How to beat IF/HB?

Malcrof

The only one that seems to help me with those teams is Blade. Get his black off, twice if you can. That way, when HB uses his black (the AI doesn't seem to want him to use 2 abilities in 1 turn) , when the turn comes round to you again, he no longer has enough to repulsor punch, if red is the strongest color.. which makes this dependent on the boosted chars.

Vhailorx

unreall: ap denial shuts EVERYONE down (except maybe laken/blade/falcon). I don't know that it is especially useful against imhb/if.

As for this pvp, I found the speed of gsbw generally worth giving up the ap denial of shehulk. Her green is annoying to fight, but harder to use offensively because it's random. I have seen way too many examples of it missing the only color I care need wiped to rely on it.

tanis3303

Unreallystic wrote:

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

I ran her the whole event. Agree, she's criminally under rated. I ran She Hulk, Hood, Fury until about 900 and didn't get touched.

As for FistBuster battles, the key is murdering Iron Fist as quickly as possible. Once he's gone, removing his attack tile should be your next priority. Eating a Repulsor Punch hurts, sure. But the AI doesn't save up mana for it to be truly devastating, they'll fire it the second they hit 9 red, so its not going to be too much worse than a Surgical Strike or Smite hit. You can survive an Overdrive into RP, but the Overdrive tiles plus fist's attack tile is like 1,300 per turn of free damage. If this happens, you're in trouble. Ensuring that at no point is there ever an Iron Fist attack tile AND HB's strike tiles on the board at the same time is the key to beating this pair.

Ding

Running hulk vs hulk buster might not be the best idea. Hb was specifically design to defeat the hulk and he still does the job. Strategy wise you'll want to take out if first. Try to deny red and purple, esp if you have a user of those colors.

Unknown

Being blunt, I never saw those strike tiles. He got them off 'once' the whole PvP. My 'personal' rule:

1 AP denier is annoying, 2 is game changing.

Hood by himself on any team just gets eaten up like Cheetos, but pair him with loki/OBW/SHulk, etc and things change drastically, that's when ap denial outpaces everything but large cascades. I don't think I'm unique in that way of thinking, Loki just isn't meaty enough, hell he's weaker than Hood. SHulk's green is low enough that you can literally spam it, every 3-4 turns I can fire it off, so even if I don't hit the colors I want, I'm bound to eventually.

Never got hit with a sniper rifle...
Only CtS was from TU...
Never got hit with any attack that was more than 10 AP except for a couple Righteous punches (that hurt like HELL WOW it sucks to be receiving them haha oh and on his last move on a IMHB/Cyc team Cyc hit me with a Full Blast, then died)...

Back to Hulk, I still don't like him for the event, strikes or not, max boosted it takes like 900 dmg to trigger anger, and in that he's just a green accelerator, I ask would a lvl 166 3hor be better as a generator for Sniper Rifle? Scarlet Witch with GSBW? Not having to use HPs to keep going? Even sticking wit hthe OP's issue - pretty much any one else, boosted or not would function better than Hulk, kill faster or prevent being killed.

And yes I'm sort of digging into Hulk because he felt so 'free', anyone with 40 pts or more and Hulk that was in my way was attacked and died.
- Unreall

Malcrof

KK Bundy wrote:

Running hulk vs hulk buster might not be the best idea. Hb was specifically design to defeat the hulk and he still does the job. Strategy wise you'll want to take out if first. Try to deny red and purple, esp if you have a user of those colors.

Using a boosted Hulk works actually, he has 1 purpose, and 1 alone, to give Hood the Clap and destroy the board, nullifying strike and attack tiles. That is why i am using him, haven't launched his red once, paired with Hood and Doom, i have been using Doom's purple to down the big guns, Hoods yellow to take care of anyone who dare show up under 10k hp, and Hulk green to get rid of pesky hood and whoever is next in line. He is very useful against Hulkbuster, bye bye strike tiles and bye bye shield tiles

Unknown

Do you know what time it is?

IT'S TIME FOR!!!!!! Boosted FistBuster/(4* or boosted char here.)

Unknown

sagapo wrote:

Do you know what time it is?

IT'S TIME FOR!!!!!! Boosted FistBuster/(4* or boosted char here.)

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to this PvP...boosted IFs everywhere...
-Unreall

Malcrof

Unreallystic wrote:

sagapo wrote:

Do you know what time it is?

IT'S TIME FOR!!!!!! Boosted FistBuster/(4* or boosted char here.)

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to this PvP...boosted IFs everywhere...
-Unreall

who needs health packs anyway.

Dauthi

Vhailorx wrote:

unreall: ap denial shuts EVERYONE down (except maybe laken/blade/falcon). I don't know that it is especially useful against imhb/if.

As for this pvp, I found the speed of gsbw generally worth giving up the ap denial of shehulk. Her green is annoying to fight, but harder to use offensively because it's random. I have seen way too many examples of it missing the only color I care need wiped to rely on it.

AP denial is only relevant towards teams with low cost abilities, so you only really need to deny purple constantly, and red a bit against HB/IF. His black is pretty costly, so it usually isn't a big deal unless the board is unusually saturated with black.

I specifically targeted any GSBW team because she is so easy to take down. That team might as well only have 2 characters on defense.

Like others stated, She-Hulk+Hood was crazy AP dominance, then throw in Nick for some serious damage. I got attacked about 6 times with this team, and only lost one of those. She-Hulk is a very strong character.

Unknown

puppychow wrote:

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.

No it's not as direct a counter as the board flooders I mentioned, but because of the way surgical strike works, by removing one color from the board, it has the potential for accidentally creating a 5-way match. Anyway that's for another discussion before we digress too much away from the IF/HB counter discussion


The thing is this game needs more characters like 2* bullseye and daken, when you encounter both those characters, you become wary of making purple or green matches respectively.. Except currently there is no characters that cover the other colours...

Right now there is probably the greatest need for a black match counter in the like of what daken or bulleye do.

Right now there is a enough counters for special tile users, or 4/5 way matches, but no real match counters for red, yellow, blue or black. I feel in terms of balance black really needs one as black is quite a strong colour at the moment

Unknown

it feels the opposite to me, its less about 'wary of making a match' and more 'I need to match that to prevent them from getting that color/match'.

I hear what you're saying though and like it conceptually, the closest we have to that are non-passive powers like Ambush & Detonation.
- Unreall

Malcrof

Just a fun accident, went up against a fistbuster team in shield sim, knowing i would lose, but wanting to try anyway.

I accidently won with the most random team i have ever used. Mind you, it is a real soft target on defense, so i went back to my staples after this...

KK, SW, 2* Hawkeye.

SW places countdown tile, accidentally making a 5 match, speed shot tiles up, start matching greens and whatnot.. speedshot took down Hood and most of IF like he was paper in just 2 turns, and did a nice chunk to HB.. few turns later, match is basically just match damage, then SW cd tiles resolves into a match 5, more speed shot, and enough purple for SW's AoE, and IF died off the crit.. stun HB for 5 turns, all speed shot tiles resolve and i had finally collected enough green for KK.. and he is gone.

Only needed 1 health pack for SW, as she tanked most of it and took IF's attack tile for quite a bit before i could get rid of it. HB was neutered.

TxMoose

Malcrof wrote:

Just a fun accident, went up against a fistbuster team in shield sim, knowing i would lose, but wanting to try anyway.

I accidently won with the most random team i have ever used. Mind you, it is a real soft target on defense, so i went back to my staples after this...

KK, SW, 2* Hawkeye.

SW places countdown tile, accidentally making a 5 match, speed shot tiles up, start matching greens and whatnot.. speedshot took down Hood and most of IF like he was paper in just 2 turns, and did a nice chunk to HB.. few turns later, match is basically just match damage, then SW cd tiles resolves into a match 5, more speed shot, and enough purple for SW's AoE, and IF died off the crit.. stun HB for 5 turns, all speed shot tiles resolve and i had finally collected enough green for KK.. and he is gone.

Only needed 1 health pack for SW, as she tanked most of it and took IF's attack tile for quite a bit before i could get rid of it. HB was neutered.

actually sub gsbw for kk and I used that team (gsbw/witch/hawk) against some overscaled jugs/ares nodes in hulk. especially when hawk is boosted, that team rocks - its like gsbw/px - lite.

Ding

aesthetocyst wrote:

Unreal, KK, you're both forgetting 1 very important thing about this game:

The AI is dumb as a brick.

Other players are not fools for running teams that you can beat easily. The AI can screw up damn near every team

Yes, multiple stealers / deniers are great ... leaves the other teams standing still ... but generally terrible on defense, except Blade SheHulk. But, Blade not buffed and levelled SheHulks being rare ... oops.

As for 4* Hulkbuster being designed to beat 3* Hulk ... he absolutely was, but since his blue only puts out paper shields and lacks even a 1-turn stun (hello, sleeping gas, c'mon, please???), HB best beats Hulk by stocking up enough red for a one-shot ... which the AI will never do.

This game is designed around offense. The AI being dumb as a brick means nothing because you shouldn't be relying on defensive wins if you're hoping for top tier. Hulk is very easy to take out on offense, especially with a 1shoot killer like hb, and the speed that hb fights are what counts. Shulk might be good on defence, but how fast can you hop with her. If you're at 1k and people with low scores take shots at you, you'll need more than 10 defensive wins for each loss. Shulk is good, but not THAT good. And, because she slows down the game both on defense from her staking and all, and on offense not having a lot of offensive strength, you'll be left vulnerable to attacks for long periods of time.

Dauthi

KK Bundy wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

Unreal, KK, you're both forgetting 1 very important thing about this game:

The AI is dumb as a brick.

Other players are not fools for running teams that you can beat easily. The AI can screw up damn near every team

Yes, multiple stealers / deniers are great ... leaves the other teams standing still ... but generally terrible on defense, except Blade SheHulk. But, Blade not buffed and levelled SheHulks being rare ... oops.

As for 4* Hulkbuster being designed to beat 3* Hulk ... he absolutely was, but since his blue only puts out paper shields and lacks even a 1-turn stun (hello, sleeping gas, c'mon, please???), HB best beats Hulk by stocking up enough red for a one-shot ... which the AI will never do.

This game is designed around offense. The AI being dumb as a brick means nothing because you shouldn't be relying on defensive wins if you're hoping for top tier. Hulk is very easy to take out on offense, especially with a 1shoot killer like hb, and the speed that hb fights are what counts. Shulk might be good on defence, but how fast can you hop with her. If you're at 1k and people with low scores take shots at you, you'll need more than 10 defensive wins for each loss. Shulk is good, but not THAT good. And, because she slows down the game both on defense from her staking and all, and on offense not having a lot of offensive strength, you'll be left vulnerable to attacks for long periods of time.

However She-Hulk buys you time as people go for easier targets. Like others have said, and I will testify, I barely got attacked at all on my way to 1k. It's like you say, it's all about speed, and I will fight an unbuffed HB/IF on the Hood pvp than a buffed Nick/She-Hulk. Besides, her red does quite a bit of damage, and as long as you have a damage dealer paired with her you will be fine.

Vhailorx

Dauthi wrote:

However She-Hulk buys you time as people go for easier targets. Like others have said, and I will testify, I barely got attacked at all on my way to 1k. It's like you say, it's all about speed, and I will fight an unbuffed HB/IF on the Hood pvp than a buffed Nick/She-Hulk. Besides, her red does quite a bit of damage, and as long as you have a damage dealer paired with her you will be fine.

She-Hulk is clearly better on defense, but boosted GSBW is so fast on offense. It's basically 11 purple ap + a few green ap = victory. And the lion's share of points will come from offense anyway. I think that risking a few more attacks may be worth the increased offensive speed.

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

However She-Hulk buys you time as people go for easier targets. Like others have said, and I will testify, I barely got attacked at all on my way to 1k. It's like you say, it's all about speed, and I will fight an unbuffed HB/IF on the Hood pvp than a buffed Nick/She-Hulk. Besides, her red does quite a bit of damage, and as long as you have a damage dealer paired with her you will be fine.

She-Hulk is clearly better on defense, but boosted GSBW is so fast on offense. It's basically 11 purple ap + a few green ap = victory. And the lion's share of points will come from offense anyway. I think that risking a few more attacks may be worth the increased offensive speed.

I think that's a factor of how much you play. When I used SHulk, NO ONE attacked me, but if I use GSBW, unless I'm shielding, which I try not to do as I'm saving up for when I need the HP, I'll lose clumps of 100-200 points at a time. Purely offensive teams for PvP SUCK if you aren't shielding.
- Unreall

TxMoose

had to get over hitting hb teams to make it to 1K in the cage event. cage/fist/hood worked very well. manually deny purple and black while taking fist out first and letting hood do his thing, and then take out hb second and cage last. beat 2 fistbuster teams and each time I think they got one blue ability off each time and one might have gotten a fist purple, but I had removed all available black matches, so it didn't do much except add black to the board for hood to steal. obviously boosted cage helps tremendously but as long as they don't get a cascade, they are beatable. side note: I did boost blue/purple, green/black, and all ap - 2x each, so that helped too. but the last 2 hops for 1K its easily worth it. now half of my ****s are at least 1/1/1 - such a long way to go and only getting slower the more they add.

Unknown

TxMoose wrote:

had to get over hitting hb teams to make it to 1K in the cage event. cage/fist/hood worked very well. manually deny purple and black while taking fist out first and letting hood do his thing, and then take out hb second and cage last. beat 2 fistbuster teams and each time I think they got one blue ability off each time and one might have gotten a fist purple, but I had removed all available black matches, so it didn't do much except add black to the board for hood to steal. obviously boosted cage helps tremendously but as long as they don't get a cascade, they are beatable. side note: I did boost blue/purple, green/black, and all ap - 2x each, so that helped too. but the last 2 hops for 1K its easily worth it. now half of my ****s are at least 1/1/1 - such a long way to go and only getting slower the more they add.

I really want to like Cage/Hood, but my Cage is 552, so black is barely usable, and they overlap - and while I don't think Rainbow is a big deal, them having the exact same active colors turns them both to just 'passive hogs', with the third wheel having to carry the active load (is there even a green/red/blue? Maybe Deadpool with Red/Purple/black?).
- Unreall