I think B3 has more versatile use, I can use it like an ESN hybrid if I want or a H3 if I want, it can deal with both style. H3 is very sensitive to racket angles. B3 not so sensitive, so even if you a little bit close your racket angle the ball won't end up in the bottom of the net. You don't need to worry about your impact so much, you can rub the ball too and it works out pretty well, but strong impact shots are great.
B3 is very good at service, that hack is hard not to notice and appreciate.
I now flirt around twiddling my B3 on my backhand sometimes and I can play with it just fine and I wouldn't say it resembles V15 extra much by look but I can play with the 40deg B3 just fine on my backhand. So it must be more tolerant than H3 or some other Chinese rubbers.
This is a really good point.
I slightly alluded to this in a previous post, but I don't believe the way the TT community compares/describes throw angle captures one of the key effects this has on the player. Admittedly, it's probably more of a technical challenge trying to measure this consistently, than anything else, but whatever the reason, the outcome, the way we discuss throw angle, is flawed.
Basically, rubbers do not have a singular throw angle metric. What we call "throw angle", is just a generalisation and doesn't capture the equally significant fact that even if two rubbers block or drive with the same blade angle at a given ball speed, they might have significantly different throw angles when looping, or at other ball speeds.
I believe that rubbers requiring less overall blade angle adjustment across the full dynamic range of shots and impact speeds, the more natural and predictable that rubber will feel. More importantly, the easier that rubbers full potential can be exploited
I believe this is why B3 is more versatile and even playable on backhand (at least, based on my observation, using a B3 on a V14Pro).
I actually have a good example of this.
Gold Arc 8 50 is my current backhand, and this has a very similar throw angle for passive blocking and drives, compared with my previous setup, which was Battle 2 Prov. Soft 37 (which is super nice on backhand, btw).
Initially, things felt great. They were so similar that it seemed as though I would be able to play with very little adjustment, but I would have more speed potential to exploit. 10 minutes into the session, we started to pickup the pace, and I started adding in some loops and flicks. All of a sudden, I'm dumping huge topspin loops into the net (with so much spin that the ball was trying to climb it), and sending some pretty pathetic active blocks long because they were 6 inches above the net. What's worse, it felt random as to when it would go long, or when it would dump.
It wasn't a grip issue, it wasn't a brush/slip issue, and it wasn't (mostly) a catapult issue. So why the hell was it so hard to get used to GA8? Was this rubber hyper spin sensitive?
I struggled for weeks with this, until it clicked.
The blade angle requirements of GA8 had a strong speed dependency.
It wasn't spin, it wasn't that the rubber was too fast, I simply needed to make some minor adjustments to the blade angle, based on the total impact speed.
Within 2 days after figuring this out, I could confidently crush the ball out of the air again and I've never looked back.
