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Team composition in Marvel Rivals: what 2,832 Competitive matches show
"Just play 2-2-2" is the most repeated advice in Marvel Rivals. Two Vanguards, two Duelists, two Strategists. But how much does it actually matter, and what happens when a team goes three Strategists or a lone tank? We counted it across 2,832 Competitive matches recorded by Lunar between December 2025 and November 2026.
Where the numbers come from
Lunar stores the full scoreboard of every match its users play, including the other ten players in the lobby. That gives us both sides of each game, not just the Lunar user's team. For this article we kept only matches that were:
- Competitive (ranked), not Quick Match or custom games,
- a full six against six, with no player leaving early and no AI fill-ins,
- decided, with one winning team and one losing team.
That leaves 2,832 matches, or 5,664 team lineups. Each player's role is the role of the hero they spent the most time on that match. Players swap heroes during a game, so a "2-2-2 team" here means a team whose six players mostly played two Vanguards, two Duelists and two Strategists. All figures are aggregates. No player names or IDs are used.
How often each lineup shows up, and how it does
The lineups are written Vanguard–Duelist–Strategist, so 1-3-2 means one Vanguard, three Duelists and two Strategists.
| Lineup | Team games | Share of lineups | Win rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-2-2 | 3,992 | 70% | 53.7% |
| 1-3-2 | 588 | 10% | 42.3% |
| 2-1-3 | 496 | 9% | 42.5% |
| 1-2-3 | 327 | 6% | 42.2% |
| 3-1-2 | 153 | 3% | 38.6% |
| 2-3-1 | 42 | under 1% | 26.2% |
Seven in ten Competitive lineups are already 2-2-2, so the advice has clearly sunk in. Every other common lineup wins noticeably less than half its games. The rarer lineups (2-3-1, 3-2-1, four Strategists and so on) have too few games to say much about one by one, but together they lose far more than they win.
The overall 2-2-2 number, 53.7%, actually understates the effect. Most 2-2-2 teams play against another 2-2-2 team, and in that mirror one side has to lose. The fairer test is what happens when the two lineups differ.
2-2-2 against everything else
In 1,082 matches, one team ran 2-2-2 and the other didn't. The 2-2-2 team won 63.7% of them (689 wins).
That is a big edge for something decided before the first fight: roughly two wins for every loss. With over a thousand matches behind it, the margin of error is about ±3 points, so this isn't noise.
The second Strategist matters most
Looking at one role at a time makes the picture clearer. These rows only include matches where the two teams had a different number of players in that role.
| Matchup | Matches | Win rate of the first team |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Strategists vs 1 | 59 | 74.6% |
| 2 Strategists vs 3 | 612 | 60.8% |
| 2 Vanguards vs 1 | 713 | 60.6% |
| 2 Vanguards vs 3 | 145 | 64.1% |
A few things stand out.
- A lone healer is rare and it hurts. Teams with only one Strategist against a team with two won about a quarter of the time. The sample is small (59 matches), so treat the exact number loosely, but the direction is very clear.
- A third Strategist doesn't help either. This is the surprising one. Teams that went three Strategists against two lost about 61% of the time across 612 matches. More healing doesn't make up for the damage or space given up to get it.
- Two Vanguards beat one, and beat three. One-tank teams lose about 60% of the time against two-tank teams. Three-tank teams do even worse against two.
In short, the "2" in each role is the sweet spot, and drifting away from it in either direction costs games.
Why might 2-2-2 win more?
The data shows what wins, not why, but the patterns line up with how fights in Marvel Rivals tend to play out.
- Two Strategists can cover each other. With one healer, the enemy only has to pressure one player to cut off almost all the team's healing. With two, one can be dived while the other keeps the team alive.
- Two Vanguards share the damage. A single tank takes all the incoming fire, runs out of shields or health sooner, and leaves the team with no front line while they respawn.
- Every role covers a different job. Damage, space and sustain all have to come from somewhere. Doubling up on one role means one of the others is thin.
What these numbers can't tell you
There are real limits here, and they're worth knowing before you argue with your teammates over a lineup.
- Lineups can be a symptom. A team that is already losing may swap into an odd lineup to try something different. Using each player's longest-played hero, rather than the hero they ended on, reduces this effect but can't remove it.
- Hero choice matters more than role count. A 1-3-2 built around a strong dive Duelist is a very different team from a 1-3-2 of three players who all picked their favourite hero. These numbers average over all of them.
- This is one community's matches. The data comes from Lunar's users and the people they played with, across several seasons and balance patches. It isn't an official Marvel Rivals statistic, and it may not match every rank or region.
- Small samples are noisy. Anything under about 100 matches can easily be several points off.
Practical takeaways
- If your team is drafting toward three Duelists, the most valuable swap is usually one of them going Vanguard or Strategist. In our data, 1-3-2 teams won 42% of their games.
- Don't stack a third healer to "fix" a losing fight. Three-Strategist teams lost most of their games against two-Strategist teams.
- Flexibility pays off. Being able to play one hero in a second role means you can fill the gap instead of forcing someone else off their main.
- Look at your own record too. Lunar's hero rankings and hero pool planner show which roles and heroes you actually win on, so you know which flex pick is worth learning first.
Related reading: what decides a Competitive match and do losing streaks make you lose more? For which heroes teams pick on each map, see map and hero matchups.