Marvel Rivals' season 9.5 launches today, and it will be bringing with it magical supervillain and hooded cloak aficionado, The Hood, who'll be appearing on August 7. Ahead of that, let's dig into the patch notes.

The gist of the season 9.5 adjustments is that most Vanguards have been buffed. Devil Dinosaur, Doctor Strange, Magneto, and Rogue have all got some small adjustments which are as follows:

• Devil Dinosaur:Minor buff to Frenzied Feast and his Team-Up ability with Jeff now lasts longer with more healing for allies.
• Doctor Strange:Daggers of Denak do more single-hit damage and Gamma Maelstrom cooldown (Team-Up with Hulk) has been decreased.
• Magneto:His Metallic Chaos projectile (Team-Up with Scarlet Witch) now adds a minor launch up effect to enemies.
• Rogue:Her damage reduction multiplier has been upped while in Defensive Stance and her Regen Shield capacity has been increased.

Unfortunately, at least if you play them, two Vanguards have been given the opposite treatment. The first being Venom, who has had his bonus health reduced and swing cooldown increased "to ensure he has to swing with a bit more strategy". Basically: NetEase needed to stop Venom players diving the backline with almost no consequences.

The second is Peni Parker: "We are slightly weakening Peni's control and survivability," a dev note reads. "In particular, the Immobilize effect applied by her Cyber-Web Snare was too frequent and oppressive, leading to a poor counter-experience for her enemies. We've decided to increase the cost of applying this control, but in return, we will also increase the freedom of her secondary fire." There are more adjustments including some Duelist buffs and a rare couple of Strategist nerfs which you can check out also.

But the main draw of season 9.5 isn't the balance changes, it's the new villain joining the Vanguard crew, The Hood. His design looks cool, some have even noted similarities between his ultimate form to none other than the Gun Devil from Chainsaw Man. But his kit looks very familiar to other Marvel Rivals heroes like Hela's ultimate, Deadpool's primary fire, and CnD's blind. There's even some similarities with Overwatch's latest addition Shion. Hopefully his kit will be more interesting to play than it is to look at.

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Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.