Hood v. Loki

Vhailorx

What is the consensus on the relative value of these two as ap-generating support characters?

Hood was the old gold-standard for this role, but Loki's mischief is fantastic for mitigating the risk of enemy cascades.

And as a secondary question, what is the value of this role in general in the new 4* world? obviously thorverine is top of the heap, but what about players without the best possible team (or with only 1 of those 2)?

Is it worth outright buying hood blue or loki green up to 5? what about buying loki green if one already has hood blue at 5 (or vise versa)?

wirius

Arguably hood is better. This is because of consistency, and consistency is always superior in multiple games over time than something like Loki's power, which is fluxuates in effectiveness. Hood also has an amazing offensive yellow that can target and remove tiles. Hood is also arguably better on defense, as a good player can largely avoid Loki's green.

That being said, if Hood is God tier, Loki is tier 1. They're both great. Should you buy hood? Depends on your roster and where you are. I use my hood all of the time with X-force, and he's great.

Unknown

Loki is purely a support character, while hood is a support and has a nuke ability. Hood blue is one of the only 3* covers worth buying (i would say lthor yellow and bp black are the other 2). Loki mischief has been offered pretty generously so i wouldn't buy his green.

The only benefit of a ap stealing character in the 4* world is more hp and more damage for those supports with damaging abilities. Honestly, the cost of leveling a 4* support isn't worth their abilities so just stick with your 3* supports.

Unknown

Here's my stance:

The only teams that attack a Hood team are other hood teams and Xthor teams.

Any team can attack a Loki team, they just go slow.

So Hood generates fewer attacks.

Loki generates higher attacks but slightly more defensive wins

Generally, I prefer Hood because I'd always take the fewer attacks over the chance of my dumbass AI winning.

NorthernPolarity

There isn't enough love for Loki in this thread. Hood has his merits defensively as Onimus said, but if you have XF / GT, XF / GT / Loki is by far better on offense than XF / GT / Hood. Two main reasons for this:
1. Hood tanks yellow and blue, meaning that if you're going for surges, Hood's going to end up taking 700-1k damage per match on average. Given that he only has 5k HP, this is no bueno. Loki, on the other hand, only tanks purple, and therefore lasts a lot longer than Hood sitting behind XF / GT.
2. In a 4or world where only gathering blue and red AP matters (highly scaled PvE in particular), illusions and mischief is way better than DA. Most of the games you lose are ones where the AI gets a string of insane cascades, and mischief greatly mitigates this problem. Furthermore, if you're prioritizing blue and red for 4or (as you should be), Hood isn't stealing blue and red, and so isn't really generating AP for that. Loki, on the other hand, generates a ton of blue and red AP with illusions and mischief, and so is far better at supporting 4or.

Assuming I could only pick 1 guy for XF / GT, I would pick Loki. He is so much better on offense than Hood that it's worth sacrificing a little bit of PvP defense to use him instead. Not to mention that in PvP for 4* players you're just using XF / GT / Featured anyways, making the only time this matters PvE.

If you only have XF, I can see an argument for Hood, since XF / Hood / Featured is generally better than XF / Loki / Featured. If you only have 4or, Loki is a nobrainer since Hood dies in 4 matches.

Unknown

Hood is awesome on offense for me because I don't have TGT so I have to have him to slow down the other team which at the higher ranks is xforce/TGT. I don't have a maxed out loki but having faced him, I would say I would much rather face hood. Loki just slows the game down way too much by denying match 4s/5s from your arsenal. He is super annoying and even his animations are so long that facing him during hops, just isn't beneficial at all. So I would say, for me, hood is better on offense, and loki on defense because he just kills you in terms of speed and that is a primary element in successful hopping.

PuceMoose

Hood is likely *better* from a completely sterile logical estimation of his respective value compared to Loki, but I definitely have more fun playing with Loki. It's so satisfying to see numerous little countdown tiles spring up from your enemy's "luck" (even though the recent Q&A confirmed confirmation bias is the thing, not the RNG's mood being a thing). It's a great feeling to be navigating a board filled with your own countdowns, all with the subconscious "That's what you get, CHEATER!" vibe that inevitably accompanies an epic enemy cascade. Loki actually *rewards* you from the enemy getting lucky (or 'cheating', depending on how charitable your mood is, or how many adult beverages you've had), and that's a satisfying feeling.

Unknown

Hood is still better, but Loki covers purple which is a hard color to get, and is easier to hide behind X Force.

Spoit

The most important aspect about loki is that, unlike hood, he doesn't immediately fold after a single x-foce

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

What is the consensus on the relative value of these two as ap-generating support characters?

Hood was the old gold-standard for this role, but Loki's mischief is fantastic for mitigating the risk of enemy cascades.

And as a secondary question, what is the value of this role in general in the new 4* world? obviously thorverine is top of the heap, but what about players without the best possible team (or with only 1 of those 2)?

Is it worth outright buying hood blue or loki green up to 5? what about buying loki green if one already has hood blue at 5 (or vise versa)?

Your post describes me to the T.

I dont have X-Force. (only 2 Yellow)

I have LVL 150 4Thor (5 blue, 5 red, 1 yellow) and fully covered Hood, Loki. The only other 3* I use is fully covered Patch.

I'm able to beat any team including 270 Xforce/Thor/whomever. 4Thor is that strong paired with Hood & Loki. Hood & Loki all but guarantee the enemy team never getting off a single attack before 4Thor can stun one opponent and insta-kill the other. I'm able to usually climb to 600-700 with this team before running out of health packs. i then shield, and push 1-3 times more for 800-1000 PVP reward.

I would say LOKI is more valuable to me than Hood by far. Hood is nice with his AP steal, but I don't really trust it. If enemy Xforce already has 10 black and there is no more on the board; Hood won't be stealing any black. Loki will be taking 2-4 black preventing Xforce attack. Sure hood can steall -1 AP every turn from multiple colors, but Loki often gets -8AP in a single turn. The AI gets match-4's ALOT. It's not uncommon for me to receive 10-16AP in a single turn if AI gets off multiple match 4's.

Loki also DRASTICALLY helps with his board shakeup and guaranteeing me a Blue or Red match almost every turn. I run 4Thor + Loki 99% of the time with success. Its a little slow for top tier PVP, but it wins vs all teams. To me Loki is the best support character in the game. If you Pair him with Patch, he often does 4k+ dmg cascades making him strong on offense as well. LOKI and Patch are one of the BEST duos in the game. Loki makes Patch a DEFENSIVE powerhouse, and Patch makes Loki an OFFENSIVE powerhouse. Plus Patch has best true heal in game so you can take this duo the stretch to save on healh packs in PVE AND PVP.

I won't comment which is better on AI defense, because AI defense is pointless and not a factor in high level PVP. Shields are my AI. They work 100% of the time. No team is safe or even that hard right now with 4Thor + boosts.

Unknown

Switchman wrote:

I dont have X-Force. (only 2 Yellow)

I have LVL 150 4Thor (5 blue, 5 red, 1 yellow) and fully covered Hood, Loki. The only other 3* I use is fully covered Patch.

I'm able to beat any team including 270 Xforce/Thor/whomever. 4Thor is that strong paired with Hood & Loki. Hood & Loki all but guarantee the enemy team never getting off a single attack before 4Thor can stun one opponent and insta-kill the other. I'm able to usually climb to 600-700 with this team before running out of health packs. i then shield, and push 1-3 times more for 800-1000 PVP reward.

So you got most of your 4thor covers climbing pvp 1000 with just patch and loki?

I have a 2/4/5 patch, 2/5/5 loki and a 4/1/1 hulk.
And currently I'm debating whether to open deadpool tokens to optimize
A) finishing patch and loki or roll for hulk blacks. Which would your recommend?

I'm using 2/5/4 thor and 5/5/3 hood atm, and hit 725, before shield hopping during the last 2 pvps where I could thor/hood/loki.
I'm assuming my score will be a bit lower now that I can only use hood or loki.

Unknown

Kriegerbot wrote:

Switchman wrote:

I dont have X-Force. (only 2 Yellow)

I have LVL 150 4Thor (5 blue, 5 red, 1 yellow) and fully covered Hood, Loki. The only other 3* I use is fully covered Patch.

I'm able to beat any team including 270 Xforce/Thor/whomever. 4Thor is that strong paired with Hood & Loki. Hood & Loki all but guarantee the enemy team never getting off a single attack before 4Thor can stun one opponent and insta-kill the other. I'm able to usually climb to 600-700 with this team before running out of health packs. i then shield, and push 1-3 times more for 800-1000 PVP reward.

So you got most of your 4thor covers climbing pvp 1000 with just patch and loki?

I have a 2/4/5 patch, 2/5/5 loki and a 4/1/1 hulk.
And currently I'm debating whether to open deadpool tokens to optimize
A) finishing patch and loki or roll for hulk blacks. Which would your recommend?

I'm using 2/5/4 thor and 5/5/3 hood atm and can hit 725 before shield hopping.

I was lucky and got my three colors for 4Thor early, through token pulls. Then I bought 4 more Blue and 4 more red , leaving yellow at 1. It cost $$$ but it literally shaved 1 year + of time as far as progression in MPQ goes and allowed me to not have to depend on PVE as my only source of 3*. I went from beginning to lose all interest in this game due to the Broken 2-3 progression, to enjoying the game and feeling rewarded for my time.

I'd recommend finishing Loki, Patch, & 4Thor if you can. I have 4/2/3 Hulk and hear he can kill any team paired with Patch (Hulk Bombing), but I am having to save all HP/ISO for xforce so I can't speak on how great Hulk is. Loki just makes the game so much smoother. He denies enemy AP, he generates AP for you, he board shakes to almost always give red/blue matches for 4Thor, he turns bad tiles to good tiles, he works beautifully with Patch, he is a pain for other players...dude is just the ultimate grease to keep the wheel turning.

Hood is nice, but unless you are matching Charged Yellow tiles...his nuke isn't going off anytime soon. Intimidation only really boosts Lcap and LOKI.

spccrain

Here's my thoughts. While both are fantastic defensively, I find more use for Hood just because of the method at which his HP steal works. Countdowns are unpredictable and Loki's steal can also choose TU tiles as the steal rendering them little more than useless to me. Don't get me wrong, once Loki got his 3rd power he jumped up on my list pretty quick. I also don't attack a Loki or Hood team unless they are worth a good (32+) amount of points.
Also if you bring down everyone but Loki then you might as well retreat, however with Hood's you can still be on the offensive. I mean, boosted Hood's yellow is doing nearly 9k damage for me in the PvE. Loki just doesn't have any true offensive capabilities.
So imo both are great defensively but Hood also has a good strong offensive capability whereas Loki just has a board shaker.

NorthernPolarity

spccrain wrote:

Here's my thoughts. While both are fantastic defensively, I find more use for Hood just because of the method at which his HP steal works. Countdowns are unpredictable and Loki's steal can also choose TU tiles as the steal rendering them little more than useless to me. Don't get me wrong, once Loki got his 3rd power he jumped up on my list pretty quick. I also don't attack a Loki or Hood team unless they are worth a good (32+) amount of points.
Also if you bring down everyone but Loki then you might as well retreat, however with Hood's you can still be on the offensive. I mean, boosted Hood's yellow is doing nearly 9k damage for me in the PvE. Loki just doesn't have any true offensive capabilities.
So imo both are great defensively but Hood also has a good strong offensive capability whereas Loki just has a board shaker.

The thing is that LadyThor is so much more efficient than anything else you can remotely be doing in this game that "just a board shaker" translates to "red and blue AP", which translates to "wreck face with LadyThor". Loki is much more about illusions (which is easily the best purple skill in the game right now) than he is about mischief, although mischief is pretty great cascade insurance as well. My logic is this:
1. Is there anything in the game that can do even remotely as much damage as surge / smite? Nope.
2. If this is true, would I rather have my support have an okay damaging skill (Pistols), or a skill that helps me get to Surge Smite much faster? (Illusions)

The choice is pretty obvious with LadyThor. DA doesn't even accelerate red/blue AP since if you are prioritizing those colors, then you aren't stealing them with DA. Hood might have been better in a metagame where you actually cared about getting a rainbow set of colors, but with LadyThor around, the only thing that really matters is surge/smite for any meaningful match.

Hood is better when you can utilize all colors of the rainbow and they are all roughly equally efficient or if you actually need your support to do damage, but when LadyThor is around, neither of those are true. I will say that Hood is probably much better for a transitioner where you lack damage, and so need him to prop your team up damagewise, But once you have LadyThor, he gets a lot worse.

spccrain

True that Loki could be more effective with 4Thor but I'm talking to basically the people running 3* rosters atm. So I'll revise, for a No 4Thor roster or low strike tile tendency team run Hood. With 4Thor or strike tile heavy run Loki because his purple will usually make at least one match.

Unknown

Loki is much more about illusions (which is easily the best purple skill in the game right now) than he is about mischief, although mischief is pretty great cascade insurance as well.

Is this equally true for a Loki with only 3 Purple or is in your line of thought 5 purple the only way to go?

NorthernPolarity

ChrisUnbroken wrote:

Loki is much more about illusions (which is easily the best purple skill in the game right now) than he is about mischief, although mischief is pretty great cascade insurance as well.

Is this equally true for a Loki with only 3 Purple or is in your line of thought 5 purple the only way to go?

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18598

I'd like to clarify that if you have 4or in your roster, purple is the best purple skill in the game. If you don't, then something like Starlord's purple is probably better. My simulation results show that 3 purple is functionally identical to 5 purple in terms of the number of cascades generated. I actually think 5/3/5 is the best build for Loki as a result: you don't get too much extra going from 3->5 purple, and I would argue that cutting the animation time of illusions by a third is actually really nice (since 5 purple is really really slow whereas 3 purple isn't nearly as bad): getting 5 black is also an okay bonus.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18598
I'd like to clarify that if you have 4or in your roster, purple is the best purple skill in the game. If you don't, then something like Starlord's purple is probably better. My simulation results show that 3 purple is functionally identical to 5 purple in terms of the number of cascades generated. I actually think 5/3/5 is the best build for Loki as a result: you don't get too much extra going from 3->5 purple, and I would argue that cutting the animation time of illusions by a third is actually really nice (since 5 purple is really really slow whereas 3 purple isn't nearly as bad): getting 5 black is also an okay bonus.

Interesting, thanks for the clarification.

Unknown

Why choose? Hood and Loki actually make great partners. I use intimidation to speed up mischief.

Aidonis

For a no 4star roster, Loki and Patch are pretty wicked together. Fire green, fire black, win. It's the combo I use in pvp to climb, and boosted they more very fast together.

Unknown

Aidonis wrote:

For a no 4star roster, Loki and Patch are pretty wicked together. Fire green, fire black, win. It's the combo I use in pvp to climb, and boosted they more very fast together.

Yep, it's really nice that Green & Black are grouped together in a single Boost for this. It was meant to be.