By Key Fontaine | Contributing Writer
You already know it’s bad when you barely see people playing the new character. Welcome to Marvel Rivals Season 10.
As a Loki main, his temporary removal leading up to Gorr’s release instantly piqued my interest, or maybe I’ve simply done too many marketing classes.
Still, the anticipation was certainly there, and I think the marketing strategy worked extremely well, as this was the first time a character has been unable to be selected (perhaps a test for disabling due to bug fixes or emergency patches in the future).
Players online and even within my personal circle were commenting on Gorr and how powerful his gameplay initially looked, so it seemed that he’d be a constant pick this season. Safe to say he isn’t so far.
Gorr the God Butcher
Gorr the God Butcher joined Marvel Rivals with the Season 10 update, serving as the solo character for the entire season. His difficulty is rated as 4 out of 5 stars in-game, and he is a duelist, becoming the 28th playable character within the role (counting Deadpool within each of the three roles and not as a multi role character ).
As much as I like to see other roles getting some love, I do have to admit that Gorr’s playstyle is extremely fun, and I found myself enjoying him a lot even on my first game.
Play-style
Gorr is commonly described as a Magik and Namor hybrid, but I’d like to expand even more and say he’s those two, plus Winter Soldier and Loki.
Gorr is a close-range duelist with limited attack range, but he has the ability to place Black Berserkers, which do damage and allow him to teleport to them. Upon teleporting, he gains bonus health, so that explains the Winter Soldier and Loki observation.
Initial Thoughts
Player opinion is mixed, with many saying Gorr’s supposed low survivability hinders his overall potential, and others saying that he is overpowered and will certainly evolve into an issue once more begin to familiarize themselves with him.
Combine these two viewpoints, and you’ll find exactly where I stand regarding the God Butcher. While I have played him and had some good games, I’ve also played him and found myself wondering how it was possible for my health to deplete as quickly as it did.
Ultimately, I think the community needs more time to settle and learn Gorr before a fair opinion is formed on him. I‘ve had him in some of my games, and he’s certainly not weak in the right hands.
Gorr is weaker against fliers, as well as alert poke, as he is heavily reliant on his Black Berserkers staying alive. If his berserkers are destroyed quickly, he loses value at a rapid rate. Though this is a big “if” because there’s a high chance your team still doesn’t destroy Moon Knight’s ankhs, Namor’s squids, and other destroyable objects.
Emma Frost, The Thing, Devil Dinosaur, and Peni Parker have given me the most trouble as Gorr, but this comes as no surprise, as they are the typical melee/dive counters and have been for some time. Gorr aside, they’re also just strong characters currently, with Peni now being better than she was last season too.
Gorr has around a 30% pick rate starting in the Diamond rank, and a win rate of around 55%.
I do believe that the community will eventually come around even more—likely because of a random TikTok since that sways the community’s opinion more than it should—and when the time comes, it may be a very dark period.
Character and Ban Changes
Scarlet Witch can now attack multiple targets at once in general and have a chance of invincibility in her ultimate; Elsa Bloodstone and Winter Soldier feel the exact same despite their “nerfs”; Gambit and other strategists have, of course, received nerfs, and the list goes on.
The full balance patch notes are public as always, but to summarize, nothing has changed for the better. In fact, everything has somehow managed to get worse. The recent season was Season 9.5, which was met with harsh feedback as well
One positive is the removal of duplicate bans in ranked matches, which should have been done seasons ago. However, the number of bans per team remains the same. Six total bans per game out of 54 playable characters (56 if Deadpool is accounted for in each role).
One of the Worst Communities Ever
The community itself is still the same as the past 10 seasons, horrendous. Despite Marvel Rivals being a team game, I’ve had people simply decide to disconnect, throw games because they didn’t like a teammate’s character, queue up and throw just because, argue in the pre-select phase, refuse to swap under any circumstances, and many more classic community moments.
The problem lies here, as no amount of changing the game can fix the toxic Rivals community. I notice that people tend to play as if it were a solo game, not helping the team but rather doing whatever they feel like doing in the moment.
Too bad if you need a second vanguard or strategist, as people will leave the spawn with neither role present.
Instead of switching characters to better counter the enemy team (or practice the lost art of helping your own), people will play whoever they feel like playing and just complain about healing. If you open the scoreboard and just one person is negative, it is still somehow the fault of the strategists.
There is a deeper issue within the Rivals community when it comes to strategists. That section of the roster is already limited to only 13 characters, but when you factor in the whining and throwing when certain characters are simply selected, it becomes smaller.
In summary, I think the developers are terrible at making changes, the community will continue to bring the game down, the team element was lost around seven seasons ago, and this game just gets worse every season. I guarantee that the player numbers will drop come GTA VI.
But hey, it was only the first weekend of the season, right?
DISCLAIMER:
The opinions presented on this page do not represent the views of the PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect the perspectives of contributing writers and/or university community members.
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