Twelve heroes, one job, and a set of numbers that look like a penalty
Marvel Rivals has 12 Strategists out of 54 heroes. Their health pool is the fragile band — 250 to 300, the same as a Duelist — and their job text names healing first.
Then there are three numbers that make the role look badly designed until you read all three together:
| Stat | Strategist | Vanguard / Duelist |
|---|---|---|
| Healing dealt converts to ultimate energy at | 65% | 55% (damage or healing) |
| Damage dealt converts at | 50% | 55% |
| Passive energy gain | 8 per second | 11 per second |
| Ultimate cost range | 4,300 to 4,800 | 2,500 to 4,000 |
Everything in that table is a penalty. Lowest passive. Most expensive ultimates in the game — every Strategist sits above every non-Strategist. Only one line is a bonus: 65% healing conversion, the highest standard rate in the game.
That lone bonus is the entire role. Healing is not the slow way to charge an ultimate; it is the fastest action available to any hero, and it is attached to the heroes with the worst passive and the most expensive payoff.
Every point of healing buys the same amount of time
Here is the fact that reorganises healing priority, and almost no guide states it. One point of healing buys:
1 ÷ incoming damage per second seconds of life
The health pool does not appear in that formula. If a target is taking 200 damage per second, 100 healing buys half a second — on a 250-health Duelist, on an 850-health Vanguard, on anyone.
So “healing efficiency” is identical across the roster. What differs is not how much a heal buys, but how much time the target had before you arrived.
| Hero pool | Time at 200 damage per second | Time at 400 damage per second |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | 1.25 s | 0.63 s |
| 300 | 1.50 s | 0.75 s |
| 500 | 2.50 s | 1.25 s |
| 850 | 4.25 s | 2.13 s |
Read the columns, not the pool. At 400 damage per second a 250-health Duelist has 0.63 seconds. That is not enough time for a heal to land, and it is the reason “I was healing you” is so often true and useless.
The urgency test replaces the priority list
The instinct most players run is “heal the tank, they’re taking everything”. The arithmetic says something different.
Take a Vanguard at 40% health. On an 850 pool that is 340 health. Take a Duelist at 100% health — 250. Under the same 200 damage per second:
- Vanguard at 40%: 1.7 seconds left.
- Duelist at full health: 1.25 seconds left.
A Vanguard at 40% has more time than a full-health Duelist. Not because the tank is tougher in some vague sense, but because 340 is more than 250. That is the whole explanation.
So the priority rule is not a role hierarchy. It is a single question asked continuously: who crosses zero first? Three inputs, all of them visible on screen:
- Current health. The bar.
- The damage rate they are taking. Is the bar draining fast or slow right now?
- Whether they have an exit. A target with 1.5 seconds and a wall to step behind has five seconds. A target with three seconds and nowhere to go has three.
The third input is the one players skip, and it is why healing a Duelist mid-dive sometimes looks like a wasted heal and sometimes wins the fight. The heal did not change; the exit did. The positioning guide is really a guide to who has an exit.
Healing is the fastest ultimate charger, on the most expensive ultimate
Put the two conversion numbers side by side properly. A Strategist who heals 100 points gets 65 energy. The same Strategist dealing 100 damage gets 50 energy. That is 30% less, per point of output.
And yet their ultimate is the most expensive band in the game. Which produces the slowest possible floor:
| Source | Best rate | 4,300-cost ult | 4,800-cost ult |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategist, passive only | 8/s | 8:58 | 10:00 |
| Strategist, healing | 65% + 8/s | needs 6,615 healing | needs 7,385 healing |
| Duelist, passive only | 11/s | — | — |
Ten minutes of doing nothing is the floor on the most expensive Strategist ultimate. That number alone explains why Strategist ultimates feel rare while Duelist ultimates feel constant — and why the fix is not “play safer” but keep healing uptime high through the whole fight, including the boring middle where nobody is in danger.
There is a second-order effect worth knowing. Because healing is the charge engine, a Strategist who dies early does not just lose a healer — they lose the tempo of an ultimate that was 60% charged. The ultimate economy guide has the full conversion table and the way it interacts with hero swaps.
Why healing feels too strong
Search volume on the topic is dominated by one complaint: healing is too strong. The complaint is real and the cause is structural, not a balance accident.
Healing is the only action in the game that does two things at once at the highest rate available:
- It denies damage that has already been dealt.
- It generates the highest-conversion ultimate energy in the game.
Every other action does one or the other. Damage generates energy but never undoes anything. Mitigation undoes damage but generates nothing at the healing rate. So a Strategist doing their job is simultaneously the most efficient denial and the most efficient charge in the lobby, and there is no trade-off to make.
The counters that exist are therefore not “more healing” or “different healing”, but three specific things:
Reduced Healing effects. These exist on specific kits and apply a debuff rather than out-damaging the heal. When one is available, it converts a losing damage race into a winning one.
Burst that outpaces the heal. Healing buys 1 ÷ damage rate seconds per point. If a target dies inside that window the heal never lands, which is what the 0.63-second table above is about. Focused burst on a single target beats spread damage every time.
Focus fire on one target. Two targets at half health is the best possible state for the enemy Strategist — one heal beam can cover both, and both are generating charge for them. One target dead is worth more than two targets pressured.
What the Strategist in your lobby actually needs
Three things, in order of how often they are missing.
A line to the target. If the tank has pushed past a corner and the healer cannot see them, the healer is not healing. The tank’s job is to stay inside that line, and the frontline Vanguard guide treats it as the primary constraint rather than an afterthought.
An exit that is not the enemy’s route. A Strategist has 250 to 300 health, which is under nine metres of retreat at 200 damage per second. Their exit has to already be within that distance.
Someone who turns around. The most common way a Strategist dies is a dive nobody answered. The survive a dive as support page covers the route; the peel guide covers what the rest of the team owes them.