-Man observes in Captain America: Civil War, “That thing doesn’t obey the laws of physics at all.”

Perhaps then the MCU is to blame for making Captain America’s shield-throwing astonishing and cinematic, but it would’ve been neat to have that be a pillar of his gameplay in Marvel Rivals as well. In the meantime, Marvel Rivals’ Captain America is terrific for holding points if he has a healer around who can watch his back while he blocks attacks from the front, and landing among a group of enemies with a Super Soldier Slam never fails to feel epic.

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