*** The Hood (Classic) ***

Unknown

oh ya... Why didn't i think of using Mn MAg with hood, since the color doesn't really clash. Using hood (Black at lvl3 is enough, in fact 1 or 2 also ok) to speed up Mag's red, and even generating AP. Nice ! Wahahh.

Unknown

Looking abilities in a vacuum (that is, ignoring his blue is already way overpowered), the yellow needs to do something like fire off 4 shots and end your turn, which means it will usually end the game the next turn when you just got 36 AP of your choosing, which is very appropriate for a 15 AP (well, it'd be 16 if level 4/5 upgrade the number of shots instead) ability on the character with the lowest HP in the game.

Of course, since his blue is way overpowered maybe that's why his yellow is way underpowered, but that's hardly a good way balance things.

Phaserhawk

Thugpatrol wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

I am seriously considering respecing Hood to 3/5/5. Why?......well consdiering I never use his yellow and his black is becoming more powerful with each character. I would love to see what Daken/Sentry/Hood 3/5/5 could do? Thoughts anyone?

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.

The counter to your point, is that if you are playing against Goons, why does end of turn matter? They don't take a turn anyway, and the more I play with Sentry's end of turn, I'm finding out it's really not that bad. Instead of ending the turn on a tile match, you end the turn with the ability, you just need to plan. However, how many times do I end up using Twin Pistols? I have been playing Hood as much as I can in this recent PvE and it's maybe 1 out of 20-25 matches I could use it, and even then, do I want to? You generally pair him with high costed characters to lower their abilties. Thor, Fury, Captain, and all of them have yellows that are better than Hood's, well excpet Cap, but those shields are tough. So by going 3/5/5 sure I'm losing the ability to not end the turn and it's going from 15 to 16 AP, but with 5 black I will not only get the insane Sentry combo, but I do get an extra 300 something dmg increase to the skill as well, and I do use Intimidation alot.

The only negative about a skill ending the turn is the loss of AP generation you get from ending your turn on a tile match. However Hood has no such drawback as the ending of the turn with Twin Pistols gives you all the AP it destroys plus any cascades, thus negating the drawback. Sentry's and Inivs Woman's though don't have that luxury but they do have skills that can cause cascades thus netting you some AP. In short having the Hood end the turn with a lvl 3 Twin Pistols isn't really a negative. The two things that suck about it are, 1. Hood is open to take damage, 2. It costs 1 more AP. The loss of match making AP is not an issue with Hood, so IMO it's not a negative.

Unknown

Really wish I went with 3/5/5. I never launch yellow, but alway launch Black.

Unknown

I think the problem with going with 5/5/3 (which I have for a long time) is that if you work out the incremental gain the 5th cover is much better in yellow (doesn't end turn) compared to Intimidation (only relevent when in conjunction with Sentry), and you keep telling yourself that there's some clever way you can make use of Twin Pistols. But now I've come to realize I never use Twin Pistols at all unless the game is already over because you just can't find a scenario where you have 15 yellow AP and can leisurely waste it on a move like Twin Pistols instead of Thunder Strike or Sacrifice if the game is at all in doubt, and both Thor and Sentry goes well with The Hood anyway. Intimidation is pretty marginal outside of the special case of Sentry, but marginal is still better than an ability that's never used. It's similar to Falcon. You'd like to think you'll be able to use Bird Strike in some clever way but eventually you realize that you almost never use it anyway.

Unknown

5 yellow was more useful in PvE when scaling was much more severe. Fights were much more likely to drag on, and matching/stealing your way to 15 yellow was much more likely to happen. Back then a Twin Pistols that didn't end your turn was a really nice thing to have if you were staring down a next turn Headbutt or Sunder from a juiced up enemy that was really going to ruin your day. Now that scaling has been toned down considerably, at least for the time being, it's much less likely to be relevant.

On the other hand, outside of Sentry tag teaming, 5 black is never relevant. 3 black is sufficient for ever other character who benefits from Hood's black at all, and I'm still not sold that 5 black is even that big a deal with Sentry. Typically if you're using Sentry and Hood you're bombing fast with boosts to shield hop. Are you really taking the time to get those extra black matches when one green and one yellow match is game over baring a mishap? If you get a bad board and/or stumble into the extra black, sure, what the hell, but chances are once you have enough for Sacrifice and World Rupture it's a wrap with or without Hood's black, regardless of how many covers you have.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

5 yellow was more useful in PvE when scaling was much more severe. Fights were much more likely to drag on, and matching/stealing your way to 15 yellow was much more likely to happen. Back then a Twin Pistols that didn't end your turn was a really nice thing to have if you were staring down a next turn Headbutt or Sunder from a juiced up enemy that was really going to ruin your day. Now that scaling has been toned down considerably, at least for the time being, it's much less likely to be relevant.

On the other hand, outside of Sentry tag teaming, 5 black is never relevant. 3 black is sufficient for ever other character who benefits from Hood's black at all, and I'm still not sold that 5 black is even that big a deal with Sentry. Typically if you're using Sentry and Hood you're bombing fast with boosts to shield hop. Are you really taking the time to get those extra black matches when one green and one yellow match is game over baring a mishap? If you get a bad board and/or stumble into the extra black, sure, what the hell, but chances are once you have enough for Sacrifice and World Rupture it's a wrap with or without Hood's black, regardless of how many covers you have.

Even on the extreme level 395s you're often better served by having a Thunder Strike because usually a better AP gain move, and it focuses on the color you need (green) as opposed to random. Consider level 395s are pretty much off limits without Magneto, you're very unlikely to get any use out of Twin Pistol's ability to destroy tiles anywhere on the board because you should have Magnetic Field. I find Twin Pistols to be quite useful when I'm doing my mix-and-match teams that are trying to lower scaling while barely winning the fight, since it's versatile enough to serve as a combination of a weaker version of Thunder Strike/Magnetic Field to bail out your weaker teams without exposing your A team to needless damage (if you're going to use CMag and then purposely take 4000 damage you might as well just start with your A team the whole time), but purposely using weak team is no longer relevent with the change to scaling no longer dependent on damage taken.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Even on the extreme level 395s you're often better served by having a Thunder Strike because usually a better AP gain move, and it focuses on the color you need (green) as opposed to random. Consider level 395s are pretty much off limits without Magneto, you're very unlikely to get any use out of Twin Pistol's ability to destroy tiles anywhere on the board because you should have Magnetic Field.

You've made two assumptions there. First you've assumed we're fighting 395s, but unless you were exploiting CMags and/or pre-nerf Spidey really hard you weren't just starting out events with enemies that level. There's a lot of room between levels 150 and 395 where you could very reasonably consider running with Hood and without CMags. Second, you've assumed a pairing with Thor. Sure, Thunder Strike is probably a better option in most situations, but there's a lot of teams that work with Hood that don't include Thor. And outside of Thunder Strike, Sacrifice, and the new and improved Battleplan, there isn't much in the way of good yellow active powers.

Also Twin Pistols does not generate "random" AP. You're probably not getting 18 AP that you really want out of it, but on most boards you can get a lot that you do, and almost always enough to fire off a couple of game changing powers. Being able to then use them without giving the enemy a turn has value. More value than you get out of 5 black specifically for the purpose of pairing him with Sentry (because that's all it's good for)? I think so.

over_clocked

The number of times Twin Pistols saved my bootie...
Maxed Intimidation is nice with Sentry. More than nice. But also narrow. It's like going 3 yellow for Patch, or 5 blue for Psylocke. You are trying to make some single skill better but the point of the character is not about that one whatever skill.

OnesOwnGrief

I've been a user of 5/5/x Hood for months now and it has pretty much put me on the path of my 3* transition. He was one of the first 3*s I got covered and has been a staple in my roster for as long as I've had him at 5 yellow. That Yellow has saved me more times than I can count and gets frequent use. I have way to many characters that prioritize other colors besides just green. 2 3x3 AP generation gives you a lot of choice when you can target it for whatever needs you may have.

Phaserhawk

Thugpatrol wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Even on the extreme level 395s you're often better served by having a Thunder Strike because usually a better AP gain move, and it focuses on the color you need (green) as opposed to random. Consider level 395s are pretty much off limits without Magneto, you're very unlikely to get any use out of Twin Pistol's ability to destroy tiles anywhere on the board because you should have Magnetic Field.

You've made two assumptions there. First you've assumed we're fighting 395s, but unless you were exploiting CMags and/or pre-nerf Spidey really hard you weren't just starting out events with enemies that level. There's a lot of room between levels 150 and 395 where you could very reasonably consider running with Hood and without CMags. Second, you've assumed a pairing with Thor. Sure, Thunder Strike is probably a better option in most situations, but there's a lot of teams that work with Hood that don't include Thor. And outside of Thunder Strike, Sacrifice, and the new and improved Battleplan, there isn't much in the way of good yellow active powers.

Also Twin Pistols does not generate "random" AP. You're probably not getting 18 AP that you really want out of it, but on most boards you can get a lot that you do, and almost always enough to fire off a couple of game changing powers. Being able to then use them without giving the enemy a turn has value. More value than you get out of 5 black specifically for the purpose of pairing him with Sentry (because that's all it's good for)? I think so.

But there are oh so many other ways I would deal with that situation than even putting Hood in my line up. Falcon/Spidey/Patch would serve you better in those situations. Hood was my first 3* I fully maxed, he was my anchor that transitioned me to 2* to 3* and at that time yes, Twin Pistols was better, but now that you have much better yellows and with the Sentry now, the 5 yellow does not seems as important. In addition, people are forgeting that you do get a decent dmg boost for going 5 black in Intimidation. A 33% dmg increase isn't too shabby, sure 1390 isn't going to be 1 turn killing your foes, but it's better than the 1043, on a skill that I use massively more than the other. Ever since I got a solid 3* roster the number of times I have casted Twin Pistols has gone down significantly. In addition, even on the times I can cast it, I only do so because, well I can, not because I need to, but just because I can. Like when I somehow have enough red for BWGS's Pistol, I don't need it, but cast it just because I can.

Unknown

Ultimately what this conversation comes down to is the value you get out of 5 yellow vs 5 black covers, because there is no benefit to leaving both at 4 and 5 in blue is a must. So when is which option likely to be more useful?

The main benefit of 5 black is in the Sentry pairing, because that's essentially the only time you're getting any benefit out of effecting more than 3 countdown tiles, which is what you get for 3 black. You can also make the case that you might get more value out of 5 black in cases where you're pairing Hood with a stronger yellow user, because you're unlikely then to save for Twin Pistols if a better, cheaper option is in play, and you might get some use out of the extra bit of damage from black, even thought it's really very minor. So who's on that list? Sentry, who we already counted, Thor, and BP are the big ones. Fury if you're fortunate enough to have him up and running. You can stretch to include IM40, Ares, and Lazy Storm. That brings you up to 7 characters you can make a case that 5 black is better for.

On every other team the potential benefit of a Twin Pistols that doesn't end your turn, which can be a very major game changing event, is going to be greater than the little bit of extra damage you're getting out of 5 black, which is all it does outside of its interaction with World Rupture.

So who are you running Hood with? If you're answer is mainly some combination of Sentry and other people on the above list, you might as well go 5 black because you're unlikely to ever even consider using Twin Pistols. If you rarely run him with people on that list, you might as well go 5 yellow, because 5 black does very little in those cases. If you land somewhere in the middle, then you have to decide what has more value to you. For me, the answer is 5 yellow by a landslide, but obviously your mileage may vary.

There's also the pink elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, which is the very real possibility that World Rupture will get altered at some point in the future, because Sentry is just ridiculous. Depending on when, if, and how this occurs, the benefits of 5 black could take a big hit if it loses its one and only interaction with more than three countdown tiles outside of truly fringe scenarios.

vudu3

Thugpatrol wrote:

You can also make the case that you might get more value out of 5 black in cases where you're pairing Hood with a stronger yellow user, because you're unlikely then to save for Twin Pistols if a better, cheaper option is in play, and you might get some use out of the extra bit of damage from black, even thought it's really very minor. So who's on that list? Sentry, who we already counted, Thor, and BP are the big ones. Fury if you're fortunate enough to have him up and running. You can stretch to include IM40, Ares, and Lazy Storm. That brings you up to 7 characters you can make a case that 5 black is better for.

You probably should remove Panther and Mohawk Storm from that list--it's true that both of their yellows are better than Hoods, but you could say the same for their blacks.

Unknown

vudu3 wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

You can also make the case that you might get more value out of 5 black in cases where you're pairing Hood with a stronger yellow user, because you're unlikely then to save for Twin Pistols if a better, cheaper option is in play, and you might get some use out of the extra bit of damage from black, even thought it's really very minor. So who's on that list? Sentry, who we already counted, Thor, and BP are the big ones. Fury if you're fortunate enough to have him up and running. You can stretch to include IM40, Ares, and Lazy Storm. That brings you up to 7 characters you can make a case that 5 black is better for.

You probably should remove Panther and Mohawk Storm from that list--it's true that both of their yellows are better than Hoods, but you could say the same for their blacks.

That's a good point, one I definitely dropped the ball on. So that brings our case for 5 black teammates list down to what? Sentry, Thor, Fury, IM40, and Ares? Still not a bad list with a few A-Listers, but still very limited, more so now down two.

OnesOwnGrief

Know what I really hate? Tile setups like this:

oxo oox xox

Seriously annoying and it brings me no end to the satisfaction of hitting it with Twin Pistols. That's a good 5 AP in a color I want and 4 in others.

Anyways, on what basis are we even going on 5/5/3 vs 3/5/5? All I'm seeing is just one singular reason to go with 5 black and that's Sentry. Hood has no other reason to affect more than 3 countdowns besides Sentry. It looks like were also completely discounting his ability generate AP for any character that doesn't actually rely on yelllow. Not even bothering that it's entirely possible to aim Twin Pistols for a favorable cascade or is picking optimal spots to shoot to slow for people?

Phaserhawk

Yellow's better than Hood

---

Invisible Woman
Fury
Black Panther
Sentry
Thor

Yellow's about even

---

Captain America
Iron Man 40
Spidey
Storm

Yellow's worse

---

X-Force

Characters that use CD tiles

---

Fury, X-Force, BP, Cap, Falcon, Torch, IM40, Psylocke, Sentry, Punisher, Hulk, Deadpool

Any character paired with Hood that has a better yellow would want you to go 3/5/5. Any character that uses a CD tile, would be better with 3/5/5 (because you get more dmg)

Overlapping Charcters

---

Fury, X-Force, BP, Sentry---3/5/5 is always better with these guys

Factor in now those with better yellow's that are playable----Fury, Thor, Sentry, BP

So 3/5/5 is always better when running---Fury, Thor, Sentry, Black Panther and even X-Force

When you run Captain, Storm, IM40, Spidey you can argue 5/5/3 or 3/5/5 as these can all be situational. Yes Cap's yellow is bad, but if you had enough for it to go off, thats a lot of protect. Storms yellow can be devastating and ramp you into some powerful TU's, IM40, sometimes those CD tiles can really help, and Spidey, there are times when just a straight heal can save your game.

The other three you can question are Human Torch, Psylocke, and Punisher. All run black, none run yellow. Psylocke is obvious a 5/5/3 Hood is superior, her blue sucks, and her black is awesome. Punisher a little more divided. If you run Pun 5/5/3 then I say a 5/5/3 hood is better. If you run Pun 3/5/5 yeah, 5/5/3 is still better. Then there is Torch. This one I see leaning towards 3/5/5 Hood. The reasoning being, if you use Torch's black, you hit Hood's yellow making it harder to cast, so you aren't going to want to use his, and Hood's black and hit for decent dmg, make Torch's tile go off again. Yeah 5/5/3 is okay, but if you are gonna use Hood's black might as well have it do the most.

I think what it really comes down to is the current meta favors 3/5/5 Hood. Even if Sentry's WR got nerfed and went all off at once, 3/5/5 is still better because he makes it happen 1 turn sooner. In addition, we keep seeing more and more characters with CD tiles and with each skill taken independently, any time you have a CD tile, a 5 black Hood is better as it does more dmg.

I think the biggest fault of Hood's yellow, is that he has yellow as his main color, only Fury and IW will always take it from him. The only other characters are Spidey, Falcon, Captain America, and Black Panther and they have to be in the 1 spot to do so. This means unless you run Hood with one of these guys he will be taking dmg to collect yellow and with his small pool of hitpoints you don't want this. Which means you either have to actively match yellow to cast his Twin Pistols thus leaving him open to dmg and the chance he won't be around to cast it, or you don't match yellow and hope to passively collect from the AI, yet it would in theory take 15 of your turns to do so.

I don't use his yellow, and where I do is in PvE, and I generally don't run Hood in PvE because he's too squishy and takes too much dmg. Thus even though a 3/5/5 has a niche use, it's a very strong one right now, with nothing on the Horizon to see that change, vs. (and I agree) the more common,safe, and needed build of 5/5/3. You are right 5 in black is generally wasted 90% of the time, except for the dmg which you get at lvl 4. But, does that make 5 yellow better for a skill I don't use 90% of the time?

That is the fun little debate. Build a character for a niche use only useful 10% of the time, or build a character for a skill that you only use 10% of the time?

over_clocked

If you are just starting out with Hood and lack a usable Sentry (or, even if you have a maxed Sentry, you aren't shieldhopping much and like your versatile Hood - like me), there's not much reason to go 3/5/5 when you can go 5/5/3. Only consider 5 black if you live off speed and are slightly paranoid about your points/the Sacrifice strike tile

over_clocked

Phaser, how come X-Force wants 5 black too? I forget what his **** skills are atm, but definitely too horrible to be salvaged by Hood even.
You forget that Hood doesn't need to match yellow to collect it. And that if you run a character with a strictly better yellow (Thor, BP, Sentry and them only), said character might fall leaving Hood and whatever third to fend for themselves. 5 yellow is a game-ending and a life-saving skill (in the current meta-game). 5 black? A nice featurette for Sentry and just him. Which is not even actually necessary to win.

Edit: The extra damage on black is about 300, which is safely ignorable. It's not comparable to hidden damage on Magneto purple, where the damage is increased significantly. Captain Marvel increases damage from 3 to 4 red, but who cares? Her red is extremely limited in removing protect tiles, while her third skill generates AP passively, and while Intimidation is less limited, it is limited, period, and thus loses to yellow every time when Sentry is out of the picture (Thor and BP might have better overall yellows but I can easily imagine Hood's yellow being situationally better, especially with Panther: do you lay out strike tiles or gain 12 black with Pistols and end the game? Although Hood and BP are not a great combo anyway due to the complete colour overlap and our lack of green/purple/red users to complete the rainbow).

Unknown

It's not so much as 5 black is really all that good but that characters with better yellow are all top tier so once you have them you pretty much always use them and end up never using Twin Pistols. Same argument can be made for Magnetic Field, which is not the same color but basically does everything you need Twin Pistols to do for 1/3 the cost. If you're just starting out Twin Pistols is a much better choice than Intimidation, but there's really no point to use Twin Pistols if you have Thunder Strike or Magnetic Field.

over_clocked

I use Pistols all the time in PvE and very often in PvP. I don't actually make 5 yellow matches to have it ready, it just gets ready by itself often (thanks, Dormammu!). I might be an outlier but I really prefer Pistols to most other yellow skills. It is often more reliable than Thunder Strike. The number of times Thunder Strike failed to get me any cascades and green AP is amazing, it even hurt me much the same Berserker Rage does, gifting all the cascades and AP to the enemy side instead. I don't like playing Thor outside of Thorneto anyway. Pistols are reliable and it's one of the few fun skills to play on a decent character (the old poll showed that fun abilities are considered those that allow placement, like Magnetic Field, Deceptive Tactics, Polarity Shift, Star-Spangled Avenger and Peacemaker, etc.). Hood is also the best at what he does and that's mitigating enemy damage, which Thor or BP and definitely Sentry lack (I guess BP has his blue, but it's worse than Bullseye's passive and that's with Bullseye's passive being laughable). You might argue that ending a game faster is the same as denying damage, but Hood also accelerates the player's offense, so whoever you bring as your damage options, they can include someone else besides Thor, Sentry and BP. And even then, Thor and BP don't care if Hood has 3 or 5 black.
I forgot to say that I consider Mororo's yellow to not be better than Pistols. It creates cascades, it's 6 AP cheaper, but it also only destroys up to 7 random (!) tiles and gives you up to 7 TUAP, which is game-ending only if you bring game-ending TUs for that. And it's all on a character with the same health as Hood (the absolute lowest class in the game), with the same general purpose (AP generation), and that also has a decent black, i.e. not much reason to combo these two, same as BP and Hood.