What Marvel Rivals’ Hero Hot List Reveals About Season 0’s Meta

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 13, 2025 4 Views 6 Min Read
What Marvel Rivals' Hero Hot List Reveals About Season 0's Meta



Marvel Rivals has officially begun its first season, which naturally means that Season 0 has ended. Developers quickly released plenty of data upon its conclusion, including a few important pieces of information regarding hero selection. Although Marvel Rivals only launched very recently, there is already a lot to unpack from its so-called Hero Hot List.

For any game in the hero shooter genre, two of the most relevant pieces of information about competitive balance are win rate and pick rate. They are both pretty self-explanatory, and both encompass how the roster is shaping up so far. Any given player’s opinion on character balance will often be motivated by their individual anecdotes, while data like this will paint a much more accurate picture of the state of the game.

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Marvel Rivals Season 0 Win Rate and Pick Rate Explained

Win rate and pick rate go hand in hand, meaning one can’t be analyzed without the other. High win rate and pick rate both represent a positive metric of a character’s viability, but the interpretation becomes more complicated once they cross over. For example, a character with a low win rate but a high pick rate isn’t necessarily bad. It’s possible that their results are being inflated in a negative direction because their large player base simply provides more opportunity for losses.

This dynamic can be seen all throughout Marvel Rivals‘ Hero Hot List, which can be broken down into a few different metrics. Data was separated by what platform people choose to play on, as well as what game mode they are playing in. Furthermore, they can then be filtered by role and rank. This is where things become interesting, thanks to the current balance of the Marvel Rivals roster.

Duelists Played a Unique Role in Season 0 of Marvel Rivals

In short, there is undoubtedly a pretty outsized number of Duelists compared to other roles. Likewise, a few of the most unbalanced characters in Season 0 were Duelists themselves. Online discussion has often revolved around these two subjects and might lead one to believe that Marvel Rivals‘ Season 0 meta was headed in a dangerous direction. There is no shortage of people affirming that they often run into players who refuse to try out any role other than Duelist, but the Hero Hot List paints a different picture entirely.

In Quick Play, there was not a single Duelist represented in the top ten of pick rates. Only a single Duelist broke the top ten in Competitive, that being Hela. Hela was powerful enough to receive nerfs from the Season 1 balance changes, so her status shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Regardless, this means both game modes are in the same boat, and immediately suggests that lobbies aren’t nearly as lopsided towards Duelists as one might think. However, this observation does prevent other possibilities to account for.

It may be the case that there are only so few Duelists reaching high pick rates because there are so many Duelists to begin with. If someone wants to play as a Vanguard, they only have a couple of options to choose from. This means that the best Vanguards will quickly rocket to the top, and even the worst may enjoy some inflated results. By comparison, there are so many Duelists in Marvel Rivals that it would be difficult for any of them to break out among the crowd. Likewise, Competitive features character bans, which may explain why dominant Duelists like Hawkeye haven’t risen higher.

Whatever the case may be, there’s no doubt that the game appears to be working as intended. Marvel Rivals‘ buffs and nerfs have been relatively light, and are laser focused on only a handful of characters. It’s especially a boon for the community to receive this information, and one can only hope that this level of transparency continues well into the future.

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