hood hood hood? really? What is he going to do, intimidate me to death? I guess if his blue stacked you would basically lose 3 ap every turn almost, but while that might be annoying, your chance of actual death is next to nothing.
Hulks wouldn’t be that scary at all honestly. 1 hulk is knocked down by match damage and the other two are done so by actives. Add someone like pun and hulk team becomes a joke. Hulk is only useful on teams that 1. have strike tiles. 2. have overall a nice health pool 3. can do damage. All hulks have high hp, but lacks the other two. ALL three are needed for hulk to be worth using imo (though you can get away with no strike tiles, its the only thing that makes his black serve as anything other than a green generator…which hulk FAR too often ends up using for his move instead of allowing for something like COTS.
Best teams are those that can do quick damage or very very strong damage. # duplicates is bad as you really should have 5+ colors when possible. With duplicates it probably would be sentry sentry or thor thor plus another high hp character that covers 1-2 other colors. Also, thor thor sentry would be a pretty strong and avoided team even with only 3 colors… the issue is that when they have only 3 you can start playing prevent D as well as more readily use someone who steals ap (especially controlled AP steals).
mohio is right, bp/thor is not a good def team. They look like they could be, but the machine plays them poorly. Its pretty easy to deny green heavily and yellow/black mildly and end the match with neither getting a move off (at worst, a battle plan early).
There are 3 categories of def teams: skip, guerilla, high chance to kill you.
Skip usually constitutes teams with high health and things like that. You might skip teams that are guerilla or “high chance” but a skip team is built with the sole purpose of making people want to skip you. while there is no good example of a team where def is high enough and fast enough to warrant use, a defensive team is the perfect example of a skip team. It might not kill you, but you might spend 5-6 instead of 2-4 min fighting it. Instead of def, hp tends to be what determines this in th current meta. an example would be thor bp hulk. not a great team, but solid because it is 3 high hp characters who have a way to kill youif you take too long to take them out (or get an unlucky cascade).
Guerilla is a team where you are guaranteed to take damage from them. They may or may not kill you, but they will always deal damage. You might skip them simply because you don’t have an easy way to heal and they do, afterall, have a good chance of a lucky cascade turning into a ko or near ko. punisher is a great character for this, as is hood, and some others. key thing is that they have low ap moves usually so that, even without a cascade, they have a chance to get enough ap to attack.
Chance They don’t necessarily have high hp and they don’t necessarily do damage every match…heck they don’t necessarily even make the opponent want to avoid you, but they have the highest chance of bringing you a def win. one of the best examples of this is patch. he is horrible on def realistically. he gives the opponent strike tiles that (as the human) they will undoubtedly use better than you, his red is too expensive to be helpful, he can be chunked down with actives to make his yellow useless, and he has avg hp. With the right ppl surrounding him though patch can lead to some very demoralizing losses. While you might beat him 95% of the time without even taking a lot of damage, the other 5% can be a crap shoot as to whether you come out with a team at all.
I don’t think “avoid me” is as great as “I might kill you” generally though as almost everyone is willing to attack if u are worth enough points. I would say some of the best defensive teams are:
patch/dakan/hulk - above avg net health. 2 healers means you are focusing match damage on hulk early. since hulk is pretty unanimously considered to be the lst person you ko (unless you run pun and can hit him down and their tem doesn’t warrant attacking someone first for some reason) that is an advantage. Hulk’s green works well with both as they both give you strike tiles, and dakan constantly puts them out (especially when anger goes off) while patch getting a green off can be very bad news as if you don’t ko the hulk quickly his angere (forced by the friendly strike tiles) can ko team all on its own). This team is about the only truely scary hulk team imo, but it also isn’t that hard to beat. It has one of the better “luck n F***” % in th egame though, so that i why i put it here.
thor/magneto/punisher - slightly above avg net health (realistically..avg). Thor + any team on its own could have its own spot, but this is one of the bettr combinations. If it doesn’t have some luck on its side though, the match can end quickly with little no no damage being done besides a molotov (which seems to ALWAYS drop at least once a match). nobody will skip you, but you might get the occasional win. unlike the pathc dakan hhulk team, this is a fast kill team (without tons of self damage) on offense as well. also unlike that team, all 3 characters can wipe you out with one move if the situation is right. Not the most amazing def, but it has a lot of “oh shoot” moments built into it such as: retribution hitting your high health character like thor for a ko. Translocation going off and 1 shotting if enough blue on the board. Thor yellow into green in one turn. judgment followed by molotov and magneto red spam. …and then as I mentioned, moltov seems to drop EVERY match. Makes the team annoying the same way a dakan team can be annoying even when they have no chance to actually kill you.
Thor+hood+x - I am not a fan of hood on def, just because his hp is so low, but thor can turn slight advantages into huge payouts and with the right #rd character hood can sacrifice himself basically in order to give his teammates a little ap before he gets taken out on def…enough for the other two to go from 10/14 green and 10/12 yellow…nothing…to “12/12 yellow adding +6 green to my 112/14 green” Other times, the hood basically does NOTHING. If you play him right and get a board that works, hood is one of the worst defensive characters in the game. Thing is, most ppl aren’t actually all that good at the game (despite most ppl still winning) and so a character like hood allows you to take advantage of that. added to a low ap team, hood can make teams even more “guerrilla.”
sentry/thor/other colors (strike tiles if possible) - sentry thor is a strong combo and if the 3rd is good, probably the best 1-2 punch atm. High hp, high damage, sentry has a very high “chance” rating due to his green and sentry’s red, when used instead of thor’s, can be pretty painful. issue, is that sentry likes to use his yellow..not a great move against a live opponent,…and more importantly loses thor out on his “best in class” yellow. add in someone like dakan or punisher and you have a solid team with good hp, a lot of damage, and some solid guerilla warfare making this team a mix of being an above avg team in all 3 categories. fury might be a good 3rd too, but it will be predicated on just how good his yellow is/is used by the machine. Fury’s moves are a little too high ap to be incredibly effective every match, but he does come with above avg hp, a nice complementary color swathe, and good “chance” moves that can wipe out a team if the higher ap requirements are met. If his yellow ends up being good then this could be the gold standard as long as the machine uses the yellow well (which it probably won’t).
there are others, but those are the only ones I am going to mention as I don’t want to water down the list with similar but slightly weaker permutations. and also, my message is already long.
tl;dr - Lt+anyone is a solid team. Senty+lt+a good compliment (preferrably with strike tiles) is probably the best def team atm. Fury could team with sentry/lt and be the best team depending on just what his yellow does and if the machine uses it well. Dakan/patch/hulk is a pretty annoying team as well.