Flats' Marvel Rivals Tier List Season 10.5: Best Heroes

Quick answer: Flats hasn't run a dedicated Season 10.5 tier-list stream yet (checked his channel Oct 16) — his most recent full board is still the Season 9.5 one below, with Magneto and the Punisher/Elsa Bloodstone pair in BIS, Venom and The Thing in S. The Oct 9 Season 10.5 patch buffed Hulk, Hawkeye, Cyclops, Phoenix and Jubilee, and nerfed Gorr, Scarlet Witch and Devil Dinosaur — use the second table below to see who moved before you trust the board as-is.

• free pick blind, it just works
• cheap low effort for the payoff
• setup needs a coordinated team
• grind takes reps before it pays off
• skip probably a trap right now

Marvel Rivals tier list at a glance (Flats, Season 9.5 board)

What changed in the Season 10.5 balance patch (Oct 9, 2026)

How this board actually got built

He starts from an empty board and the full roster, which is why the order heroes get discussed is role by role rather than tier by tier.

Flats ran this as a live tier-list stream: hero portraits start unsorted at the bottom of the board, and each one gets dragged into a row while Flats and live chat debate the placement out loud. The rows run BIS (best in slot) → S → A → B → C → D, plus a joke bottom row Flats labelled "The New Symbol of Throwing" for the one pick he considers a griefy troll choice rather than a real tier.

Early placements are provisional — several heroes get moved again later once he sees how the rest of the board fills out.

Because the list is built live from feel and chat pressure rather than a script, exact placements shift as the conversation goes. Watch the source video if you want the reasoning behind a specific hero; this guide focuses on the picks and patterns that were clear and stable enough to call with confidence, plus what the Season 10.5 patch notes confirm has actually changed since.

This single screenshot is the whole Season 9.5 board at a glance — every hero he discusses ends up somewhere on this board.

Marvel Rivals meta in Season 10.5

The headline change this patch is Iron Man's missile rework: Micro-Missile Barrage and its Armor Overdrive variant now auto-track up to 5 locked targets each, trading per-shot damage for near-guaranteed hits at long range — a real shift for a hero Flats had in D tier on the 9.5 board. On the support side, Jubilee picked up a genuine self-sustain tool (25/s healing during Sparking Sprint) on top of a stronger ultimate, which pushes back against the "slow, low-value healer" complaints chat raised about some Strategists during the 9.5 stream. Gorr and Scarlet Witch both took direct nerfs to their damage numbers, so if either was carrying your games, expect them to feel a notch weaker. None of this is from a new Flats board — it's read directly off the official Season 10.5 patch notes, and it's the most reliable way to know what moved until he streams an updated tier list.

BIS and S tier: the picks worth learning first

Magneto is the one tank he says you could lock every game and still find a way to win. The 10.5 patch didn't touch his base kit, only his Emma Frost Team-Up, which got stronger.

Elsa is his pick for the best anti-dive character in the game, ahead of Bucky, because of the Devil Dinosaur trap team-up — a trap that got slightly easier to pull off now that Devil Dinosaur's base health is lower.

1. Venom Free Landed in S tier. A dive-brawler vanguard that punishes teams without a real answer to sustained close-range pressure — safe to pick blind in most pub lobbies right now. No balance change in 10.5. 1:00:00
2. The Thing Grind Also placed in S tier. Rewards players who already understand frontline positioning and cooldown trading. His Invisible Woman Team-Up got a straight buff this patch (faster cooldown, lower heal threshold), so the grind pays off a little faster now. 1:00:00

Both best-in-slot Strategists are heroes he expects to be banned, so Cloak and Dagger and Luna Snow are the ones you will actually get to play. Gambit took a small direct nerf to his resource charge speed in 10.5, though his Jubilee Team-Up got longer in exchange.

He refuses to separate Punisher and Elsa and puts both in best-in-slot, which is the clearest signal of what to learn first. Neither received a direct balance change in Season 10.5.

BIS held a small handful of picks Flats considers a clear step above everything else — if a hero you play made that row, it's worth prioritizing over swapping to something new this patch.

The safe middle: A and B tier

The A and B rows are where most of the roster lands — these are situational picks rather than throws. Two Duelists worth flagging post-patch: Cyclops and Hawkeye both picked up real damage and utility buffs in 10.5 (see the table above), so either is worth another look even if they weren't your main before.

By the time supports are being sorted the middle of the board is dense, which is his point about how close most of these heroes are.

1. A-tier picks Cheap Treated as strong default choices — good into most compositions without needing a specific counter-pick read. 50:00
2. B-tier picks Setup Still viable, but Flats and chat generally agreed these want a specific team-up partner or matchup to really pop off, rather than working on their own. 50:00

Jeff and Rocket both fall to B for the same reason: every other support now has its own save button.

D tier and the joke pick nobody should copy

Only four heroes end up in D, and White Fox is the last one dropped in after the harshest rant of the stream. None of the three other D-tier heroes below got a buff in Season 10.5 — Scarlet Witch, in fact, got nerfed further.

Squirrel Girl does not get a tier at all — she gets her own joke row, which is the clearest do-not-copy marker on the board.

1. Namor Skip Placed in D tier on this board — considered one of the weaker picks in the current patch rather than a reliable pub-stomper. No balance change in 10.5. 1:00:00
2. Iron Man Skip Also D tier here, but Season 10.5 reworked his missile barrage into an auto-tracking weapon — the biggest single kit change of the patch. Worth re-testing before you write him off again; no live board has re-ranked him yet. 1:00:00
3. Scarlet Witch Skip Rounds out D tier on this board, and got hit with another direct damage nerf in 10.5 (Chthonian Burst 40→35) — treated as situational rather than a safe pick into an unknown lobby. 1:00:00
4. Squirrel Girl Skip The sole occupant of "The New Symbol of Throwing" — Flats' joke bottom row for the one pick he treats as actively griefing your own team rather than a real, if weak, option. No change in 10.5. 1:00:00

What live chat pushed back on while the list was being built

He admits on stream that chat is probably right about Human Torch but leaves him in B because of how many strong hitscans exist.

Part of what makes this stream useful is that Flats' calls didn't go unchallenged — chat argued back in real time, and some of that pushback is worth knowing before you take the board at face value.

The one chat argument he accepts is that you survive Spider-Man rather than kill him, which is why he does not go higher.

1. Strategist team-up value split opinion Grind One viewer called a support's team-up "buns" (bad) while others pushed back that the low floor is intentional — chat did not fully agree on how much a weak team-up should drag a healer's overall placement down. 5:00
2. Slow-resurrect healer complaint Skip Multiple chatters flagged that a resurrection-focused strategist feels noticeably slower than other healers this patch, with the resurrect ability called out as the only strong part of the kit. If that was about Jubilee, note she picked up a genuine self-heal and a stronger ult in Season 10.5 — worth re-testing. 1:00:00

The Jubilee argument is the longest disagreement of the stream and shows how much of a low placement is about who is playing the hero — and it's also the hero who picked up the most direct support buffs in the next patch.

Caveat: this stream had no captions or narrated transcript available, so quotes above come directly from the visible live chat log rather than Flats' spoken commentary — treat them as community sentiment alongside the board, not as Flats' own words.

How to actually use this list

His own instruction is that the board is meaningless without the reasoning, because several placements are rank dependent.

Don't treat any live-built chat tier list, including this one, as a patch-note-accurate ranking, and don't treat the Season 9.5 board as unchanged either — the balance table above tells you exactly which of these heroes got touched on Oct 9. Use it the way it was made: as a quick temperature check on what a large, engaged Marvel Rivals audience currently feels is strong, cross-checked against what the patch notes actually confirm. If a hero you already enjoy landed in B or C tier, that's not a reason to drop them — team comp, rank, and your own mechanical comfort matter more than a single live-voted row.

Balance patches land often in this game — recheck a board like this after any patch that touches a hero you're relying on, since a single balance update can move a pick a full tier in either direction. This guide will be updated again once Flats streams a Season 10.5 board.

FAQ

Is this tier list an official Marvel Rivals ranking? No — it's Flats' personal, community-informed tier list, built live on stream for Season 9.5, cross-checked here against the official Season 10.5 balance patch notes for anything that's since changed.

Is Flats' tier list updated for Season 10.5? Not yet as of this guide's last check (Oct 16, 2026) — his channel's recent uploads cover Marvel Rivals spectating and Season 10 placement videos, but no dedicated Season 10.5 tier-list stream. This guide marks what the official 10.5 patch changed on top of his last (9.5) board instead of guessing at a new one.

Who is the best hero in Marvel Rivals right now? On Flats' last full board, Magneto and the Punisher/Elsa Bloodstone pair sit in BIS with Cloak & Dagger, Luna Snow, Gambit and Mantis. Since then, Hulk, Hawkeye, Cyclops and Phoenix all received direct buffs in the Season 10.5 patch — worth testing even if they weren't BIS before.

Which heroes should I avoid picking blind right now? Namor, Iron Man and Scarlet Witch landed in D tier on Flats' board, and Squirrel Girl got her own joke row below D. Scarlet Witch was nerfed again in 10.5, so that call still holds; Iron Man's missile rework is big enough that it's worth trying him again before ruling him out.

Does the A and B tier placement in this list match every source exactly? Not necessarily. Most of the roster landed in the flexible A/B middle of this board, and exact hero-by-hero order there is hard to call from portraits alone — cross-check with a win-rate tracker if a specific hero's placement matters for your decision.

Sources

Hero placements and quotes are from Flats' live Season 9.5 Marvel Rivals tier-list stream (video linked throughout) — the most recent full board on his channel as of this guide's last check. Season 10.5 balance changes are verified directly against the official Marvel Rivals Version 20261009 patch notes (Season 10.5 balance patch, published Oct 6–9, 2026). Flats' YouTube channel (@Flats_OW) was checked directly for a newer tier-list stream; none was found at time of writing.

Read next

• Marvel Rivals Counter-Picking Guide — who counters who in the current meta
• Best Strategist Heroes in Marvel Rivals — healer tier list, Season 10.5
• Best Duelist Heroes in Marvel Rivals — DPS tier list, Season 10.5
• Best Vanguard Heroes in Marvel Rivals — tank tier list, Season 10.5
• Marvel Rivals Cyclops Guide — abilities, combo and the Season 10.5 buffs