Hood v. Loki

Unknown

This morning, I had a couple of PVE matches that may have put it into perspective a bit, at least for me.

In the first, the AI was getting crazy cascades. Loki was putting out crazy mischief tiles, and essentially won me the game, by feeding so much ISO into Lazy Cap that I had two of his red and one of his blue cycling over and over. Loki turned a bad board for me into a massive win - I took some damage at the start from those cascades, but that was it.

In the second, I had a pretty good board, and Loki was 100% useless. Mischief didn't trigger until the penultimate turn, and so they didn't have time to go off. But the match went fine, for the most part, and I still won easily. But Hood would have been more useful in the second, as a result.

Essentially, Hood is always useful. Loki is bad board/cascade insurance. Loki pair well with Patch and a few others; Hood has a yellow nuke that has been my last move several times in this PVE (but only once used before then).

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

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.

I didn’t mean to devalue Loki. I use him very very often. I generally consider him a top 5 character in this game.

Just, he’s #4 whereas Hood is #3.

The only time I ever lose on offense is when the enemy AI gets drop…after drop….after drop…after drop… and then before you know it, I get surgical strike and xforced to death.

Loki essentially prevents that from ever happening.

If there is ever a fight that I think I can’t comfortably win, especially in PVE, I’d take Loki over Hood any day.

But, in PVP, Hood has more value due to his defensive prowess. For those of us without GT, Hood is better in PVP than Loki. But I definitely understand that my opinion may be different if I had a GT.

simonsez

Loki works out better for me, since I suck at seeing the board and give up way too many Match4s

GrumpySmurf1002

onimus wrote:

If there is ever a fight that I think I can’t comfortably win, especially in PVE, I’d take Loki over Hood any day.

But, in PVP, Hood has more value due to his defensive prowess. For those of us without GT, Hood is better in PVP than Loki. But I definitely understand that my opinion may be different if I had a GT.

I went through most of the late stages of Sim with XForce-Loki-rotating cast, even against the multitude of Hood-XF-GT teams. As you said, when fighting uphill, Loki's better insurance.

GrimSkald

Question regarding Loki - is it worth it to hold him at 139 so that others tank purple for him? Or are the extra hit points a better thing?

I basically agree with everyone else here - Hood is more consistently useful, but Loki is definitely pretty darn good. I also look to synergy - will Hood's black and yellow be useful, or Loki's black? (Loki's purple is always useful to shake up a bad board.)

san

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.

This. I have fully functioning Hood at 5/5/4 and am working on Loki just for the chance to pair with Patch and Daken, who should tank all Loki's colors...

Unknown

If your big guy has an active that places of removes tiles, like xf and 4t, the shuffling ability on loki can be a godsend. But the real reason I prefer him to hood is that hood depends almost entirely on luck to drain ap. You can leave useless 4 matches to loki and you will absolutely drain 8 ap, and get a small cascade when the tiles pop.

It doesn't hurt that he has an option to castrate strike/protect tile users either. When you use hood you usually already have a nuke.

Unknown

The Hood actually breaks the power level badly on both ends. Dormammu's Aid is obviously way overpowered, but Twin Pistols is way too weak for a 5 match move by modern standards. Compare to Righteous Uppercut, it doesn't even do more damage for a guy with the lowest HP class in the game. If he was designed more like the recent characters it'd probably be like:

Twin Pistols (15 AP) - Fires 2 shots, doing 15000 damage at level 5, ends the turn

And Dorammmu's Aid can actually be weaker.

Note that TBTI does about 10K+ damage for 5 matches as well in a favorable team lineup and is on a character that is far more durable than The Hood.

woopie

If the other team has a Hood, I'll definitely be using mine. If not, I'll use Loki because he's more disruptive. Cheap purple shuffles the board a lot and his green makes the opponent either change their matching tendencies if they don't have the power ready to wipe him the next turn. Personally, I've been wiped more by a Loki/XFW/4or team than a Hood/XFW/4or because you basically have to hope you DON'T get a good cascade which further slows down the pace of the game

Unknown

woopie wrote:

If the other team has a Hood, I'll definitely be using mine. If not, I'll use Loki because he's more disruptive. Cheap purple shuffles the board a lot and his green makes the opponent either change their matching tendencies if they don't have the power ready to wipe him the next turn. Personally, I've been wiped more by a Loki/XFW/4or team than a Hood/XFW/4or because you basically have to hope you DON'T get a good cascade which further slows down the pace of the game

And it's not like it's something you can always control anyway. Who here hasn't matched 3 then cringed hard as you got a critical in a color you don't need with a loki on the other team.

Unknown

In the Loki event I found it was pretty much the first team that makes a match 4 loses the game when you're fighting equivalently powerful mirror matches.

Arimis_Thorn

So what's the minimum viable covers to make this work? I'm considering dropping some $$$ to boost some combo of Patch/Loki/4Hor, though I'm considering Path/Loki/LDaken for more covers and a decent team to help me get more 4hor covers via events.

Right now for those characters I have :

LDaken: 3/3/1 - Lvl 91
Patch: 0/1/5 - Lvl 91
4Hor: 1/0/1 - Lvl 74
Loki: 4/1/1 - Lvl 65 (if I had the ISO, I could boost to 81)

I also do have a fully covered Hood, though he's only lvl 140. The recent influx of 3* covers has drained my ISO reserves, so it's a bit slow going leveling characters up.

I've been looking for a solid team for both PVP and PVE and some version of the above characters sounds pretty good from the thread so far.

If I wanted to drop the $$$ for covers, where would I best be served?

Thanks in advance!

Unknown

Arimis Thorn wrote:

So what's the minimum viable covers to make this work? I'm considering dropping some $$$ to boost some combo of Patch/Loki/4Hor, though I'm considering Path/Loki/LDaken for more covers and a decent team to help me get more 4hor covers via events.

Right now for those characters I have :

LDaken: 3/3/1 - Lvl 91
Patch: 0/1/5 - Lvl 91
4Hor: 1/0/1 - Lvl 74
Loki: 4/1/1 - Lvl 65 (if I had the ISO, I could boost to 81)

I also do have a fully covered Hood, though he's only lvl 140. The recent influx of 3* covers has drained my ISO reserves, so it's a bit slow going leveling characters up.

I've been looking for a solid team for both PVP and PVE and some version of the above characters sounds pretty good from the thread so far.

If I wanted to drop the $$$ for covers, where would I best be served?

Thanks in advance!

Uh, you'd want to up that 4thor to at least 4/0/5, Patch to 5/3/5 and loki to 5/3/5.
If I'm counting right, that's 7 4* covers and 14 3* covers, which adds up to 35000hp. That's what, 155 dollars?

I'd seriously consider playing Cage on place of Patch btw. Patch loki is nice and all but patch's low health is a big issue when it comes to competitive pvp, and you don't need that much health regen when you take no match damage. That would also give you a 7k damage yellow.

dr tinykittylove

Phantron wrote:

In the Loki event I found it was pretty much the first team that makes a match 4 loses the game when you're fighting equivalently powerful mirror matches.

I've gambled several times on taking match 4s and match 5s and then destroying the board or killing loki, and so far haven't lost because of it yet. Random ap steal is random. Fun, but random, and can be interfered with.

My team is never equivalently powerful.

fmftint

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In the Loki event I found it was pretty much the first team that makes a match 4 loses the game when you're fighting equivalently powerful mirror matches.

I've gambled several times on taking match 4s and match 5s and then destroying the board or killing loki, and so far haven't lost because of it yet. Random ap steal is random. Fun, but random, and can be interfered with.

My team is never equivalently powerful.

for me it depended on how many green covers they had, 2-3 green gives you 4/3 turn CDs, they almost never resolved

Unknown

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In the Loki event I found it was pretty much the first team that makes a match 4 loses the game when you're fighting equivalently powerful mirror matches.

I've gambled several times on taking match 4s and match 5s and then destroying the board or killing loki, and so far haven't lost because of it yet. Random ap steal is random. Fun, but random, and can be interfered with.

My team is never equivalently powerful.

If you made a green match 4 and killed Loki on the next turn, that's obviously not a gamble. I'm taking about when you've no assurance taking the match 4 because the enemy Loki is level 249 like yours and isn't dying anytime soon.

Arimis_Thorn

ark123 wrote:

Uh, you'd want to up that 4thor to at least 4/0/5, Patch to 5/3/5 and loki to 5/3/5.
If I'm counting right, that's 7 4* covers and 14 3* covers, which adds up to 35000hp. That's what, 155 dollars?

I'd seriously consider playing Cage on place of Patch btw. Patch loki is nice and all but patch's low health is a big issue when it comes to competitive pvp, and you don't need that much health regen when you take no match damage. That would also give you a 7k damage yellow.

Interesting thoughts on Cage. He's also pretty low for me. Lvl 66 2/2/1

In your example above, you have Patch and Loki fully covered. As I said, what I'm after is a minimum viable to start doing well in my transition to full 3* and what the optimal covers to pick up would be if I were to go that route.

Right now I've got a handful of character fully covered (Hood, Sentry, Mohawk Storm), a couple almost fully covered (Hulk, Falcon) and no one fully leveled. I'm doing alright getting by with making the top 100 in PVP events and nabbing a cover or two in the PVE events, and the Deadpool Daily is a godsend. Just trying to get over the tipping point to start maybe making 2 covers in PVP events, etc and working my way to where I might finally nab a top spot.

dr tinykittylove

Phantron wrote:

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In the Loki event I found it was pretty much the first team that makes a match 4 loses the game when you're fighting equivalently powerful mirror matches.

I've gambled several times on taking match 4s and match 5s and then destroying the board or killing loki, and so far haven't lost because of it yet. Random ap steal is random. Fun, but random, and can be interfered with.

My team is never equivalently powerful.

If you made a green match 4 and killed Loki on the next turn, that's obviously not a gamble. I'm taking about when you've no assurance taking the match 4 because the enemy Loki is level 249 like yours and isn't dying anytime soon.

It doesn't always kill loki, just have to judge the board to see if there is potential to get a lot of board shake from the move or even follow up moves by the ai to destroy their own countdowns, or have a juggs tu/other skill powered to shake the board. Usually can get rid of most of the countdowns, and again, random. Mischief steals tus, 1 ap, ap in colours not covered by the enemy, etc. That's why it's a gamble.

My loki isn't 249. None of my 3*s are maxed.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Arimis Thorn wrote:

So what's the minimum viable covers to make this work? I'm considering dropping some $$$ to boost some combo of Patch/Loki/4Hor, though I'm considering Path/Loki/LDaken for more covers and a decent team to help me get more 4hor covers via events.

Right now for those characters I have :

LDaken: 3/3/1 - Lvl 91
Patch: 0/1/5 - Lvl 91
4Hor: 1/0/1 - Lvl 74
Loki: 4/1/1 - Lvl 65 (if I had the ISO, I could boost to 81)

I also do have a fully covered Hood, though he's only lvl 140. The recent influx of 3* covers has drained my ISO reserves, so it's a bit slow going leveling characters up.

I've been looking for a solid team for both PVP and PVE and some version of the above characters sounds pretty good from the thread so far.

If I wanted to drop the $$$ for covers, where would I best be served?

Thanks in advance!

Uh, you'd want to up that 4thor to at least 4/0/5, Patch to 5/3/5 and loki to 5/3/5.
If I'm counting right, that's 7 4* covers and 14 3* covers, which adds up to 35000hp. That's what, 155 dollars?

I'd seriously consider playing Cage on place of Patch btw. Patch loki is nice and all but patch's low health is a big issue when it comes to competitive pvp, and you don't need that much health regen when you take no match damage. That would also give you a 7k damage yellow.

Patch green then Loki black makes -1 dmg for the rest of the match and also turns Loki into a 5AP X,XXX dmg cascade machine. Boost Green/Black and it doesn't take long to pull off. It'd be hard to find better synergy between any other two chars in the game. It won't get you past maxed Xforce/4Thor though. Xforce/4Thor can one hit kill both chars. I'd take Patch's true healing + Loki synergy over Cage. It's great for high level PVE & 700 pts in PVP.

But yeah, if you are going to spend money buy 4Thor covers and never look back. All you need is Loki and 4Thor to compete in high lvl PVP. She can one hit kill 10k chars when she is only lvl 150. Loki allows you the time to pull it off before getting instanuked.

Dartmaster01

Hands down Loki for me. 4thor/Laken/Loki handled Thunderbolt MT like champs (most nodes lvl320+). Using one health pack per clear about halfway for thor. This was my first time using him with geen and black cover maxed. He hid behind laken and only took damage from matching a green every once in a while. All I can say is, Loki my new best friend!