Marvel Rivals Season 10: Gorr, the Scarlet Witch Rework and the Key Balance Changes

Marvel Rivals Season 10 maintenance began on 11 September 2026 at 09:00 UTC and was scheduled to last about two hours, so servers came up after it rather than at 09:00 sharp. The headline is Gorr the God Butcher joining the roster, but the balance pass that came with it reaches across all three roles rather than trimming a few outliers. Community write-ups counting the full change list put it near 70% of the roster; the developer does not publish a percentage, so treat that as an estimate and the scale, not the number, as the point.

If you only have five minutes: Scarlet Witch is the actual story of this patch, not Gorr. Her rework replaces a fragile, single-target lock-on kit with a mark-and-follow-up loop that rewards aggression instead of punishing it. Gorr is a solid new Duelist, but he is one hero among fifteen Duelists that got touched this patch.

The wider balance pass matters more for your day-to-day games than either individual change. Strategists build Ultimates slower across the board. Duelists are mixed rather than uniformly nerfed — several Season 9 staples got trimmed while others were buffed outright. Vanguards changed on base stats as well as on team-ups. Expect ranked queues to feel noticeably different for the first week or two while everyone relearns matchups.

The patch notes frame Gorr’s arrival around a story beat: after assassinating two deities back-to-back, the God Butcher reveals himself, and the new serial Butcher’s Blasphemy along with the Gorr lore drop All Gods Will Die set up his campaign against every god in the Marvel Rivals universe, Loki included.

A Necrosword Duelist Built for Pressure

Gorr joins as a Duelist built around the All-Black Necrosword, which reshapes itself into other weapons — a scythe for extended reach and a bow for range — so calling him a pure melee pick undersells the kit. He also summons minions, the Black Berserkers, and closes distance with Symbiote Assimilation rather than walking into fights. His ultimate temporarily supercharges the sword for a burst of heavy damage.

Loki Is Missing From Quick Play — For Now

As part of the story setup, Loki has been disabled in Quick Play mode, with his character-select icon marked to show he is unavailable while the narrative plays out. This is a story-driven lock tied to the season’s plot rather than a balance decision, and it is worth knowing before you queue up expecting him to be there.

Yes, and Scarlet Witch’s rework is the centerpiece of it. Her old kit relied on locking onto one enemy at a time with limited payoff for spreading damage, which is a big part of why she has sat near the bottom of most tier lists alongside Squirrel Girl, Iron Man, and Mister Fantastic.

How Chaos Marks Actually Work

The new system revolves around Chaos Marks. Landing her Dark Seal bubble or her brand-new Scarlet Hex ability tags enemies with a mark, and her primary fire now automatically locks onto any marked target instead of just one, letting her damage multiple enemies without manually re-aiming. Scarlet Hex itself is a frontal shockwave covering a 20m long, 8m wide area that deals damage and applies the mark on hit. The numbers that decide whether the rework works for you are the limits: primary fire reaches marked targets within 20m in a 120° frontal arc; the bonus health is 25% of the damage you deal to marked enemies and caps at 50; Mystic Projection’s speed bonus drops from 50% to 35%; Dark Seal now opens with a 0.3s stun and follows with a 30% slow.

What Wanda Trades Away for It

None of this comes free. Her Mystic Projection mobility got nerfed, which removes some of the flanking speed that let old-school Scarlet Witch players hit-and-run. The trade is clear: less mobility, more staying power in a straight fight, as long as you keep marked targets in front of you. Do not overread the staying power — 50 bonus health is a cushion, not a second health bar. Her exact final numbers still need to prove out in real matches, but the design goal — pulling her out of the bottom tier — is obvious from the kit alone.

Outside of Wanda, the balance pass follows a clear pattern by role. Duelists as a group get nerfed after dominating the Season 9 meta, while a handful of specific picks buck that trend and go up instead.

The Strategist change is the one to actually feel in every match, not just the ones with Wanda in them. Cutting both healing and damage conversion rates means support Ultimates come online later across the board. That is a role-wide change, but it is not identical for everyone: several Strategists also got individual ability changes on top of it, so the gap between supports moves as well as the pace.

Duelist Players Lose Some Power, Gain More Counterplay

If you were riding the Season 9 Duelist wave, expect your pick to feel a notch weaker unless it is one of the specific buffed exceptions. Black Cat in particular loses the invincibility window on Phantom Pursuit, trading it for damage reduction instead — a fair fix for an ability that was nearly unpunishable.

Strategist Players Will Feel Slower Ultimates

Plan around Ultimates arriving later than you are used to. The 5-point drop on both healing and damage conversion adds up over a full match, so holding a support Ultimate for a genuinely good window matters more now than it did last season.

Vanguard Players Get a Mixed Bag

Vanguard changes are not confined to team-ups, and that framing is wrong wherever you read it: base stats moved too. Captain America goes from 300 to 350 health, Magneto from 650 to 600, and Deadpool’s changes land on his own abilities rather than on a team-up. Read your own tank’s line rather than assuming the role was left alone.

Season 10’s content beyond the balance pass is straightforward but substantial. The Season 10 Battle Pass, The Godbomb, adds ten new costume sets, and a new Domination map is on the way shortly after launch.

• God Quarry A new Domination map tied directly to the season’s story, arriving September 24, 2026, roughly two weeks after the main patch.
• The Tetrameron A new seasonal story event built around Loki, The Chronicler, with tasks to complete for rewards through the season.
• Fruit of Immortality rerun The Season 4 Battle Pass returns for a limited window, from September 11 to September 24, 2026, purchasable through the Reality Link Point interface.
• Endgame Encore extension The Avengers: Endgame tie-in event gets extended through October 9, 2026, keeping its 20% discount coupon active on MCU-themed costume bundles.
• Store bundles New Cloak & Dagger, Gorr, and Emma Frost bundles land at launch, alongside matching chromas and Ultimate Ability VFX for each.

A smaller housekeeping item: the achievement system got a refinement pass because recent map and story changes broke the completion conditions on a few older achievements. Progress carries over automatically and nothing gets re-locked.

• What a Team-Up!
• Cute, Smart, Clever
• Echoes of the Abyss

Here is the mistake I would bet on people making this week: playing Scarlet Witch like it is still Season 9. Her old identity was hit-and-run poke with Mystic Projection carrying her out of danger. That mobility is nerfed now, and her whole kit is built around the opposite idea — standing in a fight and punishing marked targets for Bonus Health.

The pre-patch community discussion around her rework repeatedly flagged the same sequencing point: you have to land Dark Seal or Scarlet Hex first, then follow up, or the passive does nothing for you. Chasing kills with primary fire before applying a mark just leaves you playing the old, weak version of the character without realizing it.

On the Strategist side, do not panic-swap off your main support because Ultimates feel slower. The 5-point conversion cuts hit every Strategist equally, so the relative gap between supports barely moves — it is the pacing of every match that changed, not the hierarchy.

If you play ranked regularly, read the full role-by-role balance list before you queue — the Strategist Ultimate change alone will make fights feel different even if you never touch Scarlet Witch or Gorr. If you mainly play casually, the Scarlet Witch rework is worth trying on its own; the new Chaos Mark loop is a genuinely different character, not a stat tweak with new numbers attached.

This patch is good, not flashy — one new hero, one real rework, and a balance pass big enough to matter more than either. It rewards players who actually read what changed over players who just queue up assuming last season’s picks still work the same way.

Sources and Confidence

The season’s dates and content were read on the official patch notes page. Balance numbers that the patch notes summary does not spell out are marked as coming from the full change list rather than from the summary.