Is Strategist the easiest role?
I’m a Top 500 strategist player and here’s my opinion.
Yes. 100%.
Hear me out.
The very nature of a Strategist involves keeping your teammates healthy and assisting the group effort to capture objectives. Sounds so easy right? Strategists do have the easiest barrier to entry, it’s relatively easy to pick up a healer and do a decent job. You can replenish a few health bars and throw out your ultimate every now and again while achieving a satisfactory amount of success. There are incredibly easy Strategists to play, like Rocket Raccoon and Cloak and Dagger, who have loose aim or auto-aim mechanics which makes them easy to learn.
However, when you insert the Strategist role into a ranked game, their difficulty level skyrockets.
Potency Of Dive
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Lots of enemies violently focus Strategists as their primary target and inflict a crazy amount of damage. The skill of surviving against dive characters is not easy to master. In fact, the sheer difficulty of constantly looking around you in fear of being instantly deleted by an assassin has pushed many Strategist players away from the game.
Many players decided that it actually isn’t very fun to be deleted from the battlefield by the same characters using the same abilities every single game. Who could have thought? No gameplay short of perfection is left unpunished by the likes of Daredevil, Spiderman and Black Cat.
Team compositions geared towards diving Strategists really are miserable to play against. If I’m playing Luna Snow, I can only freeze one enemy while the other two jump on me simultaneously, frothing at the mouth by the thought of my freeze being down.
Most players would agree that the biggest issue which heightens the success of dive compositions is the absolute refusal of most teammates to turn around and help their healers. Strategists are condemned to an untimely gruesome end without good teamwork, which is a rare commodity to find in competitive multiplayer games these days.
Powerful Ultimates
But what if these enemies drop their ultimates on top of you? You will need to cast your Strategist ultimate in response to act as a counter, otherwise your team will likely be wiped off the board. The awareness of where and when to pop your ultimate requires exceptional skill expression at higher ranks. Strategists hold the reins of the most impacful ultimates that dictate the pace of the game. A huge amount of responsibility is bestowed upon them, and the enemies know to target them first as a result.
Strategists need to be aware of enemy ultimates that pose an imminent threat and plan ahead to nullify them while also focusing on building their ultimates as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it’s so blatantly obvious to see when a healer dies in their ultimate or uses it incorrectly. But, what happens when a Duellist or a Vanguard obtains zero value from their ultimate? It usually happens a lot more frequently as there is simply double the opportunities for mistakes to happen but players definitely do not call out their mistakes as often as strategists.
Additionally, let it not be underestimated just how diverse a knowledge is required of every ultimate in the game to play as a healer. Each Strategist ultimate has different strengths and interact differently against various threats, rendering mistakes easy to make. For example, a Rocket Raccoon ultimate is a terrible counter for an enemy Phoenix ultimate as the beacon will be instantly destroyed.
Strategists Require Aim And Skill
Some Strategists are more complicated than others. Mantis, Luna Snow, Adam Warlock and Invisible Woman all require pretty accurate aim which was a wide misconception in Season 0, when Luna Snow was considered the easiest character in the game.
Invisible Woman has a very versatile kit, she deals damage, heals a bunch and can make crazy plays with her ‘Force Physics’ push/pull ability. There are so many micro mechanics to learn with her shield, blocking damage, peeling for yourself and how best to manage the shield health. She has such a high skill ceiling and definitely is not easy to play at an advanced level, the same sentiment applies to Luna Snow. Landing a Luna freeze on a 20/0 Black Panther dashing around in your face is not easy. It takes a LOT of skill to stay alive against skilled DPS players.
Interrupting ultimates is difficult to consistently pull off yet it is widely considered yet another responsibility to be attributed to Strategists. Dr Strange’s ultimate is one of the most impactful in the game but it can be frozen by Luna or pushed away by Invisible Woman which requires great patience and prediction. You can use Invisible Woman’s shield to block enemy ultimates, Adam’s Soul Bond can be used to soak damage from a big ultimate that would have otherwise caused a teamwipe and Cloak can make his team invulnerable at crucial moments.
Bad Strategists Instantly Torpedo The Game
Every player has experienced bad healers, you’re constantly spamming ‘need healing’ and Strategist ultimates are being popped at the completely wrong time. Your team instantly falls apart without good Strategists. It’s easy to take for granted consistent healing without diverting your attention to your backline for even a second. Strategists are always expected to be alive, regardless of the Lord Black Panther or the 30/0 Magik. If Strategists die, then it’s ‘GG NO HEALS’. Players will always remember when a ‘bad’ Strategist caused them to lose ranked points, but hardly ever when a Strategist played perfectly and interrupted ultimates that secured the victory.
When the Strategist role is filled by players that have little prior experience of all the micro mechanics and knowledge required to succeed, it is INCREDIBLY apparent. My absolute worst experience on Marvel Rivals is loading into a Celestial+ lobby, only to find that I am the only Strategist main. I am therefore condemned to a game of no heals, permanent death and misplaced Strategist ultimates.
Easy Vanguard and Duellist Characters
Many players commonly express their wrong opinion that the Strategist role requires no skill and equates to boosted players. If Strategists are to be judged as the easiest role based on the simplistic nature of some characters, like Rocket, then surely this line of thinking can be extended to tanks like Groot? Place walls and swings your arms at any enemy. Should we conclude that Groot is easy and therefore playing Vanguard is easy? No, because there are an endless number of variables that affect Groot’s ability to perform perfectly on the actual battlefield.
Optimal wall placement, tanking just enough damage to not die, dealing damage, ensuring line of sight for your healers, looking for a game winning play with your ultimate, blocking enemies off, pushing objectives, making space/peeling for your team, and the list goes on infinitely!
However, Strategists are easier to perform more consistently in games. It is definitely a lot easier to heal your allies than pick up eliminations consistently. In some matches, there are hardly any opportunities to grab takedowns just based on team compositions. But you should always be proactive as a Strategist, you can’t just healbot and expect your team to carry you to victory. Look for opportunities to get a pick on an enemy and to make those impactful plays that instantly provide you with more dominion over the game’s fate. Of course there are occasions where the game matches you with clueless healbots, but the same concept is true for ill-experienced tank and damage players.
Dealing With Consistent Toxicity
Support is definitely the role that players look to blame the most. It’s an easy scapegoat and the most popular excuse that players always seem to jump on, whether it’s a complete falsehood or not. Instantaneously avoiding the spotlight shining on their own bad plays, just to direct the blame on to someone else. This happens more often in lower elo, where players will genuinely believe that there is no healing output.
However, after being presented with the post-game scoreboard, it quickly becomes evident that their Strategists had a higher amount of healing than the enemy team and they conveniently disappear. Players will often refuse to look at their own gameplay in the interest of improving and simply just throw insults at the Strategist players.
I do agree with the notion that popular content creators fuel this blame. A considerable amount of players have preconceived notions that their healers are going to be bad, sentiment that they echo from their favourite streamer. But, I do think it’s unfair to attribute all the blame on content creators for this attitude. They are only partly at fault, at least in Marvel Rivals. ‘GG no heals’ is an everlasting meme that has survived for eons, I’m sure we’ve all had a laugh at those ‘need healing’ Genji edits. There are many competitive video games that set the precedent to blame healers long before Marvel Rivals and the stigma will probably never dissipate.
The Strategist Unbroken Mental State
Breathe in, breathe out. Strategists usually provide the peaceful harmonic melodies required for teamwork. They don’t flame their teammates half as much as Duellist or Vanguard players. I often find that Strategist players have much better composure and mental game than their counterparts. If a player starts griefing or trolling in my game, it is very rarely the Luna Snow and more often the Spiderman who refuses to swap.
Similarly, players consumed by rage and susceptible to screaming in the voice chat are often found in the front lines, rather than in the back. Strategists are usually the glue that holds the team together, so PROTECT that glue. If a Strategist player tilts and trolls, the game is at least twice as hard to win at the snap of a finger. Whereas games are actually still winnable if a Vanguard or Duellist player loses their mind.
The Strategist role definitely requires a certain level of patience and tranquility, that most players don’t possess, to deal with the constant barrage of blame and insults directed their way.
To conclude, I agree that Strategist is the easiest role at face value and it has the lowest barrier to entry. You can play at a decent standard with the least effort and skill out of the three roles. But mastering a strategist and learning how to play against skilled players takes a lot of experience, skill and knowledge. There’s a reason why some Strategists reach Top 500 and some don’t.
