While it started off brightly with a massive number of players, Marvel Rivals is suffering from a declining player count month by month. This is partly due to what naturally happens with games, with many online, competitive titles being stripped down to their core audience as they get on with age, although there are some reasons to be worried. The game is only around six months old, having been released in December 2024, and while there are plenty of people playing the game, the current number of players is roughly one fifth of what it was at its peak.

There are plenty of factors contributing to this, one of which being how toxic the community has become, showing many of the same symptoms that Overwatch 2's community suffered from, inevitably driving people away. The civil war between Duelists and Strategists, which resulted in a strike, is a good example of this, and this is largely out of NetEase's hands. What isn't out of its hands is the game's balance, and it seems like the studio is making many wrong decisions for Season 2.5, stemming from doing too much at once. A certain Land Shark is suffering the most.

Jeff Is Getting Brutally Nerfed In Marvel Rivals Season 2.5

Despite Having A Terribly Low Win Rate

Jeff is getting nerfed hard in Season 2.5, and it seems in response to the effectiveness, or rather annoyance, of playing against a DPS Jeff. His mobility and self-healing made him difficult to stop, but both have been nerfed to the point of near-uselessness. While he can do damage with his healing beam now, without his bubbles and nerfs to his alternate fire, Jeff is less useful as both a damage dealer and healer. The only upside is how quickly he can charge his ultimate now, which might make his entire playstyle based around that.

One of the most reliable ways to block Jeff's ultimate is with Cloak's Dark Teleportation.

Although win rates don't always reflect a character's strength, with Luna Snow third from bottom despite being one of the most effective Strategists, Jeff has the second-lowest win rate in the game, according to the Marvel Rivals website, and is still seeing nerfs. He had a unique playstyle that benefited massively from the team-up with Luna Snow, but on top of all the nerfs, he no longer benefits from an ice damage buff. He will get two other team-ups with Venom and Storm, but Luna Snow's was often pivotal to dealing damage.

Nerfs May Not Have Been Needed After Team-up Changes

Even If He Did, They Didn't Need To Be So Severe

The problem with all the nerfs at once, to Jeff specifically, is that they coincide with team-up ability changes. Team-up abilities have been so pivotal to the game that characters have often been banned purely for being a team-up anchor, like with Hulk, and with Jeff's ice buff giving him such a sizable damage boost, he might not have needed a nerf to his damage and mobility without the team-up, since he probably isn't enough of a threat otherwise. Now, he won't do enough damage or healing, and will be even less valid.

Jeff will get a team-up with Venom, which seems to be based on the time he was infected by the Venom Symbiote.

Jeff isn't the only one being nerfed, with divers practically getting weakened across the board, according to the Dev Vision Vol.6 on YouTube, probably hinting at a mass change in the meta, but the problem with all these balance changes while adding a new hero, and changing all the team-ups, is that there is so much going on all at once. Balance changes are often viewed as tweaks, but with team-ups and new characters already shifting the meta massively, these tweaks can often push the direction NetEase is going with a new season too far in one direction.

NetEase Is Making Too Many Changes At Once

Team-Up Changes Need Longer To Marinade

Although it is convenient to make a bunch of changes all at once at the start of a season or half-season, it changes the game too heavily at once. If NetEase made balance changes a week or two after Season 2.5, once the new team-ups have been put in, it could then monitor how this and Ultron affect the game before making balance adjustments. This way, characters don't get changed so dramatically, and in Jeff's case, don't get nerfed to the ground.

NetEase needs to look at how it balances Marvel Rivals going forward, since each season is so different with new maps, characters, and team-ups. A part of what makes Rivals so appealing is how much new content there is each season and half-season, but this needs to be tempered with a better way to balance the game. Making as many drastic changes to Jeff specifically seems as odd as it is harsh, even for someone who has been on the receiving end of many DPS Jeff players assaulting the backline.

Source: MarvelRivals.com, Marvel Rivals/YouTube