NetEase Games has revealed details surrounding Marvel Rivals Season 9, including major balance changes, a new character, Jubilee, a Black Widow Rework, and more in the most recent Dev Vision for the first-person shooter.
To start with, Marvel Rivals enters Season 9 in just days, and the brand-new season centers around the ancient world of Thebes. Jubilee journeys there to get help from Apocalypse as she searches to save her son, Shogo, who’s trapped in his dragon form. This takes Marvel Rivals to the Collapsed timeline, and Thebes will be a new Convoy map, starting on July 23, 2026.
With that, Jubilee also joins the Marvel Rivals roster with Season 9 as a new Strategist. Her kit lets her use pyrotechnic plasma to both heal teammates and damage and blind teammates.
At the same time, Black Widow is getting a major rework after struggling to find a place in the game since its launch. She’ll no longer have an ADC sniper mode in her standard state, and her primary fire is now faster. The blast that was part of her Ultimate is now a regular ability, slowing enemies and dealing damage. She can also now dash to enemies and slam down to deal AoE damage.
Now, her Ultimate ability is her sniper ADS mode that has a limited number of bullets (but can also run out of time if all the bullets aren’t fired). While she doesn’t have her one-kit KO potential, the hitbox of her sniper shots has been increased, and her bullets can pierce through enemies.
There are also major balance changes coming that will inevitably shake up the meta. To start with, there are a few changes being made across the board. Ultimate Ability energy comes from dealing damage or healing enemies, and that conversion rate is being slashed for everyone:
- Vanguards: damage-to-energy conversion reduced from 70% to 55%
- Strategists: healing-to-energy conversion reduced from 75% to 60% and damage-to-energy conversion reduced from 75% to 55%
Additionally, a new Regenerative Shield is being introduced to the game. This new shield will take damage the same way that health does, but it will fully regenerate over five seconds, starting when players don’t take damage for five seconds.
These changes led to most characters getting a balance adjustment. Developers also evaluated each character based on their performance last season and internal testing with the new Team-Up system. These changes can be found here in the balance adjustment notes.
As previously mentioned, Marvel Rivals Season 9 is also bringing a new Team-Up system. Now, every character will have two independent Team-Up ability loadouts. Players can choose two loadouts with a Base Effect and Enhanced Effect for each character. The Base Effect will always be available, while each character will need their Team-Up partner to trigger the Enhanced Effect.
In the future, Team-Ups won’t be constantly updated and moving around as they have been in the past. Now, the goal is to balance the Team-Up abilities.
This is the biggest change to Marvel Rivals since it was released, and it will absolutely change the way the game plays. 80% of the game’s characters are being adjusted because of this, so NetEase will be monitoring the balance of the game closely.
Players can watch the entire Dev Vision Volume 19 here, or check out the Marvel Rivals Season 9 trailer below:
Marvel Rivals Season 9 is set to release on July 10, 2026, on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Players can see the Battle Pass for the upcoming season here.
