Marvel Rivals is a new hero shooter on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and the Epic Game Store, that takes the gameplay mechanics of Overwatch or Team Fortress 2 and gives them a Marvel comic twist. You get to take on the roles of various Marvel heroes and villains like Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor. However, one of these heroes currently benefits from sending his teammates to their deaths.
Which hero is it? The superhero known from the comic books and films, Doctor Strange, belongs to the “Tank” category of playable characters in Marvel Rivals. He has a shield that protects him and allies from incoming damage from the front. This shield can be used similarly to Reinhardt in Overwatch and can be activated or deactivated situationally.
Additionally, with the ability “Pentagram of Farallah,” he can create a portal that functions similarly to the portals in the games “Portal” and “Splitgate.” This means you set up 2 portals and can travel back and forth through them. You can also see what happens on the other side of the second portal and shoot at enemies through them.
With Doctor Strange’s ultimate ability, the “Eye of Agamotto,” you separate an enemy’s soul from their body. This allows you to essentially deal double damage to affected enemies, as the damage the soul suffers is also transferred to the body. You can also inflict damage on the body itself.
How can you charge the ultimate instantly? You can charge the Eye of Agamotto shortly after the start of a round by sending your teammates to their deaths.
As the content creator “Bogur” discovered, the ultimate charge of Doctor Strange fills up when he kills team members – heroes with a lot of health, such as tanks like Hulk, Venom, or Thor seem to be particularly worthwhile in this regard.
Here you see a clip from the content creator on X.com, demonstrating the trick:
To start the round with your ultimate ability fully charged with Doctor Strange, your teammates should choose tank heroes. You then need to place a portal in such a way that your teammates fall to their deaths when they travel through the portals. If all your teammates with tank heroes fall off the map through one of the portals, Doctor Strange should have his ultimate ready.
At this point, it is unclear whether Doctor Strange is actually meant to receive an ultimate charge through team kills or if this is an unintended bug. It is possible that the developers will remove this approach with a patch if it is found to be unintended and too powerful.
Marvel Rivals is currently a hotly debated game. It had 480,000 players on Steam shortly after release and is sometimes criticized for its similarity to Overwatch. Former Blizzard head Mike Ybarra embarrassingly made a blunder on the topic, as he called a 50-year-old Marvel heroine an Overwatch copy: Former Blizzard head calls Marvel Rivals an “Overwatch clone” and embarrasses himself significantly
