Doctor Strange has long been a formidable character in Marvel Rivals, known for his powerful abilities such as the shield, flight, and portal skills, making him a key figure in many team fights. However, an unintended bug involving his portal ability had been giving players an unfair advantage right from the start of the game. NetEase Games has swiftly acted on this issue, and it has been addressed in the first major Marvel Rivals update.
Doctor Strange bug
Since the game’s launch, Doctor Strange’s portal ability allowed players to charge his ultimate ability faster than intended. The bug worked by players placing one portal near their spawn and another on the edge of the map. By jumping into the second portal, team members would effectively sacrifice themselves, resulting in “team kills.” Surprisingly, these kills counted towards Doctor Strange’s ultimate energy, giving him a significant advantage in the early stages of a match. This allowed the player controlling Doctor Strange to start the game with a much faster charge on his ult, an unintended and overpowered strategy.
Streamer ‘bogur’ demonstrated this bug in a video, showing just how effective the strategy was in giving Doctor Strange an early lead.
Marvel Rivals update fixes the bug
In response, NetEase Games quickly implemented a fix in the update. According to the company, the issue arose because Doctor Strange’s portals mistakenly counted terrain KOs (deaths caused by terrain, such as falling off the map) as part of his ultimate energy charge. The update temporarily disables this mechanic, meaning terrain KOs will no longer contribute to Doctor Strange’s ultimate charge.
“We have disabled the portals’ terrain KO attribution to temporarily fix this issue,” NetEase Games stated. “Terrain KOs will not count toward Doctor Strange’s own KOs. Rest assured, this bug will be resolved in a future update, at which time we will restore the portals’ KO attribution.”
While this issue has been addressed, the patch notes for the update reveal that there were no major balance changes made to other characters or abilities. Instead, NetEase focused on resolving bugs related to maps, game modes, and heroes.
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