Marvel Rivals Season 2 is introducing a lot of new features, including new heroes, Emma Frost and Ultron, new maps, new Team-up abilities, and, as per usual, a ton of hero changes. Most of these are pretty straightforward and expected, like a nerf for Winter Soldier and a small buff for Loki. But the best change, by far, has to be the fact that Rocket Raccoon's ultimate now heals teammates.
Before this change, Rocket Raccoon's ultimate just provided a damage boost for teammates. It may have been a nice subversion of the usual Marvel Rivals Strategist ult, which predominantly heals allies, but in practice, it often didn't work very well. Now this wasn't all due to Rocket's design: most of the blame lies on players not using it correctly.
Rocket Raccoon players using their ult when their team gets caught up in a Groot ult or when everyone's getting shredded by a Psylocke became a bit of a meme. Popping your ult is a pretty common reflex to nearly dying in a game, but as Rocket's ult didn't heal anyone, it was a pretty useless last-ditch attempt to save your team. Instead of saving your ult for when your team's about to die, like other Strategist players should do, Rocket's ult was best used for when your team was on the cusp of winning a team fight, as the damage boost tends to push your team up for the win.
It was decent when used correctly, but it seems like the devs didn't think it was good enough. "Rocket's healing abilities will see some adjustments to enhance team survivability," the Marvel Rivals patch notes say. "Reduce C.Y.A. (Ultimate Ability) damage boost from 40% to 25%, but add a new effect: during the ability's duration, linked allies will receive an additional 100 Bonus Health points per second, capping at 150. After breaking the link, this bonus starts to fall off after 1 second at a rate of 75 per/s. Additionally, increase the energy cost from 3700 to 4000."
Compare this with other Strategist ults like Luna Snow, who deals 200 healing on cast of Fate of Both Worlds and then 250/s for its duration, Cloak and Dagger, who dish out 250/s during Eternal Bond, or even Invisible Woman, who provides 165/s with Invisible Boundry, and Rocket's healing factor doesn't quite match. But even still, having some healing tacked onto his ult will likely be a big bonus—some players are already celebrating ahead of Season 2.
"Rocket Raccoon is now the goat healer with his ultimate change," redditdugmonsta says. "Finally, Raccoon won't be looked down upon as much as before with his ultimate now giving some type of health to his allies!"
But we can't really judge yet. It's too early to tell how this change will affect Rocket, his win rate and his pick rate. It may take some time to get used to, but I think this ability will suit Rocket better and fall in line with how players seem to want to use his ultimate.
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