Marvel Rivals patch tries to pull its newest hero out of the dumpster

Human Torch certainly isn’t the worst hero in Marvel Rivals, but he’s far from the best — maybe too far for one of the newest additions to the game. According to RivalsMeta, Human Torch is one of the weakest heroes right now. His winrate isn’t much higher than Black Widow, who has consistently been at the bottom of every tier list since the game came out. That could change with the latest balance patch released Wednesday.

Both changes target the weakest parts of his kit, and focus on “enhancing his solo takedown potential,” according to the developer note. That’s a fancy way of saying his primary fire attack will no longer be as clunky to use, nor will fireballs take two business days to arrive at enemies.

The main thing keeping Human Torch relevant has been his devastating ultimate combo with Storm. RivalsMeta tracks team-ups too, and it has Human Torch and Storm ranked as one of the most potent pairings. And despite its ridiculous power from a team-up synergy with Storm, Human Torch’s fiery tornado ultimate ability is getting a slight damage buff, too. The problem before was his reliance on the team-up to achieve success, and these tweaks should make him a more viable solo character.

The rest of the patch notes have minor changes to Iron Man and Cloak and Dagger. Iron Man will do a little more explosive damage, and Dagger’s healing projectiles have been tweaked towards single-target healing over AOE. Neither change seems like it’ll be big enough to shift the meta, but some players aren’t particularly happy to see Cloak and Dagger changes that aren’t nerfs, as they continue to be one of the strongest healers in the game.

Nothing in the patch will deter players away from the tank-heavy team compositions that are popular right now. With support heroes unable to protect their team as often, the next logical step is to lean on the sturdiest heroes. We’re not quite repeating the Overwatch GOATS meta yet, but we’re close.