Marvel Rivals Team Comps Guide (2026): Dive, Brawl, Poke, 2-2-2

Formation board · Season 10.5

Six heroes, one plan.

There's no role queue in Marvel Rivals, so your team decides its own shape. This is the shape most teams pick, and how the alternatives score.

Enemy ↑ ThorVanguard Peni ParkerVanguard MagikDuelist HelaDuelist Rocket RaccoonStrategist Luna SnowStrategist

Role splits · V-D-S · all ranks

2-2-2 70.8% of matches 53.7% won

1-3-2 14.3% of matches 45.2% won

1-2-3 5.1% of matches 37.1% won

2-1-3 5.0% of matches 39.8% won

rivalsmeta.com, Season 10.5 selector, read 8 November 2026.

The lineup is an example 2-2-2, not a recommended comp. Heroes: Thor and Peni Parker (Vanguards), Magik and Hela (Duelists), Rocket Raccoon and Luna Snow (Strategists).

Marvel Rivals has 54 heroes and no role queue: Competitive gives the account one rank and lets six players pick whatever they like. That freedom is why comps matter so much. A team that agrees on a shape and a plan in hero select starts every fight with an edge over six players who each picked a favourite. This guide uses the public role-split numbers for Season 10.5 to show which shapes actually win, explains the dive, brawl and poke archetypes with real heroes, and covers the two systems that changed comp building in 2026 — the Season 9 team-up rework and Chain-CC Protection.

What the role splits say

rivalsmeta.com publishes how often each role split — Vanguards, Duelists, Strategists — appears and how often it wins. Its numbers on 8 November 2026, with the site's season selector on Season 10.5 and all ranks included, across 2,104,856 team-matches in the eight most common splits:

Source: rivalsmeta.com team comps page, "All Ranks", read 8 November 2026. The page doesn't state its platform or date range; the season selector showed Season 10.5. A community site's sample, not NetEase data.

Two cautions before reading too much into it. First, splits with few matches are often accidents: a 0-4-2 usually means a Vanguard swapped mid-fight or left, not that a team planned it, so its low win rate partly measures teams that were already losing. Second, the snapshot mixes every rank; organised high-rank teams can make unusual splits work. Even so, the gap is wide. A team that drops to one Vanguard loses roughly eight points of win rate on these numbers, and going to three Strategists costs more than that.

Why 2-2-2 works

Each pair does a job the other roles can't cover for long. Two Vanguards means one can create space while the other protects the backline, and the team survives one of them being out of position or dead. Two Duelists provide the kill pressure that converts space into picks. Two Strategists let healing continue when one is dived, and since ultimate energy converts from healing at 65% they bring two of the most charge-efficient ultimates in the game — our ultimate economy guide has the numbers.

Season 9 also changed the maths in 2-2-2's favour. NetEase's 6 July 2026 balance post moved several Vanguards from raw health to Regenerative Shields — Hulk from 650 health to 400 plus a 300 shield, Thor from 600 to 300 plus 300 — and those shields refill after 5 seconds without damage. Two Vanguards can rotate who takes pressure, letting each shield come back, which a lone Vanguard can't do.

Dive, brawl and poke

Within 2-2-2, most comps lean one of three ways. These are BoostPirate's coaching definitions, with heroes from the current roster that fit each style; they're examples to build from, not fixed lists.

Dive lives on mobility. Venom and Captain America can engage from range and get out again, Spider-Man, Psylocke, Magik and Black Panther threaten the backline from angles a ground team can't watch, and the Strategists either keep up (Jeff the Land Shark) or play safe and heal from distance. It's the hardest archetype to coordinate in solo queue because it only works when several players commit at once.

Brawl walks in together. Hulk, Groot, The Thing or Devil Dinosaur hold the front, close-range Duelists such as Wolverine, Iron Fist or Gorr fight in the middle of the enemy, and Strategists with strong sustained healing keep the whole group alive. It's the simplest plan to explain: stay together, take the close fight, never trickle in one at a time.

Poke wins before the fight starts. Doctor Strange, Magneto or Peni Parker give a team something to stand behind, long-range Duelists such as Hela, Hawkeye, Black Widow or Phoenix deal damage across the map, and Strategists heal from safety. NetEase's falloff numbers matter here: Hela's damage starts falling at 18 metres, so poke still has a sweet spot rather than infinite range — the positioning guide maps them.

Which archetype beats which

The three styles loosely counter each other, which is why reading the enemy comp in the first fight matters more than any tier list.

This is BoostPirate's coaching model, not a law: individual heroes break it all the time, and flyers in particular ignore the "walk across open ground" weakness. Use it to pick a direction for your swap rather than a specific hero. Our counter-picking guide goes hero by hero.

Building around team-ups

Season 9 (10 July 2026) rebuilt the team-up system. Every hero now has two team-up abilities; the base effect works on its own, and having the partner on your team adds the enhanced effect. The old anchor bonuses — extra health or damage just for having a partner — were removed. That makes team-ups a reason to pick a pair, not a requirement. NetEase's Season 10.5 balance post (6 October 2026) tuned these pairs:

Hulk + WolverineFurious speed boosts 20% → 25%, cooldown 60 → 45 s

Magneto + Emma Frostmagnetic projection 45% → 50%, 5 → 6 s

The Thing + Invisible WomanUnbreakable Forces cooldown 20 → 15 s

Cyclops + GambitKinetic Kin 6 → 8 s

Hawkeye + PsylockePsionic Arrow 32 → 33 damage

Iron Man + ThorUnibeam outer ring 70 → 80/s

Phoenix + Helacooldown 12 → 10 s

Gambit + JubileeSparkling Staff 1.5 → 2 s

Adam Warlock + UltronCosmic Cluster healing 16 → 18

Jubilee + Bladenew 15/s healing to allies for 6 s

Hawkeye + Cloak & DaggerMoonlit Slash now heals Hawkeye too

How to use this in a comp: if your Vanguard is already on Hulk, a Wolverine on your team turns a base effect into the enhanced one, and the Season 10.5 post made that pair's Furious state faster and more frequent. Don't force a pair onto a player who can't play the hero well — a strong base effect on a hero you're good at beats an enhanced effect on one you aren't. The full system is in our team-ups guide.

Crowd control after Chain-CC Protection

Since 17 April 2026 every hero has a safety valve against stun-lock. NetEase's balance post sets the rule:

For comp building this means crowd control is a budget, not a stack. A comp with four heroes who can stun one target looks strong on paper, but if they all fire at once the last effects run into the cap and do nothing. Spread them: one to start the fight, one to stop the enemy's escape, one held for their dive. A comp with less crowd control but better follow-up damage often kills the same target faster.

The Season 10.5 snapshot

Which heroes are strongest right now? rivalsmeta's tier list for Season 10.5, filtered to Diamond and above and read 8 November 2026, put nine heroes in its S tier:

Three of the nine are Vanguards (Peni Parker, Devil Dinosaur, Hulk) and two are Strategists (Rocket Raccoon, Ultron), which fits the role-split data: the strongest teams invest in the front line and the healing. Treat a tier list as a hint about what you'll face, not an order to play something you don't know — and remember that bans start at Gold III, three per team, so the top heroes are often the first ones gone. Our hero bans guide covers how that works.

Fitting the comp to the map and mode

The archetype should follow the map. Open maps with long sightlines reward poke; tight interiors and choke points reward brawl; maps with height and side routes reward dive and flyers. The mode matters too: on attack in a payload-style map you need a comp that can walk forward together, and in a capture-the-point fight you need one that can contest the point when the timer is short. Our mode guides go deeper: Convoy, Domination and Convergence.

Fixing a comp in solo queue

Most comp problems in ranked aren't strategic, they're social. BoostPirate's hero-select script:

1. Look before you lock. Count what the team has. If there's one Vanguard or one Strategist, fill the gap first if you can play it.
2. Name the shape, not the heroes. "Let's go dive" or "we're brawling this map" lands better than telling someone what to pick.
3. Pick the hero that fits, from your pool. A hero you can play in the right role beats the tier-list pick you can't.
4. Read the first fight. If the enemy comp beats yours on the counter triangle, one swap in spawn after the fight is worth more than four arguments.
5. Swap after your ultimate. If you change hero, do it when your charge is spent.

And if nobody will play Vanguard, it's often you. The role-split numbers say a second Vanguard is worth more to your win rate than a third Duelist — the single most useful thing a flexible player can learn is one Vanguard and one Strategist they're comfortable on.

What will change in Season 11

Season 11 starts on 13 November 2026. Its balance post will move some heroes up and down, and rivalsmeta's role-split and tier numbers will reset with the new season's data. The principles here — two of each role, one archetype, team-ups as a bonus and crowd control as a budget — have held through every 2026 season so far, but recheck the snapshot sections after the first week of Season 11.