*** The Hood (Classic) ***

hurcules

locked wrote:

Riggy wrote:

You have to a) have 9 tiles of a given color on the board

10. 10 tiles.

10. 10 tiles. AH AH Ah.

*lightning/thunder*

Zen808

So for today's edition of MPQ Mythbusters, we're going to test the myth that Hood is, in fact, more powerful than Sentry.

And how will we be doing that, Jamie?

I'm glad you asked. We'll be teaming both individuals up with Yelena and Bagman, and seeing how they perform in real world battles.

*Cut to testing*

Well, it looks like Team Hood just got squished by the team of Patchneto + Buster the Crash Test Dummy.

Let's check in on Team Sentry.

*World Rupture*
*Sacrifice*
*BOOM BOOM BOOOOOOOOM!!!*

Ouch, that had to hurt, Adam.

Poor Buster, he gets blowed up so much.

Anyway, I guess it's safe to say that this myth is BUSTED!

Thanks, for watching!

Unknown

locked wrote:

Arith wrote:

Riggy wrote:

locked wrote:

10. 10 tiles.

Edit: have also been going to 1300 scores on one shield just fine (thanks, 2000 scorers!) with my 5/5/3 Hood(s): black is irrelevant for hopping and only shaves off 1 couple of seconds usually or allows the players to not skip 5/3/5 Falcons and 4/4/5 She-Hulks.

9. 9 tiles

Yeah, credibility :þ

Ok, before the thead goes to hell. Let's say Hood is fine, how about reworking blade and mystique to at least match his abilities, giving us at least some options on who we want to use for stealing?

We already hijacked your thread because your OP had very little credibility while Riggy still has tons (the actual dev-posted preview is ambiguous and wrong, no wonder they changed it on request). And I completely agree on your other point and wish there were tons of viable options besides Hood; Blade kinda already is due to a damaging passive. As mentioned by others, if Sentry's high damage output wasn't completely warping the meta, fast and squishier characters like Human Torch, Psylocke, Punisher could see more play and also be viable Hood counters.

Apparently, yeah, that just proves how irrelevant his AP steal is for Sentry bombing. It's annoying in general, but not something I apparently pay attention to when fighting Sentry.

mohio

Riggy wrote:

Apparently, yeah, that just proves how irrelevant his AP steal is for Sentry bombing. It's annoying in general, but not something I apparently pay attention to when fighting Sentry.

I usually will only boost +2 ALL cause I'm F2P and cheap, so every few matches (i dunno, 1 in 6 or 7?) it will come into play where the opposing hood will steal a yellow and then match yellow so I won't steal one back. This usually just means a few more turns and some extra damage taken, but occasionally it can mean disaster. I imagine if you +3 ALL it's gonna be super-unlikely that AI can steal twice without you being able to at least steal one back.

Unknown

Unknown

Now we're getting somewhere. My whole reason for starting the thread with my low cred was my worries about Hood becoming essential. And as it is, I think he'll be xf next sidekick. Psylocke and torch were my #2 and #3 166 and I've played them a lot. Of the two Torch typically does more dmg since you need everything to go just right to get full dmg from Psylocke. Changing her blue to stun might make her the ideal counter to hood.

Oh, and don't steal my thread :þ

Unknown

Hood and Sentry are two kinds of problem. Hood is the strongest support character in the game, but he cancels himself out exactly and since every top team has him, it's not a huge issue in the high end playing. Sentry has no such parallel, as having Sentry does very little at stopping the opponent's Sentry. Due to both boosts and that Sentry's moves are 3 matches it is fairly likely for a human to hit Sacrifice or World Rupture first in most cases. Note that this isn't true with X Force as Surgical Strike is 4 matches and this takes considerably longer to get which has more chances for weird things to happen to the board that weakens the human player's first move advantage.

The Hood wasn't top tier most because people don't get he's that strong, not to mention for a long time you had characters that can end the game with 2 matches so even having a broken AP steal doesn't matter. Back in the old days Wolverine 2* would start with 2 Feral Claws with 6g 6r (AP+3 all boosts didn't cost HP back then) and you open with 2 Feral Claws and The Hood would already be half dead and you got like 200+ strength of strike tiles on board so of course he's not a big problem. You had Spiderman who can stun the whole team forever, and Magneto that can usually kill The Hood after 2 blue matches. So yeah, back then it's all about having high HP characters that may possibly outlast the broken combos, but that was the past.

To balance The Hood he needs to have way more HP because this is the only way you can even nerf Dormammu's Aid. He indeed does die to a lot of moves in one hit (Fireball/X Force for example) so if he wasn't game breaking powerful you'd be pretty stupid to run a guy who can die in one move. I've said this on the Mystique thread but if you want to have a support character that is relatively weak at support, they have to have a lot of HP to justify their spot even if it goes against the philsophy where a character's HP is obviously tied to how big they are on their portrait. Something like say make Dormammu's Aid reduce damage from AP consuming attacks by 10%/20%/30%/40%/50% would work if they truly insist on never increasing The Hood's HP (and obviously make it steal less if it did that).

FaustianDeal

I am reminded of the meme picture from Futurama... text says something about "has maxed bag man - not sure if ..." (I forget)

someone get on changing that image to read: "Thinks Hood is the OP Half of Sentry-Bombing"

Unknown

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Boosts won't disappear. They're a revenue stream and ISO dump... but I agree that they are much of the issue. A non-boosted Sentrybomb team is actually quite vulnerable, even to AI.

Hood isn't overpowered as such, he's just got amazing synergy with Sentry in two of his three colours - and great synergy with other characters with his blue. If I was going to 'fix' Sentry then my main change would be to up the countdown to 4 (maybe 5) to give the opposition more chance of clearing down WR tiles before it can do major damage. That would make it somewhat less overpowered for it's cost.

Before Sentry was released, Hood was a very good character but no-one was screaming he was overpowered. He's only OP when paired with Sentry, and Sentry is still fairly OP when not paired with Hood but paired with Daken (for example). This means that Sentry is the issue, not Hood.

Over and above all these factors though is the way scoring works. At the top end it is all above Speed because you can lose SO MANY POINTS if you're exposed for more than 4 minutes. It's stupid. It means that any strategy other than WIN AS FAST AS POSSIBLE is redundant, even if it's a better winning strategy. For example, X-Force is a great counter to Sentrybomb teams but people don't use X-Force because even though (unboosted) he's better at taking down Hood/Sentry, he's slower to win with and therefore even if you win, you might be attacked and lose more points while gaining that win.

Actually, developers want to remove boosts. They haven't removed them BC of player demand for them.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Hood and Sentry are two kinds of problem. Hood is the strongest support character in the game, but he cancels himself out exactly and since every top team has him, it's not a huge issue in the high end playing.

The problem with this logic is that it separates the players into "have a complete hood" and "have nots", and keeps a decent chunk of the game only accessible to people with a full hood.

Not everyone has free access to full 3*s. Actually, I wish we had the metrics about how many people have any fully covered max levelled 3*s. I bet it's a small percentage of the total players.

This thread is nonsense of course, you can slot literally any character with a maxed sentry with full boosts and he can still kill pretty much anything out there by himself in a couple turns. Even a pair of lvl1s.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Hood and Sentry are two kinds of problem. Hood is the strongest support character in the game, but he cancels himself out exactly and since every top team has him, it's not a huge issue in the high end playing.

The problem with this logic is that it separates the players into "have a complete hood" and "have nots", and keeps a decent chunk of the game only accessible to people with a full hood.

And by a decent chunk you mean the top 10 of any given Versus event. Otherwise, you can do just about everything else that a person without The Hood can do.

Perhaps another aspect of the discussion would be why do we have so many characters where a certain build is the only build viable (or conversely why a certain skill at 5 is mandatory for that character to be viable). But again, those are points that have been discussed ad nausea in other threads. As you said though:

ark123 wrote:

This thread is nonsense of course

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Hood and Sentry are two kinds of problem. Hood is the strongest support character in the game, but he cancels himself out exactly and since every top team has him, it's not a huge issue in the high end playing.

The problem with this logic is that it separates the players into "have a complete hood" and "have nots", and keeps a decent chunk of the game only accessible to people with a full hood.

Not everyone has free access to full 3*s. Actually, I wish we had the metrics about how many people have any fully covered max levelled 3*s. I bet it's a small percentage of the total players.

This thread is nonsense of course, you can slot literally any character with a maxed sentry with full boosts and he can still kill pretty much anything out there by himself in a couple turns. Even a pair of lvl1s.

It's obviously not fair but at least there is a solution even if it's an unfair one. I was just pointing out that in Sentry's case even having him doesn't really stop you from being hammered by an opposing Sentry, while The Hood most definitely cancels himself out until he's downed.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

ark123 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Hood and Sentry are two kinds of problem. Hood is the strongest support character in the game, but he cancels himself out exactly and since every top team has him, it's not a huge issue in the high end playing.

The problem with this logic is that it separates the players into "have a complete hood" and "have nots", and keeps a decent chunk of the game only accessible to people with a full hood.

Not everyone has free access to full 3*s. Actually, I wish we had the metrics about how many people have any fully covered max levelled 3*s. I bet it's a small percentage of the total players.

This thread is nonsense of course, you can slot literally any character with a maxed sentry with full boosts and he can still kill pretty much anything out there by himself in a couple turns. Even a pair of lvl1s.

It's obviously not fair but at least there is a solution even if it's an unfair one. I was just pointing out that in Sentry's case even having him doesn't really stop you from being hammered by an opposing Sentry, while The Hood most definitely cancels himself out until he's downed.

This. Hood is the best defence for Hood. That's what I'm talking about. No matter how much forum "vets" get off bantering about nonsense the simple matter is fighting Hood the fastest, safest way is either 6ap of boosts or your own Hood.

Nellyson

That would be very interesting if they did get rid of boosts. And I agree with almost everyone here that Hood is not OP. Sentry is. I don't use Hood to Sentrybomb....in fact, it doesn't matter who you use. Use anyone you want, you just see Hood most often for the same reason that you saw OBW in the past. It's the only way to counter him right now. Hopefully Mystique is a cool thief and I really like her Shapeshift (love the fact that she actually changes!!), but the match stealing is a good idea. What they really need in this game is really good defensive people. We have all these strong attack and power move characters aka Lazy , Steve , Berserk and X-Force, but no good defensive people. Your friendly neighborhood used to be a good defensive guy and I really think they need to change his stun to 3 ap rather than 5. But who else does defense???? yeah, but you'll never get out any shields. classic is good, but his shields are weak. They need to buff and make her a good defensive character. Have Force Bubbles create a stronger shield, but only put out 3-5 bubbles at 5 covers. 8 is just stupid. Even when I put them out there, I don't want 8. Honestly, I would love it if the next new character was a defensive guru. Have them destroy strike tiles for a low AP cost. Bye bye bombing, but will still remain powerful and that's fine! Because as we all know, World Rupture doesn't work without the strike tiles. But we would need many options of this characteristic.

Then of course there is the scoring. The way we get hit for massive losses is just absurd and stupid. These massive losses are the only reason we have to play quickly. If this can be fixed, then I won't care if or X-Force is overpowered. They can still be beat....they just take longer.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

Actually, developers want to remove boosts.

Not sure I've seen any evidence of that. When TUs came out they just forced more boost purchases because they stopped dropping after fights.

Unknown

Arith wrote:

This. Hood is the best defence for Hood. That's what I'm talking about. No matter how much forum "vets" get off bantering about nonsense the simple matter is fighting Hood the fastest, safest way is either 6ap of boosts or your own Hood.

I note that you've stopped talking about Sentry all together, which was the point of your terribly ill-advised OP. But what you're missing is that at least Hood has a counter. There is no counter to Sentry. Sentry doesn't even counter Sentry.

Ergo, to your OP, Hood isn't the problem, Sentry is..

Also, I rated down your quoted post (my first and only for the thread) for the insult. It's one thing as a forum newbie to come in and say "I'm right and you're wrong". It's something else to fling blatant insults about. I am a big enough person to note when I'm mistaken on something and I even rated Locked up for pointing it out to me.

ClydeFrog76

There's wanting to nerf characters because they're OP, and then wanting to nerf characters because you don't like playing against them.

Sentry is blatantly the first, and Hood is - quite obviously in your case - the second. He's not the problem, he's just the current best support character in the game with a skill that is only *really* useful against characters with CDs, which are few and far between. It just so happens to help Sentry be even more of a **** than usual, but he is still the Fabio clone with a nuke in his pocket if Hood is on his team or not.

Unknown

Sentry and Hood are just not the same kind of problem. Suppose there's a character with the passive: You win the game if the opponent doesn't have the same character on their team at the start of the fight. He has no other abilities.

In the grand scheme of things this character isn't that overpowered because eventually every team will have him. He sure makes the team composition very boring, but in a mirror match it's quite fair and there's no unreasonable advantage.

Sentry is a character that breaks symmetry. Sentry does not defend against himself at all. There isn't even some kind of bad balance when it comes to Sentry. X Force would be an exmaple of a 'bad' balance, as he counters himself very well and most fights boils down to the team getting Surgical Strike first wins. Sure, the human has the advantage for going first but that's a universal advantage and not specific to this particular matchup. Is it fun to know that the first team to make 4 black matches win in a X Force mirror match? Of course not, but at least it's sort of fair. You don't have that with Sentry, because his moves cost so little in terms of AP that even without boosts it's generally a one way beatdown, and with boosts there's no chance for defense to race to green/yellow even with the identical team setup. It's similar to how classic Magneto before his nerf is strictly in favor of the attacker. Even if the AI knows how to use Magnetic FIeld, it's just inconceiveable that they could get 2 blue matches before the human can even when there are no boosts involved and with boosts you'd start out the fight with Magnetic Field. There isn't even a chance to get lucky here.

Unknown

DrUnpleasant wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

Actually, developers want to remove boosts.

Not sure I've seen any evidence of that. When TUs came out they just forced more boost purchases because they stopped dropping after fights.

Im too lazy to find the posts. But if you remember they even stopped boosts drops. Players complained, now boost drops are back.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

DrUnpleasant wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

Actually, developers want to remove boosts.

Not sure I've seen any evidence of that. When TUs came out they just forced more boost purchases because they stopped dropping after fights.

Im too lazy to find the posts. But if you remember they even stopped boosts drops. Players complained, now boost drops are back.

They probably thought if boosts stopped dropping then people would stop using them and then they can transition into no boosts allowed period. Of course, that obviously didn't work out that way. They retired the +50% damage boosts for PvE events and I think they were probably testing what happens if they removed boosts from game, though I doubt any useful information was obtained because I sure can't imagine anyone bought those willingly. It'd take a lot less to buy the covers of whatever event you're trying to win than the amount of boost you'd have to spend on those way overpriced boosts.