How to beat IF/HB?

razput1n

In the Hood PvP I'm up to 960 shielded, and all teams I get that are worth 40+ point are IF/HB. So far I've been playing with 245 Hood, 200 Luke Cage and 192 Hulk, earlier on the grind I went against an IF/HB and got wrecked

Any tips would be appreciated.

Phaserhawk

It's tricky with Hood since he is also a priority and in theory taking out their Hood and leaving your own should shut down the other team, however, because IF's purple is so low costed this is very hard. You have to take him out first, pure and simple, once you gut the engine I would then down Hood second, if you can do this quickly it should keep HB from going off most of the time.

you can mirror match it with your own IF/HB, otherwise with Cage being buffed, he's a nice counter to IF, would then maybe run X-Force and deny black to surgical strike IF or Hood if IF is downed by then, without knowing your roster though tough call, but IF, Hood, HB should be your order

razput1n

My roster is kinda sad unfortunately, my highest covered 4* are IW and Devilsaur so that should tell you something

Hulk and Cage are the highest leveled heroes I have given their boost, also have GBW and She hulk at 170ish and at 166 I have deadpool, HT, spiderman and patches

One of the teams I found has a 175 Hood, but he does have full covers, so I could kill him faster, but still means IF can just go about his business.

Maybe Id be better of trying to get two wins on some 20ish point teams and hope I dont get hit first

Houtro

Yeah I just beat two IF/HB teams with Doom & Hulk, I also count with a bit of luck. I did two different approaches on the first I takedown Hood first then IF left HB for last it was hard only Hulk survived but thanks to IF that left some strike tiles and that keep Hulk very angry, on the second battle I takedown IF first then Hood then HB it went much more smooth.

Unknown

This probably won't help you but I almost lost to Jean/Thing/Hood.

Jean alone counters both IF and HB. When I made a 5 match with IF purple, my whole team got stun for 2 turns, the strike tiles that HB creates can be removed by Jean as well. Combine that with Thing, you are forced to down Thing first, which takes a while to do without IF's help.

Hendross

Sniper Rifle is prob. your best bet without your own 4* counter.

I'm using Fury+Cage. Beat down Hood then, Demolition + Uppercut = Insta-Kill

razput1n

Thanks! That sounds promising, guess all I need is a couple anger cascades or 11 purple to setup a snipe. I only want to get 1k and then shield until it's over, so defending isnt an issue.

Hendross

Use damage and/or critical boost, you're bound to get 1 or 2 match 5s with deceptive tactics.

razput1n

Got it! thanks for the help... now I just need another 12 carnage covers *cries in corner*

Vhailorx

I don't think anyone needs ANY amount of carnage covers. his only real value is as a scarecrow. But if you are using him as a scarecrow, then you AREN'T using IMHB/IF or some other faster combo that would let you shield hop with less risk of being hit.

And in PVE carnage does so much self damage that he's suicide against overleveled enemies and equally bad against goons where he ensures some lost health in nodes that would otherwise be 0 damage. Maybe his best use is to control scaling by making sure that you never escape pve unscathed. . .

still, grats to OP on running the IMHB/IF gauntlet in pvp. It can definitely be done if the weekly boosted characters are good (or even with regular 3*s and boosting + some luck).

simonsez

Vhailorx wrote:

And in PVE carnage does so much self damage that he's suicide against overleveled enemies and equally bad against goons

The more I use him, the more I can't believe what a waste of a roster spot he is. To save some health packs in the current PvE, I figured if I just threw up Carnage, AntMan and Cage, between AntMan flipping some tiles and Cage's protect tile, I could easily win a battle of attrition in one of the juggs/daken/goon nodes. Didn't even come close to winning.

Omega Blacc

I was running 240 Hood, 240 Cage and 247 Nick Fury.

I think that team generally covers the same colors as Hood, Iron Fist and Hulkbuster.

I played patiently. I got rid of their Hood first and then basically let my Hood do his thing and hate-matched AP until I got powers I could fire off.

That's not a team I would fight if I could avoid it at all. One cascade and a Repulsor Punch and it's game over.

spectator

Assuming you have a 5 blue hood and a 5 purple doom, bring +2 purple and +2 all boost. 2 purple matches and diabolical plot is ready. Once enough traps are available, you down their iron fist (about 5 traps or less if you have been targetting him) and then the rest of the match is about killing hood first and denying red black and blue

Vhailorx

spectator wrote:

Assuming you have a 5 blue hood and a 5 purple doom, bring +2 purple and +2 all boost. 2 purple matches and diabolical plot is ready. Once enough traps are available, you down their iron fist (about 5 traps or less if you have been targetting him) and then the rest of the match is about killing hood first and denying red black and blue

That sounds like an expensive strategy, requiring HP boosts and good purple luck. I would rather just take someone like GSBW who is boosted this week, and maybe Cage or cyclops for some red/yellow/black casting (cage is also boosted this week). And OP said that he had both cage and gsbw decently covered.

As for carnage: When he was announced I thought he would be dangerously p2w because his red has such a good damage/ap. Then I took a closer look at his black (still pre-release) and revised my opinion to: his abilities will work well together, in which case he will be overpowered and p2w, OR his black will be too destructive and he will be a **** 4* not worth the roster slot.

I don't have him close to built yet myself, but from the posts of those who do, I think that the latter is more likely. He just isn't a viable character in almost any situation. . .

Unknown

Reading this thread, I would suggest using Jean if you can get her... The reason being is her blue passive although only triggers on a five match. Any hero that floods the board with a particular color, i.e. like IF purple or Hulkbuster's blue she can stun the whole team for two turns.

I seen a lot of people dismiss Jean's blue because they rarely see the AI actually make a 5* match, but it would seem most people forget that abilties like IF purple which adds a whole bunch of blacks to the board, increases the chances of a 5-match. Thus Jean's blue is a huge counter to a single color board flooders, even in a way she's also a counter to xforce's surgical strike because after it resolves the chances for 5-matches jump up

Vhailorx

skydivearcher wrote:

Reading this thread, I would suggest using Jean if you can get her... The reason being is her blue passive although only triggers on a five match. Any hero that floods the board with a particular color, i.e. like IF purple or Hulkbuster's blue she can stun the whole team for two turns.

I seen a lot of people dismiss Jean's blue because they rarely see the AI actually make a 5* match, but it would seem most people forget that abilties like IF purple which adds a whole bunch of blacks to the board, increases the chances of a 5-match. Thus Jean's blue is a huge counter to a single color board flooders, even in a way she's also a counter to xforce's surgical strike because after it resolves the chances for 5-matches jump up

Barely any one has jean grey yet, so no one really knows how good her blue will be. It's almost certainly a great counter to offensive strategies that create cascades. So she will probably have value in PvP in defense. Not yet clear if her blue will have much value offensively. Probably not as much as much as loki's green, but mischief is awesome.

Unknown

For almost any fight in the Hood PVP, you really need a 5 blue Hood of your own.

Assuming you have one, I'll respectfully disagree with aesthetocyst regarding the utility of AP boosts; any AP stolen will bounce back and forth between the two Hoods, so AP boosts are actually almost as helpful as in non-Hood play. There is an edge case where the total number of tiles on the board drops below Dormammu’s threshold 9. If you can drop the count below that threshold at the end of your turn and the AI causes the count to rise above it after its turn, you're ahead by one AP. This creates a small incentive not to make match-4s of undesirable colors when the cascade potential is relatively low and the desired color tile count is below threshold. I can only consider a slight incentive swing though - with the unpredictability of new tiles, falling behind by one tile isn't a big deal unless it happens over and over again (or if you can cause it to happen over and over again to the AI).

Dauthi

I dumped HB/IF this PVP because it is pretty bad on the defense. HB's best skill is his black, and Hood ends up using the black for his terrible ability. If things went bad, you just got really unlucky, or have an underdeveloped Hood. As Malenkov noted, it's usually not a good idea to come in with AP boosts, you always use damage boosts to topple Hood's weak HP bar.

I had fun smashing HB/IF combos this PVP. It's nice to know that sometimes this combo isn't the way to go.

Unknown

Since this topic has been brought up - I thought I ask for advice on more generic strategies regardless of the featured characters.

I've used patch/loki with some success and take out IF first. But will patch/hulk be a better option? And should I focus on denying their colors rather than accumulating ap to fire off something?

puppychow

skydivearcher wrote:

Reading this thread, I would suggest using Jean if you can get her... The reason being is her blue passive although only triggers on a five match. Any hero that floods the board with a particular color, i.e. like IF purple or Hulkbuster's blue she can stun the whole team for two turns.

I seen a lot of people dismiss Jean's blue because they rarely see the AI actually make a 5* match, but it would seem most people forget that abilties like IF purple which adds a whole bunch of blacks to the board, increases the chances of a 5-match. Thus Jean's blue is a huge counter to a single color board flooders, even in a way she's also a counter to xforce's surgical strike because after it resolves the chances for 5-matches jump up

My current roster has no answer to a buffed Jean Grey. Anyone running an IF/HB combo looking to trigger IF pink into blk into HB red hasn't tasted her blue yet.

A fight against JG is a battle of attrition, relying primarily on 3 matching and finally a power to knock her out. She reminds me of Thing---thread carefully until the character is off the board.

Add: I'm not sure I agree JG blue is a counter to surgical, b/c I happen to use xf daily for DDQ and he rarely triggers a 5-match w/ SS. I think thor/lthor has a much better chance of 5-matching than xf.

Unknown

This PvP was weird...it was a prime example of why boosting really changes tiering. Hulk was boosted, a lot of people have Hulk, so people felt like they should use their lvl 200+ Hulk, but WHY?!?! A high lvl Hulk is nigh USELESS, especially against someone like Hood, we aren't talking BP or some other AoE or strike tile guy being boosted, no punisher or Patch. Hood hits you one time for almost 10k dmg, and keeps 'tons of greens' low. so why the heck did so many people waste their time with Hulk? Half the time he was the only green user on the team, am I supposed to be scared of a boost thunderclap?

I went with Hood/Cage/S.Hulk instead. No it isn't as fast as say a GSBW team, but it has two AP denials, one is automatic and the other is great for cascades or when spells are called that generate a bunch of AP, shutting down IF and GSBW. Add in Cage so Hood's dmg was minimized, and gaining a low cost black, and no one bothered fighting me until I made it to 940ish.

Fighting Hood/Fistbuster? Who cares. Match greens and blues with reds until Hood is dead, spamming green whenever any color gets out of hand, and using blue to steal IF's tiles. AP denial makes IMHB weaksauce, so one Hood is done, the team is pretty much done in, kill IF with yellow power,chew through HB at your leisure.

My main point being AP denial shuts down Fistbuster in general, Hulk is a waste of time in this PvP, and She-Hulk with low requirements for her green, solid AoE Red, and tile stealing blue, was criminally slept on in this event, I didn't see a single one in my travels short of a TU.
- Unreall