Marvel Rivals: 6 Biggest Character Changes in Season 5.5

Marvel Rivals Season 5.5 has arrived, bringing Rogue to the Vanguard roster, new hero skins, new in-game events, and more to enjoy. Alongside the beginning of this new season, several significant changes have been made to various heroes in the latest balance patch, including huge buffs, refining how abilities work, and, in some cases, even the arrival of new abilities. Here are six of the biggest character changes seen in the free-to-play team shooter as of Season 5.5, including characters across the Vanguard, Duelist, and Strategist roles.

Ultron Gains the Ability to Provide Way More Healing

Ultron gained some huge changes with the arrival of Season 5.5. He has always been a more niche/off-healer pick, due to having very high DPS potential, but lower healing due to being limited to a heal drone targeting a single ally at a time. Since Season 5.5, Ultron now has two healing drones, enabling him to heal two allies simultaneously. This has dramatically improved his value as a Strategist, enabling him to cycle his resources more smoothly and pump out more heals as a result. Other than that, Imperitive Firewall also had some changes, now requiring a target to have a drone placed on them beforehand. After Ultron hits a target, he gains 65 Bonus Health, the target and nearby allies get 50 Bonus Health, plus the selected ally gains a 20% Movement Speed and 10% Damage boost.

Luna Snow Gets a Huge Survivability Boost

Luna Snow has gained not only some significant buffs to parts of her kit, but also a brand-new ability, enhancing her survivability on the battlefield. First of all, Luna’s freeze now has a quicker wind-up time and faster projectile speed, from 60ms to 80ms. This enables her to freeze enemies on reflex more consistently, helping her survivability against the likes of Dive. On top of this, she also gained the Number One Idol ability. This, separate from her Share the Stage, can be placed upon herself to convert 10% of healing you deal to allies into self-healing. This gives Luna so more self-sustain potential through team fights, as she previously only had a small amount of shields gained through her freeze, which was more crucial for CCing targets rather than regenerating Luna’s health bar. It’s not always a situation where you can do both, so now she can pop Number One Idol on herself and continue heal focusing her team to top herself up.

Wolverine Can Now Land on Walls With His Ultimate

Wolverine received just one small change with Season 5.5, but this is a small change that makes a huge impact on his gameplay and secures value in team fights. As of the new Season, Wolverine can now target walls as the landing spot for his Ultimate. Previously, he was limited to the floor, which restricted the way in which users were able to utilize his Ult. If this went wrong, it would essentially mean that Wolverine knocks enemies into the air, but may not be able to drive them down to confirm kills if there was no floor tile to target. Now, he can simply target the nearest wall, which opens up opportunities for different angles and playmaking with his Ultimate. Overall, confirming kills with this ability will now be significantly easier, helping Wolverine bring more value to his team.

Thor Hits Harder With More Storm Surge Control

Thor gets a small but powerful buff on the Vanguard role, helping him to be more of a dominating presence on the frontline. As stated in the patch notes, during Storm Surge, instead of being unable to change the direction of movement, Thor can now freely adjust it while dashing and move in any direction. This is just a great change for Thor’s character – minor enough to not make anything too overpowered, yet a subtle enough change that enables skilled Thor players to make Storm Surge just that much more deadly. Considering the ability is capable of pumping out quite a bit of DPS and making securing 1V1 picks against squishies an easy job, Thor now becomes even more viable as an off-tanking, brawly Vanguard pick.

Scarlet Witch’s Burst Potential Significantly Improved

Wanda gained very significant buffs to several aspects of her kit in Season 5.5, enabling her to be a much bigger threat with her chaos magic. And honestly? They were kind of needed. Scarlet Witch has always been one of those characters that is easy to play and secure value with at lower ranks, yet a pick who significantly struggles at high ranks and in the overall meta. Essentially, if the dev team ever buffs Wanda even slightly too much, then she will become an overpowered beast that dominates low-mid ranks. Nerf her too hard, and she becomes significantly underpowered across the board. 5.5 Finally offers a very solid in-between, with changes that feel satisfying, but also fair.

First of all, the travel time for her stun has improved from 40ms to 60ms, which is a very noticeable difference. However, the most significant change is a buff to her secondary fire/burst damage. Chaos Control hits now increase the charge to Cthonian Burst hits from 0.08 to 0.1, which makes her much more lethal if you’re able to hit these bursts. This also drastically decreases her time-to-kill not only on squishies, but even when it comes to chipping down Vanguards. Lastly, she also gained a bit of a buff to her Ultimate Ability, Reality Erasure. Now, the effect that pulls nearby enemies in towards her has been improved from 2.4m/s to 3m/s, helping Wanda to secure kills. As she tends to be such a glass cannon in her Ultimate, this is a subtle shift that definitely pays off in her favor, without feeling impossible to escape or react to on the enemy side.

Human Torch Gains Buffs All Around

Lastly, Johnny Storm has gained several buffs in 5.5 after a pretty big falloff in Competitive Ranks across Season 5. Human Torch mains will be relieved to see he’s been compensated with positive changes pretty much across the board, helping him to operate as one of the strongest flying hero picks yet again. Fire Cluster has slightly smaller projectile spread and increased single-cast damage from 5 to 5.5, but has a slight falloff adjustment from 60% at 30m to 60% at 20m.

Blazing Blast, on the other hand, has a much faster charging time now that it has been reduced from 3s to 2.5s, and the hit damage is more effective, now 45 (up from 40). Invisible Woman is pretty much top of the Strategist pool this season, and both The Thing and Mister Fantastic have been in pretty solid spots. With Human Torch’s buffs, this now means that the entire Fantastic Four lineup is viable hero picks for the season, also benefiting from the Team-Up Bonuses they share with one another.