The Thing and Human Torch Finally Get a Release Date in Marvel Rivals
The Fantastic Four is complete.
Marvel’s first family is finally about to be reunited in Marvel Rivals, as NetEase has officially announced a release date for The Thing and Human Torch. The duo will release on Feb. 21, joining Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman to complete the set of heroes for the game’s first season. It also sounds like some big changes are coming to Marvel Rivals alongside the new heroes.
In a “Dev Talk” update on the official website, NetEase announced the new character’s release date, as well as a few tidbits on the second half of the season.
“Get ready to welcome new Super Heroes to Marvel Rivals — The Thing and Human Torch — along with some major balance adjustments,” reads the post, “These updates are expected to shake up the battlefield during the second half of Season 1.”
While NetEase hasn’t exactly detailed these changes, there are likely some major nerfs coming for characters. The start of Season 1 buffed characters like Captain America, Cloak & Dagger, and The Hulk. However, some of the more notoriously broken characters haven’t had any changes so far — namely Iron Fist, Hawkeye, and Jeff the Landshark. NetEase has previously said it’d be tweaking Jeff’s ultimate, which lets players suck up the entire enemy team surprisingly easily and send everyone plummeting to their doom off a cliff. Don’t be surprised by those tweaks, but Iron Fist also seems like the most obvious candidate for changes. However, a lot of the fun of Marvel Rivals lies in how hectic and unbalanced it is, and it’ll be interesting to see if NetEase still leans into that.
While we haven’t seen any gameplay for The Thing and Human Torch, datamining has already revealed their movesets — as you can see on the Marvel Rivals wiki. Here’s each one’s skills, but again keep in mind we don’t exactly know how they work. We also know Thing is a Vanguard, and Human Torch a Duelist.
The Thing can use the same exact team-up ability as Hulk, throwing Wolverine like an angry, furry baseball.
The Thing
- Combination Punch - Normal attack
- Slam Moment - Use tremendous force to knock all enemies in front of you into the air.
- Thunderbolt Punch - Deliver a devastating punch.
- Furious Charge - Continuously charge forward, lifting up enemies in your path, leaving behind a seismic zone that prohibits displacement.
- Battlefield Support - Jump toward teammates and add damage reduction to them and yourself.
- Solid as a Rock (Passive) - Immune to knockback and other displacement effects.
- Team-Up Ability - Like The Hulk, Thing can pick up and throw Wolverine.
Human Torch
- Fire Cluster - Normal attacks (launches a splittable fireball)
- Plasma Body - Hold button to enter a state of accelerated ascent.
- Pyro-Prison - Connect flame fields to form a fire wall that deals burning damage to enemies.
- Flaming Meteor - Dive toward the ground and stun nearby enemies.
- Blazing Blast - Launch a fireball to create a flame field at the targeted area.
- Supernova (Ultimate) - Unleash shockwaves to deal damage to enemies within range. During skill activation, the flame field with transform into a fire tornado.
- Team-Up Ability - Storm can consume one of Human Torch’s tornadoes into her ultimate to ignite her hurricane. Likewise, Human Torch can turn Storm’s hurricane into a fiery hurricane with his ultimate.
While the new characters are the highlight, there’s one extra detail that’ll be changing with the second half of Season 1 — how ranked divisions work. Ranks will reset at this midpoint, and all players will drop four divisions.
New costume rewards will be added for Gold rank players and above. Starting from now, players will need to compete in at least 10 matches in competitive mode to earn rewards for each season, as well. Then going forward for future seasons, players will drop six divisions at the start of a season, and four at the midpoint — but NetEase says it will “tweak” this as needed.
This mid-season refresh promises to be the biggest update Marvel Rivals has seen yet, and could be a big factor on if the popular hero shooter can maintain its momentum or not. Season 1 will last another six to seven weeks roughly, with each Season in Marvel Rivals lasting three months. That means Season 2 should drop sometime in April.
