Basics of hogging at TH8

The basics of hogging at TH8

Hi vipers, I thought I'd write a short post what I've learnt (from others and my own experiences) about the basics of hogging at TH8, for those new to the art. At TH8, you can hog any base for 3*, so it is a skill worth learning and a good precursor to TH9. There are 3 main phases to a hog attack: 1) the CC lure, 2) the main hog attack, and finally 3) the cleanup.

Troops:

1. Lvl1-2 hogs are not viable most of the time because they vanish to single giant bombs. Lvl3 are definitely viable, but difficult (though not impossible, I've seen vipers do it) to 3* a max TH8.
2. A good composition: 6 barbs, 2 archers, 8 wizards, 32 hogs. However, always let your planning dictate your army composition; you shouldn't need to follow this template. You should never need to bring more than 8 wizards (see section below on killing CC troops); this gives you more hogs and a better chance at completing the second phase.
3. CC: 2witch/1barb, or 5 max hogs (not exhaustive). The former is probably better if you need to kill an AQ. The latter is preferred if your main hog attack force is going to be small. I prefer the latter in most situations.

Planning:

Always plan your hog attack. If you find yourself putting down hogs and praying for a 3*, you might 3* an early-mid TH8 base, but you will not consistently 3* a maxed-out TH8 target.

1. Attack direction. If the target's BK is off-core, try to finish your hog attack at where the target's BK is. This increases the chances of your hogs killing the enemy BK as early in the cleanup stage as possible. This usually means attacking from the opposite end of where the BK is located.
2. Attack pathing. Hogs path from defense to defense. Try to make your hogs path from one end of a target's base to the other, in as streamlined a fashion as possible. This increases the efficiency of your heal spells, and reduces the amount of time your hogs take in their run. Some questions to consider: can you remove any defense to make your hogs path in this way? What can you do to remove those defenses?
3. Deployment. Related to the above, how you deploy your hogs also dictates how they will path. Deploying your hogs on 2-4 targets helps them to move forwards instead of sideways to said targets, and can affect whether they will split into 2 groups early on. Avoid deploying your hogs with 1 finger only, always use at least 2, even if deploying on only 1 target.
4. GB spots. Always take into consideration GB or DGB spots in your plan, and always plan on dealing with them. Single GB spots are not as threatening and can be dealt with by healing over them. DGBs are show stoppers because they can completely wipe out your entire hog army if you happen to path over and detonate them. Of course, GBs and DGBs are only relevant if your hogs can path over them, i.e. they are in between defenses. Always deal with DGBs, either by pruning your hogs' path, or detonating them. See section below on main hog attack.
5. Lastly, always look for base weaknesses and ask yourself what could be exploited. This could form the basis of your attack plan. Be creative!

CC lure and kill:

1. Lure completely. Use barbs to lure if you can put troops in the target's CC range. Otherwise, use giants if you can walk into the CC range. Otherwise, you will need hogs (or loons) if the enemy CC range is within walls. Some factors to consider while calculating the lure composition include the presence of bombs/traps and the number of point defenses in the vicinity. As a general guideline, you need at least 2 giants or at least 3 hogs; increase as you see fit. It's always worth sacrificing 1 hog to double check that the CC is empty if you are not sure of a complete lure.
2. Luring. Use an archer to "anchor" the lure to a side building. Then try to bunch enemy troops together in a tight group, outside the range of enemy defenses.
3. Kill composition. You can kill ANY TH8 enemy CC troop composition with 4-5 wizards and barch.
4. Killing. In general, always place 1-2 barbs within range of the enemy wizards, then immediately put your wizards down behind, then put your BK down in range of the enemy troops. Enemy CC troops will target the barbs and then die to your wizards; those who didn't die will target the BK next. If you are using a CC kill squad, put down 1-2 barbs, then deploy CC about 5-7 squares away, or witches might get targeted first. Try to keep your kill squad as far away from enemy defenses as possible; spread out your wizards, even if you are in a tight corner you can still spread them out in a line on the very edge. Don't put any of your wizards within range of enemy towers, or they are as good as dead. Against witches: Not necessary to group witch into the same group as the other enemy CC troops, just lure them out far enough, then split your kill squad into 2 (a barb and a few wiz each) against both the other group and the witch. Make sure skeles are in the other group. Against dragon: Lure enemy CC troops out as far as possible. At this point dragon should be behind other enemy troops. Kill the other troops, then put your BK down. Drag will chase BK, wizards will take care of drag.
5. CC kill location. It's always a good idea to lure the enemy CC to whereever you are starting your hog attack from. You want to keep as many wizards and your BK alive by putting them behind your main attack force. That way they get "shielded" by the hogs and the hogs remove the threat of nearby defenses so your wizards can continue cleaning up even when the main hog attack is taking place.

Main hog attack:

1. Detonating bombs. If you see GB spot on the outside, attempting to detonate them is sometimes worth a hog or two. This can also be done before the lure, or even as part of the lure. It is sometimes worth it to consider muscling your way into DGB spots to detonate them at the cost of reducing your main hog force.
2. Pruning hog pathing. If you can't deal with DGB spots by detonating them, an alternative is to remove defenses that will cause your hogs to path into the DGBs, i.e. one of the 2 defenses sandwiching the DGB spot. This is the basis of HoLo attacks.
3. Heal placement. Plan to place your heals to cover as many defenses as possible. Your hogs are running in between defenses, so this is optimal. It's always better to heal earlier rather than later. One of the signs of a well planned attack is if you know exactly where you are going to place your heals. In a majority of cases you never wing all of your heals.

Final tips:

1. Be snappy. When luring, aim to place the next troop just before the other troop dies so you minimize pauses. Once you start getting more confident with your CC lure and kill, you can start trying to overlap the CC kill phase and the main hog attack phase. You need as much time as possible in the cleanup phase.

Happy hogging!

Edit 1: additional explanation about GBs