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Being a support player in a hero shooter is a thankless job. You keep everyone alive, and then your bad teammates still blame you when they run off and die trying to 1v6 the enemy team. Things have gotten so bad in the eyes of some Marvel Rivals’ Strategist mains that a group of them are going on “strike” by refusing to play the role and instead queueing up to play as tank and damage heroes instead.
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The inception of the strike comes from a few places. Some players argue that Strategist heroes are penalized by Marvel Rivals’ ranking system, which prioritizes kill counts over other stats like healing or damage mitigated, unfairly penalizing players for focusing on keeping their teammates topped off rather than popping heads. Support heroes have also been on the receiving end of several nerfs over the course of the game’s first three seasons. Often the only thanks they get are harassment and blame from their teammates, all while content creators like streamer Necros criticize support players on their platforms.
In a thread on the Marvel Rivals subreddit, user Revolutionary-Ad6480 wrote about the strike and why attitudes like the one Necros expressed on his stream have so many Strategist players disillusioned with the game, saying that it points to a growing cultural problem within the community.
“We’re not asking to be glorified or seen as the ‘hardest’ role – because I don’t think we are,” they wrote. “We just want basic respect. It’s tiring to be called brain dead or worthless when your stats are solid and you’re playing your role the way it’s meant to be played.”
The movement has spread across other social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok. However, there are a fair number of detractors casting doubts on the size of the movement, with several Rivals streamers making fun of the whole thing and calling it dramatic. As of yet, it’s unclear if the message is getting through to those in the community who need to hear it. Maybe those players will get it when they’ve got to swap over to Strategist themselves because nobody is healing.
For more on Marvel Rivals, check out Kotaku’s review.
