*** The Hood (Classic) ***

Unknown

locked wrote:

I don't like playing Thor outside of Thorneto anyway.

This is why you think Twin Pistols is better than Thunderstrike.

I have a 5/5/3 Hood for the reasons stated above, you have to have 5 blue, and 5 black isn't THAT much of a benefit. I run Hood/Cap/Punisher a lot, and the Twin Pistols to Judgement to Star-Spangled Avenger combo is just too good. The minor damage increase to black isn't all that good, especially since if I want damage I use Molitov Cocktail instead anyway. The damage on Intimidation shouldn't even really be considered at all, there are far more damaging black powers out there, so it's real value is in CD tile reduction. Of the Characters that use CD tiles listed by Phaserhawk only Sentry uses them in the quantity needed to make 5 black viable. It isn't so much that Twin Pistols is that much better than other options as it is Intimidation is so much worse than other options for damage, so upping it purely on a "it does more damage so it's better" philosophy is incorrect.

On the powers list, I would bump Captain America and Storm to Yellow's worse than Twin Pistols. Storm you can typically only use once, and it's as good or bad as your Team Up power you use the 6 AP on. Captain America's Yellow is just terrible. Cost prohibitive to be useful, once you get 19 yellow, after using Twin Pistols the match should be over, no need to use shield tiles. Fury, BP, Sentry, and Thor all see tons of use tho. If you are using Hood with these guys to steal AP then yes, you aren't going to benefit from 5 yellow, but you also aren't going to benefit from 5 black, unless you are Sentry.

over_clocked

Lerysh wrote:

locked wrote:

I don't like playing Thor outside of Thorneto anyway.

This is why you think Twin Pistols is better than Thunderstrike.

No, I didn't say that. I admit that Thunder Strike is usually much better and it's the single best yellow ability in a vacuum, but it failed me often enough to leave me grizzled, ya know? The fact that I don't adore Thor doesn't prevent me from admitting the truth.

Unknown

Twin Pistols can be situationally better than Thunder Strike, but the odds of that happening must be very small. Thunder Strike is often enough to end a game so Twin Pistol most definitely won't be game ending the vast majority of the time. Twin Pistols feels like it's more fun to use, but if you just want to win, Thunder Strike's 'I think the whole board just exploded' cascade potential wins at least 9 out of 10 times. I think Twin Pistols is a versatile and slightly overcosted ability, but it can't compare to the massively undercosted/overpowered abilities like Sacrifice or Thunder Strike once you've access to them. That's not the skill's fault but until there's better balance, Twin Pistols is something you use for style points.

Phaserhawk

All in all, these are valid arguements for 5 yellow. But lets look at it from a defensive perspective. Assuming you use Hood in PvP, 5 black is always better than 5 yellow. The reason being, every player targets Hood first, unless they have a Hood of their own, you must target Hood first, thus, Hood will never get to cast Twin Pistols on defense, but he may get an indimidation off, and you might as well have it do as much damage as possible.

Now if PvP is not your cup of tea, than 100% go 5/5/3 as in the PvE enviornment you are mostly best served with that build. While you probably still won't be casting Twin Pistols unless going against goons that generate yellow, at least you can cast it, but....once again if you use Twin Pistols and its against goons only, assuming you destroyed any CD tiles that were giving you an issue, the end turn won't matter since they won't be tile matching to begin with.

Both Intimidation and Twin Pistols are marginal skills at best. Blue is the bread and butter of Hood and as someone said earlier 4/5/4 is the worst of the maxed blue builds. But, in all reality a Hood that was 0/5/3 is just as effective as a 5/5/3. The reason being you just don't use yellow that often. I cast Intimidation regularly as many times Hood is my only black, I just don't use yellow, because....you run Hood to accelerate higher costed characters, so I'm gonna be running him with Thor, Sentry, Fury, BP, Cap, all who use yellow, and other than Cap, I'm going to want to use the other's yellow long before Hood's. I'll say it again, I would rather have a build that maximizes a skill I use a 100% of the time, but only reaps the full benefits 10% of the time (sentry or when cap is rolling) vs. maximizing a skill I use 10% of the time, but I reap the full benefits 100% of the time.

The big five, Thor, Sentry, C.Mags, Patch, Daken and Black Panther being on deck, that's 3 guys in the top 6 characters that are benefited by a 3/5/5 Hood. The other three aren't served better or worse by either build as they are gonna kill you long before you could probably use either, so until Thor, Sentry, and Panther are no longer good, 3/5/5 is going to give you the highest return on those characters and max them out to their utmost potential.

When you drop down to the lower tiers, Punisher, Torch, Psylocke, Captain, Deadpool, Hulk, they are probably better served by a 5/5/3 Hood because on a Majority of those characters, you are not going to want to use Hood's black so why max out a skill you won't use, thus 5/5/3 is better.

Assume an event where you can only play with 2 characters, this is where they fit.

Better with 5/5/3
===============
Black Widow GS
Captain America
Captain Marvel
Dr. Doom
Psylocke
Falcon
Storm
Punisher

Where it doesn't matter
===================
Black Panther (you want both his yellow and black over Hood's)
Daken
Daredevil
Deadpool
C.Mags
Rags
She-Hulk
Patch

Better with 3/5/5
===================
IW
Fury
X-Farce
Human Torch
Iron Man 40
Loki
Sentry
Thor

Too many variables
================
Spider-man
Hulk

With Spiderman, his yellow can be useful at times, but other times you may want Hood's. With Hulk, he tanks black, meaning you can get tiles to feed intimidation, but your yellow won't be as good. These are just too dependent upon the game.

The group of it doesn't matter is because you will really only be using Hood for acceleration and you could argue more dmg black or non-turn ending yellow all day, it doesn't matter the arguements are too 50/50.

The other groups are more clear cut. And if you look at those groups in the 3/5/5 pile you see Fury, Sentry and Thor. With those 3 plus the group of doesn't matter, since they can go either way, you are currently going to be better served opting for 3/5/5 in the current meta.

NorthernPolarity

Phaserhawk wrote:

All in all, these are valid arguements for 5 yellow. But lets look at it from a defensive perspective. Assuming you use Hood in PvP, 5 black is always better than 5 yellow. The reason being, every player targets Hood first, unless they have a Hood of their own, you must target Hood first, thus, Hood will never get to cast Twin Pistols on defense, but he may get an indimidation off, and you might as well have it do as much damage as possible.

Now if PvP is not your cup of tea, than 100% go 5/5/3 as in the PvE enviornment you are mostly best served with that build. While you probably still won't be casting Twin Pistols unless going against goons that generate yellow, at least you can cast it, but....once again if you use Twin Pistols and its against goons only, assuming you destroyed any CD tiles that were giving you an issue, the end turn won't matter since they won't be tile matching to begin with.

Both Intimidation and Twin Pistols are marginal skills at best. Blue is the bread and butter of Hood and as someone said earlier 4/5/4 is the worst of the maxed blue builds. But, in all reality a Hood that was 0/5/3 is just as effective as a 5/5/3. The reason being you just don't use yellow that often. I cast Intimidation regularly as many times Hood is my only black, I just don't use yellow, because....you run Hood to accelerate higher costed characters, so I'm gonna be running him with Thor, Sentry, Fury, BP, Cap, all who use yellow, and other than Cap, I'm going to want to use the other's yellow long before Hood's. I'll say it again, I would rather have a build that maximizes a skill I use a 100% of the time, but only reaps the full benefits 10% of the time (sentry or when cap is rolling) vs. maximizing a skill I use 10% of the time, but I reap the full benefits 100% of the time.

The big five, Thor, Sentry, C.Mags, Patch, Daken and Black Panther being on deck, that's 3 guys in the top 6 characters that are benefited by a 3/5/5 Hood. The other three aren't served better or worse by either build as they are gonna kill you long before you could probably use either, so until Thor, Sentry, and Panther are no longer good, 3/5/5 is going to give you the highest return on those characters and max them out to their utmost potential.

When you drop down to the lower tiers, Punisher, Torch, Psylocke, Captain, Deadpool, Hulk, they are probably better served by a 5/5/3 Hood because on a Majority of those characters, you are not going to want to use Hood's black so why max out a skill you won't use, thus 5/5/3 is better

The difference between 3 and 5 black is 150 damage. Defensively speaking, i would imagine that the times where 150 damage will significantly impact the match is about as likely as the odds of a twin pistols that doesnt end the turn would, so its a moot point.

Personally, i think the decision comes down to how much you want to use the sentry hood combo. Yeah, hoods yellow is bad with bp and lazythor, but its not like the 150 damage increase from 3->5 black is going to really do anything in your matches either. I would much rather have the option of 5 yellow in non bp/sentry/lthor teams (basically whenever torch or punisher are featured in pve since torch/pun+cmags+hood is one of the best pve teams) than the extra 150 damage from black. Sentry hood though is a legit reason for 5 black, and is all you should be basing your decisions off of.

Phaserhawk

"NorthernPolarity wrote:

The difference between 3 and 5 black is 150 damage. Defensively speaking, i would imagine that the times where 150 damage will significantly impact the match is about as likely as the odds of a twin pistols that doesnt end the turn would, so its a moot point.

Personally, i think the decision comes down to how much you want to use the sentry hood combo. Yeah, hoods yellow is bad with bp and lazythor, but its not like the 150 damage increase from 3->5 black is going to really do anything in your matches either. I would much rather have the option of 5 yellow in non bp/sentry/lthor teams (basically whenever torch or punisher are featured in pve since torch/pun+cmags+hood is one of the best pve teams) than the extra 150 damage from black. Sentry hood though is a legit reason for 5 black, and is all you should be basing your decisions off of.

Not to split hairs or that it is huge, but the difference is 347 dmg. Max 3 black maxed is 1043 dmg, 5 black maxed is 1390

over_clocked

Phaser, I like you and all, but you might be confusing newer players with the silly notion that 5 black is almost always or even often better than 5 yellow which it definitely isn't unless they add Sentry 2.0, Sentry 3.0 and so on. And even then, the sheer versatility of 5 yellow trumps 5 black every time. Stop mentioning the extra damage and defense, 5 blue is all that matters on defense! And of course, gaining AP and setting up cascades without ending the turn trumps extra 300 damage on defense too.

Better with 3/5/5
===================
IW
Fury
X-Farce
Human Torch
Iron Man 40
Loki
Sentry
Thor

Correction: IW and X-Farce, ignorable, their yellows suck too much to be used over Hood's; Fury - too expensive, yellow with a hidden cost of 5 red/green to boot; HT has a nice black of his own; IM 40 shouldn't be really comboed with the Hood outside of PvE, and even then 3 black is generally enough unless you're rolling in AP and firing multiple Recharges but then you have already won; Loki and Thor do not care if Hood has 3 or 5 black, and Loki has a usable black too. Only Sentry and Sentry alone cares about Hood's black and even with him, as I said, 5 black is not a must like Magneto is a must for 5 green Patch.

NorthernPolarity

Phaserhawk wrote:

"NorthernPolarity wrote:

The difference between 3 and 5 black is 150 damage. Defensively speaking, i would imagine that the times where 150 damage will significantly impact the match is about as likely as the odds of a twin pistols that doesnt end the turn would, so its a moot point.

Personally, i think the decision comes down to how much you want to use the sentry hood combo. Yeah, hoods yellow is bad with bp and lazythor, but its not like the 150 damage increase from 3->5 black is going to really do anything in your matches either. I would much rather have the option of 5 yellow in non bp/sentry/lthor teams (basically whenever torch or punisher are featured in pve since torch/pun+cmags+hood is one of the best pve teams) than the extra 150 damage from black. Sentry hood though is a legit reason for 5 black, and is all you should be basing your decisions off of.

Not to split hairs or that it is huge, but the difference is 347 dmg. Max 3 black maxed is 1043 dmg, 5 black maxed is 1390

[/quote][/quote]

Whoops, my mistake: was comparing 166 3 black to 141 5 black. I think the decision is slightly tougher then, but the same logic probably applies.

Unknown

5 in Twin Pistols is definitely better before you have Magneto, Sentry, or Thor maxed, but once you have 2 out of 3 you probably won't ever need to use Twin Pistols again so Intimidation wins by being marginally more useful. If you're in a fight where tile removal is important you'd have Magneto, and if you need a hard hitting yellow ability you should use Thor and Sentry. These guys all synergize well with The Hood so there's no reason to not run them together. In the absence of those guys, Twin Pistols is a decent yellow ability that can remove at least 2 arbitary tiles and very few characters can do that, but eventually you get the guys who can do that and do it better at the same time.

Katai

The marginal gains from black 3-to-5, though, is really discouraging when it comes to maxing out that ability. I feel like 5-yellow is more versatile, especially when you're capitalizing on boosted characters rather than your main damage dealer.

Unknown

Katai wrote:

The marginal gains from black 3-to-5, though, is really discouraging when it comes to maxing out that ability. I feel like 5-yellow is more versatile, especially when you're capitalizing on boosted characters rather than your main damage dealer.

But just because a character is boosted doesn't mean it makes sense to use him. The Hood was boosted 90 levels in the Deadpool event, and the only time I used him was on the required node. With +90 levels he tanks at least 4 colors (his colors + TU) and he's certainly not very durable even with 90 levels, so why would I want to use him since The Hood getting hurt instead of trusty Daken only slows me down? Though of course this isn't a problem just unique to him, though his lack of HPs makes this the most obvious since a level 256 character is going to be doing a lot of tanking.

Phaserhawk

Twin Pistols is like that really cool shirt you only wear on special occasions. Your other shirts are more functional day to day, but on those days you might go out you want that shirt ready to go. Intimidation is your old t-shirt you wear all the time. No matter the day it looks good on you, but occasionally you look spectacular in it. So what's the best wardrobe choice? The awesome dress shirt you rarely use but always look good in, or the old t-shirt that looks good all the time but your girlfriend/boyfriend/sentry really loves?

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Twin Pistols is like that really cool shirt you only wear on special occasions. Your other shirts are more functional day to day, but on those days you might go out you want that shirt ready to go. Intimidation is your old t-shirt you wear all the time. No matter the day it looks good on you, but occasionally you look spectacular in it. So what's the best wardrobe choice? The awesome dress shirt you rarely use but always look good in, or the old t-shirt that looks good all the time but your girlfriend/boyfriend/sentry really loves?

Winning with Twin Pistols should give you extra style points, or better yet Deadpool points.

over_clocked

So, we are *really* discussing which ability should get the 5 covers. The one that ONLY extreme shieldhoppers and only them truly need to be 5 currently (I have a maxed Sentry and more than enough HP to shieldhop when I feel like it, you don't see me respeccing Hood to 5 black, although I might want to build my dupe Hood that way in case more CD spam characters appear). And the one that is versatile enough to be used on every team without other yellows or with the likes of Captain America/Spider-Man, etc. The one that is significantly weaker with unmaxed covers. 18 AP without ending your turn and setting up cascades or crit tiles? Or extra 300 damage (only Sentry sees the difference between 3 CDs/all CDs)?
It's like you forget that most players are not actually maxed 3*s and if they do happen to be able to max Hood but not Sentry as one of their first 3*s, 5 black is gonna do jack for them.

OnesOwnGrief

Locked, Twin Pistols is 15 AP without ending your turn with potential to cascade. That'd be 15 AP for (at most) 18+ AP.

over_clocked

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Locked, Twin Pistols is 15 AP without ending your turn with potential to cascade. That'd be 15 AP for 18+ AP.

That's what I meant. 18 AP earned, not spent.

OnesOwnGrief

locked wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Locked, Twin Pistols is 15 AP without ending your turn with potential to cascade. That'd be 15 AP for 18+ AP.

That's what I meant. 18 AP earned, not spent.

Gotcha.

Unknown

Considering working on The Hood as my next 3*, currently using Punisher, IM40 and Patch. Along with OBW, Ares, Thor, Wolvie at 2*.
Would he best a good fit with this roster?
I know I'd probably be better off with Lazy Thor or Daken but already got 7 covers for him, besides 5 blue which build would be best for this set of characters thanks.

over_clocked

douk123 wrote:

Considering working on The Hood as my next 3*, currently using Punisher, IM40 and Patch. Along with OBW, Ares, Thor, Wolvie at 2*.
Would he best a good fit with this roster?
I know I'd probably be better off with Lazy Thor or Daken but already got 7 covers for him, besides 5 blue which build would be best for this set of characters thanks.

All of these characters go well with the Hood, if you use IM 40 as a red battery for lazy Cap/Patch/Human Torch, though, his own attacks are too terrible. But 5 blue Hood wants a strong and preferably a rainbow team with active abilities in all colours. If you can pick all 3, oBW/Hood and a strong damage dealer with red/green/black or red/green/yellow colours are an amazing mixed team. Ares, Thor, Patch and Punisher are all good fits. HT and Lazy Captain when you have them, too. Captain loses out on green, but he can take down any tank with minimal damage taken.

spawn2012

Hi!

Does frozen tile count in hood's passive blue power? IE if I'd use Invisible Woman's blue power to froze couple of purple tiles (that activates passive hood abillity) would it work or are frozen tiles "dismissed" of the game.