Unless you plan on really playing with the surface, the Awesome Hook is, by far and wide, much more of an oil ball than the Epic.  From my understanding, the Epic seems to work for you for the first game/couple of games -- until you have to move in.  I would consider an Epic Saga, or, if you think that will slide too much, a slightly-moderately polished Horizon Solid drilled for length with a strong backend (something like 4.5x4 and maybe a weight hole 1 inch down from your PAP).

Hope this helps!
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I am the University of Virginia's Bowling Team.  After all, one All-American is all you need.

i have an epic and a battle and i have seen that when there is enough oil that the epic will get to the pocket and not finish the battle shines. I have never seen an awesome hook used ,but if you like your epic i think the battle you will also like for when the epic doesnt have that last bit of umph.
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my style, the art of bowling without bowling

Awesome Hook will be far earlier and stronger than the epic will be, Awesome Hook is more comparable to Battle
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Mainzerpower

I get frustrated by watching the one person I know throwing a battle.  He seriously has 10 boards of area with that ball. He throws ~15-18 depending on the shot (no lie, he feels himself getting one in and turns up the speed somehow, and lets one out with less) and throws very little rotation in my opinion. The battle flat out KILLS the pins and I am the farthest thing you will find from a Roto fan after my experience with them.  The battle is very heavy rolling, so not inherently recovery prone, but I would say on the shot you are describing it may just be perfect.  I am using a sanded vapor zone to hit the same type of shot for me, and its working great b/c it won't over recover and nose job me if i leave it out.

Thanks for the reply Jesse. Just to clarify, I am a right-handed medium speed player with maybe a touch more hand than most so I will say medium-high rev. rate. My book average for last year was 223 although I am in the 2-teens this year. On any given night I start out with my Silver Streak Se playing about 11 out to five with good results.  The track area quickly burns up however to a point of what I would consider a pretty severe over/under condition forcing me to move in. If I pull the ball at all with my SSSE after I make this move it sails through the heads and lacks the carry power on the back end resulting in weak tens. If I miss right, especially in the early part of the lane it over reacts & heads through the nose (hence over/under). Last year I purchased an Epic that I had great results with and was able to move left right away (15 out to 8 or so) & stay inside the burned up area and carry well through the entire set, continually moving left. This year, it seems that when I try to do this with my Epic it lacks the back end reaction to carry consistently. I think there may be more oil in the middle of the lane this year or perhaps my current equipment needs to be replaced as I have a ton of games on my Epic. Thus leads me to this post. I am considering purchasing a new Epic for the sake of a new cover and that might just be the ticket, or something with a little more cover, which led me to look at the Awesome Hook. I didn’t post this comparison to ask which ball is “better” which is such a subjective term. I posted it to get feed back on how the Epic & Awesome hook compared to each other with all other factors being equal. Should one have more overall hook than the other? Should I expect more back end? Does one hook sooner, and so on.  I appreciate all who posted & now I am considering other equipment like the Horizon Solid, the Saga, & the Radar Lock peak my interest. I have read on these boards that the Saga is like an “SSSE on steroids”. If that’s the case, I feel like that ball might fit the bill. One of my teammates has an Epic Battle that died on him after about thirty games and after watching this I have to admit I am gun shy about the Battle. It sounds like the Awesome Hook might have too much shell to accomplish the look I am after. I hope this clears up the head scratching. The search continues……and I know it may be the Indian not the arrow.