*** The Hood (Classic) ***

Unknown

I never really thought of Hood as OP or even as a solid addition to any lineup. I like Hood because his abilities work well to help prepare and stabilze sentry's abilities.

1. Dormammu's aid speeds up Sentry's cheap abilities
2. Intimidation protects sacrifice strike tile and world rupture countdown tiles, as using it for final countdown delays matches, holding the board in place until all world rupture countdown tiles have proc'd.
3. Intimidation damage with sacrifice strike tile is good to use on highest HP opponent. This helps make sure world rupture finishes all opponents.

If they change the way intimidation works, to allow columns to fall as normal, after each countdown procs, it would be a 'nerf' in my eyes. It would allow the skill to remain technically unchanged.

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

I never really thought of Hood as OP or even as a solid addition to any lineup. I like Hood because his abilities work well to help prepare and stabilze sentry's abilities.

1. Dormammu's aid speeds up Sentry's cheap abilities
2. Intimidation protects sacrifice strike tile and world rupture countdown tiles, as using it for final countdown delays matches, holding the board in place until all world rupture countdown tiles have proc'd.
3. Intimidation damage with sacrifice strike tile is good to use on highest HP opponent. This helps make sure world rupture finishes all opponents.

If they change the way intimidation works, to allow columns to fall as normal, after each countdown procs, it would be a 'nerf' in my eyes. It would allow the skill to remain technically unchanged.

He's balanced in a very bad way. He's limited by the PvP event structure itself (the best guys he can partner with is often not selectable due to the forced inclusion of a character), and he's just slightly not quite top tier enough on offense to make up for his top tier defense. But this isn't the kind of power that'd sell or even enjoyable. If I run Daken + Sentry and so do you, what's likely happen is I blow up your team on offense and then you blow up my team on offense. We'll likely feel pretty good about our offense and shrug off the loss as a fact of life in PvP. If now we both run Hood + Sentry (and no boosts) the game will be considerably slower, and it might even end in a loss-loss. Although from a rating point of a view the loss-loss is the same as win-win, losing generally sucks and health packs take a while to replenish. Although I think the game in general should have more losses in PvP, currently the game model doesn't support losing meaningfully in PvP and Hood is likely only below Sentry (who is way overpowered) for causing the most number of losses. Unlike Sentry, he's not responsible for too many wins, so he's balanced but he almost only exists to grief your opponent because he sure doesn't help you win that much. I don't have a problem with a strong defense weak offense character, but it just doesn't work in the current PvP which is why Hood ends up being a skip or use boost character most of the time because you can't take chances on losing due to health pack reasons.

BuckeyJaw

Had this happen several times over his event.

Unknown

If Hood has 5 covers in Twin Pistols, the ability no longer ends his turn.

OzarkBoatswain

If you get a 5-in-a-row from it, you get to make one more move (special ability or match) before the turn ends.

Unknown

@ Phantron

I don't know that your in-game experience is typical. Do you notice how people find it delightful to ding particular players? I think you might be among the most delightful people to attack.

Unknown

locked wrote:

nothing is able to replace Hood/Falcon atm.

Can someone explain why hood/falcon is good?

And just to contribute to the conversation I feel like the best way to minimise the impact of hood is to use him yourself. The steals end up being more or less balanced and by matching the colour you want or wish to deny you make sure there aren't enough on the board for the steal of that colour to kick in.

These days I've started ignoring the hood and just killing the main threat first and leaving hood for 2nd or 3rd even.

over_clocked

Milkrain wrote:

locked wrote:

nothing is able to replace Hood/Falcon atm.

Can someone explain why hood/falcon is good?

And just to contribute to the conversation I feel like the best way to minimise the impact of hood is to use him yourself. The steals end up being more or less balanced and by matching the colour you want or wish to deny you make sure there aren't enough on the board for the steal of that colour to kick in.

These days I've started ignoring the hood and just killing the main threat first and leaving hood for 2nd or 3rd even.

I didn't mean hood/falcon as a combo, as a combo they would be spectacularly bad, worse than spider-man/falcon maybe. They just have passive abilties that are not available through TUs, unlike oBW.

Spoit

Bugpop wrote:

@ Phantron

I don't know that your in-game experience is typical. Do you notice how people find it delightful to ding particular players? I think you might be among the most delightful people to attack.

No one has a game experience like phantron, that's what makes him special

Unknown

locked wrote:

Milkrain wrote:

locked wrote:

nothing is able to replace Hood/Falcon atm.

Can someone explain why hood/falcon is good?

And just to contribute to the conversation I feel like the best way to minimise the impact of hood is to use him yourself. The steals end up being more or less balanced and by matching the colour you want or wish to deny you make sure there aren't enough on the board for the steal of that colour to kick in.

These days I've started ignoring the hood and just killing the main threat first and leaving hood for 2nd or 3rd even.

I didn't mean hood/falcon as a combo, as a combo they would be spectacularly bad, worse than spider-man/falcon maybe. They just have passive abilties that are not available through TUs, unlike oBW.

Oh, I don't know. I kinda like them against goons when teamed with Laken. Slow down the goons, charge Hoods yellow while you're doing your whole Falken green/yellow boost thing. Overwrite strikes with the occasional intimidation to speed that up. You might get in a bad situation against 3 Muscle occasionally since they're so quick with the Threaten, but other than that, I've had a lot of success running off 10-12 matches at a time without getting touched.

hurcules

^^^ Same here. In TaT I found using Psylocke/Falcon/Hood is actually quite fast against all goons nodes and nothing went off for me. Only issue is no green user, but it was fine actually. Prioritise blue in the beginning to get red wing out as soon as possible, then red and black matches.

Unknown

hurcules wrote:

^^^ Same here. In TaT I found using Psylocke/Falcon/Hood is actually quite fast against all goons nodes and nothing went off for me. Only issue is no green user, but it was fine actually. Prioritise blue in the beginning to get red wing out as soon as possible, then red and black matches.

If you like that team try Daken/Falcon/Psylocke. I use it on just about every node south of about level 100 at this point.

As for Hood, he's a pest. I skip him more often than not because I'd rather take on a harder team with a more expected result. Hood brings an additional level of chaos into matches, and ultimately that's what going to get you. If I do decide to go at him, you'd best believe I'm bringing Daken and he's going down first. But none of that says to me that he needs nerfing. He's one of a very few genuinely unique characters in the game that brings a dynamic nobody else does. We need more characters that do interesting things other than just smash face harder than the last guy, and we don't need to be breaking the ones we have.

It also bears asking, if you were going to nerf Hood, how do you go about doing it? How do you adjust his blue, because nothing about his yellow is overpowered or his black outside of possibly its interaction with World Rupture, without making it worthless? He already steals increments of one, so you can't lower it that way. You could increase the number of tiles needed to be present before he can steal, but even one more is a big hit for a binary operation where the bad outcome is a big fat zero. Those are the only numbers to mess with, so after that you're left with a more substantial redo, which sounds like a lot of work for something which isn't really that broken in the first place.

Unknown

btw, it will be better if hood is able to steal Team UP AP too. #justsaying =X
Well, after all he is the master of stealer... wahhahaha

Unknown

It will be good if hood's blue (level 5) is able to steal team up AP now, but.... #justsaying...

atomzed

Hannybal wrote:

It will be good if hood's blue (level 5) is able to steal team up AP now, but.... #justsaying...

I believe the patch has made that change.

Unknown

Hood obviously partners well w sentry on 5 black

but there are two other incredibly useful combos for high level players

Hood 5 black & (passive) blue pair incredibly well w LCap. The two make an excellent combo to knock off Hulk & other big health problem guys especially scaled goons in pve
Fury purple also benefits from Hood 5 black. Fury is super OP but is a little slow. Hood 5 blue speeds up Fury which is crazy to think

For me Hood 5 yellow at its cost & w its value slots in behind the following other yellow powers in game: LT, fury, Sentry, BP
It rates ahead of IW, LCap, LStorm, IM40, xforce
obviously Falcon & CM & Patch don't compare w their passive yellow powers
Basically mid tier but effectively lower once you see the character lists. Of the people behind him for yellow "power" only LCap is effective in PvP.

BUT we can all agree that 5 Blue is a must have

over_clocked

Why does Fury need 5 Hood black? He only produces one CD at a time. And no I don't really think his yellow is that much superior. It what, produces protect tiles at 12 yellow? And does some damage on 5 red AP? And adds critical tiles or something for 5 purple? In other words, nothing game-ending unless you have it maxed AND have 12 yellow + 5 AP of every other colour except black. Not to mention Fury is still extremely rare and unviable for 99% of the playerbase. I still say a common joe gets *much* more from 5 Hood yellow than from 5 black which is only needed for the troll PvE team of lazyCap or mHawkeye/IM 40 (countdown tiles, countdown tiles everywhere) and for the shieldhopping Sentryhood duo.

IlDuderino

Strongly agree with Thugpatrol - his yellow is uber expensive and bettered by Thor, Iron Man etc and his black is pretty useless unless used with specific characters (Sentry, Lazy Cap, Hawkeye). His blue is the only reason to take him and is unique and balanced by his low health (he can be easily taken out by Daken blue or similar low cost powers). I think he is actually one of the better balanced characters (along with Punisher and Psylocke) and should definitely dodge the nerf bat

famousfoxking

Thugpatrol wrote:

I can't speak on the D/S/H combo, which sounds like a bad time to go against, but I will make a case for a 5 yellow Hood in PvE, which is where I use him the most these days. There are a lot of goons who generate yellow, and when scaling gets bad it's not uncommon for fights to drag on a bit. Between stealing and matching you can easily get to 15 yellow without even trying that hard, and a Twin Pistol shot that doesn't end the turn can literally be a life saver. He's my favorite tag team partner for Lazy Cap, who coincidentally has a **** yellow power, and the two of them do some serious work. Throw in OBW for maximum AP stealing and let the shields fly.

Hood, MNMags and CStorm similarly help me out massively in PVE. Sometimes it's going to multiple applications of Storms blue to get through, and I can easily find myself with enough yellow for Twin Pistols without any work. Also, with this team, Hood's black is find at 3 because all I ever use it for is to kick off Magneto's red CD. Long matches against lots of health can be pretty fun with this team, because at a certain point, you get enough green for Lightning Storm, which gathers enough yellow for Twin Pistols, which gathers enough red for Magnetic Flux which gathers enough green for... If everyone's tinykitty health can hold out that long.

Unknown

actually his yellow is not that bad. Getting 18 AP (of your choice) can be a good saver too, when it comes. But of cause looking at the cost there are many other yellow options too. Even sometimes when i used with LCap, i may use either his yellow, especially when u need 1 or 2 more blue or red, even though LCap yellow really give strong defense.