What Could Carnage’s Kit Look Like?

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 11, 2025 4 Views 12 Min Read
What Could Carnage's Kit Look Like?



Despite launching with a roster consisting of more than 30 heroes and villains, Marvel Rivals isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. With Season 1 bringing the entirety of the Fantastic Four, NetEase is setting an incredibly ambitious and exciting hero release schedule right out of the gate. And with the full Marvel Comics backlog to pull inspiration from, it’s unlikely the developers will run out of characters to add anytime soon.

Despite boasting a fair few villains on the roster already, the likes of Loki, Magneto, and Venom aren’t really the evildoers they once were. Most modern incarnations of the characters have them ranging as anything from frenemies with their respective heroes to downright antiheroes in their own right. Marvel Rivals is in dire need of some purely evil, bad-to-the-bone villains, and there’s no better fit for that part than one of the most vicious individuals in the entirety of the Marvel canon: Cletus Kasady, AKA Carnage.

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Marvel Rivals is full of iconic and beloved Marvel characters, but one character has been a glaring omission so far given his massive popularity.

Carnage’s Potential Role in Marvel Rivals is Clear

Carnage Needs to Be a Duelist in Marvel Rivals

Carnage is one of the most popular villains in Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery. The firstborn child of the Venom symbiote bonded to the serial killer Cletus Kasady to create one of the deadliest menaces to ever haunt the streets of Marvel’s NYC. And while more recent comic runs have seen him becoming the avatar of Knull and trying to bring about the end of the world, Cletus is at his core an indiscriminate, random killing machine.

That said, he would have to be a duelist in Marvel Rivals. Carnage isn’t even close to altruistic enough to be a healer, and he’s never been beefy enough to be a tank. For a guy who strictly wants to go around hurting as many people as possible in the lore, DPS seems like the only faithful option NetEase could take when bringing him into the fold.

As he’s typically not portrayed as especially large (his feature film debut in Venom: There Be Carnage notwithstanding), Carnage is always depicted as a lithe, agile fighter able to overpower the likes of both Spider-Man and Venom despite his smaller frame. In light of this, it’s pretty clear that he should follow in their footsteps and be something of a dive character, focused on isolating and quickly bursting down squishy targets like healers and backline DPS heroes.

How Carnage’s Moveset Could Look in Marvel Rivals

Carnage Should be An Aggressive, High-Damage Assassin in Marvel Rivals

His primary form of damage should be his massive, talon-like claws, which have been a staple of the character’s design throughout every adaptation. Though this may be a fairly short-range melee attack, Carnage is an adept user of his symbiote’s shape-shifting ability, even more so than Venom. Maybe after a successful attack, his dagger-like claws could extend for extra range, functionally the same way Captain America’s melee attack lets him throw the shield short distances after connecting a solid hit or two. His alt-fire could be a singular spear-tipped tendril that fires out of his chest, doing massive damage to whomever it connects with. Mechanically, it would be slightly similar to Venom’s primary fire, but slower and more of a risk/reward skill shot.

Carnage’s first ability could be a melee buff to himself. More than any other symbiote, he has a talent for turning his hands into different bladed weapons. A buff that lets him choose between turning his hands into axes or swords would let him alter the properties of his melee attacks: the swords dealing slightly less damage than the basic attack but moving much faster, while axes would be slower, but give a massive damage increase.

His secondary ability could be a pounce punctuated by a bite from his massive mouth. This would let him get into the fight quickly while also making headway in killing a target in the backline. A third ability could be an AOE used to get out of sticky situations where he shoots out spiked tendrils in a radius all around him. These tendrils can do some light damage, but mostly serve as a utility to slow enemies down with symbiote goo, allowing him to get out of a losing fight.

Carnage Would Need to Differentiate Himself from Marvel Rivals’ Venom and Spider-Man

Carnage has all the same powers as Venom and Spider-Man, so similar swinging and wall-crawling mechanics would be must-haves for the sake of authenticity, but one thing Cletus has that his progenitors lack is an incredibly pronounced bloodlust. Carnage should have a passive that enables a DoT bleeding effect after a player has been hit with one of his special moves. Marvel Rivals doesn’t have many DoT attacks at present, and this would help Carnage secure eliminations on squishy heroes while still being very much in line with his character as a serial killer.

His ultimate should be an extension of his manic melee play style. When activated, he could turn his arms into axes and spin around in a whirlwind of damage for a short period of time, randomly spitting out bladed projectiles as he goes. It could be an idea to allow this ult to do damage to Carnage’s teammates to really drive home the character’s complete disregard for anyone’s life, but that might make the character non-viable for higher-level players, or even encourage trolling. The whole ultimate is, of course, a loving reference to the character’s big-screen debut in one of the most ridiculous scenes of the endearingly ridiculous Venom trilogy.

Possible Team-Up Abilities for Carnage

For being such a lone wolf of a character, there are not a ton of team-up opportunities that would fit Carnage. He famously ran with a similarly bloodthirsty gang of super-powered killers in the Maximum Carnage event, but niche picks like Shriek, Doppleganger, Carrion, and Demogoblin aren’t likely to be hitting the Marvel Rivals anytime remotely soon.

Despite them having a long history of hating each other, Venom might be the only character in the game who could have a synergy ability with Carnage. Something related to their shared relationship with Knull, the god of the symbiotes who features heavily in the Klyntar map currently in the game. Their shared ability could give them both Knull’s spiral insignia for a short time, which grants them an additional form of tendril attack.

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