OBW or The Hood?

Leugenesmiff

Ok, I've got some HP saved up and am thinking of getting my Hood up to snuff but I've got a question I thought I'd ask here first. I'm interested in using Hood mostly for his AP stealing, not for Sentry combos. That said I've already got OBW filling that role and her blue really helps against a goons in PVE. I don't see myself using both at once very often. So, is Hood a better AP control character than OBW or, having OBW already would spending HP on Hood's blue to fill the AP control role be a waste?
Thanks for any help.
BTW my Hood is currently 5/2/4 and I'd only be able to get him to 5/4/4 with my 2500 HP right now and either hope for or save up for that last blue.

Nonce Equitaur 2

OBW is better, but she has to collect purple, and that leaves her open.
Hood is better long term, since he can stay in the background.

Much of Hood's drain depends on layout. He steals when there is More than 9 of a color. On average, there will be 9 tiles of each color and 10 team-up tiles, which gives a net drain of nothing. Eliminate a color or the team up tiles and then you might get 5 or 6 a turn.

Thus, Hood might drain your opponent. Overall, he does a good job slowing an opponent down some. OBW can be much more aggressive about it.

NorthernPolarity

It really depends on your team composition. The thing about Hood is that the majority of the AP stolen with him is going to be in colors that you are NOT prioritizing. Example: say you're running X-Force / C. Mags. With this team, you really want to focus on green / black / red, which means that there are going to be less tiles on the board of those colors on average so less chance for Hood to be stealing those colors. This means that Hood is going to be stealing a lot of yellow / blue / purple. Now, stealing these colors is actually very good for this team, since yellow can fuel Twin Pistols (which is normally completely unachievable) and blue fuels Translocate.

Like Nonce said, OBW differs in that she'll steal less AP in the long term, but with her you know that you're going to get AP in even your prioritized colors, which isn't the case normally.

If your team has good abilities in 5 colors, then go ahead and take Hood since you can use the excess AP regardless. If it doesn't then OBW's probably doing more for you.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

It really depends on your team composition. The thing about Hood is that the majority of the AP stolen with him is going to be in colors that you are NOT prioritizing. Example: say you're running X-Force / C. Mags. With this team, you really want to focus on green / black / red, which means that there are going to be less tiles on the board of those colors on average so less chance for Hood to be stealing those colors. This means that Hood is going to be stealing a lot of yellow / blue / purple. Now, stealing these colors is actually very good for this team, since yellow can fuel Twin Pistols (which is normally completely unachievable) and blue fuels Translocate.

CMags Polarizing Force also helps a lot with Hood, as destroying team-ups means there's way more chance you'll be stealing AP. Really depends on your team team compositions.

over_clocked

I would not spend HP if you only have 2 blue covers. Just wait and earn covers naturally; maybe you will be able to build 5 blue without having to buy covers.

oBW is the best in the 2* land and in the transition land. She's also better for anti-goon PvE, especially Maggia since they generate tons of blue. But Hood is also great against those.
With Hood, you indeed fail to see much benefit unless you can flood the board, remove a colour quickly like with XF/cMags, and have strong abilities in at least 4-5 colours. Hood is better overall due to having higher level cap and a passive steal.
You can use both together after you get more blue Hood covers, they work very well as a team, you just need your 3rd guy to be good at red/green/optionally yellow and black damage and preferably be buffed:
A.Wolvie (strike tile synergy, charges yellow for Pistols),
Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Flame Jet synergy, Inferno anti-synergy),
Ares (Anti-Gravity/Sunder/Intimidation and Onslaught/Aggressive Recon synergy),
2* and 3* Thor,
Patch (strike tile/Espionage/Twin Pistols synergy),
Punisher (strike tile synergy, Molotov early, Intimidation as a finisher for single targets),
Sentry (World Rupture + Intimidation and Sacrifice + Espionage synergy. Anti-Gravity can be used to negate self-damage before WR/Sacrifice. Just try not to use Supernova often as Hood and oBW will most probably die to it).
Even lacking green, LC/Hood/oBW are one awesome team too (you can bring Flame Jet/Onslaught team-ups to use all that green). oBW will only have purple over Hood after Hood breaks level 105 I believe, it's cool since she has lower health, but she will still synergize with strike tile guys on purple and have a failsafe steal for you in case Hood's is not enough.

jobob

I like to take Hood along on most of my runs, he seems to help a ton with damage mitigation... Hood's real value for me comes in making sure the enemy team hardly ever gets off a special attack, especially one of the more devastating ones. I don't think I've ever been hit with Storm's Wind Storm, or Thor's Thunder Strike or Call the Storm... I just keep siphoning off enough to keep them from getting the AP. I also like the fact that (as opposed to OBW) I don't have to worry with actually collecting AP to do it, allowing me to focus on the AP that generates my offensive abilities, which helps with ending the game quicker as well. He also has an active black, wich tends to be a gap, so he at least does some damage (and helps a lot reducing countdowns, so it plays nice with some of my other favs, like MN Magneto, Fury, or Cap)

The exception is PVE goons, which generate AP too fast for Hood to effectively steal, and OBW's countdown increase provides a huge boon.

GrimSkald

I'm in the 3* transition now - the Hood was my second 3* to cross the level 100 barrier. I kind of lucked into an opposite build from yours: 2/5/3. Honestly, I think I got the better luck here (sorry.) 5 blue is just so very, very useful in a number of situations, while the black is very situational and the yellow is just so damn expensive. Even at the level you have it, I think it is too expensive to use on a regular basis. It is an extremely handy ability, but its cost makes it a lot more situational.

In your case, I think I'd go with the covers. Hood is definitely a more useful later-game character than OBW, but I still use both - particularly when we have blue-generating goons. Against the Muscles on the New York board of the most recent PVE I used Ares/Hood/OBW and that worked pretty well. I could generally get enough blue using the Hood to fire off Anti-Gravity Device and delay those darn strike tiles, meanwhile Ares fed off the yellow and I got a lot of my green back with both the Hood and OBW. Your only real danger is a blue or yellow-poor board.