Discover everything you need to know about The Thing in Marvel Rivals, including his abilities and playstyle.
The Thing in Marvel Rivals is an absolute unit as his kit is relatively straightforward. If you like punching things, then The Thing might be for you. He’s a legit one-star hero with a move set that’s easy to grasp, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to master. The Thing is an absolute powerhouse of a disruptor that is fantastic at creating chaos for the enemy team and bringing some great utility for his teammates. He’s a tanky vanguard that specializes in knocking up entire enemy teams while being an absolute unmovable object himself. His primary is a basic string of jabs, right click is a Stone Haymaker, which is a stronger, charged-up punch with much greater range and AoE. His shift ability is a dashing charge that knocks up enemies in his path, and at the end of the charge, leaves the rocky field that prevents all enemies from using mobility abilities. In this guide, we’ll discuss The Thing in Marvel Rivals, along with the best tips to use his abilities on a battlefield.
In case you’re stuck at a particular rank, we can help you Rank Up in Marvel Rivals to the One Above All. Get the best seasonal rewards and forget about grinding the ladder. We guarantee the lowest price and the fastest completion time of your order.
The Thing Abilities
Here are all the abilities of The Thing in Marvel Rivals, including some tips and tricks to use them effectively.
Unyielding Will
This ability makes the hero immune to launch-up knockbacks and other displacement effects. In short, you can’t move the thing. This is crucial to remember when you consider Heroes like The Invisible Woman. As they have important knockbacks that can save them from the rush of an oncoming attacker. That’s not going to be the case with the thing and as you’ll find out the name of the game here is pressure and keeping it applied at all times.
Rocky Jab
The Thing’s left click is a Rocky jab. A quick, short-range punch that deals low damage. While its range is only about 3 m long, you can continuously pump damage into enemies if you manage to stay in range. This one is pretty straightforward, so don’t overthink it.
Stone Haymaker
The thing’s right click is Stone Haymaker. This is where the kit starts to get a bit interesting. On paper, it’s just another punch, but a few things happening with this ability are worth pointing out. For starters, it’s got a bit of a wind-up time, and thus, you have to anticipate when the punch is going to happen. It tracks the enemy you’re trying to punch during that entire ramp-up period. The Stone Haymaker also has an extended range around 10 m, and I’d go so far as to say it has decent range for a melee ability. You can hit enemies that are a few meters away and even flying heroes that are hovering a bit too close to the ground. This is important to remember as enemy heroes are constantly moving in and out of range, but this ability gives you more flexibility. The Stone Haymaker also has Pierce, allowing you to hit multiple Targets in a line.
If you manage to stack up enemies at a choke point, you can lay into them with this one ability. Finally, it has no cool down. Just like Rocky jab, you can string multiple Stone Haymakers together depending on the situation you find yourself in. During my time with The Thing, I found myself bouncing between both the Rocky Jab and the Stone Haymaker. If I were applying pressure to an enemy healer, I would use left click, opting to pump constant damage into them as I stayed up in their face. However, if an enemy hero managed to slip outside of the incredibly tight melee range of Rocky jab, I would immediately switch to Stone Haymaker, which allowed me to continue my assault. Your goal should be constant pressure, but enemy Heroes have more than enough mobility to exploit the short range of your Rocky jab. This is why being fluid between both abilities is critical to your success.
Yancy Street Charge
The Thing’s left shift ability is Yancy Street charge. This is the most interesting ability in his entire kit. When used, The Thing will charge forward, gaining a small temporary shield and damaging enemies and knocking them up. Using the left and right arrows, you can control which direction the thing moves. While it’s not exactly easy to control, you get the hang of it rather quickly. This is not a precise movement ability. You can’t turn on a dime, and some of the tighter maps make this more challenging to use, but as always, practice makes perfect. The key here is what happens at the end of the charge. When the time expires or you manually end the ability early, a small earthquake zone will erupt around the thing and linger for a few seconds. While in the zone, enemies can’t use mobility skills. If you dive a Healer, most will immediately try and escape using their mobility to create some distance between you and them. If that’s not possible, then they have to proactively get outside of the zone, and then they can use that mobility skill.
It doesn’t lock down the healer for long, but rather changes their normal behaviors, and that is disruptive. The charge also lasts for a solid 5 seconds, and if you’re accurate, you can disrupt an entire enemy team. However, as with most charge abilities, you have to be careful not to overcommit. That is a cardinal sin of any Frontline or tank-style character. There’s no question that Yancy Street Charge is meant to be an engagement ability. But you better be confident that you can survive the dive, or at least cause enough chaos during that moment that the enemy team is completely distracted from you, allowing your team to kill enemy Heroes. Unlike most vanguards, The Thing doesn’t have any sustaining shielding capabilities. It’s a bit odd given how common it is on other tank Heroes.
Embattled Leap
The Thing has access to Embattled Leap, a two-charge ability that allows him to jump towards an ally. It applies damage reduction to both you and the hero you jump to. This is a fascinating ability, and it has three core uses. First is simply to Escape The Fray of combat. If you end up too deep with Yancy Street Charge, you can easily find a dualist or support and jump out of the action and back towards safer ground. The Second Use is more nuanced, and that’s because it can be used to strategically buff an ally with damage reduction. The two charges are the key here, so long as you maintain at least one charge for an emergency escape, you should constantly leverage that second charge to help reduce the overall damage your team takes.
It’s not as pronounced as a Doctor Strange Shield, but you’re providing the same benefit, reducing the overall damage your teammates are taking. Keep an eye out for allies who are being pressured, especially for support. This is the perfect opportunity to leap to their side, buff them, and draw the aggro away from their aggressor. The third and honestly most fun use case is using in-battle leap to quickly double-team an enemy hero. If you see one of your melee Vanguard or dualist heroes attempting to kill an enemy hero, you can quickly turn a 1V one into a 2V1 by leaping to their side, immediately changing that dynamic. In most cases, that enemy hero is going to panic and try and retreat or potentially even panic. You can do that in so many different ways, even with Embattled Leap, which presents itself more as a utility skill.
Clobberin’ Time (Ultimate)
Finally, there’s The Thing’s ultimate ability, Clobberin’ Time. When used, The Thing slams into the ground, sending out a large shock wave in front of him, dealing damage and knocking up any enemy hit. Enemies that are hit are also temporarily stunned once they land. This has a decent range right around 15 M, but I wouldn’t consider it a long-range attack by any stretch. The key here is maximum disruption, finding the perfect opportunity to hit multiple Targets in a straight line. Knocking them up and essentially taking them out of the fight for a few seconds. That window is all your team should need to pick off at least one, if not more, enemy Heroes.
I think it’s important to point out that this is not meant to be some crazy offensive ability. It deals some damage, but it’s more about the overall disruption to an enemy team than anything else. You can easily finish off an enemy with Clobberin’ Time in combination with your other abilities. However, the goal should be disruption, knocking up, and stunning as many enemy Heroes as possible during key moments. Chaining this together with Yancy Street Charge is also insufferable if you’re on the receiving end of the attack, so keep that in mind whenever the ability is charged up.
The Thing Playstyle
The Thing isn’t that challenging to grasp, and he might have picked up on this before, but his entire kit is designed around pressure. When possible, you want to use Yancy Street Charge to engage with the enemy team, often pushing as far back as you can to reach the much squishier backline Heroes. You’re not exactly hiding your intentions as this character because you always have a way to escape the Carnage using your embattled leap to jump to an Allied hero on the outskirts. Just that quick departure alone is going to take a second for the enemy team to adjust to, but you have to know when you’re in over your head.
The single biggest mistake most Thing players are going to make is the case with most new tank Heroes is believing they’re invulnerable, and that’s simply never going to be the case. The Thing has no real shielding, so your 700 HP is all you have to protect yourself. You’ll learn quickly how deep you can push and how long you can actually stay in that hot Zone. That’s going to be dependent on your Healers, of course, but while you’re there, the goal should be to cause as much backline chaos as possible. Smacking healers with both your left and right clicks, forcing them to deal with you rather than heal their allies. Remember, you can use a charge of Embattled Leap to guard other Ally Heroes, even other Vandals. Never forget that you can use it to change a 1V1 to a 2V1 in an instant. It’s the most versatile ability the thing has at its disposal, but unless you use it, it’ll sit there on cooldown, wasting away.