# Marvel Rivals Season 9.5 Hero Tier List: Best Heroes
> Flats' Season 9 Marvel Rivals tier list, checked against what's actually changed in the 9.5 balance patch before you copy any pick.
- **Game:** Marvel Rivals
- **Category:** Meta & Tier Lists
- **Author:** LongBeam (https://guides-factory.com/about)
- **Difficulty:** Beginner
- **Reading time:** 12 min
- **Published:** 2026-08-10
- **Updated:** 2026-08-31
- **Tags:** Achievements, Combat, Endgame, Multiplayer
- **Adapted from:** [Flats OFFICIAL Marvel Rivals Season 9 Hero Tier List — Flats Two (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuRA17pWI0g)
- **Canonical URL:** https://guides-factory.com/guides/marvel-rivals-season-95-hero-tier-list-best-heroes-to-play-right-now
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## 🎯 The core idea
This single screenshot is the whole guide at a glance - every hero he discusses ends up somewhere on this board.
> Flats built this Season 9.5 board live on stream, dragging every hero into a tier while chat argued in real time — it's a fast gut-check on what feels strong in pubs right now, not a lab-tested spreadsheet, so use it to prioritize what to try this week rather than as a permanent ranking.
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
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## 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 Two 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 — a hero can get bumped a row up or down mid-stream. 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.
This board was captured from Flats Two's Season 9.5 tier list stream. Jump into the video itself for the hero-by-hero commentary — a lot of the reasoning is spoken, not written on screen.
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## 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.
Elsa is his pick for the best anti-dive character in the game, ahead of Bucky, because of the Devil Dinosaur trap team-up.
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.
He refuses to separate Punisher and Elsa and puts both in best-in-slot, which is the clearest signal of what to learn first.
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.
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## 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.
Most of the roster ended up in A and B tier, which is exactly what you'd expect from a healthy patch — it means there isn't one build-breaking pick forcing everyone into the same five heroes. Heroes here are generally described as solid, flexible, and matchup-dependent rather than auto-wins or auto-losses.
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.
Jeff and Rocket both fall to B for the same reason: every other support now has its own save button.
Exact hero-by-hero placement inside A and B tier is genuinely hard to call from portraits alone with no on-screen labels — if a specific hero's exact row matters for your decision, confirm it by watching the timestamp above rather than trusting a second-hand list.
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## D tier and the joke pick nobody should copy
Only four heroes end up in D, and [White Fox](/guides/white-fox-guide-advanced-abilities-combos-and-ultimate-marvel-rivals) is the last one dropped in after the harshest rant of the stream.
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.
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## 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.
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.
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.
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## 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. Use it the way it was made: as a quick temperature check on what a large, engaged Marvel Rivals audience currently feels is strong, so you know which heroes are worth a few ranked games before you commit real practice time. 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.
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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 9.5 hotfix can move a pick a full tier in either direction.
**See also:** [Marvel Rivals Counter](/guides/marvel-rivals-counter-picking-guide-who-counters-who) — meta & tier lists
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## FAQ
### Is this tier list an official Marvel Rivals ranking?
No — it's Flats Two's personal, community-informed tier list, built live on stream with input from chat. It reflects one strong Marvel Rivals voice's read on Season 9.5, not a developer-issued balance document.
### Which heroes came out on top of this Season 9.5 board?
Venom and The Thing were placed in S tier, just below Flats' small BIS row of standout picks. Both are frontline-focused heroes rather than easy backline carries, so expect a learning curve if you're new to tanking.
### Which heroes should I avoid picking blind right now?
Namor, Iron Man and Scarlet Witch landed in D tier on this board, and Squirrel Girl was singled out in Flats' joke bottom row as an actively griefy pick rather than just a weak one.
### Is a slow-resurrect healer complaint from chat something I should worry about?
Chat flagged that a resurrection-focused strategist feels slower than other healers this patch, with the resurrect itself called out as the standout part of the kit. That's live-chat sentiment rather than Flats' own verdict, so test the hero yourself before writing it off.
### 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 row-by-row placement there is genuinely hard to verify from portraits alone without narrated commentary, so treat that section as directional rather than exact and check the source video for any hero you're unsure about.