u/JumpFlea

There are a lot of people saying they’ll quit Marvel Rivals if Cyclops turns out to be a DPS. I hope they actually do leave. I’m so tired of hearing people complain about the number difference between DPS and the other roles.

We get it. People have complained about it for over a year. There’s also nothing any of us can do about it. But now, Cyclops’ role takes up more discussion than anything else about the character. We could be talking about abilities he might have, or funny character interactions, or even what skins he might get/what default design they’ll go with. Instead, we have a bunch of people arguing at clouds about how he should be a tank.

And to clarify, I want Cyclops to be a tank. I want more poke/main tanks in the game. But I’m not going to quit or whine if he turns out to be something else (unless he’s absolutely busted, in which case I’ll probably complain).

We’ve seen before that the devs listen to community complaints. They don’t always act on them immediately, but they do listen. Can we save the whining until AFTER Cyclops gets revealed to be a DPS, then? Call me a bootlicker or whatever, but I want to at least give NetEase the CHANCE to fail us before complaining. We’re so negative now that we can’t even wait a few weeks before complaining about something that hasn’t happened yet.

I hope for the sake of everyone that these people actually leave like they’re threatening to if Cyclops is a DPS. The community would be less negative for it. And for their own sake, they should cut themselves off from something that makes them feel so victimized and hateful. Plus, a mass exodus of players might actually make the devs reconsider the characters they add to the game.

But I doubt all of the people threatening to leave actually will. And of those people that leave, I bet most of them will come back as soon as we get another tank. Then they’ll just go back to whining all the time about how the game hasn’t changed in the time since they’ve left.

I just wanted to get this out there before the reveal trailer tomorrow. I don’t really have any hard feelings against these people, I’m just frustrated. Seeing people post about the role disparity gets me angry because they almost never bring up new points, just rehash old ones. It feels like the community is stagnating because of it.

Before you brush off this post, please hear me out. I’ve been trying to learn Black Cat for the past week or so and I honestly think she’s one of easiest dive dps characters to learn. This is partially due to her just being really strong, but also just because her kit is very forgiving.

I’m no expert, but I just wanted to write about the conclusions I’ve come to as someone who isn’t great at diving but always wanted to learn.

This is going to be a very long ramble, so I left a tl;dr at the end.

Point #1: Range/Hurtbox

Black Cat’s most-used abilities during kill combos are all ranged attacks. These are her whip, dash, pursuit, and yoink. Other dive characters typically require better tracking than Black Cat due to their attacks having a shorter distance (with obvious exceptions like Psylocke). Because you can play a couple of meters further away, it’s less likely that you’ll lose sight of your opponent in the middle of a fight. Additionally, because almost all of the abilities I listed are melee attacks, it’s unlikely that you’ll miss them during your combos due to their wide hurtboxes.

This means that Black Cat is a little more forgiving than other dive characters in terms of aim.

Point #2: Movement

Black Cat has several movement abilities plus invisibility. People like to focus on her dashes, but I honestly think her double jump is what’s really scary. Black Cat’s double jump has no cooldown and resets every time you dash, wall climb, yoink, or pursuit. It’s a really strong movement option for something that can be spammed, even if it’s not super fast. The yoink/pursuit having such short cooldowns also makes the double jump extra spammable. Her dashes are also very strong movement options (albeit tied to very long cooldowns), though in my opinion they’re better off saved for damage/money. Her wall climb is too slow to use mid-combat beyond refreshing her double jump, but it’s still good for setting up. Finally, Black Cat can go invisible at will. While this isn’t a movement ability, I’m grouping it here because of how easily you can spam it to move in and out of fights. When paired with the double jump (which doesn’t break invisibility), it’s practically a free reposition. You don’t make footsteps while in the air, so tracking her is especially difficult while invisible.

There are other divers that have faster movement, but I don’t think anyone can match Black Cat’s long-term consistency in her short-range agility (due to the mostly low/lack of cooldowns), nor does anyone have such free access to invisibility.

Admittedly I haven’t been using Cat’s portal that much, but that’s also another movement option she has that lets her get away freely. AFAIK enemies can’t follow you. The only issue with it is that if you buy it and can’t find a surface to use it on, you’re kind of stuck with the portal and can’t use your invisibility.

Overall, Black Cat’s mobility makes her very forgiving in terms of having to plan out dive routes. It’s easy for her to move in and out of fights, and you don’t have to worry as much about having an exit plan every time you dive in as long as you have money (which if you don’t, you can just yoink some and wait ~5 seconds to get your cooldown back before jumping in).

Point #3: Combos

Black Cat’s damage is really good. I haven’t run the numbers or anything, but her time to kill is very solid. Because whip, dash, and pursuit all cancel into each other to some degree, Black Cat’s combos are very fluid and easy to weave together without much practice. If you spam double jump during these combos, you become very hard to hit (especially when you double jump after yoinks and pursuits).

Honestly, I don’t think too many divers fall behind Black Cat in terms of having easy combos. I just want to point out that hers are also very simple to learn—and once again, are relatively forgiving in terms of difficulty in-game.

Point #4: Wallhacks

Black Cat being able to see enemies through walls for only 100 gold is incredibly good for new players and helps make up for a lack of experience in diving. You don’t need the game sense to figure out where everyone is if you can just see them directly. Plus, you don’t miss out on your long-range vision like Daredevil does. The only problem here is that the orb is kind of buggy and breaks on walls a lot without refunding your money.

Point #5: Survivability

Black Cat has incredibly good survivability. Her yoink is practically a free 50 bonus health, and her whips also give her bonus health. Her pursuit gives her I-frames and sometimes confuses people into looking the wrong direction. These factors in addition to Black Cat’s survivability make her very hard to kill if you’re spamming your abilities to the fullest.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re far from immortal and there are other divers that match Black Cat’s bulk. However, I think all of the factors I’ve mentioned so far add up and make Black Cat very forgiving for new divers.

So why doesn’t everyone play her?

I personally think Black Cat’s shop system just scared most people away from actually giving her a try. I’d imagine this is especially true for controller players, who have less buttons to bind her abilities to (though this is just conjecture; I play M+K). While all of Black Cat’s shop abilities are useful (minus the gambling one), the only ability I think that needs to be used all the time is the invisibility. Learning how to use the fish, portal, and cleanse can be done later in my opinion.

Also, Black Cat has a few traps to fall into if you’re not careful. Wasting dashes, using abilities that miss (and not getting the refund), and going into fights without money are the big ones. However, I think that after you learn to be careful with your dashes/money, it’s relatively easy to not feed the enemy team. From there, you can focus on learning the fundamentals of dive—timing, target prioritization, etc.

Tl;dr

Black Cat has really good survivability and mobility, which makes it harder to punish new players for making mistakes while diving. Her damage is also extremely solid, and her combos aren’t too difficult or demanding to learn due to multiple animation cancels and large hurtboxes. Her wallhacks also help make up for a developing game sense. Once you’re comfortable with her kit and learn to be careful with money/dashes, Black Cat is significantly easier to use.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Black Cat is easy. I don’t think any of the dive characters are easy. I’m terrible at playing all of them. But I think Black Cat lets you get away with mistakes that other characters would get you punished for. Her play style being so forgiving makes her the best pick for learning how to dive as a dps, in my opinion.

I hope I don’t sound insane lol

Today I had a pretty bad QP game while solo tanking as Hulk. It’s not optimal but honestly it’s QP and I’m still filling the role the team needs, so I didn’t mind. I wanted to practice the character. 2/3 of our dps were negative for nearly the entire match, but tbh our team coordination was off so it’s to be expected. I’m not really mad at them since I’m not climbing or anything anyway.

Then the solo tank (Emma) of the other team went and flamed me and only me. It wasn’t even the useful kind of flaming, it was just a “I need to let you know you suck.” I’m not the type of person that values the scoreboard above all else, but I had half the deaths of my teammates with a similar amount of kills/damage (bar one guy that was popping off) and the most damage blocked in the game. I was kinda confused and offended, so I looked into that guy’s profile. Most of it was private (I get it), but I was able to see their match history, their discord, and their steam profile.

I play this game a lot, pretty much since the launch of this game. This guy was on a completely different level.

They were level 100, had at least ~10 lords (based only on what they played in the last 3 days), and over 2000 hours on Rivals. Rivals isn’t even the only game this guy plays—he’s got thousands of hours in other games on a 5 year old account. They play for 10+ hour sessions. At the time I played with them, they were mostly on a winning streak. They’re not a streamer or anything, they do this for free.

I took one hard look at myself and incredulously thought “I want to compare myself to THAT GUY?” The guy that feels the need to put others down after winning his games? In terms of play time, this guy was amazing. But the thought of ending up like this guy is just scary.

I guess what I’m saying is that this guy is probably the better player. And despite how long I’ve played this game, I think I’m okay with that. I don’t think I want to be like that guy. Actually, I feel glad that I’m not that guy.

Just wanted to rant because this person got under my skin in a moment of weakness, but now I’m just considering cutting back on the game some more.

It’s just something I’ve picked up on over the past few months. After a game ends, the most likely people to say “gg ez” are the dps with the lowest K/D or the healers with the most deaths. It’s like a 9/10 chance in my experience.

I often get teammates that flame everyone else on the team (despite performing poorly themselves) and sometimes still manage to win in spite of that. And then when the game ends, they say something like “dps diff” and pretend like the enemy team didn’t stand a chance even though they were blowing up team chat minutes ago.

I used to find it really annoying but now I just get confused lol