‘The winds of change are blowing’: After 159 days Marvel Rivals has finally nerfed Storm, albeit not by much

It’s been about half a year since NetEase gave Storm a massive touch-up in Marvel Rivals. A somewhat temporary fix to players not touching the X-Men hero in Season 0, when Season 1 came around the devs simply made her too strong to resist.

As part of these changes, Storm’s damage capability was increased, alongside her Bolt Rush’s damage. Her left click was made more powerful going from 50 to 55 damage, and her Wind Blade’s projectile speed went from 100m/s to 150m/s.

Storm is also privy to some of the scariest team-up abilities around. Alongside Human Torch she can form a massive fire tornado that can cut through any Strategist ult or healing you may try to dish out. Then there’s the truly cursed Sharknado combo that meshes Storm and Jeff the Land Shark’s ultimates together to send Jeff flying in the air, eating up any poor soul that gets swept up.

Combine all of this with the ability to speed boost and damage boost her team and you have one formidable opponent. But something has changed, Storm isn’t as strong as she once was.

As part of Marvel Rivals’ 2025 06/19 balance patch, Storm has been weakened, very slightly. “The winds of change are blowing,” the balance patch says. “We’re slightly reducing the frequency of her Ultimate Ability.” Now her energy cost for Omega Hurricane will be 3,400 instead of 3,100.

This definitely isn’t the change that I had hoped for as it hasn’t made her ultimate ability, regular attacks or passives any less devastating. But seeing how much damage Storm’s ultimate can do, I am glad that it will hopefully come about a little less often.

Other heroes involved in this balance patch include Star-Lord, Moon Knight, and Thor. These heroes have all gotten a slight buff with a decrease in damage falloff, a health increase of 250 to 275, and a quality-of-life upgrade for Awakening Rune respectively.

Then there’s the team-up ability changes. For Chilling Assault Hawkeye has been made weaker as his ice arrows have been adjusted to reduce damage from 30 to 25 and a decrease in stun duration. The Jeff-nado has also been made a little less deadly as it’ll now take him more time to devour enemies, 1.2 seconds to 1.5 seconds to be precise. Finally, Rocket Raccoon’s role in Rocket Network has been nerfed as now the armoured Spider-Nest cooldown is 30 seconds as opposed to 20 seconds.

I may sound like an utter killjoy, but seeing NetEase dish out nerfs always makes me smile, just a bit. It may not be as fun as having a full roster of overpowered heroes, but paying more attention to hero performance both individually and in union with the rest of the roster is what Marvel Rivals has needed for a long time.