As Marvel Rivals gets ready to kick off season 3 next week, we’re getting our first glimpse at some of the upcoming changes. And, with respect to my poor beleaguered Blade bros, the biggest news for me is that Jean Grey, original member of the X-Men and sometimes terror of the cosmos, is joining the roster as Phoenix. 

There’s plenty more coming, including Blade in Season 3.5 next month, but Phoenix is the headliner for me, and here’s our first look at what she can do. 

Phoenix’s abilities in Marvel Rivals

Phoenix joins as yet another duelist — an already oversaturated role, but one that feels appropriate for her. She brings a mix of area-of-effect damage that can help chew through groups of enemies as well as mobility that lets her flit around the battlefield to find flank angles. 

Phoenix’s primary fire appears to instantly apply damage to enemies with no travel time (also known as hitscan) and apply some kind of flame stacks to opponents, represented by up to three flame icons above their characters. In the trailer, heroes appeared to detonate when hit at full stacks, releasing a burst of additional damage around them.

Her alternate fire sends a rapid-fire burst of flame that creates a series of small explosions, similar to Hela’s alternate fire. In the trailer, we see it used on a group of enemies with maximum flame stacks to detonate everyone and effectively burst down the entire opposing team at once.

Her first ability is a quick dash. In the trailer, Phoenix uses it to jump backward, dodging an enemy Venom looking to crash down on her. 

Her second ability appears to be a limited-duration flight, allowing Phoenix to freely fly around the battlefield for a few seconds. The flight is on a resource meter that recharges while Phoenix isn’t flying.

Phoenix’s ultimate is what made me scream. I’ve watched the trailer several times and my best description of how it appears to work is, «You crash to the ground, kill everyone in your way and explode.» And I mean everyone — in the trailer, we see Hela in her ultimate, wherein she flies up into the sky and her health jumps up to 1,000 HP, get erased when Phoenix ults through her. In addition to also killing Rocket and Psylocke in one shot, the ultimate also clears deployables like Rocket’s rez beacon and Peni’s nest while whittling Peni herself and Groot down to a sliver of health in the explosion. 

A mobile hitscan hero who with a stacking mechanic and a meteoric ultimate? Yeah, sign me up. Between this and Overwatch 2’s Freja, this longtime support/strategist main may have officially turned into a damage/duelist main.

When does season 3 start?

Marvel Rivals season 3.0 is scheduled to start on Friday, July 11 UTC. Typically, this involves servers going down for a few hours around midnight PT before being turned back on for the new season in the very early morning.

What about Blade? Haven’t we waited enough?

Rivals continues to make Blade fans wait, since that hero won’t be added to the roster until season 3.5. But at least that’s only a month away under the new season structure. 

Rivals season 3 balance changes

In the Dev Visions vol. 7 video, Rivals devs gave us a quick breakdown of the upcoming balance changes, though we’re still waiting on full details from official patch notes. Here’s the quick breakdown, with any confirmed details in parentheses. 

Buffs:

• Venom
• Thing (gains a new ability to jump to enemies, possibly knocking down fliers)
• Namor (primary fire)
• Scarlet Witch (ultimate)
• Invisible Woman (healing efficiency)
• Mantis (healing and ultimate utility)

Nerfs:

• Emma Frost
• Iron Man (poke potential)
• Punisher (turret)
• Mister Fantastic (survivability) 
• Loki (ultimate charge)
• Ultron

Team-up changes

Rivals is adding two new team-ups, tacking heroes onto two existing ones and removing two others (Storming Ignition and ESU Alumnus) from the game. It’s also nerfing another. Here’s the quick rundown:

• New — Primal Flame: Phoenix anchors to add damage over time and lifesteal to Wolverine’s attacks after his leap. 
• New — Ever-Burning Bond: Human Torch anchors to let Spider-Man shoot a burning web with a flaming tracer. (The flaming tracer stacks with Spidey’s regular tracers, devs said.)
• Updated — Symbiote Shenanigans: Adds Hela, giving her Soul Drainer Hel Sphere slowing tendrils.
• Updated — Stark Protocol: Adds Squirrel Girl, giving her an explosive, homing gauntlet. 
• Updated — Guardian Revival: Devs said they’d be nerfing some element of the Guardians’ team-up.

Other things coming in season 3

The battle pass is getting some adjustments to account for shorter seasons. Battle passes still offer 10 skins, but you’ll earn tokens at a faster rate to make it easier to progress through the entire battle pass in the shorter time period. Daily missions are also going away, with weekly missions shifting to permanent quests instead of being time-limited. Seasonal missions that offer large batches of tokens are also being added.

Rivals devs also announced a new competitive mode coming in season 3.5 but said we’d have to wait for any details about it.

The game is also adding accessories (which appear to be animated stickers that float above the KO notifications), new chroma options and visual effects for ultimate abilities. Perhaps the nicest quality of life change is the ability to mix & match MVP animations with any skins, instead of having certain MVP animations locked to specific skins. 

Rivals needs a win

Season 3 is a major turning point for the hero shooter, marking the start of its new two-month seasons where we’ll be getting new heroes every month — one at the start of the season and one at midseason. The new cadence is an aggressive pace for expanding the game’s roster, and threatens to keep the metagame churning even faster, assuming those new heroes are relevant at launch. 

That’s important because Rivals has been bleeding active players since launch. Based on SteamDB data, the start of each new half-season brings in fewer players than the previous. (For example, fewer players joined for season 2.5 than for 2.0.) Most games lose players over time, but for a live-service game, that kind of consistent drop is bad news because it means fewer players coming back each season to spend money on battle passes and cosmetics.

And while Rivals was a hit at launch, the game has struggled with player retention, whether it’s due to in-game toxicity, role-based infighting, frustrating metagames or just generally losing the luster of being a brand-new game. 

How do you fix that? Not easily, that’s for certain. But adding an iconic member of the original X-Men and giving her fun gameplay in the form of mobility and unique mechanics can sure help. 

I’ll tell you this much: It’s working on me.