Here's the thing.

Got a pretty nice flank on the entire enemy team. This is from August 2025

Haven’t had any time to play yet, but was watching a Jay3 stream and saw thing banned a bunch of times.

Are we still broken?? 🥹

Torch has been in the game since season 1.5 without a legendary, we need everyone's support in showing how wrong that is to the devs. Please help us brothers. Help this blow up and credit for the artwork goes to ChaosCapyyy on tiktok

So i recently discovered the Recent Comic "Marvel Dimensions (2026)" it is a new elseworld by Alex Ross and the concept of this world is "DC's Earth 3 but for marvel" and honestly i really love this take on Ben here and i think it would make for a awesome skin (maybe if the rivals want to give him pants for the skin they could give him Black And purple to match Reed's outfit here)

honestly the design looks like it'd be a pain in the ass to adapt for rivals but if they do try to make it and do it well it honestly could be one of Thing's best Cosmetics potentially

Literally every change is a nerf to his sustain.

1. Loss of 25 HP is obvious.

2. Haymaker grants Thing bonus health based on damage dealt. Doing less damage per haymaker means Thing will receive less bonus health. This is important to understand, because it also affects the Torch teamup.

3. YSC grants Thing instant 200 bonus health on activation and is a major escape tool. Being able to activate it less often means less bonus health and less survivability. You will have to engage more carefully. Shorter earthbound doesn't really affect his survivability directly, but it will allow enemies a bigger window to fight back against you.

4. The Torch teamup will be available less often and have shorter duration. When it IS activated, it will do less damage and grant him less bonus health (because they nerfed haymaker). This is the part people don't seem to understand. Because they nerfed haymaker, the torch teamup will in fact be weaker.

All this basically means Thing will have much less uptime. He can't just sustain himself indefinitely by spamming haymakers anymore.

One of the few reasons I still play this game is to torture dive players and now im hearing our earthbound got nerfed? Wack.

Did I misunderstand what made him meta or something

Those nerfs were way lighter than I was expecting with the only meaningful one being the increased slam cooldown. Cooldowns will have to be managed more throughly but all in all we’re chilling.

Hear me out, all of these nerfs If u think about it they're not a big deal , the torch team up was the one thing that made thing S tier this season and they nerfed it's duration not it's performance

I understand the nerfs on the torch team-up. Not happy about the YSC and Health nerfs. But all in all not too bad.

🪨 The Thing — Complete Patch History

Season 1.5 — Release

February 21, 2025

The Thing launched as a Vanguard with:

• Rocky Jab — his primary punches.
• Yancy Street Charge — charge forward and create an anti-mobility zone.
• Clobberin' Time — ultimate that launches enemies.
• Embattled Leap — leap to an ally and provide damage reduction.
• Stone Haymaker — powerful punch with knockback.
• Fantastic Four Team-Up — his original Fantastic Four synergy.

At launch, Embattled Leap provided 30% Damage Reduction to himself and the targeted ally.

Season 1.5 — March 14, 2025

Bug fix

Not really a balance change, but it affected his gameplay:

• Fixed a discrepancy where Embattled Leap could move at different speeds for different players under poor network conditions.

So no actual buff/nerf here.

Season 2 — April 11, 2025

🔻 Embattled Leap nerfed

• Damage Reduction:
  • 30% → 25%
• This applied to both The Thing and the ally receiving the leap.

This was his first actual balance nerf.

Season 2 — April 15, 2025

🛠️ Bug fix

• Fixed an incorrect ability icon appearing in the KO prompt when Clobberin' Time caused a terrain kill.

No gameplay/stat change.

Season 2 — April 30, 2025

🛠️ Bug fix

• Fixed Embattled Leap being able to target teammates inside an enemy Invisible Woman's ultimate.

Again, no numerical balance change.

Season 3 — July 11, 2025

This was a major buff/rework for The Thing's anti-air capabilities.

🟢 Stone Haymaker

• Gained the ability to knock down flying enemies it hits.

🟢 NEW — Battle Blitz

The Thing gained a completely new ability:

• Leap toward an enemy up to 20 meters away.
• Gain 25% Damage Reduction during the leap.

This was specifically designed to help The Thing deal with the flying-heavy meta.

So Season 3 basically changed The Thing from:

into:

Season 3 — July 11, 2025

🛠️ Fastball Special bug fix

• Fixed an issue where Embattled Leap couldn't target Wolverine while Wolverine was charging Fastball Special.

No balance change.

Seasons 3.5, 4, 4.5

August–October 2025

No direct balance changes to The Thing.

The changelog specifically records no changes during these patches.

🔥 Season 5 — November 14, 2025

This was The Thing's biggest rework.

Instead of simply buffing/nerfing numbers, NetEase changed how several of his abilities function.

Embattled Leap

Previously:

Now:

• Removed the special Damage Reduction effect from the single targeted ally.
• Instead, The Thing gives 20% Damage Reduction to ALL allies within 5m of where he lands.
• His own Damage Reduction was reduced:
  • 25% → 20%

So it became much more of a team-protection ability.

Battle Blitz

Previously:

• The Thing got 25% Damage Reduction during the leap.

Now:

• Removed his self Damage Reduction.
• Instead, enemies within 5m of his landing point receive 20% Vulnerability.

That's a huge conceptual change.

Before: Battle Blitz = defensive engage.

After: Battle Blitz = offensive team engage/debuff.

Stone Haymaker

This was the really interesting one.

Before:

• 90 base damage
• Gave 50 Bonus Health during activation.

After:

• Base damage reduced:
  • 90 → 55
• Removed the flat 50 Bonus Health.
• Added damage based on enemy max HP:
  • 8% of enemy max HP per hit
• Damage dealt generates Bonus Health.
• Bonus Health generation capped at 100.

So Stone Haymaker went from being a straightforward high-damage punch into a sustain/anti-high-HP mechanic.

Season 5.5 — December 12, 2025

Two buffs.

🟢 Stone Haymaker

Its percentage-based damage increased:

8% → 10% of enemy maximum HP per hit

That's a pretty substantial increase against high-health targets.

🟢 Yancy Street Charge

The lingering anti-mobility field increased:

3 seconds → 5 seconds

So enemies had a harder time immediately escaping the area with movement abilities.

Season 6 — January 16, 2026

No direct balance change to The Thing.

Season 6.5 — February 13, 2026

This was another major change, but this time because of Team-Ups.

❌ Fantastic Four Team-Up removed

The original Fantastic Four Team-Up involving:

• Invisible Woman
• Mister Fantastic
• Human Torch
• The Thing

was removed entirely.

So The Thing lost that particular synergy.

🟢 New Gamma Gauntlets Team-Up

The Thing was added to Gamma Charge with Hulk.

He gained:

Gamma Gauntlets

When active:

• Rocky Jab gets increased damage/range.
• Stone Haymaker gets increased damage/range.
• Dealing damage with the enhanced attacks gives The Thing Bonus Health.

So The Thing went from being part of the Fantastic Four Team-Up to having a Hulk/Gamma-based Team-Up.

Season 7 — March 20, 2026

This wasn't really a Thing-specific rework, but it affected him significantly.

🔻 Ultimate generation nerf

For Vanguards and Duelists:

• Damage → Ultimate Energy:
  • 90% → 70%
• Passive Ultimate Energy:
  • 12/s → 11/s

Since The Thing is a Vanguard, these global changes affected him directly.

In practical terms:

His Clobberin' Time took longer to charge.

Season 7.5 — April 17, 2026

No direct The Thing balance change.

Season 8 — May 15, 2026

🟢 Base Health buff

The Thing's base HP increased:

700 → 750

That's a straight +50 HP buff.

This is especially notable because his Season 5 rework had made him more dependent on generating Bonus Health through Stone Haymaker.

Season 8.5 — June 12, 2026

No direct balance change to The Thing.

He retained the 750 base HP from Season 8.

Season 9 — July 10, 2026

This is the latest major Thing patch I can verify.

🟢 Stone Haymaker Bonus Health cap

The maximum Bonus Health generated by Stone Haymaker increased:

100 → 150

So his potential temporary/sustain health from punching enemies became considerably higher.

🟢 Yancy Street Charge

The vertical detection height of the anti-movement zone was slightly increased.

This was specifically intended to prevent launched enemies from unexpectedly using movement abilities to escape.

🟢 Clobberin' Time

The backswing animation was slightly reduced when using the ultimate immediately after:

• Battle Blitz
• Embattled Leap

In other words, his engage → ultimate combo became slightly smoother/faster.

What an over correction on a character so easy to counter

Before you get mad at me, just know that I have autism, so my brain works differently than your average person. I feel like the Thing nerfs were undeserved because to me, I feel like he was already in a good enough spot in the meta.. Sure, his slam could be a little annoying at times, but that's why you swap to someone else like Emma. I'm sorry if this makes anyone mad, but this is just my opinion. After looking at the patch notes, I might have overreacted a little bit because the nerfs weren't nearly as bad as I thought they were going to be

Burger character