By James Carr on
GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.
Marvel Rivals Season 3.5 has added Blade to the Marvel Rivals roster after months of teasing the Daywalker in-game. The new Duelist joins the massive DPS section of the roster, but Blade occupies an area that only Mister Fantastic is currently in, which is a hybrid DPS-tank. His large health pool, life-steal ability, and high damage shotgun make Blade a deadly and overwhelming force in Marvel Rivals.
Blade overview
Blade has two primary weapons: his sword, which deals low melee damage, and his shotgun, which deals high damage at medium and close range. His parry ability is actually just a block, allowing him to tank reduced damage while reducing the cooldown on his dash ability. His dash inflicts either slow or anti-heal on the enemy you hit with it, depending on whether you have your sword or shotgun out. Blade’s ultimate ability is a long-dash that can be charged for extra distance. It deals a large amount of damage on the initial dash, with the slicing blade remaining in its wake for a brief moment afterward.
Blade abilities and team-ups
Ancestral Sword (primary): Slash forward with Blade’s Ancestral Sword.
Hunter’s Shotgun (primary): Fire at enemies using your shotgun.
Daywalker Dash: Dash forward. If wielding your gun, shoot at enemies upon impact, applying a Healing Reduction effect. If wielding your sword, deliver a cleaving strike that inflicts slow.
Bloodline Awakening: Awaken the Dhampir bloodline, enhancing slash speed during continuous attacks and triggering Whirlwind Slash. While under this state, you suffer Reduced Healing, but attacks gain Lifesteal.
Scarlet Shroud: Parry with Ancestral Sword to become Unstoppable for a brief period, reducing damage taken from the front and decreasing the cooldown of Daywalker Dash.
Thousand-Fold Slash (ultimate): Charge power and swiftly draw the Sword of Dracula, executing a powerful Iaido strike as you dash forward, leaving behind a slashing zone where the sword automatically strikes enemies. Enemies hit suffer Reduced Healing.
New Moon (team-up): Cloak & Dagger can inject light and dark energy into Moon Knight and Blade to create a Light & Dark Realm where Moon Knight and Blade can become invisible and gain Healing Over Time. Blade can unleash Swift Strike toward a targeted enemy.
Don’t bring a Blade to a gun fight
While there are reasons to use Blade’s sword, primarily due to his abilities, I cannot recommend ever using it over the shotgun as your primary weapon. Blade’s shotgun does about double the base damage of the sword, and it can deal critical damage while the sword cannot. There are two situations where the sword is useful. The first is when using Daywalker Dash, which slows enemies if used with the sword equipped, and which can be beneficial against fast enemies. However, the anti-heal from having the gun out is also quite powerful. The other is when using Bloodline Awakening, which grants you lifesteal but also lessens your healing. In this state, you can only use the sword, but you do gain attack speed, which increases your damage output significantly.
The unrelenting Daywalker
Blade is another dive-focused Duelist, but you should think about him like Mister Fantastic and not Black Panther. Blade has a large Duelist health pool, 350 HP, and his Bloodline Awakening grants him lifesteal on his attacks, at the cost of reduced healing, but even so, it makes it quite easy to sustain your attack as Blade. Blade thrives at dealing high damage quickly against a single opponent, but he can go toe-to-toe with enemy Vanguards, so long as he doesn’t get stunned.
While your time will be best spent terrorizing Strategists on the backline, Blade can handle most characters with ease. His natural counter will be flying enemies–although the shotgun makes this a winnable match-up–and anti-dive long-range heroes, like Namor and Hela. Wolverine is another tough match-up, but none of these are a hard counter thanks to the medium-range attacks of Blade’s shotgun.
Thousand-Fold Slash
Blade’s ultimate ability, Thousand-Fold Slash, is a deadly ultimate ability, although it has a more limited range than other similar ultimate abilities. You can charge up Blade’s ultimate to slightly extend the range, but he dashes forward, dealing damage in a rectangular area. The initial dash does a healthy chunk of damage, but in his wake, Blade leaves a lingering slash attack, which deals damage for a few seconds after attacking.
Because of the way Blade’s ultimate works, the best time to use it is when the enemy team is grouped up, likely on the objective. While charging for extra damage is great, you will want to activate Thousand-Fold Slash shortly after triggering it, since it can be quite easy for the enemy team to disperse after hearing you use the ultimate. The damage isn’t there to fully take out a Vanguard, so focusing on enemy Duelists and Strategists is the best use here. It can also be used to quickly take out an enemy using an extended ultimate ability, like Punisher, letting you take them off the board before they can do any real damage.
