Marvel Rivals Season 5 marks the addition of one of the X-Men’s power couples, Gambit and Rogue. While Rogue joins as part of the 5.5 Midseason Update, Gambit joined the ranks of Strategists in Marvel Rivals at the beginning of Season 5. His ability kit is the most complex of any support hero to date, but in the right hands he can heal and deal damage with the best of them. Here’s how to make the best of Gambit’s kinetic cards.
Gambit overview
Gambit is a versatile support, with high healing, high damage, and anti-heal, something unique to him on the support roster at the time of release. For his primary attack, he throws three playing cards in an arc outward, which explode on impact healing teammates and damaging enemies. The base healing is 28 per card, and the damage is 20 per card.
Gambit also has a dash as well as a slam in his kit, with the slam also healing and dealing damage. These can be used in quick succession to do a damage dealing dash as well. Gambit has two stances he can temporarily switch into by using a stack of Sleight of Hand. In his Healing Hearts stance, he gains self-healing and can use an additional stack to use one of two moves. In his Breaking Spades stance, he gains a 15% damage boost and can use an additional stack to use one of two moves. His ultimate, Ragin’ Royal Flush, targets multiple enemies within your vision, giving them healing and movement speed, in addition to adding enhanced damage in the form of a damage boost and extra kinetic explosions. Gambit also gains these boosts when using his ultimate.
Gambit abilities and team-ups
Kinetic Cards (primary): Launch three kinetic-charged cards in an arc ahead. Each card detonates on impact, creating a single-target explosion that damages enemies and heals allies.
Bayou Bash: Channel kinetic energy into the bo staff, then slam it into the ground after a sweeping strike, creating a shockwave that damages nearby enemies and heals allies.
Cajun Charge: Side-step forward with bo staff in hand, dashing a short distance.
Ragin’ Royal Flush (ultimate): Lock onto an ally within sight and unleash multiple Aces that heal and Purify. Both enter the Kinetic Transfer state, granting increased Movement Speed and Jump Boost, while enhancing attacks with additional single-target explosive damage and providing the ally with Ultimate Ability Charge Acceleration.
Healing Hearts (stance): Conjure a Heart card by consuming one stack of Sleight of Hand to Heal and switch to the Healing Hearts deck.
Breaking Spades (stance): Conjure a Spade card by consuming one stack of Sleight of Hand to gain Damage Boost and switch to the Breaking Spades deck.
Bridge Hearts (Healing Hearts): While Healing Hearts deck is active, trigger Flush Empowerment to card spring and fire a full deck forward. Cards bounce between allies on impact, granting Health and a Healing Boost.
Purifying Pick-Up (Healing Hearts): While Healing Hearts deck is active, trigger Raise Empowerment to launch a cluster of cards in an arc ahead. Explosions heal nearby allies and Purify them.
Explosive Trick (Breaking Spades): While Breaking Spades deck is active, trigger Flush Empowerment to fire a full set of cards forward. Cards explode on impact, dealing damage while inflicting Reduced Healing.
Bidding Barrage: While Breaking Spades deck is active, trigger Raise Empowerment to scattering cards in an arc in all directions. Explosions damage enemies and launch them up.
Ace of Aces (Magneto team-up): Gambit charges Magneto’s greatsword with kinetic energy. When Magneto activates this ability, Iron Volley is replaced with Ace Greatsword, which detonates upon striking enemies. The explosion leaves residual kinetic energy within the target, inflicting secondary damage after a brief delay.
Know when to hold them
When it comes to succeeding as Gambit, the most important aspect of his kit are his Sleight of Hand stacks. You have four total, and these are used to do two things. First, you use them to switch into either of his stances, Healing Hearts or Breaking Spades. Once in that stance, you can have one of two abilities unique to that stance, for a total of four abilities, but that requires another stack to use.
If you wanted to quickly use Bridge Hearts for a large amount of healing, you would need to burn two stacks, one to switch stances and another to use the ability. These stacks have an 8 second cooldown, and they cooldown one at a time. While Gambit can still heal and deal damage without any stacks, you become vulnerable and it caps your healing output significantly. Importantly, each stance lasts 6 seconds, at which point they end automatically without using one of the abilities.
So, the best way to handle these stacks is–whenever possible of course–to wait until the last moment before the stance ends to fire off an ability, since you will be most of the way through the initial cooldown. You can also opt to not use an ability and save the stack. In real matches, it can be easy to feel the need to quickly burn through stacks, but this can quickly leave you at a disadvantage. Importantly, whenever you do burn through all four stacks, remember to delay using the first stack once it’s off cooldown. If you fire it immediately, you’ll exit your stance before another stack comes off the cooldown.
The best defense is a good offense
Gambit has the best short-burst offensive toolkit out of all the Strategists, making it much easier to defend yourself from any diving opponents looking to pick you off. In addition to his Breaking Spades abilities, Gambit also has his Bayou Bash and Cajun Charge. Bayou Bash slams down his bo staff, creating a small shockwave that deals damage, but also provides healing to both you and your teammates. Cajun Charge is a simple, short distance dash. However, During the short charging phase of Bayou Bash, you can activate Cajun Charge to perform Big Easy Impact, which creates a similar shockwave, but does so along Gambit’s dash path.
Both of these abilities have hefty cooldowns, just like the rest of Gambit’s abilities, he does get two charges of each. Combining these abilities with Breaking Spades, including the anti-heal ability Explosive Pick, can not only deal a hefty amount of damage to running you down, but can also provide healing if spaced out correctly.
Ragin’ Royal Flush
Gambit has a much more tactical ultimate ability compared to the large AoE healing ultimates of Cloak and Dagger, Invisible Woman, and Luna Snow. His Ragin’ Royal Flush is an ability that is applied to teammates within the target range. It has a vision cone going outward from Gambit, with enemies within range marked by a purple circle.
The two main functions of Ragin’ Royal Flush are healing and damage boosts, which can help turn the tides of battle quickly. While you can never go wrong opening a team fight with this boost, letting your teammates charge in, it works incredibly well as a saving throw when you have multiple low teammates. The initial heal is 100 HP, but there is also an additional 75 HP per second during the 10 second duration of the ultimate. One other aspect to keep in mind is the 30% ultimate charge boost. While you might not always have time to check your teammate’s ultimate charges, if you know multiple teammates just used theirs in the last fight, use your ultimate on them to refill their charge as fast as possible.
