iHulk is a badly designed champion and should be 'rebalanced' at some point
AmaadAkira
Member Posts: 391 ★★★
Firstly, yes there are many champs who should be 'rebalanced' before him (whatever that means nowadays as it seems to be changing every 2 months) but look at this from a neutral POV.
The novelty of his gameplay is so underutilized, it's frustrating. Doing damage to yourself while dealing damage is a cool idea, but the trade-off for high damage (which isn't even that high for how long it lasts) should EITHER BE dying as you're almost always at 1% hp OR losing the damage if you're not aggressive enough. Why is it both? 3 points to break it down.
1. His mechanics (aside from the suppression and stun at sp2) do NOT facilitate his aggressive gameplay style. At the VERY least he deserves an infuriate. On top of that, a medium into a blocking opponent should also refresh rage stacks. Currently, his suppression can't even counter most mystics that have passive power gain and he's a science champ.
2. His mechanics also do not facilitate his 'immortality' gameplay. He can easily be heal blocked, his immortality can be shut off via assassins mastery/ability accuracy (rendering him quite risky as an attacker in AW mind you), and he has a 50 SECOND immortality CD. Again, at the VERY LEAST, don't allow his immortality to be bypassed by ability accuracy.
3. Currently, iHulk can be utterly countered by: Healblock, stun/debuff immunity, limber, defensive AI, power gain, physical resistance, unstoppable, unblockable, autoblock, evade, miss, disorient, all DOT except poison, etc. And these are just nodes, there are champs he simply does not have the kit to counter himself. And no, not counter as in "ooh maybe not too good in these cases", I mean borderline useless. As in you are required NOT TO play him the way he's supposed to be played (which is the frustrating part) and it is near impossible to ever reach half the maximum damage you could potentially reach for even a second most the time.
And even THAT would be all OK if the matches he WAS good for, he was insanely good. But even those matches are RNG-dependent if you want any good damage. An AI holds block each time you reach 2 rage stacks in his perfect matchup? Unless you hit immortality early, the most you're gonna build to is about 10 rage stacks if you manage to pull off the sp2 cycle (2 mediums into SP2, heavy, and 2 more mediums). At 10 rage stacks, you're hitting for less than champions that do not require you to lose most your health to pull off that damage.
A good example of all the above is CGR. CGR is borderline trash if the opponent is constantly nullifying your buffs/is armor break immune, but at least in the matches he's good for, his damage is amazing and most importantly, CONSISTENT. iHulk should have a similar gameplay style.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
The novelty of his gameplay is so underutilized, it's frustrating. Doing damage to yourself while dealing damage is a cool idea, but the trade-off for high damage (which isn't even that high for how long it lasts) should EITHER BE dying as you're almost always at 1% hp OR losing the damage if you're not aggressive enough. Why is it both? 3 points to break it down.
1. His mechanics (aside from the suppression and stun at sp2) do NOT facilitate his aggressive gameplay style. At the VERY least he deserves an infuriate. On top of that, a medium into a blocking opponent should also refresh rage stacks. Currently, his suppression can't even counter most mystics that have passive power gain and he's a science champ.
2. His mechanics also do not facilitate his 'immortality' gameplay. He can easily be heal blocked, his immortality can be shut off via assassins mastery/ability accuracy (rendering him quite risky as an attacker in AW mind you), and he has a 50 SECOND immortality CD. Again, at the VERY LEAST, don't allow his immortality to be bypassed by ability accuracy.
3. Currently, iHulk can be utterly countered by: Healblock, stun/debuff immunity, limber, defensive AI, power gain, physical resistance, unstoppable, unblockable, autoblock, evade, miss, disorient, all DOT except poison, etc. And these are just nodes, there are champs he simply does not have the kit to counter himself. And no, not counter as in "ooh maybe not too good in these cases", I mean borderline useless. As in you are required NOT TO play him the way he's supposed to be played (which is the frustrating part) and it is near impossible to ever reach half the maximum damage you could potentially reach for even a second most the time.
And even THAT would be all OK if the matches he WAS good for, he was insanely good. But even those matches are RNG-dependent if you want any good damage. An AI holds block each time you reach 2 rage stacks in his perfect matchup? Unless you hit immortality early, the most you're gonna build to is about 10 rage stacks if you manage to pull off the sp2 cycle (2 mediums into SP2, heavy, and 2 more mediums). At 10 rage stacks, you're hitting for less than champions that do not require you to lose most your health to pull off that damage.
A good example of all the above is CGR. CGR is borderline trash if the opponent is constantly nullifying your buffs/is armor break immune, but at least in the matches he's good for, his damage is amazing and most importantly, CONSISTENT. iHulk should have a similar gameplay style.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Post edited by Kabam Porthos on
64
Comments
He’s the Mike Williams of MCoC. One of the best in a good matchup, but downright useless in the bad ones
I agree that he could also use a way to slow down opponent power rate outside the SP2. It’s hard to keep up the damage when you have to bait specials every couple of combos.
Finally, the things that bothers me the most is when he defeats the opponent while in immortality he doesn’t regain his health, but he still loses the 15 gamma it took to enter immortality. So he enters the next match, instantly triggers immortality, and loses another 15 gamma, reducing his health by 15%.
Although I do agree that he needs an infuriate mechanic to make him viable against passive AI.
@Kabam Miike do u have a take on this?
I totally understand and agree with the timer not being excessively long. It shouldn’t be excessively long.
But at the same time, it is really short for Passive AI. There should be some way to refresh it, even if you tie it to a high sig level on a dupe, because anyone who plays the kit knows the absolute frustration of how Passive AI isn’t something you can control, as a player
A point on Assassins, that can only stop his immortality if you get hit by the opponent. Since it's DAAR, it can't occur while you are hitting the opponent and triggering immortality. Not that he's a great war champ due to inconsistency with AI, but just wanted to correct that.
Overall, I tend to agree though, there's a reason I don't use my R3 anywhere except EoP where you can get infinite retries for perfect AI
Just the title is enough for me to agree with it
I know some people like him but it's still a badly designed kit
Won’t complain if they improve him but if you make his rage too easy to maintain he might be too good.
-SP1 stun base chance increased to 75% with a +1% per rage stack (maxing out at 100% when at 25 rage stacks). Additionally, each hit places a weakness debuff of 10% potency on the opponent for a base duration of 10 seconds plus 0.5 seconds per rage stack (max duration of 22.5 seconds).
-Just give the monster full degen immunity, or at least scaling degen resistance with health loss. How the hell does Spider-Ham have better degen resistance than this guy
-Consuming 15 gamma radiation to enter immortality but ending the fight before regaining health should refund that gamma radiation.
-Give him a mechanic similar to how each of She-Hulk's passive furies increases the chance of the enemy throwing a special attack ("Immortal Hulk's savagery and rage panics his foes, increasing their chance to launch a Special Attack by 10% for each stack of Rage").
And I've always been of the opinion that his sig ability seemed more like an afterthought. I am unable to take advantage of the stun chance one like 90% of the time because the stun duration is too short for my brain to comprehend what's going on and I'm mid combo. The weakness one is kinda useless imo given it's only a 4 second duration. The petrify one is actually pretty nice.
25%: Rage attacks can no longer be evaded, missed, and Unstoppable opponents react to Rage hits as though they weren't. (last bit stolen from Valk's kit)
50%: Basic attacks have a 2.02% to 5% chance to inflict a Stun Debuff, lasting 1.25 second (increased from 0.75 seconds).
75%: Inflict an indefinite Petrify Debuff of 27.08 to 75% potency.
100%: Consume all gamma radiation to become passively indestructible, unstoppable, and unblockable for 0.75 seconds when receiving damage that would KO Immortal Hulk. Rage damage does not trigger this. (for those scenarios where you're able to play aggressively enough to get to 100% gamma radiation while immortality is on cooldown).
I have Mike Williams in my fantasy team and he’s pissing me off lol
iHulk effectively NEEDS it and his gameplay style requires for it too as he's constantly killing himself. You're correct about the assassins mastery part.
However, converting health to gamma radiation is still effectively killing yourself if the opponent has any form of healblock/ability accuracy reduction and they manage to get the last hit in to make you immortal.
His immortality and healing should NEVER be allowed to be prevented except by maybe some unique skill champions (similar to nick fury's LMD). What's funny is Fury's LMD is a bonus for extra damage and it is not needed for him as there is no reason to kill yourself in the first place. But even he has a better failsafe on his LMD. Whereas iHulk kills himself and his regen/immortality can be bypassed quite easily.
But in full transparency it doesn't matter as there is nothing that could have been said that would've changed my mind as if I felt he needed a buff I never would've r4 mine.
SP1 60% stun chance to 100% chance. (You can reliably incorporate sp1 into his gameplay now).
Infuriate on MM combo for about 6-10 seconds. 20 sec cool down. (No need to worry about rng defensive AI in vanilla match ups).
Regen from immortality similar to LMD of nick fury - cannot be prevented by heal block. (For someone built around killing themselves, this is NECESSARY).
Refresh rage stacks by consuming 1 rage stack when medium attacking into opponents block. (Again, helps against defensive ai but doesn't make him fullblown OP as it's built around making a sacrifice).
Unblockable for ~2 seconds after knocking the opponent down with special - similar to dragon man. (Minutely helps against stun immune/debuff immune/shrug off match ups, as you can go back in after your special attack more reliably).
Unstoppable nullification when above x rage stacks - similar to cap IW. (Actually gives him some utility that isn't uncommon for science champs and makes sense seen as he's a HULK).
This would improve him for a lot more content and allow you to work around certain mechanics like stun immunity and healblock without sacrificing entire gameplay rotation.