Viable teams against IF/HB?

Vladdy

Hi there,

I have a hard time fighting against IF/HB this week with HB boosted. What are viable options to fight them with a high chance of success in your experience? I don't have IF or HB. You can check my roster if you like. Hulk/Patch seems to have a chance but my statistics with them are not very good.

Or should I just skip them?




This is not a "nerf HB" thread .

fmftint

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MarvelMan

fmftint wrote:

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Sadly, I concur.

Ive done Daken/XF, but you still end up hurting.

Buret0

Step one is to ask, who is boosted this week?

Step two is to use whales.

Vladdy

Buret0 wrote:

Step one is to ask, who is boosted this week?

Step two is to use whales.

1. I know who is boosted this week. And looking at my roster, I am not happy with the answer. Hulk! Hmm...
2. Sadly, I had to use my super whales in Gauntlet. And it takes so long to recharge them. Well not so sad: black Hulkbuster in my pocket .

Der_Lex

My personal go-to against HB has been Xforce/cyclops. Use Cyke's yellow to drop red tiles (try to pick a moment when there are enough TU tiles on the board, but almost no red matches will be created), then use Surgical Strike for 10k+ damage, often in the 15k range. I've one-shotted non-boosted HB this way, plus having both cyke and Xforce gives you two good outlets for that red and black that you want to deny HB.

Your third is a matter of personal preference. I tend to use either my own IF or Kamala (frequent temp healing limits IF's damage, her purple can help you deny red or black by converting them to green, and her green packs a punch at 5 covers). You could also use Cage for his defense tile, but his actives will be useless because you'll want to save yellow and black for MR and SS instead.

TheOncomingStorm

https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=30124&start=20#p363680

Here are the most obvious from Daibar. Further up in that thread is one from Phantron.

This is not old Sentry. HB/Fist is not that bad, it just takes a while like when you play KP or 4or. I'd still argue 4or PS/Smite is better. I would much rather run 4or against HB/Fist than use HB/Fist against itself. HB is very slow once you get rid of Fist. You are playing the AI after all. Can deny black and purple. Denying black means there will not be as much on the board if Fist manages to get purple off.

HB/Fist is no different than Hood, Hulk, etc. You cannot play them the same as you would other characters. You cannot use the same team you always use if you want a better chance of winning. You do not have to bring Hood to fight Hood, but it definitely increases your chances of success.

This another situation where players can beat this combo in PVE (especially when not scaled to 395), but suddenly in PVP they want to stick with one team that can lead to a disadvantage depending who you are playing against.

bdksni1

Besides Hulk bombing i've been using Steve and Hood with some success against that duo (plus in this event with sg they cover all colours). Race for blue and red and you control the match

Buret0

Hood has worked well for me against HB, but I have been skipping most of the maxed IF/HB teams.

Against the AI, SG did really well for me in her event. Her nuke was regenerating 12 AP and dealing 10,000 damage at the end of the CD. When I was using Gamora's Bad Reputation, I was adding another 1,000 damage to the Nuke and another 1,000 damage from the basic tile pops.

With Hood protected (IF and HB don't have AoE attacks), you should be able to generally deny enough AP to keep the AI from doing much. SG's protect tiles make IF's strike tile useless.

With her strike tiles out I was able to deal 2,700 damage per hit with Gamora's 5 AP red.

acescracked

I just use 4hor\xforce and boost. Focus on IF whose the real problem then HB is easy to deal with. Very late in a PvP event I might just skip due to all the health and just the amount of time it takes to finish the match. IF's purple only thing that gives me trouble.

puppychow

I've tried 2x against Capt Rex 89's max IF/boosted HB defense in pvp, and lost both. LOL He was worth 50+ each time, so it was worth the risk in my view. I tried Cage/Cmag with boosted 4 red/blue. managed to knock out IF. Knocked the boosted HB down to 20% health when the board started spamming blacks on the AI's turn. Uh-oh. Overdrive fed HB's punch, and game over. Oh I was so close! UGH

Unknown

PX gsbw
Xf gt
GT cyke
Hull bomb (boost crit, g/b)

These will all beat that pair consistently barring a bad cascade.

Unknown

Anything that takes Pink and Red and does damage with it. Bonus points for single characters with both so.... Deadpool. Clearly you have to deny all the and you can, and by doing so deal damage with it otherwise you are chasing your tail.

Deadpool/Cage is a particularly effective combo in any PvP where the featured character is a green user (Squirrel Girl).

Unknown

I was running XF/Shehulk effectively against the top end. Won 4 out of 5 against HB/IF. The only match I lost was when I fired SheHulk green 3 times and she cleared everything but red. Odds were 85.7% that I would clear the red. Bad luck, what can you do?

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

HB/Fist is no different than Hood, Hulk, etc. You cannot play them the same as you would other characters. You cannot use the same team you always use if you want a better chance of winning. You do not have to bring Hood to fight Hood, but it definitely increases your chances of success.

This another situation where players can beat this combo in PVE (especially when not scaled to 395), but suddenly in PVP they want to stick with one team that can lead to a disadvantage depending who you are playing against.

The problem with this logic is that in PvP, you have a defensive team. And if you leave a team with an unboosted Hood or anything along those lines out there, you will get lit up like a Christmas tree and lose twice the points that you earned by playing a strategic team against HB. Unfortunately, once you cross over that ~600 point threshold, leaving anything but your A-team out, is a bad idea.

TheOncomingStorm

papa07 wrote:

I was running XF/Shehulk effectively against the top end. Won 4 out of 5 against HB/IF. The only match I lost was when I fired SheHulk green 3 times and she cleared everything but red. Odds were 85.7% that I would clear the red. Bad luck, what can you do?

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

HB/Fist is no different than Hood, Hulk, etc. You cannot play them the same as you would other characters. You cannot use the same team you always use if you want a better chance of winning. You do not have to bring Hood to fight Hood, but it definitely increases your chances of success.

This another situation where players can beat this combo in PVE (especially when not scaled to 395), but suddenly in PVP they want to stick with one team that can lead to a disadvantage depending who you are playing against.

The problem with this logic is that in PvP, you have a defensive team. And if you leave a team with an unboosted Hood or anything along those lines out there, you will get lit up like a Christmas tree and lose twice the points that you earned by playing a strategic team against HB. Unfortunately, once you cross over that ~600 point threshold, leaving anything but your A-team out, is a bad idea.

That is not a flaw in the logic, that is the way pvp is set up. It's all cost benefit analysis. Do you fight harder fights for more points or easier fights for less? Do you hulk bomb for a quick shield hop even though that team will show to others on your next hop? Do you do 2 or 3 fights per hop? Do you run your best offensive team, or a slower team that will better guard your points?

Also, most of the teams suggested are not just turn styles on defense. No one is saying take out your best team and put in stormneto. There are degrees between your best all around team and a team of scrubs.

If you've been at the top tier lately, there is a substantial variety of team comps.

Unknown

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

papa07 wrote:

I was running XF/Shehulk effectively against the top end. Won 4 out of 5 against HB/IF. The only match I lost was when I fired SheHulk green 3 times and she cleared everything but red. Odds were 85.7% that I would clear the red. Bad luck, what can you do?

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

HB/Fist is no different than Hood, Hulk, etc. You cannot play them the same as you would other characters. You cannot use the same team you always use if you want a better chance of winning. You do not have to bring Hood to fight Hood, but it definitely increases your chances of success.

This another situation where players can beat this combo in PVE (especially when not scaled to 395), but suddenly in PVP they want to stick with one team that can lead to a disadvantage depending who you are playing against.

The problem with this logic is that in PvP, you have a defensive team. And if you leave a team with an unboosted Hood or anything along those lines out there, you will get lit up like a Christmas tree and lose twice the points that you earned by playing a strategic team against HB. Unfortunately, once you cross over that ~600 point threshold, leaving anything but your A-team out, is a bad idea.

That is not a flaw in the logic, that is the way pvp is set up. It's all cost benefit analysis. Do you fight harder fights for more points or easier fights for less? Do you hulk bomb for a quick shield hop even though that team will show to others on your next hop? Do you do 2 or 3 fights per hop? Do you run your best offensive team, or a slower team that will better guard your points?

Also, most of the teams suggested are not just turn styles on defense. No one is saying take out your best team and put in stormneto. There are degrees between your best all around team and a team of scrubs.

If you've been at the top tier lately, there is a substantial variety of team comps.

Unboosted Hood is asking to lose your points. I stopped fighting Hood teams simply because they were always worth 10-20 points less than advertised. Unboosted anything (except Fist) is an easy fight. Once you get over a point (600 or 700), putting out anything except 4stars over 200, boosted over 200, or Fist over 150 is asking to get clobbered and cost you all your hard earned points. Agree there is strategy in picking opposing teams, but you have a limited pool that is viable on defense to slow the rate of attacks.

As for variety at the top, yes and no. From 800 to 1000 there is still good variety, but most of the targets above 1000 were HB/Fist - at least based on my climb. Of course, that will change in 2 events to the new flavor of the week.