1) Hulk enemies doesn't have variable strength. The U-foes, The Abomination, The Leader inventions, wendigos, Zzzax, Mr. Hyde, Red-Hulk, Xemnu, etc, have always the same strength, and Hulk has fought them in both states (angry and calm) many, many times, being normally comparable (or slighty weaker) to them when calm and being stronger than them when enraged. And many Hulk enemies has good fights against other 4-B characters.
2) Hulk allies doesn't have variable strength either (or it's not as variable as the Hulk strength), and in base Hulk shouldn't be THAT weaker than any of them. She-Hulk is like since 2004 (or 2005, don't remember very well) treated as almost equal to Savage Hulk, as she has defeated since then many Hulk classic enemies (like the Abomination, Wendigo, U-Foes...) and proved herself stronger than Hercules. Skaar could fight Juggernaut (he was weaker, yes, but put a better fight than Colossus and a caught off-guard and calm Professor Hulk), defeated with ease Superia, who is comparable to Modern Carol Danvers, and put a good fight against Green Scar (World War Hulk). A-bomb fought evenly against Red Hulk. Lyra (Hulk daughter from the future), although she in fact has variable strength (she can get extremely weak when angry), normally is calm, and is comparable to Modern She-Hulk and Red She-Hulk. Red She-Hulk was able to fight Green Scar, could fight against his father and was able to defeat the Redeemer armor, an armor able to fight Savage Hulk, Red Hulk and stomp Samson. And Samson, arguably the weakest of the gamma gang, who is stated to be as strong as a calm Hulk, defeated once with much effort an enraged Hulk and recently in Immortal Hulk could resist a beating from an extremely angry Savage Hulk and even blocked one of his punches.
3) In some cases, Hulk has not been able to get stronger or, for being in an inteligence state, succesfuly prevents himself to get too much angry and stays with effort in calm state. This is the case of Professor Hulk, Banner controling Hulk body and Doc Green. In the first case, during an arc Professor Hulk couldn't get stronger, but weaker when angry (this situation is explained in Hulk profile) so hestruggle to stay calm and in that state he fought with effort against Thor and The Abomination and it wasn't directly outclassed by them. Once, Banner in control of Hulk body, and without getting angry, fought a wendigo (who, in turn, can fight Genis-Vell and injure him) without much problem, althought he didn't have the power to knocked him out, he was more than a match for the hairy beast. Doc Green doesn't get as angry as other Hulks, and in a very calm state one-shotted modern Carol Danvers. And there are some cases of a calm Savage Hulk fighting 4-B characters, like when Savage Hulk, at his weakest due to Annihilus empathic manipulation, was able to injure him in his hulksified state, or when he fought Juggernaut the first time, he really didn't want to fight, he was like getting bored of the situation, getting weaker every moment and he still put a good fight.
4) The whole variable Hulk strength thing depends of his emotional state. Calm=weaker, angry=stronger, so to really determine how variable its his tier, it's necessary to check all his worst showings and see if he was angry or not. For example, if we see in a comic Hulk being injured by an old Iron Man model, and in said comic Hulk is angry then it's an outlier and nothing more. If we find that, in most of his worst showings he's in fact calm, then yes, he has a very, very variable tier.
5) Hulk not directly killing 9-A characters when fighting them is thanks to Bruce Banner influence. Remember that he subconsciously do some stuff to reduce casualties to almost 0 during Hulk rampages and fights, something theorized by Amadeus Cho and likely confirmed by the Immortal Hulk series.
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