Marvel Rivals: The Most Significant Hero Buffs & Nerfs in Season 7.5

Marvel Rivals Season 7.5 launched on April 17, 2026. This update marked the arrival of Black Cat in the free-to-play team shooter's DPS roster, as well as new events, a new series of hero skins, and fresh hero balance changes and updates to keep the meta as fresh and exciting as possible. During these balance changes, some pretty significant buffs, nerfs, and adjustments have been made across the board – including a brand-new mechanic that protects users against multiple CC effects within a short window. If you’re wondering which heroes on each role have been most significantly affected by the Marvel Rivals Season 7.5 balance changes, this breakdown has you covered with all of the most notable adjustments.

Chained CC Changes

Significant new changes are being made to CC abilities in Marvel Rivals, significantly improving QOL across matches. This will affect characters with hard crowd control and stun abilities, such as Spider-Man’s pull, Wanda’s AOE Stun, Hela and Phoenix’s stun, Bucky’s hook, Mantis’ Sleep, and Luna Snow’s freeze, among other things. From now on, additional CC abilities on the same target will be weakened in power following the first successful CC, helping single targets to survive being stun-locked by continuous CC abilities.

Here are the exact details for this new mechanic, as explained in the official Rivals patch notes:

• The Trigger: If a Hero suffers 5.5 seconds of total CC duration or is hit by 6 CC effects within a 7-second window, Chain-CC Protection activates. This instantly purges all active CC effects and grants the Hero 30% Tenacity for 3 seconds.
• Scaling Tenacity: Tenacity proportionally reduces the duration of incoming CC. While active, every new CC effect applied to the Hero increases their Tenacity by 10% and extends the buff's duration by 0.5 seconds.
• Total Immunity: If Tenacity reaches 100%, the Hero becomes completely CC Immune until the buff expires. During this window, incoming CC will not grant further Tenacity or extend the Immunity duration.
• Cinematic Exceptions: Certain animation-driven CC effects (such as Emma Frost's Carbon Crush and Monster Hulk's World Breaker) bypass this system. Tenacity cannot reduce their durations, nor will they be interrupted if Chain-CC Protection triggers. Any standard CC effects applied during these cinematic moves will be cleared, and Tenacity applied, only after the cinematic ability concludes.
• Cooldown: The Chain-CC Protection system has a 5-second cooldown, which begins the moment the final Tenacity effect expires.

Elsa Bloodstone Has a Trickier Time Farming the Entire Lobby

Elsa Bloodstone has been pretty darn powerful since her launch, and she has remained in a good position following White Fox’s release. Her Ultimate is incredibly powerful, but what has been more shocking is her incredibly quick TTK when executing a perfect weapon combo against a single target. This enabled her to shred even the likes of Vanguard heroes in a matter of seconds. Now, she’s been tuned down in damage and cooldowns.

Helix Advance cooldown has been increased from 8s to 10s. (Cooldown at max passive stacks from 2s to 4s). Monster-Piercer percentage damage per pellet has been lowered from 1.2% to 0.8%. Lastly, the total percentage damage when all 5 pellets hit has also been lowered from 6% to 4%. A note from Zhiyong adds additional context, stating that when all pellets hit, damage against a 275 HP hero drops from 81.5 (13*5+275*6%) to 76; against a 700 HP hero, it drops from 107 (13*5+700*6%) to 93.

Bucky Gets Adjustments with CC Nerfs & Damage Buffs

Bucky has been a massive problem at high ELO ever since the game released, containing an extremely powerful kit including bonus shields, combo-based ability cycling, high DPS shots, and CC with grounding and a hard-stun hook. As a result, he gained a nerf heading into Season 7 and has dropped off in value quite dramatically. To help Bucky be more viable again, he’s being buffed in base damage, but having his CC nerfed – helping him play less like a bodyguard and more like an aggressive Duelist.

Trooper Fist is getting a cooldown decrease from 12 seconds to 10 seconds, but will no longer apply the Grounded effect on enemies. Bionic Hook gets an increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 15 seconds. Roterstern Projectile damage is being buffed from 75 to 80, with decreased Spell Field damage from 55 to 45. Tainted Voltage single charge energize time has been decreased from 6s to 5s, with base damage also going down from 80 to 70.

Peni Parker Gets Survivability Nerfs, But Strengthened Ability Kit

This is being achieved by nerfing Peni’s base health from 700 HP to 650 HP. However, she is being compensated with a buff to her Bonus Health cap, provided by Cyber-Webs. This is being increased from 150 to 200. The number of Cyber-Webs available on the field at a given time has also been increased from 3 to 4, and her Web Cluster projectile speed is being increased from 120ms to 150ms. This means that essentially, Peni loses a bit of her natural tankiness, but is rewarded more for good web placement and using her kit efficiently, as the additional web will help with bonus heals to keep her on her feet for extended uptime, making it a rather decent trade-off.

Vanguard Deadpool Takes a Hit to His Ultimate Damage Potential

Vanguard Deadpool, otherwise known as TankPool, is getting nerfs to his burst damage and survivability gained from his gun-form Ultimate – The Ban Hammer. Bonus Health gained per hit has been reduced from 80 to 60 (standard) and from 80 to 70 (upgraded). In addition to this, the damage dealt per hit has also been affected, lowered from 45 to 35. Lastly, his bonus attack speed provided by Deadpool In Your Area is also being nerfed, now sitting at 40% rather than the previous 60%. These seem like very fair changes across the board that don't affect Deadpool too heavily, yet will still help across the life of a match, as his Ultimates can be pretty easily farmed.

Human Torch Gains Another Adjustment in Hopes of Finding His Place in the Meta

Poor Torch has been in a rough spot since release. He’s spent his entire Marvel Rivals life either thriving at the top of the meta as one of the strongest flying heroes and a must-ban pick for certain maps, or being nearly completely useless due to being nerfed too heavily. Rivals seem yet to find the sweet spot for Human Torch in terms of balancing for a while now, but they have certainly been trying. He had some adjustments recently, and Season 7.5 sees more tweaks – this time to his mobility mechanics. Here is the change, as listed in the patch notes:

• Plasma Body Mechanic Adjusted: Upon casting, he immediately dashes a short distance (10m) in the direction of movement and enters the Plasma Body state for 4s. This ability now has 2 charges, with a 10s recharge time per charge. There is a 4s cooldown between consecutive casts.

Ultron Gains Buffs to His Ultimate Ability

Ultron is eating well in Season 7.5 with some nice buffs to his Ultimate, increasing the threat levels during a team fight through additional damage and range tweaks upon casting. In addition to this, the behaviour of his Ultimate is being switched up. The four drones that surround Ultron will no longer shoot at your crosshair, but will now bombard the area surrounding your target, matching Ultron’s – just with lower damage. The coverage area of Rage of Ultron has also been increased from a 3m radius to a 6m radius. Here are the damage and falloff changes that will now occur when activating Rage of Ultron (his Ultimate Ability), as stated in the official patch notes:

• Increase Ultron's Encephalo-Rays Damage from 8 to 18.
• Increase the Drones' Encephalo-Rays Damage from 8 to 12.
• New Spell Field Damage Falloff: Starts at 1.5m after Encephalo-Rays explode, with a max falloff to 50% at 3m.
• Increase healing effect on allies from 25 to 40.
• Damage and healing effects on targets within the original 3m radius remain roughly the same.