Level Ihulk or not ?

tonypq

Thoughts on leveing Ihulk or leaving under leveled ?

I have Ihulk at level 448, kept him that way in hopes I'd build my Okoye up so she'd tank, but I'm a ways off from that happening since she's level 454.

When I pulled for Ihulk back in latest legends I got a ton of dupe covers, ended with 8 saved covers. Then after the She-hulk store not too far back I got 6 more Ihulk saved covers. So my 448 Ihulk has 14 saved covers.

I was always wondering if a new character might come out down the road which you wouldn't want to keep Ihulk under leveled, as many do to use with Okoye. Now with Chasm and She-hulk, among others who can revive, I was curious if how good it is to level Ihulk up to play with any of them, or if he's still best let under leveled to pair with Okoye.

I was curious to hear from any of you what you think. FYI my 5She-hulk is level 460 and Chasm 451.

Bowgentle

Depends on if you do mainly PVP or PVE.
For PVE, keep him as low as possible.
For PVP with Chasm, level him.

HoundofShadow

It seems like iHulk always work best when he's not tanking because if he needs to take damage, that would cause him to die quicker, revive and then tank over his partners. Both his meta synergestic partners require him not to tank, and if he does, he messes thing up somewhat.

If you are using him with Vulture or other infinite airborne characters, then it would be better for him to tank.

ThaRoadWarrior

I level everybody, but I don't play PVE competitively - just to full progression. My hulk is 456 to my 459 Okoye, and I still use them on pick-2 every day in SCL10 required nodes. I have a 5* Royal Talon Fighter on Okoye, but now she only tanks yellow and team up even so. It really doesn't matter on those 3 and 4* required nodes if you're only after progression, but it definitely isn't ideal. I try not to be part of the problem with Chasm so I don't run him much, he is 454 on my roster so he tanks for at least a revive or 3.

Vhailorx

@Bowgentle said:
Depends on if you do mainly PVP or PVE.
For PVE, keep him as low as possible.
For PVP with Chasm, level him.

This is true enough, but ihulk isn't super relevant in pve anymore, is he? Waiting for his passive means going to turn 2, so he is almost always slower than thanos for trivial nodes, even if you don't stall out for lack of green. And for harder nodes I don't think he is substantially better than a number of other options available nowadays. It seems to me that his main calling card has always been pvp where his passive aoe threat has always been sufficiently painful to make him a good scarecrow, and chasm has taken it to a new level with their "can't stop, won't stop" synergy.

As for softcapping for pve purposes, it's definitely a viable tactic, especially for smaller rosters, as there are few very valuable characrers who are also squishy and/or have low match damage, but really need to tank (or NOT tank) to be viable; Okoye being the most prominent. But as one fills out their roster, softcapping makes less and less sense as the number of team options it enables gets outstripped by the number of teams it precludes.
(E.g., brb plays beautifully with thorkoye right up until he starts tanking blue, yellow, and purple over her. Same with apoc. Keeping them low level makes some sense when thorkoye is your only A team option, but that strategy is self harm once you also have SC, Colossus, Wanda, Fosthor, etc. Then it's tine to give yourself more options and start champing all the useful meta combos.)

Yepyep

@Bowgentle said:
Depends on if you do mainly PVP or PVE.
For PVE, keep him as low as possible.
For PVP with Chasm, level him.

So I'm not sure I agree with this wrt PvP. If he's sufficiently behind Chasm in levels your opponent will never be able to get him to tank for Chasm, and the easiest way to kill the pair, by far, is to drive iHulk to tank by targeting him so Chasm can't make his Chasm tiles. A 454 Chasm with a low-level Hulk is a seriously unappealing target. I skip that 100% of the time because the match will never end.

But you know the game. Would you mind explaining your thinking a bit? I could well be missing something. (If it's a matter of pure speed, I'm not missing that and the answer is to have a duped iHulk which I can swap out for the bigger brother when at the grilling stage, my next 5* project.)

Edited to say: my only quibble is with the PvP part of your statement.

Bowgentle

@Yepyep said:

@Bowgentle said:
Depends on if you do mainly PVP or PVE.
For PVE, keep him as low as possible.
For PVP with Chasm, level him.

So I'm not sure I agree with this wrt PvP. If he's sufficiently behind Chasm in levels your opponent will never be able to get him to tank for Chasm, and the easiest way to kill the pair, by far, is to drive iHulk to tank by targeting him so Chasm can't make his Chasm tiles. A 454 Chasm with a low-level Hulk is a seriously unappealing target. I skip that 100% of the time because the match will never end.

But you know the game. Would you mind explaining your thinking a bit? I could well be missing something. (If it's a matter of pure speed, I'm not missing that and the answer is to have a duped iHulk which I can swap out for the bigger brother when at the grilling stage, my next 5* project.)

Edited to say: my only quibble is with the PvP part of your statement.

If both are baby champed then yes, keep ihulk small.
For a higher level Chasm you can level ihulk a bit to make the AOE a bit more painful.

Sekilicious

@Vhailorx said:
This is true enough, but ihulk isn't super relevant in pve anymore, is he? Waiting for his passive means going to turn 2, so he is almost always slower than thanos for trivial nodes, even if you don't stall out for lack of green. And for harder nodes I don't think he is substantially better than a number of other options available nowadays. It seems to me that his main calling card has always been pvp where his passive aoe threat has always been sufficiently painful to make him a good scarecrow, and chasm has taken it to a new level with their "can't stop, won't stop" synergy.

So the question of ‘best team’ comes up on Reddit every month or so. The way it is explained there is that there isn’t one; there are best teams for situations and it depends on the boost list. An Optimal Okoye/iHulk (especially somewhere around 550/520) is very relevant in most Pick-2 and 3 situations unless opposing Mindless Ones. I think you are right, iHulk was never relevant in the easy nodes.

tonypq

Thanks for the replies everyone. I should mention also I have all the meta 5s champed and over 30 champed 5s total. I'm in a top 20-25 alliance who mainly does PVE. Although many do PVP also as do I but usually only up to the 10 CP reward.

In PVE I don't really find myself using Okoye and Ihulk often, but that's typically because she's not high enough to tank for him. Sometimes another character is boosted though and ends up able to tank for Ihulk, then I'll use Okoye also.

I just was confused now a days with Cham or others if there was finally a reason to leve Ihulk up like any other character or still baby champ. It seems like from what I'm reading even with Chasm a lower level Ihulk is better ?

If I leveled Ihulk up, champed him then used my 14 saved covers, he'd be level 462. At that point only BRN, Apoc, and Kitty would be higher level. With 5Shehulk, Chasm, and Ihulk, I wasn't sure if it made sense in any way leveling ihulk, if this trio makes a viable revive team, if that's a thing or not heh.

Vhailorx

@Sekilicious said:

@Vhailorx said:
This is true enough, but ihulk isn't super relevant in pve anymore, is he? Waiting for his passive means going to turn 2, so he is almost always slower than thanos for trivial nodes, even if you don't stall out for lack of green. And for harder nodes I don't think he is substantially better than a number of other options available nowadays. It seems to me that his main calling card has always been pvp where his passive aoe threat has always been sufficiently painful to make him a good scarecrow, and chasm has taken it to a new level with their "can't stop, won't stop" synergy.

So the question of ‘best team’ comes up on Reddit every month or so. The way it is explained there is that there isn’t one; there are best teams for situations and it depends on the boost list. An Optimal Okoye/iHulk (especially somewhere around 550/520) is very relevant in most Pick-2 and 3 situations unless opposing Mindless Ones. I think you are right, iHulk was never relevant in the easy nodes.

I'm not super experienced with the day-in-day-out 550 game, but I can imagine that a 550 hulkoye with full boosts is pretty fast. But many teams fill up green, not just mindless ones, so I would expect that there are a significant number of nodes where other options like 'thanos + okoye + high single target character' are comparably fast. And in any event, we are talking about speed advantages that are only meaningful if you play top 50 or so in competitive slices. So there are maybe a few hundred players for whom that discussion is relevant at all.

(Edited for "atrocious" typing)

Bowgentle

@Vhailorx said:

@Sekilicious said:

@Vhailorx said:
This is true enough, but ihulk isn't super relevant in pve anymore, is he? Waiting for his passive means going to turn 2, so he is almost always slower than thanos for trivial nodes, even if you don't stall out for lack of green. And for harder nodes I don't think he is substantially better than a number of other options available nowadays. It seems to me that his main calling card has always been pvp where his passive aoe threat has always been sufficiently painful to make him a good scarecrow, and chasm has taken it to a new level with their "can't stop, won't stop" synergy.

So the question of ‘best team’ comes up on Reddit every month or so. The way it is explained there is that there isn’t one; there are best teams for situations and it depends on the boost list. An Optimal Okoye/iHulk (especially somewhere around 550/520) is very relevant in most Pick-2 and 3 situations unless opposing Mindless Ones. I think you are right, iHulk was never relevant in the easy nodes.

I'm not super experienced with the day-in-day-out 550 game, but I can imagine that a 550 hulkiye with full boosts is pretty fast. But many teams fill up green, not just mindless ones, so I would expect that there are sig ificant number or nodes where other options like thanos + okoye + high single target characrer are comparably fast. And in any event, we are talking about speed advantages that are only meaningful if you play top 50 or so in competitive slices. So there are maybe a fee hundred players for whom that discussion is relevant at all.

Running Thanos with Okoye is kinda pointless.
Also PLEASE start reading over your posts, your autocorrect is atrocious.

Vhailorx

Guilty as charged on the bad typing. It's my stupid thumbs on a new(ish) touchscreen.

I dont think Thanos + okoye + a damage booster is pointless if you only care about speed and are playing high-health opponents.

Bowgentle

@Vhailorx said:
Guilty as charged on the bad typing. It's my stupid thumbs on a new(ish) touchscreen.

I dont think Thanos + okoye + a damage booster is pointless if you only care about speed and are playing high-health opponents.

Are we talking about 3* Thanos here?
Because the 5* version doesn't get boosted by Okoye because she's stunned.

Vhailorx

@Bowgentle said:

@Vhailorx said:
Guilty as charged on the bad typing. It's my stupid thumbs on a new(ish) touchscreen.

I dont think Thanos + okoye + a damage booster is pointless if you only care about speed and are playing high-health opponents.

Are we talking about 3* Thanos here?
Because the 5* version doesn't get boosted by Okoye because she's stunned.

Yeah, should have been more explicit about that. You give up some damage on the aoe, but with boosting (especially with a high level okoye) you don't really care about base damage anyway.

Something like okoye + thanos + sabretooth. Lower ceiling, but higher floor than hulkoye because it's harder to stall out. Obviously not as fast against challenge nodes and opponents with hundreds of thousands of health. But hulkoye doesn't shine their either; that's what SC is for. The main disadvantage is that it requires pick 3.

Bowgentle

@Vhailorx said:

@Bowgentle said:

@Vhailorx said:
Guilty as charged on the bad typing. It's my stupid thumbs on a new(ish) touchscreen.

I dont think Thanos + okoye + a damage booster is pointless if you only care about speed and are playing high-health opponents.

Are we talking about 3* Thanos here?
Because the 5* version doesn't get boosted by Okoye because she's stunned.

Yeah, should have been more explicit about that. You give up some damage on the aoe, but with boosting (especially with a high level okoye) you don't really care about base damage anyway.

Something like okoye + thanos + sabretooth. Lower ceiling, but higher floor than hulkoye because it's harder to stall out. Obviously not as fast against challenge nodes and opponents with hundreds of thousands of health. But hulkoye doesn't shine their either; that's what SC is for. The main disadvantage is that it requires pick 3.

Try Hulkoye with Gorr.

Vhailorx

Gorr is a great quasi aoe partner for okoye, whether or not you use ihulk!