Hockey Ultimate Team: HUT Thread III

[Rhaegar Targaryen]

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[Bondurant]

Any good HUT tutorials out there? I'd like to know more about all of the different player variants I am seeing in the auction, what they do and mean. General stuff like that. Does a casual gamer have a chance to get any of the rare stuff or is that reserved for the professional gamers and folks willing to spend real money on packs? Saw a Darren McCarty Heavy Hitters cards on a checklist. I assume this is a rare card.

 

[Rhaegar Targaryen]

Any good HUT tutorials out there? I'd like to know more about all of the different player variants I am seeing in the auction, what they do and mean. General stuff like that. Does a casual gamer have a chance to get any of the rare stuff or is that reserved for the professional gamers and folks willing to spend real money on packs? Saw a Darren McCarty Heavy Hitters cards on a checklist. I assume this is a rare card.

I’m sure there should be some stuff on YouTube, but I can do my best to answer questions. The basic player cards are regular Gold cards, Team of the Week (based off real life performances over the week), Primetime (based off real life performances the last night). Then there’s always an event going on that produces cards.

As a casual player your best bet to get good pulls are completely the weekly tournaments. There’s HUT Rivals and HUT Champs online modes, but also Squad Battles which is all offline. Rewards come out every week and include packs.

The heavy hitters event was a long time ago, so while the card might be a little rare, it shouldn’t be too expensive for you to buy on the Auction House.

 

[Bondurant]

I’m sure there should be some stuff on YouTube, but I can do my best to answer questions. The basic player cards are regular Gold cards, Team of the Week (based off real life performances over the week), Primetime (based off real life performances the last night). Then there’s always an event going on that produces cards.

As a casual player your best bet to get good pulls are completely the weekly tournaments. There’s HUT Rivals and HUT Champs online modes, but also Squad Battles which is all offline. Rewards come out every week and include packs.

The heavy hitters event was a long time ago, so while the card might be a little rare, it shouldn’t be too expensive for you to buy on the Auction House.

Last night I did find good content on YouTube. One guy in particular had a series of tutorials that he put together back in September. He was showing the one-handed tuck in practice mode. He was able to execute successfully over and over and over again. When I tried it worked possibly 3 or 4 times. One video was a compilation of goals he scored and it looked like it was all CPU controlled. I will never be at that level. New games are too far advanced for me. I remember when it was just a d-pad and two buttons (pass & shoot). That stuff I can handle. Needless to say, I won't be online anytime soon.

Thank you for the brief rundown on the card types.

 

[Rhaegar Targaryen]

Last night I did find good content on YouTube. One guy in particular had a series of tutorials that he put together back in September. He was showing the one-handed tuck in practice mode. He was able to execute successfully over and over and over again. When I tried it worked possibly 3 or 4 times. One video was a compilation of goals he scored and it looked like it was all CPU controlled. I will never be at that level. New games are too far advanced for me. I remember when it was just a d-pad and two buttons (pass & shoot). That stuff I can handle. Needless to say, I won't be online anytime soon.

Thank you for the brief rundown on the card types.

Honestly, just give it some time. It may seem way out of your skill level, but this game doesn't require a lot of skill. Once you get a hang of it, it's not too difficult to win online.

NHL 18 was my first HUT experience, and I won the Division 1 title and did pretty well for myself. By the end of NHL 19, I finished top 10 in an online competitive season.

This game is all practice. Even learning when to poke check, hit, or just have your player glide into another player. You'll get the hang of it.

 

[ElectricDreamMachine]

Couple tips:

Squad battles are great for learning the game + you'll get free packs for ranking in the leaderboards. To get the max points you'll need to win by 5 goals and get 20 shots or more and the harder the cpu difficulty the bigger the win difficulty modifier will be. Once you are beating a certain cpu level constantly just move up and when you are beating superstar you are probably gonna be at least average online and beating the lower divisions in rivals/seasons. Beating the cpu is all about getting to know the tendencies because cpu pretty much always defends and attacks the same way, the best way to defend is using collapsing and contain puck/protect net as defensive strategies and playing as a forward taking away the slot/backdoor passes and not following the puck into corners. Once you get better at basic defending you can start to play more aggressive, which is necessary for beating above average players online. If you want to play online, rivals is by far the best mode for beginners in terms of prizes. Online season prizes are a joke and hut champs is basically the same as playing div 1 rivals, which is pretty tough.

The best way to make coins in the beginning is to play squad battles and rivals. Once you have some bank you can start to flip cards in the auction house but this year you can do pretty well by just playing the games and selling everything you pull from the packs. Once you get the packs from the modes, never quick sell anything. Find out what the prices are for different items and auction them using buy now option. You can find out the prices for players quickly by putting the cards in a set for example gold players in the gold upgrade set and pressing the card and "search auction house" which will show the prices for that card only.
If you have untradeable players that won't make your team you can either put them in a upgrade set or put them in a set for making cold or icon collectibles, which you can use for special event players or icons.
And lastly NEVER buy packs from the store unless you are okay with gambling with low odds, they are a complete ripoff.

 

[Bondurant]

Sounds like it's best to save the coins for the auction house? Are there any rewards for lower tier players in online modes? I'll be dusted by anyone I play. I've seen it mentioned that if you cannot defeat the CPU on the hardest settings you will have virtually no chance head-to-head.

 

[Beauner]

Sounds like it's best to save the coins for the auction house? Are there any rewards for lower tier players in online modes? I'll be dusted by anyone I play. I've seen it mentioned that if you cannot defeat the CPU on the hardest settings you will have virtually no chance head-to-head.

Yeah save your coins. Packs aren't really worth it. And if you play Rivals you'll get some kind of reward regardless of where you finish. You have to play 5 "placement" games first which puts you in a division closest to your skill level. I'd say play your 5 Rivals placement games, then play a few regular rivlas games to get rewards. Worst case, you get smoked but get a few packs in return. Otherwise, definitely stick with Squad Battles for now and try to get as high as possible.

Also fwiw, I'd consider myself a pretty good player, and I don't ever mess with superstar difficulty.

 

[Bondurant]

Yeah save your coins. Packs aren't really worth it. And if you play Rivals you'll get some kind of reward regardless of where you finish. You have to play 5 "placement" games first which puts you in a division closest to your skill level. I'd say play your 5 Rivals placement games, then play a few regular rivlas games to get rewards. Worst case, you get smoked but get a few packs in return. Otherwise, definitely stick with Squad Battles for now and try to get as high as possible.

Also fwiw, I'd consider myself a pretty good player, and I don't ever mess with superstar difficulty.

Good to know there's still packs given to the losers. I've been reluctant for H2H because all of the teams I am seeing are loaded with 90+ rated players with special cards. One tutorial I was watching on YouTube was dated from early September and the dude already had a full squad of silver & gold Icons. My highest rated card (non loaner) is an 85 Larionov and my lines still have cards below 80. I will be dead in the water but if there's still packs to be had I'll give it a go.

 

[Beauner]

Good to know there's still packs given to the losers. I've been reluctant for H2H because all of the teams I am seeing are loaded with 90+ rated players with special cards. One tutorial I was watching on YouTube was dated from early September and the dude already had a full squad of silver & gold Icons. My highest rated card (non loaner) is an 85 Larionov and my lines still have cards below 80. I will be dead in the water but if there's still packs to be had I'll give it a go.

With the game being out for so long now, a lot of teams you run into will have better cards. If you only have limited time then just go all out on squad battles. But yeah if you can spare the time to get Rivals games in, there's no downside really (unless losing is really gonna grate on your nerves )

 

[BruinDust]

Good to know there's still packs given to the losers. I've been reluctant for H2H because all of the teams I am seeing are loaded with 90+ rated players with special cards. One tutorial I was watching on YouTube was dated from early September and the dude already had a full squad of silver & gold Icons. My highest rated card (non loaner) is an 85 Larionov and my lines still have cards below 80. I will be dead in the water but if there's still packs to be had I'll give it a go.

I picked up the game a month ago in anticipation of this lockdown.

Don't be afraid of H2H. If you play Online Seasons you'll start in Division 10. I've worked my way up to Division 5 and I've rarely come across any stacked teams full of 90+ rated cards. Certainly as I move up I will start seeing more of those teams, but starting off I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

[Rhaegar Targaryen]

Updated team:

Marner (98) - Lemieux (99) - McDavid (99)
Selanne (88) - Barkov (94) - Gretzky (99)
MacKinnon (90) - Sakic (88) - Dadonov (90)
Hirano (90) - Pageau (90) - Vrana (91)

Karlsson (94) - Coffey (97)
Fox (89) - Hughes (95)
Petry (90) - Gunderson (89)

Murray (90)
Rittich (90)

Saving up Icon Collectibles to upgrade Selanne to his 97, but this is pretty close to my end game team. All team synergies are activated. Not a huge fan of Dadonov, Sakic and Gunderson, so they'll probably be the next to go.

Good to know there's still packs given to the losers. I've been reluctant for H2H because all of the teams I am seeing are loaded with 90+ rated players with special cards. One tutorial I was watching on YouTube was dated from early September and the dude already had a full squad of silver & gold Icons. My highest rated card (non loaner) is an 85 Larionov and my lines still have cards below 80. I will be dead in the water but if there's still packs to be had I'll give it a go.

The great thing about online play is there's always packs up for grabs. Even lower end players do get a reward, which will help you get a good team (even if you don't get good pulls, the gold players can be converted into collectibles).

I wouldn't fear online play! Most of the modes are skill-based matchmaking to a certain extent, so you'll be playing beginners as well. And while higher overall cards can be intimidating, not everyone can use them well. You'll get used to habits of online players and learn how to combat them really well, just takes some practice.

 

[Wats]

Pastarnak (95) - Primeau (88) - Vrana (91)
Gartner (95) - Hertl (88) - Valk (89)
Vanek (88) - Brindamour (86) - Foligno (88)
Kobasew (86) - Bellemare (85) - Parise (86)

Hannan (90) - Haller (88)
Chelios (87) - Pronger (88)
Nurse (85) - Giordano (84)

Keumper (88)
Montoya (85)

Active team synergy: SP, TK, and FB

Saving up for a 90+ C to bump Brindamour off team.

I'm only in div 4 in HUT Rivals online and gotta say...some of these teams I'm facing is unbelievably stacked. Like 4th lines of 95+ overalls stacked. To be honest, not sure how fun it'd be to have such a team. I kinda enjoy trying to get Gartner/Pastarnak rested and back out there as much as I can.

 

[LarKing]

So I got this game a week or so ago and I followed the advice of some of the posts in this thread to play the rivals mode and team of the week. I’ve gotten some decent rewards from that but I’m struggling pretty hard with losing 95% of games I play. It’s frustrating losing so much.

Any gameplay advice for me? I pretty quickly got my team up to all 80+ players thanks to the loans and offline games that give you coins. Most team’s I face are better than mine but not crazy better because I’ve been relegated a lot. I really struggle with defense in this game. The poke check is a penalty almost every time so I never use it. The stick lift is good but you have to be so close to them it’s hard to use. People go around or pass so easily when you go for the hit. When I defend the puck carrier my other dman leaves a forward wide open. When I defend the open guy, my dman lets him walk right in and score. I just don’t know what to do to defend better.

Then my other question is the exchange sets. I understand the silver for gold players and gold for premium gold ones but the rest confuse me. Tried looking online but didn’t get a good answer. For example, what is an icon collectible? Or a gold collectible? I’ve got 12 of the April cards now but I’m saving them until I understand what I’m getting back a bit better.

 

[Beauner]

So I got this game a week or so ago and I followed the advice of some of the posts in this thread to play the rivals mode and team of the week. I’ve gotten some decent rewards from that but I’m struggling pretty hard with losing 95% of games I play. It’s frustrating losing so much.

Any gameplay advice for me? I pretty quickly got my team up to all 80+ players thanks to the loans and offline games that give you coins. Most team’s I face are better than mine but not crazy better because I’ve been relegated a lot. I really struggle with defense in this game. The poke check is a penalty almost every time so I never use it. The stick lift is good but you have to be so close to them it’s hard to use. People go around or pass so easily when you go for the hit. When I defend the puck carrier my other dman leaves a forward wide open. When I defend the open guy, my dman lets him walk right in and score. I just don’t know what to do to defend better.

Then my other question is the exchange sets. I understand the silver for gold players and gold for premium gold ones but the rest confuse me. Tried looking online but didn’t get a good answer. For example, what is an icon collectible? Or a gold collectible? I’ve got 12 of the April cards now but I’m saving them until I understand what I’m getting back a bit better.

Re: gameplay, on defense keep good gap control and focus on getting in shooting/passing lanes. Then go for the poke/stick lift when the chance arises. Especially against the computer. Online you can begin to guess and anticipate where a guy might go so it's easier to line someone up. Against the cpu just get in lanes.

Icon collectibles can be traded in for Icons. 1 collectible gets you a choice pack of one 85 icon. 12 collectibles get you 91 ovr mario/gretzky. They released upgraded icons as well, so you can trade in normal icons+colectibles for an upgrade of that player. For instance they just released 99 mario/gretzky So trade in the 91+collectibles and you get his 99.

Gold collectibles are used for events or to upgrade certain cards. For those/icon collectibles just go into sets and read the headings on everything. They'll explain it well enough

 

[LarKing]

Re: gameplay, on defense keep good gap control and focus on getting in shooting/passing lanes. Then go for the poke/stick lift when the chance arises. Especially against the computer. Online you can begin to guess and anticipate where a guy might go so it's easier to line someone up. Against the cpu just get in lanes.

Icon collectibles can be traded in for Icons. 1 collectible gets you a choice pack of one 85 icon. 12 collectibles get you 91 ovr mario/gretzky. They released upgraded icons as well, so you can trade in normal icons+colectibles for an upgrade of that player. For instance they just released 99 mario/gretzky So trade in the 91+collectibles and you get his 99.

Gold collectibles are used for events or to upgrade certain cards. For those/icon collectibles just go into sets and read the headings on everything. They'll explain it well enough

Thank you for the advice. I think I’m starting to understand the exchange sets now. 12 for Gretzky is crazy. Going to take forever.

I was a fool for trading in my gold players for premium gold players.

 

[Beauner]

Thank you for the advice. I think I’m starting to understand the exchange sets now. 12 for Gretzky is crazy. Going to take forever.

I was a fool for trading in my gold players for premium gold players.

As a beginner it's not the worst idea. Coming in this late to the game, you'll be behind the 8 ball regardless. I got mario pretty quickly but I play every day. Just keep playing squad battles and get as many rewards as possible

Honestly your position, where your team is kinda meh, is one of the more fun parts of the game. Each upgrade you make is awesome and if you pull a great card it feels amazing.

 

[ElectricDreamMachine]

Gonna upgrade my Mario tomorrow, I just need 1 more monthly collectible for the last Icon collectible. The 95 has been my favorite card to this date and can't wait to upgrade that beast, looked up his stats 317 games 168+239 not baaaad.
I might have overstated the online competition in my last post a little too much. Most people online will try the 1T backdoor/slot most of the time so when you learn to defend that you pretty much take away their only way to score at least in the lower divisions. For me what works is that simply you just read where they are gonna pass and stand in the passing lane with your vision control on.
My team tomorrow:
*Untradeable

*Ovechkin (99) - *Lemioux (99) - *Jagr (97)
*St.louis (97) - Stamkos (96) - Kucherov (87)
*Selänne (97) - *Sakic (97) - Cournouyer (86)
Hossa (91) - Toews (89) - Kane (86)

Byfyglien (88) - *Chara (93)
Doherty (88) - *Hedman (88)
*Addison (91) - *Sergachev (91)

Bishop (82)
Jarry (91) (for the synergies)

TK, 1T, WC, SP, FB
BL, X, TN, RS, WM

Next on my list is to upgrade Kuuch and Kane, and eventually Cournoyer when I get the icon collectibles.
Also online seasons are great if you play Co-op, highly recommend.

 

[hockeynorth]

Right now I have (play all forwards on the off wing):
Quinn (86)-Crosby (87)-Kucherov (87)
Mackinnon (86)-Debrusk (87)-Kane (86) *DeBrusk had better face-offs then Mac and have too many lefties
Ovechkin (86)-Acciari (86)-Marchand (86)
Marner (85)-Barkov (85)-Malkin (85)

Chychrun (85) - Horton (85)
Giordano (84) - Burns (85)
Hedman (84) - Carlson (84)

Anderson (86)
Price (84)

Anyone have any tips for me for team building or working with these players? Also have about 10.5k coins.

I have way too many snipers though and I prefer two way/pwf/playmakers to snipers. Messed up building my squad in that sense. Thought Debrusk was a PWF when I bought him lol oops.

 

[hockeynorth]

Updated team:

Marner (98) - Lemieux (99) - McDavid (99)
Selanne (88) - Barkov (94) - Gretzky (99)
MacKinnon (90) - Sakic (88) - Dadonov (90)
Hirano (90) - Pageau (90) - Vrana (91)

Karlsson (94) - Coffey (97)
Fox (89) - Hughes (95)
Petry (90) - Gunderson (89)

Murray (90)
Rittich (90)

Saving up Icon Collectibles to upgrade Selanne to his 97, but this is pretty close to my end game team. All team synergies are activated. Not a huge fan of Dadonov, Sakic and Gunderson, so they'll probably be the next to go.



The great thing about online play is there's always packs up for grabs. Even lower end players do get a reward, which will help you get a good team (even if you don't get good pulls, the gold players can be converted into collectibles).

I wouldn't fear online play! Most of the modes are skill-based matchmaking to a certain extent, so you'll be playing beginners as well. And while higher overall cards can be intimidating, not everyone can use them well. You'll get used to habits of online players and learn how to combat them really well, just takes some practice.

How do you convert players to collectibles?

 

[Beauner]

How do you convert players to collectibles?

Under sets. Icons sets has an option to trade 50 gold players for a collectible and the event sets have a 50 player set for a gold collectible

 

[ElectricDreamMachine]

Also you'll get a free gold collectible by completing the weekly cpu challenges, currently there is 6 of them and you need 9 to complete the set (the rest of the challenges are coming next week).

 

[LarKing]

As a beginner it's not the worst idea. Coming in this late to the game, you'll be behind the 8 ball regardless. I got mario pretty quickly but I play every day. Just keep playing squad battles and get as many rewards as possible

Honestly your position, where your team is kinda meh, is one of the more fun parts of the game. Each upgrade you make is awesome and if you pull a great card it feels amazing.

I enjoy upgrading my team but it's also not fun running into teams where they're worst player is higher than my best haha.

One thing that isn't making sense to me though: I see the icon collectible sell for about 70k - 80k at the auction house. But if you can trade 50 gold players which can be bought for about 850 - 900 each, should their value not be about 42.5k - 45k? Seems like the people selling don't realize this or do realize it but are hoping others don't or are just too lazy to spend 10 minutes buying 50 players.

 

[ElectricDreamMachine]

Yeah the collectible prices are high because it's so rare to pull a tradeable from the packs. Right now gold player prices are high because of the Mario and Gretz upgrades. Best time to buy players is usually when the packs are rewarded from Rivals (Thursday 5pm est) and squad battles (Friday 5pm est).

 

[LarKing]

Yeah the collectible prices are high because it's so rare to pull a tradeable from the packs. Right now gold player prices are high because of the Mario and Gretz upgrades. Best time to buy players is usually when the packs are rewarded from Rivals (Thursday 5pm est) and squad battles (Friday 5pm est).

It's just strange to me. You would think the market would be set by the lowest price of gold players because it's pretty obvious doing the 50 gold players sets is far cheaper.

Also, I realized yesterday that you can play more than just the 5 games for the single player hut teams mode. I was wondering how people had like 50k points when I was only getting like 5k. Looking forward to even better rewards this week.