Marvel Rivals Season 9 Duelist Team-Ups: The Complete Guide to the New Damage Meta

If you thought the damage role in Marvel Rivals was already a chaotic mess of flying blades and laser beams, Season 9 is about to make your ranked matches look like a total fever dream.

NetEase just completely ripped out the old Team-Up architecture and replaced it with something far more flexible. You no longer have to sit around praying your teammates lock in a specific character just so you can access a fun part of your kit. Season 9 hands every single hero exactly two permanent Team-Up abilities to choose from. For the massive Duelist roster, that means 54 new mechanics are dropping into the game all at once. Even better, they aren't tied to a seasonal calendar anymore, meaning the balance team will tune these individually through normal patches.

How the Rebuilt Team-Up System Actually Works

The absolute biggest shift this season is that your chosen partner hero does not actually need to be on your team for you to use your ability. When you select one of your two available choices in the spawn room, you get its baseline effect automatically. If someone on your team happens to lock in the listed partner, your ability upgrades to its enhanced version.

You can only equip one of these abilities at a time, but you can swap between your two options whenever you visit a spawn room. This means you can actively counter the enemy team setup mid-match instead of being locked into a bad decision for ten minutes. The golden rule here is simple: pick the base ability that helps you survive or confirm kills first, and treat the enhanced partner bonus as a neat side perk.

Every Duelist Team-Up Ability in Season 9

With 27 Duelists currently on the roster, you have a massive amount of text to memorize if you don't want to get blindsided out there. I organized all 54 new abilities below, detailing exactly what they do by default and how they change when your partner is in the match.

Duelist	Partner	Ability Name	Effect Breakdown
The Punisher	Daredevil	Bestial Hunt	Base: Fires piercing bullets that carry a flat Damage Boost. Enhanced: Bullets shred through enemy walls and shields significantly faster.
The Punisher	Rocket Raccoon	Ammo Overload	Base: Throws a device that grants a Faster Firing buff to anyone inside its range. Enhanced: The device grants Infinite Ammo while you stand inside it.
Storm	Thor	Gods of Thunder	Base: Upgrades Wind Blade into a hitscan beam that explodes when it hits a target. Enhanced: Bolt Rush turns into Chain Lightning, bouncing between multiple nearby foes.
Storm	Jeff the Land Shark	Jaws of Fate	Base: Drops a torrential downpour that provides continuous healing to Storm and her team. Enhanced: Using Omega Hurricane lets Jeff swim inside the storm to create an area-of-effect Jeff-nado.
Human Torch	Jubilee	Fiery Sparks	Base: Passively spots close enemies and releases tracking sparks to chip away their health. Enhanced: Hitting an enemy with a Firework Spark awards Human Torch Bonus Health.
Human Torch	Storm	Storming Ignition	Base: Fires a massive blaze that creates a Fire Vortex on impact, pulling in and damaging targets. Enhanced: Storm's Omega Hurricane becomes a Burning Hurricane if it touches a Flame Tornado. Any cyclone crossing Torch's Flame Fields spawns additional tornadoes instantly.
Hawkeye	Cloak & Dagger	Moonlit Slash	Base: Upgrades Crescent Slash to fire a light projectile that heals allies, boosts incoming healing, hurts enemies, and applies Vulnerability. Enhanced: Can be chained into a fast three-hit combo of consecutive light blades.
Hawkeye	Psylocke	Senbonzakura Strike	Base: Upgrades Blast Arrow to Psionic Arrow, letting you stockpile extra arrows while holding down the draw string to unleash them in rapid sequence. Enhanced: Arrow nocking speed is heavily buffed, and the arrows explode on contact.
Hela	Namor	Deep Wrath	Base: Securing a elimination spawns an Undead Monstro at the corpse. Using Piercing Night orders the minion to shoot a thorn at the closest enemy. Enhanced: Every single attack during your Ultimate spawns a Monstro right where the hit lands.
Hela	Venom	Hel Tendrils	Base: Replaces Soul Drainer with tendrils that yank nearby targets to the impact center and links them, slowing down anyone trying to run away. Enhanced: Piercing Night launches a dense symbiote cluster of thorns, and direct hits restore Hela's health.
Black Panther	Magik	Dimensional Shortcut	Base: Deploys a stepping disc to snap back to where you were a few seconds ago, clearing health deficit with a bonus. The exit spot explodes, dealing damage and applying Vibranium Marks. Enhanced: You can manually cancel the teleport animation right in the middle of transit.
Black Panther	Storm	Damisa-Yao	Base: Ignites elemental power in your suit, slowing down and damaging close enemies while slapping on Vibranium Marks. Enhanced: Enemies caught in the radius are yanked directly into Black Panther's melee range.
Magik	The Hood	Void Pentagram	Base: Dropping portal discs inside a magic circle refunds your energy and auto-summons a Limbo Demon to attack. Enhanced: The summoned demons have massive health pools and hitting arrays that span wider.
Magik	Doctor Strange	Chain of Cyttorak	Base: Lets you hook and tether two enemies at the same time, dragging both into one exact spot. Enhanced: Can tether a whole cluster of enemies simultaneously, pulling the entire pack into a single point.
Moon Knight	Cloak & Dagger	Luminous Moon	Base: Enter a phased state to dash forward, releasing a wave of light energy that heals yourself and teammates upon arrival. Enhanced: Extends the phase window, lengthens the dash, and severely boosts the healing wave's size and output.
Moon Knight	Elsa Bloodstone	Blood Moon	Base: Sets down an Ankh Trap that summons a single Talon of Khonshu to fling enemies directly into the center when triggered. Enhanced: Triggering the trap summons an entire volley of talons to completely carpet-bomb the zone.
Squirrel Girl	Iron Man	Squirrel Missile	Base: Unlocks a homing missile attack where a squirrel hitches a ride on Iron Man's glove, jumping off right before a massive explosion. Enhanced: Activating your block ability automatically fires off a Squirrel Missile at the same time.
Squirrel Girl	Spider-Man	ESU Alumnus	Base: Throws a web bomb that explodes on contact with surfaces or targets, applying a brief slow and chunking health. Enhanced: Exploding an acorn coats the floor in a web field, inflicting a continuous slow that escalates into a hard Stun if targets stay inside too long.
Black Widow	Phoenix	Burning Bullets	Base: Instantly spikes your rifle fire rate. Your Plasma Cannon also converts into an instant hitscan laser that completely bypasses the charge-up time. Enhanced: The Plasma Cannon gains an entire extra ability charge.
Black Widow	Hawkeye	Allied Agents	Base: Normal hits pool Focus. At three stacks, your next shot pierces and gains a massive Damage Boost. Enhanced: Landing a critical hit keeps the enhanced status active indefinitely until you finally miss a headshot.
Iron Man	Hulk	Gamma Charge	Base: Upgrades Overdrive to Gamma Overdrive, equipping a protective shield while supercharging your beams and blasts. Enhanced: Dropping your ultimate pulse cannon generates a massive shield and heavily infuses the blast beam to leak radiation damage over distance.
Iron Man	Thor	Thunder Overdrive	Base: Adds a swirling ring of volatile lightning energy around your Unibeam, shocking anyone caught near the edges. Enhanced: The cooldown on your primary Overdrive ability is massively slashed.
Spider-Man	Venom	Symbiote Bond	Base: Channels symbiote power to shoot out explosive spikes, dealing area damage and physically shoving enemies away. Enhanced: Automatically triggers secondary tendrils that trap and sap targets on top of the spike burst.
Spider-Man	Peni Parker	Parker Power-Up	Base: Arms a ticking spider bomb to throw for area damage and tracer tags. If you hold it too long and it blows up in your face, it instantly recharges all web shots. Enhanced: Upgrades the tracer marks so that popping them awards Spider-Man a flat pool of Bonus Health.
Scarlet Witch	Jubilee	Hex Fireworks	Base: Infuses firework energy into your defensive seal, letting you trigger a manual secondary detonation that hurts enemies and applies Vulnerability. Enhanced: Grants constant ticking healing while you're utilizing your flight projection.
Scarlet Witch	Doctor Strange	Sorcerers Supreme	Base: Replaces primary Chthonian fire with a relentless, rapid-fire salvo of magic missiles as long as you hold down the button. Enhanced: Expands your maximum total energy capacity and causes your control ability to generate energy way faster.
Winter Soldier	Elsa Bloodstone	Expert Instinct	Base: Securing or contributing to eliminations builds a stacking passive that shortens all other cooldowns. You lose everything if you die. Enhanced: The health buffer generated during your bionic charge ability is significantly increased.
Winter Soldier	The Punisher	Timeless Veterans	Base: Shoots out an electrical surge from the bionic limb, dealing damage and physically knocking targets backward. Enhanced: The electrical wave instantly grounds enemies and launches them much further back.
Star-Lord	Groot	Flora Munitions	Base: Flings out seed clusters that sprout into defensive snares, instantly rooting and damaging anyone who steps on them. Enhanced: Increases the total number of deployed snares and spikes their base trigger damage.
Star-Lord	Adam Warlock	Star-Soul	Base: Places a beacon that lets you instantly warp back from anywhere on the map. If you are eliminated, you spin into a cocoon to respawn right at those coordinates. Enhanced: Securing or helping with kills actively slashes the beacon's cooldown.
Blade	Captain America	Bleed For Battle	Base: Taking chunks of damage builds up stacks that increase your attack speed thresholds. Enhanced: Snagging critical damage instantly triggers your fully awakened state and raises the maximum stack cap.
Blade	Moon Knight	Blade of Khonshu	Base: Executes a dashing sword slice followed by four rapid slashes, shooting ricocheting blades that bounce between targets. Enhanced: Every normal spin attack you trigger launches an extra bouncing blade.
Psylocke	Cloak & Dagger	Light & Dark Darts	Base: Fires a circle of darts that heal you on hit and leaves a shadow domain behind. Standing inside the zone pulls you back into stealth. Enhanced: The domain's size is heavily expanded, and entering stealth re-fires the circle of darts automatically.
Psylocke	Emma Frost	Mental Projection	Base: Sends an illusion forward to execute a dash while you vanish into stealth. The clone mirrors your subsequent attacks. Enhanced: Re-activating the ability lets you instantly swap physical places with your clone.
Wolverine	Gambit	Pair of Threes	Base: Grants a massive speed and jump height boost while causing your attacks to plant delayed kinetic particles that detonate for extra damage. Enhanced: Awards constant, ticking healing for the entire duration of the buff.
Wolverine	Cyclops	Blast Slash	Base: Extends your basic slash reach and replaces your normal ultimate attack with a lunging flurry of area cuts. Enhanced: The extended melee attack range becomes completely permanent without needing to activate a cooldown.
Iron Fist	White Fox	Kumiho Palm	Base: Landing your lunging punch releases a burst of area healing to support your nearby allies. Enhanced: The automatic tracking and lock-on distance for the dive punch is significantly extended.
Iron Fist	The Thing	Iron & Stone	Base: Unlocks a heavy uppercut that launches targeted enemies straight into the air. Enhanced: You can chain the initial lift directly into a wide leg sweep for a fast follow-up combo.
Phoenix	Hela	Circle of Life	Base: Replaces your blast with a sequence of three explosive ground bursts that stun targets, reduce enemy incoming healing, and apply sparks. Enhanced: Each individual explosion in the sequence applies multiple stacks of sparks instantly.
Phoenix	Rogue	Telekinetic Beatdown	Base: Fires a shockwave that commands the Phoenix Force to blink between nearby enemies, striking them for damage, applying sparks, and healing you. Enhanced: Widens the shockwave size and heavily extends the auto-detection distance for enemy chaining.
Daredevil	Iron Fist	Comprehensive Defense	Base: Upgrades your club spin to hurt all close enemies while deflecting projectiles from all directions and generating Fury. Enhanced: Grants constant passive health regeneration for the entire time you are spinning the clubs.
Daredevil	Black Widow	Devilish Affair	Base: Swings your chain in a crossing pattern to deal damage and slow down anyone in front of you. Enhanced: Expands the hitting arc size and awards Fury whenever a strike connects.
Deadpool	Gambit	Gumbo Chimichangas	Base: Leaps forward to scatter a ring of explosive chimichangas on the floor upon landing. Enhanced: The impact explosion instantly applies a hard Stun to anyone caught inside the radius.
Deadpool	Hela	Hel-Yeah, Honey	Base: Allows your weapons to gain an extra upgrade level. Pistols pierce and leave homing death bubbles that hurt foes or heal friends. Swords deal percentage-based true damage after three hits. Enhanced: Allows you to upgrade BOTH your pistols and swords to their maximum underworld state at the same time.
Elsa Bloodstone	Devil Dinosaur	Prehistoric Trap	Base: Deploys a snare trap that causes Diablo to monitor the zone, immobilizing targets and leaking continuous poison gas damage. Enhanced: Lets you store and lay down two separate traps simultaneously.
Elsa Bloodstone	Deadpool	Loudmouth Mercs	Base: Modifies bullets to taunt and slow close enemies over time before snapping back to heal you based on damage done and boosting your passive cap. Enhanced: Heavily accelerates the acquisition rate of your core passive stance energy.
Black Cat	Spider-Man	Binding Ties	Base: Replaces your fortune swap with a two-charge web grapple that steals stats and plants tracers. Hitting a tracer target with another move pops it for bonus damage. Enhanced: Popping a marked enemy with the grapple instantly immobilizes them in place.
Black Cat	Black Panther	Feline Alliance	Base: Stuffs incoming damage into a meter. Once filled, you pop a knockback blast that gives you health and a quick speed burst. Enhanced: Bypasses the energy meter entirely, letting you detonate the explosion whenever you want.
Cyclops	Gambit	Kinetic Kin	Base: Ricochet shots set enemies on fire for continuous burn damage. Hitting a burning target with your beams instantly detonates a chunk of the remaining fire damage as a single burst. Enhanced: Teammate spark detonations actively lower the remaining cooldown on your ricochet ability.
Cyclops	Phoenix	Slim & Red	Base: Vent energy to enter a supercharged state, boosting your raw movement speed and jump height. Enhanced: Dramatically increases the firing speed of both your primary laser and concussive beam while active.
Namor	Luna Snow	Chilling Charisma	Base: Unlocks a tidal wave move that shoves back and slows down any enemy in its direct path. Enhanced: The wave gains an extra charge and crashes down at its maximum distance to deal an extra explosion of area damage.
Namor	Hulk	Gamma Monstro	Base: Summons a secondary creature that automatically shoots the closest target, scaling its attack speed off your critical hits. Enhanced: Standing inside your defensive water pool drops its cooldown rapidly and awards the minion a flat damage increase.
Mister Fantastic	Rocket Raccoon	Fantastic Amplifier	Base: Equips a mod that extends your maximum reach and lets you actively trigger an inflated defense state. Enhanced: Your bouncing movement ability now physically launches enemies into the air.
Mister Fantastic	The Thing	Clobberin' Research Dept.	Base: Replaces your brawler stance swing with a chargeable smash that heals you based on damage done and launches targets at full charge. Enhanced: Modifies your grab into a chargeable hammer slam that also provides damage-scaled healing and high launches.

Which Duelist Options Look Insane?

Looking strictly at the functional mechanics of these 54 abilities, a few specific setups are going to completely dictate how you play certain characters.

Blade's Bleed For Battle looks like a massive problem for backline supports. Building up 12 individual attack speed stacks just by taking regular frontline pressure turns him into an absolute chainsaw. If you swap over to his Blade of Khonshu option, his ultimate slashes start throwing out ricocheting projectiles that copy Moon Knight's bounce patterns. This means Blade officially has two distinct modes: one built entirely around individual attack-speed scaling and another built for clearing out grouped compositions.

I am also keeping a very close eye on Phoenix's Telekinetic Beatdown. A tracking projectile that automatically bounces between multiple targets, inflicts fire stacks, chunks health, and returns a steady stream of self-healing is an absurd amount of utility to pack into one button. If you run a Rogue to unlock the enhanced version, the targeting range and width widen so much that missing a chain becomes almost impossible.

Hela's Deep Wrath is another pick that will absolutely warp team fights. Spawning an autonomous squid turret on top of an enemy's corpse every time you secure a kill means clean wipe pushes will compound automatically. If you pair her with Namor, you get a minion dropped on every single impact point during her ultimate, turning the battlefield into a literal minefield of extra turret fire.

Before you waste three hours trying to force a supportive ability while solo queuing, pay attention to the fundamental design of what you are equipping. Team-centric mechanics like Magik's portal loops or Hawkeye's healing projectile only offer value if you can trust your team to capitalize on them. If you are diving alone, stick to the self-contained kits like Wolverine's particle explosives or Star-Lord's teleportation beacon. You can always use the spawn room to pivot when you notice your strategy is not working.