Jeff the Land Shark's creator tells whiny Marvel Rivals players who can't deal with her hero to buck up: 'Sounds like a skill issue to me, if my boy is beating your ass every night'

Jeff, from Marvel Rivals, poses merrily with his cute little winter onesie on.
(Image credit: NetEase / Marvel)

There are plenty of heroes in Marvel Rivals with busted ults, but one of the most terrifying and probably the most frustrating to counter is Jeff the Land Shark's.

Despite looking adorable, his ultimate is vicious as he dives underground and emerges as a giant whirlpool, eating everyone caught in its radius. You gradually damage enemy heroes who are caught up in this, and can then launch them off the side of the map when you spit them out.

Jeff the Shark

(Image credit: NetEase)

While it may seem impossible to counter, there are a couple of ways in which you can save yourself from a watery grave. If you have a shield of some sort, you can stop yourself from being gobbled up if you place it between you and the centre of the whirlpool, or, if you have some movement ability, your best bet is to jump as high as you can since there's a height limit to Jeff's ultimate.

But even with all of these tricks up your sleeve, it can still be monstrously hard to avoid Jeff's ult. Instead of whining about it, though, the creator of Jeff the Land Shark just thinks players should git gud. "I think they should get better at the game," co-creator of Jeff the Land Shark, comics writer and novelist Kelly Thompson, says in an interview with Polygon. "Sounds like a skill issue to me, if my boy is beating your ass every night. I mean, listen, he has an incredibly powerful ult; just accept it, become zen about it. Everyone’s got upsides and downsides, right?"

To be fair, it really is just a skill issue. No matter how much I try to get it in my brain, I just can't seem to pull off the life-saving Cloak and Dagger shift combo to save my team from an incoming Jeff ult. Maybe it's the pressure of knowing that I'm the only one standing between Jeff and a team wipe, or maybe I just don't have the dexterity to pull it off. Either way, 'skill issue' is very apt in my case.

Jeff throwing people off the map

(Image credit: NetEase)

Thompson also goes on to discuss all of Jeff's adorable costumes and what comic book inspirations she would love to see added to the game next: "He’s been a taco, he’s been a sheep, he’s been Grogu, he’s been Wolverine, he’s been everybody. I’m not usually super into the Venom-ification of everything because it can really overwhelm, but he has merged with Venom in the comics [in Venom War: It’s Jeff!], and he grew giant, punchy arms. So that would be fun to have in the game.”

It would be really cool to have a Venom-Jeff crossover, whether that be a new team-up ability or just a neat costume. I think it really suits the little guy. But for the time being, I'm just happy wearing the pink dolphin costume for Jeff (a reference to the third issue of It's Jeff!), which I managed to snag with the help of 200 free units that everyone got after a brief server outage last week.

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Elie Gould
News Writer

Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.

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