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Tariffs Explained: As Trump Alters Tariff Plans, Here’s What It All Means for You

The president’s global raft of tariffs was dubbed «worse than the worst-case scenario» by experts, but the most alarming parts of the plan were delayed on April 9.

After months of delays, President Donald Trump’s contentious tariff barrage was meant to fully take effect at midnight on Wednesday, but only a few hours later, the many of the most widespread duties were delayed — while the focus shifted to China in a big way.

This came after a week of historic stock market plunges and volatility following the president’s import tax policy reveal. Some experts dubbed the tariffs «worse than the worst-case scenario» and prompted even the most ardent Trump supporters on Wall Street to sound the alarm.

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For many, one of the most alarming aspects of Trump’s tariff policies was the so-called «reciprocal» tariffs, which were meant to go into effect against most countries on April 9 at midnight. Around midday, however, Trump announced on social media that most of them were being delayed by 90 days, citing efforts by the affected countries to make new trade deals.

The tariffs imposed on China, however, were increased even further. Due to the fact that China is its third biggest trading partner, and given the extremely high new rate, experts noted that the US’s overall tariff rates remained the highest in roughly a century. The stock market certainly seemed to reflect that realization: While values soared after news of the delay, they plunged back down to Earth the next day.

The chaos and potential market damage of Trump’s tariff policies reportedly led Tesla CEO and White House advisor Elon Musk to urge the president against implementing them. Following that news, Musk took to X, lambasting a Trump trade advisor, Peter Navarro, as a «moron» over the tariff drama.

While the president once claimed (with little evidence) that his tariffs would cause no pain for US consumers, he has more recently admitted that some «pains» are likely, reigniting concerns about the cost of living as prices have continued to creep up. Tariffs against China, for example, prompted Acer to announce impending price hikes for its laptops, with similar price increases from other companies expected soon on smartphones, laptops, tablets and TVs. 

A new survey conducted by CNET found considerable anxiety about prices among US adults. And Nintendo cited the tariffs as it delayed the start of preorders for its hotly anticipated Switch 2 video game console, making the impact of Trump’s tariffs all too real for many folks.

So, what exactly are these tariffs that are causing such a frenzy? And more to the point, what do they mean for the prices you’ll see when crossing things off your shopping list? The short answer: Expect to pay more for at least some goods and services. For the long answer, keep reading, and for more, find out how tariffs could affect the price of another popular gaming console.

What exactly is a tariff?

Put simply, a tariff is a tax on the cost of importing or exporting goods by a particular country. Therefore, a 60% tariff on Chinese imports would be a 60% tax on the price of importing, say, computer components from China.

Trump has been fixated on imports as part of his economic plans, often claiming that the money collected from taxes on imported goods would help finance other parts of his agenda. The US imports $3 trillion of goods from other countries annually.

While Trump deployed tariffs in his first term, notably against China, he ramped up his plans more significantly for the 2024 campaign, promising 60% tariffs against China and a universal 20% tariff on all imports into the US. «Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,» Trump said at a campaign stop in Michigan last year. More recently, he called himself «Tariff Man» in a post on Truth Social.

Who pays the cost of a tariff?

During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that the country from which an imported good is coming pays the cost of the tariffs and that Americans would not see any price increases from them. However, as economists and fact-checkers stressed, this is not always the case.

The companies importing the tariffed goods — American companies or organizations in this case — pay the higher costs. To compensate for those new costs, companies can raise their prices or absorb the additional costs themselves.

So, who ends up paying the price for tariffs? In the end, usually you, the consumer. In February, Trump admitted consumers might «feel pain» financially as his tariffs take effect. For instance, a universal tariff on goods from Canada would increase Canadian lumber prices, which would have the knock-on effect of making construction and home renovations more expensive for US consumers.

Some companies may eat the new costs resulting from tariffs themselves rather than pass them onto consumers, at least temporarily. On March 2, Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright told NBC Nightly News, «It is our intent as we sit here today to absorb those costs,» but he also stressed that prices could go up eventually.

Speaking with CNET, Ryan Reith, vice president of the International Data Corporation’s worldwide mobile device tracking programs, explained that price hikes from tariffs, especially on technology hardware, are inevitable in the short-term. He estimated that the full amount imposed on imports by Trump’s tariffs would be passed on to consumers, which he called the «cost pass-through.» Any potential efforts for company’s to absorb the new costs themselves would come in the future once companies have a better understanding of the tariffs, if at all.

Which Trump tariffs have gone into effect?

At a White House event on April 2, Trump laid out the new wave of tariffs, including:

  • A 25% tariff on all foreign-made cars and auto parts went into effect at midnight on Thursday, April 3.
  • A sweeping overall 10% tariff on all imported goods went into effect April 5. Despite Trump’s delay announcement on April 9, this one remains in effect.
  • For a certain number of countries, which Trump said were more responsible for the US trade deficit, that number was set higher, the president calling them «reciprocal» tariffs: 20% for the 27 nations that make up the European Union, 26% for India, 24% for Japan and so on. These were meant to take effect on April 9, but were delayed by 90-days in the wake of historic stock market volatility, which would make the new effective date July 8.

A complete list was shared on X, claiming that the tariffs were set in proportion to the tariffs allegedly imposed against the US by each country:

Trump’s claims that these reciprocal tariffs are based on high tariffs imposed against the US by the countries in question have drawn intense pushback from experts and economists, who have argued that some of these numbers are false or potentially inflated. For example, the above chart claims a 39% tariff from the EU, despite its average tariff for US goods being around 3%. Some of the tariffs are against places that are not countries but tiny territories of other nations. The Heard and McDonald Islands, for example, are uninhabited. We’ll dig into the confusion around these calculations below.

These join a handful of Trump tariffs already in effect:

  • A 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports.
  • A preexisting 20% tariff on all Chinese imports, previously set at 10% in February but doubled in early March. This had been in addition to what was initially a 34% reciprocal tariff, but after a series of back-and-forth responses between the two nations, the Trump White House ultimately hiked the reciprocal rate for China to 125%, later clarifying that the total tax on Chinese imports was now a staggering 145%.
  • 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico not covered under the 2018 USMCA trade agreement brokered during Trump’s first term. The deal covers roughly half of all imports from Canada and about a third of those from Mexico, so the rest are subject to the new tariffs. Energy imports not covered by USMCA will only be taxed at 10%.

Notably, that minimum 10% tariff will not be on top of those steel, aluminum and auto tariffs. Canada and Mexico were also spared from the 10% minimum additional tariff imposed on all countries the US trades with.

How were the Trump reciprocal tariffs calculated?

The numbers released by the Trump administration for its barrage of «reciprocal» tariffs led to widespread confusion from experts. Trump’s own claim that these new rates were derived by halving the tariffs already imposed against the US by certain countries was widely disputed, with critics noting that some of the numbers listed for certain countries were much higher than the actual rates, and some countries had tariff rates listed despite not specifically having tariffs against the US at all.

In a post to X that spread fast across social media, finance journalist James Surowiecki said that the new reciprocal rates appeared to have been reached by taking the trade deficit the US has with each country and dividing it by the amount the country exports to the US. This, he explained, consistently produced the reciprocal tariff percentages revealed by the White House across the board.

«What extraordinary nonsense this is,» Surowiecki wrote about the finding.

What will tariffs do to prices in the US?

Speaking about Trump’s tariff plans just before they were announced, Navarro said that they would generate $6 trillion in revenue over the next decade. Owing to the reality that tariffs are most often paid by consumers, CNN characterized this as potentially «the largest tax hike in US history.»

New estimates from the Yale Budget Lab, cited by Axios, predict that Trump’s new tariffs will cause a 2.3% increase in inflation throughout 2025. This translates to about a $3,800 increase in expenses for the average American household.

In an email to CNET, Patti Brennan, CEO of Key Financial, predicted that no products would be safe from these price hikes and that tariffs «could have a systemic effect» on the cost of goods, even ones not coming from targeted countries.

«Even if products aren’t coming from the countries affected, companies can increase prices and just blame it on rising costs due to tariffs,» she wrote. «They’ll assume the consumer is well aware of the issue of tariffs and test the boundaries until demand falls off.»

This speculative and uncertain nature of tariff impacts might already extend to consumers. In the wake of Nintendo’s Switch 2 event, speculation was rampant online that the higher-than-expected prices ($450 for the system and $80 for certain games) were because of tariffs. This concern was later disproven, but in a way that showed how gamers might still get hurt by Trump’s policies: Nintendo later delayed the start of system preorders as it reckoned with how to handle the new tariffs, meaning the Switch 2 might be getting even more expensive.

Brennan noted the cost of services should be safe for now. As opposed to goods, which are the tangible products you buy, services are the things you pay for people or companies to do for you, ranging from haircuts and deliveries to legal work and medical care. «Services should be relatively resilient, and consumers (already) spend more on services than on goods,» she explained.

In February, Taiwanese computer hardware company Acer announced that the prices of its products would increase by 10% in March, directly resulting from the Trump tariff on Chinese imports. Acer is the world’s sixth-largest personal PC vendor by sales. Other PC makers like Dell and Asus are expected to make similar moves eventually.

When the Canada and Mexico tariffs initially took effect on March 4, Target CEO Brian Cornell warned that customers could expect higher prices in stores «over the next couple of days.» Echoing that sentiment, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned that price hikes were «highly likely» because of the tariffs, as China and Mexico are two of the company’s biggest suppliers.

Will tariffs impact prices immediately?

In the immediate, short-term future — think the next couple of days or weeks after a tariff takes effect — you might not see any major price changes. Tariffs are a tax on imports, so companies won’t need to hike prices on things currently on the shelves, which obviously they’ve already imported. However, once they need to import more products to restock the shelves, that’s when you might start to see inflated prices. So while the stock market might be immediately reacting with historically bad plunges in value, actual prices might take a bit to increase.

Naturally, that new reality has got a lot of folks concerned about when to make certain purchases, with American consumers now feeling anxiety over planned buys being affected by tariffs. As found in CNET’s recent survey, around 38% of shoppers feel pressured to make certain purchases before tariffs make them more expensive. Around 10% say they have already made certain purchases in hopes of getting in before the price hikes, while 27% said they have delayed purchases for things over $500. Generally, this worry is the most acute concerning electronics — like smartphones, laptops and home appliances — which are highly likely to be impacted by Trump’s tariffs.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman and noted Trump critic, voiced these concerns about when to buy certain things in a post to Bluesky just after Trump’s «Liberation Day» announcements. In it, he suggested that consumers might want to stock up on certain items before tariff inflation hits.

«It’s not a bad idea to go to the local Walmart or big box retailer and buy lots of consumables now,» Cuban wrote. «From toothpaste to soap, anything you can find storage space for, buy before they have to replenish inventory.Even if it’s made in the USA, they will jack up the price and blame it on tariffs.»

What is the goal of the White House tariff plan?

The typical goal behind tariffs is to discourage consumers and businesses from buying the tariffed goods and encourage them to buy domestically produced goods instead. When implemented in the right way, tariffs are generally seen as a useful way to protect domestic industries. One of the stated intentions for Trump’s tariffs is along those lines: to restore American manufacturing and production. 

However, tariffs are a better tool for protecting industries that already exist because importers can fall back on them right away. Building up the factories and plants needed for this in the US could take at least two years, leaving Americans to suffer under higher prices until then. That problem is worsened by the fact that the materials needed to build those factories will also be tariffed, making the costs of «reshoring» production in the US too heavy for companies to stomach. These issues, and the general instability of American economic policies under Trump, are part of why experts warn that Trump’s tariffs could have the opposite effect: keeping manufacturing out of the US and leaving consumers stuck with inflated prices. Any factories that do get built in the US because of tariffs also have a high chance of being automated, canceling out a lot of job creation potential.

Trump has reportedly been fixated on the notion that Apple’s iPhone — the most popular smartphone in the US market — can be manufactured entirely in the US. This has been broadly dismissed by experts, for a lot of the same reasons mentioned above, but also because an American-made iPhone could cost upwards of $3,500. One report from 404 Media dubbed the idea «a pure fantasy.»

The claims from Trump officials like Navarro that tariffs will be a massive tax windfall for the US are also at odds with the idea of bringing domestic manufacturing back. In order for tariffs to raise tax revenue, importers and consumers need to keep buying the tariffed goods but if the tariffs actually resulted in the mass switchover to American-made goods, the tariffs would not be raising any money. Basically, the Trump administration’s stated goals contradict themselves and the most likely result in the end is higher prices for consumers and no new jobs. It is also increasingly likely that Trump’s tariffs will see certain products disappear from the US market completely, especially with the new 145% tax on Chinese imports.

It’s also important to note that the changes hypothetically needed to brace for Trump’s tariffs are beyond the means of smaller businesses. In another post to Bluesky, Cuban echoed this sentiment, predicting that the tariffs would hurt the majority of the businesses and workers in the US, because they will be unable to respond to them.

«There are 33 [million] companies in the USA,» Cuban wrote. «Only 21k employ 500 or more. And they only make up 23% of workers. Trump and Elon [Musk] are ignoring the more than 32 [million] entrepreneurs that can’t afford to build a new factory or pay tariffs or absorb canceled contracts.»

In her correspondence with CNET before the April 2 announcement, Brennan said that it’s tough to predict right now if tariffs will benefit the US economy long-term after the initial price shocks.

«It will be painful short-term, but it will reveal how resilient our economy is (or isn’t),» she wrote. «If tariffs are successful in raising revenue, it could reduce the amount of our annual deficit (shortfall). This could postpone the need to increase taxes on all Americans. In the end, no one really knows what the outcome will be; for example, in spite of higher inflation than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, the dollar grew in value. Just as we don’t always win other types of wars, I’m not sure a trade war is going to accomplish the stated goals.»

For more, see how tariffs might raise the prices of Apple products and find some expert tips for saving money.

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Rideable Horse Robot Viral Video: The Real Story Behind It

Kawasaki’s Corleo robot horse is just a concept right now, but a thrilling hype video makes it look like a blast to ride.

If you’ve ever watched a video featuring a Boston Dynamics Spot robot dog and wanted to saddle it up and ride it, then Kawasaki has a concept robot that’ll make your heart flutter — and it’s part horse, part leopard, part robot and all wild. Too bad you can’t actually buy one.

The Kawasaki Corleo is a four-legged rideable robot, the answer to the question: «What if we put legs on an all-terrain vehicle instead of wheels?» Kawasaki released a video showing what the concept would look like if it were fully realized. 

The trippy video features the Corleo and riders galloping through a forest, running across a field, leaping over rocky terrain and trotting across a snowy landscape. The video appears to be primarily computer generated with Lord of the Rings-worthy scenery.

Kawasaki is known for its motorcycles and ATVs, but the international company has its hands in everything from railcars to industrial equipment and robotics. 

Kawasaki unveiled the forward-thinking Corleo for the Osaka Expo 2025 in Japan. It’s a 2050 concept model for a future mode of transportation. The expo’s theme is «designing future society for our lives.» The event officially opens on April 13.

Corleo incorporates some nifty design ideas, including independent legs, a hydrogen engine and steering through weight shifting. 

«While preserving the joy of riding, the vehicle continually monitors the rider’s movements to achieve a reassuring sense of unity between human and machine,» Kawasaki said. 

Kawasaki didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on its plans for Corleo.

For now, Corleo is just a model capable of limited movement, so your sci-fi dreams of riding across rugged mountains on a kick-butt robo-steed will have to be put on hold. Perhaps 2050 will bring us a world full of leggy, rideable robots. Somehow, that feels more achievable than a bunch of flying cars.

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What’s the Switch 2’s Price With Tariffs? | Obvious Skill Issue

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Marvel Rivals Season 2: The 6 Best Heroes to Start Learning Now

Every balance patch shakes up a hero shooter’s meta compositions. These are the best heroes you can learn to be flexible in your matches.

Everyone’s favorite heroes are attending the Hellfire Gala in Marvel Rivals Season 2. As Ultron attacks Krakoa, the sentient island and sanctuary for all mutants, it’s time to take up arms and leave the dancing for the afterparty.

But not every hero is built the same way. As a competitive live service game, Marvel Rivals’ seasonal patches change how heroes function, shifting stats around health pools, damage output and ability cooldowns. Some heroes lose abilities and other heroes gain more, fundamentally changing their base kits — which could shift the balance through the whole season, empowering some characters and limiting others.

Any character is viable in the right hands and the most important variable for success in a hero shooter is the ability to play around your team. If you make character picks that synergize with your teammates and work together, you can even overcome players with more mechanical skill than you.

If you’re serious about ranking up, it’s important to find a character or two that fits your playstyle in each role so that you can remain flexible enough to fill in your team’s needs. While certain characters have undeniably gained key strengths in the Season 2 patch, you should play who you feel comfortable with.

That said, you have a whole season to adapt to the current power balance and grow your roster of playable picks. If you’re looking to learn a new hero, these characters are some of the best ones you can invest time into this season.

The biggest winners in Marvel Rivals Season 2

The Marvel Rivals Season 2 patch introduced some critical buffs for struggling characters, making them better all-rounders that bring more utility to the table for their team.

Players who have put in the time to master these characters will benefit the most from their increased competitive viability this season. Ranking up requires just as much flexibility as it does mechanical skill in a hero shooter like Marvel Rivals, so you’d do well to add these characters to your roster this season.

Peni Parker

While Peni Parker has always been a very strong pick on defense for certain maps, she has struggled to find success in other situations. Her slow movement and massive hitbox led her to get shredded by characters like Punisher and Hela, who can keep up constant pressure with hitscan firepower.

Recognizing that Peni could lock down an area but wasn’t great at defending herself, the Marvel Rivals devs gave the character a series of buffs increasing her firepower, mobility and survivability in one patch. Peni is now able to shoot her primary fire Cyber-Web Clusters with a 20% movement penalty, rather than the extremely punishing 40% movement penalty that she shipped with. She also gained a 100 health point increase up to 750 to help her stay in fights longer. This is massive for a character that can generate a small amount of passive healing for themselves.

Perhaps most important, Peni is now able to land critical hits with her primary fire, drastically increasing an accurate player’s damage potential — which will be especially helpful if you’re able to web up one of the flying heroes zooming around. If you want to lock down defensive zones and provide utility for your team, Peni Parker has always been a solid pick — and now her poking capabilities are a whole lot stronger, too.

Scarlet Witch

Wanda was always a decent anti-dive duelist pick but she lacked the firepower to play around enemy strategists and her ultimate ability requires a lot of dedicated support from the team to be truly effective. In Season 2, the Scarlet Witch is able to put out some more consistent damage, making her a more effective all-rounder — and she becomes truly dangerous in her new team up with Doctor Strange.

Scarlet Witch’s primary fire now does 80 damage per second (up from 60), which means she can delete squishy targets in just three seconds if they’re not getting any healing. Her small area-of-effect alternate fire, Chthonian Burst, now does 80 damage on direct impact as well, which means she has a strong burst damage option for beginning and ending engagements. These simple number tweaks go a long way in helping Scarlet Witch players challenge opponents in one-versus-one situations, where they’d previously be forced to retreat from battle.

The real lynchpin of Wanda’s kit this season is her team up ability: Sorcery Surge transforms Chthonian Burst into a field of magic missiles capable of shredding even the bulkiest vanguards and it can be used in tandem with primary fire.

As long as a Doctor Strange player is on the team, I expect to see Scarlet Witch rotating her presence throughout the battlefield much more in Season 2, using Sorcery Surge to shred the frontlines before retreating to peel for the strategist backline in a pinch.

Psylocke

While Psylocke didn’t receive any direct changes to her damage output or cooldowns for this patch, she was part of the first team up ability mix ups. While the mutant assassin definitely benefited from Magik’s stepping discs, she already has impressive survivability from the escape tools in her base kit.

Now Psylocke is part of Emma Frost’s team up, which lets players create an AI-controlled copy of the character that can use her primary fire as well as the Psi-blade Dash and Wing Shuriken abilities when the player activates them.

Unlike a Loki clone, Psylocke’s copy stays mobile, diving on any enemies the player does. This effectively doubles Psylocke’s damage output — and the cloned projection will stay and fight enemies even if players activate Psylocke’s ultimate.

The new team up ability makes Psylocke an even deadlier assassin, and if you believe you can time your assaults from the shadows to catch the enemy team off guard, you’ll be able to make crucial picks before anyone is able to react. There are very few characters that can so quickly skew a fight in their team’s favor, making Psylocke an important duelist to learn in Season 2.

Hawkeye

The Avengers’ crackshot bowman was built with intentional weaknesses to balance out his ability to one-shot enemy duelists and strategists. He moves slowly, charges his primary fire up by aiming at enemies and doesn’t have much mobility. The Season 2 patch removes some of these restraints, letting Hawkeye move slightly quicker while drawing his bow and building his ultimate even faster than before.

Hunter’s Sight, Hawkeye’s ultimate ability, now only takes 3,100 ultimate charge to build up instead of 3,700 charge, and it’s gotten a pretty massive buff this season. The sharpshooter now draws his bow 1.5x as quickly while his ultimate is active, letting him fire additional volleys of high-damage arrows into his enemies and their afterimages.

Hawkeye’s Hypersonic Arrow ability also got buffed: Each hit now does 55 damage. This is another indirect buff for Hawkeye’s ultimate, as the arrow can pierce through enemies and their afterimages to reach crucial KO breakpoints for duelists and strategists alike. Skilled Hawkeye players will once again be able to pluck off members of the enemy team before anyone can react, creating a version of this character that is somewhat reminiscent of the Season 0 balance patch.

Rocket Raccoon

This rascally weapons specialist was a controversial pick in Season 1 — his team up and revive offered some of the best utility to a coordinated team but his lack of burst healing and mediocre ultimate ability compared to other strategist heroes made Rocket a tough pick against certain team compositions. In Season 2, Rocket Raccoon’s healing and ultimate have been completely revamped, making him perhaps the biggest winner of the patch.

The wily trash panda now puts out a whopping 55 burst healing when his healing orbs make initial contact with teammates, and they still provide 50 healing per second afterwards as well. Rocket’s ultimate also received big changes — teammates in the Cosmic Yarn Amplifier’s area of effect will now receive a lessened 25% damage boost but they’ll also gain 100 bonus health points per second while they maintain the link. This is a huge buff that brings Rocket’s ultimate ability more in-line with the healing power of other strategists.

In exchange, the raccoon’s escape ability got nerfed: Each dash takes longer to regenerate and doesn’t take Rocket as far away from the action as it previously did. But Rocket is one of the only strategists with the ability to heal himself. A small constriction of his mobility doesn’t damper his immense survivability, which means this character will have some of the most consistent healing and utility this season.

If you want to support your teammates with healing and utility and never get caught without an escape route, Rocket is one of the best characters you can pick up in Season 2.

Mantis

Rocket isn’t the only member of the Guardians of the Galaxy that got a massive buff this season. Mantis lost 25 base health this season, bringing her down to 250, so she’s squishier than ever before — but her sleep is still an effective anti-dive tool that should allow skilled players to offset this survivability nerf.

What makes Mantis a winner in the Season 2 patch are the changes to her Healing Flower and Allied Inspiration buffs. Casting these abilities on allies gives them 20 health points per second and a powerful 12% damage boost, respectively, for eight seconds. That damage boost is a crucial bit of utility that isn’t usually available outside of Rocket Raccoon and Luna Snow ultimates.

Before Season 2, recasting the ability on the same target would refresh the eight second timer but now Mantis can stack these buffs on her teammates until they have 16 seconds of healing and damage boosts.

If you’re a strategist player who often plays with dive DPS teammates, the change to these boosts helps you enable these players to disrupt the enemy backline and return alive much more frequently. You just might not want to force this character into single or double strategist team compositions — she works much better as a third, flexible strategist.

Heroes who took a hit in Marvel Rivals Season 2

While most of the Season 2 patch notes detailed buffs for characters across the Marvel Rivals roster, some heroes received a mixed bag of adjustments or outright nerfs. These characters aren’t unplayable — in fact, some of them will still be able to outperform the rest of the lobby in a skilled player’s hands — but they won’t be operating in top form like they were in Season 1.

Doctor Strange

The Sorcerer Supreme has been hit with another nerf — and while previous adjustments have focused on decreasing the magician’s health pool, the Season 2 stat changes affect the character’s damage output. Each dagger in Strange’s primary fire now does two less damage, which means the good doctor loses 10 damage total from a full volley. This is a devastating blow to the combo-reliant vanguard, preventing him from reaching elimination breakpoints with his fully-charged Maelstrom of Madness, which could leave enemies alive with very low health where they’d previously be reliably taken down.

Doctor Strange was also removed from Hulk’s Gamma Charge team up, which means the Gamma Maelstrom ability no longer exists. Strange’s dark magic is still a real threat but the extra damage that this team up afforded him helped him hit important breakpoints to eliminate key enemy threats, especially when paired with his group stun ultimate ability, the Eye of Agamotto. There’s also no way to negate Doctor Strange’s self-imposed anti-heal now, which means players will need to remain ever mindful of dark magic accumulation.

As one of the only main tanks in the game, Doctor Strange will still be incredibly useful to pick up and learn in Season 2 — in fact, Groot, Magneto and Strange are all pretty evergreen picks in different Marvel Rivals metas. But if you’re used to playing this mystical vanguard, you’ll probably find you have less individual agency when it comes to securing key eliminations this season.

Bucky

Bucky got hit with a one-two punch at the beginning of Season 2, receiving a handful of direct nerfs to his most powerful abilities and losing his infinite ammo team up with Rocket Raccoon. The Winter Soldier is still capable of some very scary burst damage but he won’t be able to take as much space this season.

The Bionic Hook cooldown has been increased to 12 seconds so vanguards won’t have to worry about getting yanked into the middle of Bucky’s team as often. The Winter Soldier’s Kraken Impact ability also does less damage this season, and now players will have to drop enemies to 15% of their health pool to instantly eliminate them after they’ve been hit with the ultimate.

Bucky gained a new team up that allows him to leap toward Captain America to slam his shield to attack nearby enemies, dealing 80 damage to and slowing enemies in a 10 meter radius while temporarily giving Bucky 30 bonus health points. I can’t imagine this will be useful outside of niche situations, as Winter Soldier just doesn’t have the dive capabilities that Cap does, and this ability could get players into a dire situation very quickly

The previous iteration of the infinite ammo team up was much more useful for Winter Soldier players, but the character is by no means terrible in Season 2 — he has just gone from being absurdly strong to being more in line with other duelists.

Namor

There’s no doubt in my mind that Namor will still see play this season. He might even remain one of the best characters in the duelist roster. But the king of the sea still lost one of his most important abilities as his team up anchor moved from Luna Snow to the Hulk, marking him out as one of the losers in this patch.

While Namor’s new Gamma Monstro team up ability is incredibly strong if you can keep an enemy pinned down, it takes five seconds of continuous fire for the damage to ramp up. The 20 meter range on the gamma beam is useful but a good diver will play around the ability before it can really start taking a substantial chunk out of their health pool.

The Ice Monstros that Namor lost this season were the easiest way to shut down divers in Marvel Rivals, functioning as auto-aim turrets that slowed down the escape of some of the most movement-dependent characters in the game.

Namor’s stats and base kit were left untouched, though, so he’s one of the characters that got hurt the least by an unfavorable change to his team up. This character will still be one of the most important picks against a dive team composition — and one of the most important bans for any Spider-Man, Black Panther, Psylocke or Magik mains looking to prey on strategists in the backline.

Adam Warlock

The golden boy is rolling with the punches this season. Adam Warlock got a small buff to his ultimate ability — he’ll now resurrect teammates with 30% of their maximum health pool, which should stop Winter Soldier players from clip farming their ultimate ability on poor strategist mains. But that’s all the good news there is for players in pursuit of embodying the perfect human.

With no real mobility options, Adam Warlock depends on careful cooldown management to be consistently effective during battle. The Season 2 patch introduces a 10 second increase on the cooldown of his health-sharing and heal-over-time ability Soul Bond, raising it up to 40 seconds, interrupting the flow of this character’s resource management. Dive team compositions will have a much easier time jumping on and eliminating Adam Warlock in this balance patch.

Players with impeccable aim and careful positioning will still be able to wring a lot of value out of an Adam Warlock pick, especially if they’re able to consistently land the entire Cosmic Cluster charged volley (his secondary fire). It’s just going to be much harder — and far more resource intensive — to stay alive against certain teams.

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