*** The Hood (Classic) ***

babinro

There are 2 optimized Hood builds in my opinion.

055 - Level 117 - This Hood is optimized for sentry bombing. His yellow match damage is low enough that he won't tank yellow matches.

550 - Level 117 - This hood is optimized for general play. It wont' tank yellow and combines defensively with X-Force who will use surgical strike rather than hood's black.

If you've already maxed out your hood like I have then it's just a matter of preference.
I like 553 because it's amazing when xforce steals yellow and it's stronger for all modes of play rather than an optional niche perk.

over_clocked

I give up. I hope OP will come complain after Season 10 when we do indeed field fantabulous, fun-to-run, fun-to-fight XF/4or teams* that he has to overcome, and claim how two 4*s are completely OP and he misses days he had to fight Hood.

* without Hood, since you can't usually pick all 3 for Versus, and Hood has 5k health against 4or's 16k.

Lock this thread, please.

Unknown

Here's the problem with that. IS Sentry an optional niche? If you want 1300 points can you get there without him? I couldn't when I tried. The fights take too long. The only way to viably shield hop is Sentry. The only way to get crazy high scores is shield hopping. Thus the only way to get crazy high scores is Sentry. That's how I currently see it, thus mandating a 3/5/5 Hood.

Both your 5/5/0 and 0/5/5 builds are better with 3 covers in the off color, even if you don't level him passed 117.

Katai

553 since I've been running XForce far more than I run Sentry (cheaper, HP wise). I can still get to 1300 when I need to, so it's not a huge deal.

It's not uncommon to get a butt ton of yellows from Xforce's Surgical Strike (Nick Fury and Black Panther aren't exactly rare). Twin Pistols gets me more green and black to do it all over again.

The thing I find is that that 3 black can still be useful (Captain America teams in PvE, for instance, as well as roughly 1200 damage when you need it), while 3 yellow is worthless (Ending your turn is awful).

NorthernPolarity

Lerysh wrote:

Here's the problem with that. IS Sentry an optional niche? If you want 1300 points can you get there without him? I couldn't when I tried. The fights take too long. The only way to viably shield hop is Sentry. The only way to get crazy high scores is shield hopping. Thus the only way to get crazy high scores is Sentry. That's how I currently see it, thus mandating a 3/5/5 Hood.

Both your 5/5/0 and 0/5/5 builds are better with 3 covers in the off color, even if you don't level him passed 117.

I disagree, the other viable team in high end PvP right now is X-Force / Hood, and for that team 5/5/3 is miles better than 3/5/5.

Here's the thing about your logic: yes, if you want "crazy high scores", then Sentry is the only way to go. But my question to you is whether or not crazy high scores to begin with.
This is my view on the current PvP meta by points as an XF/Hood, assuming that its a standard PvP tournament where X-Men score say 2-2.4k:
0-600 - Any team can be used here, as it's pretty much irrelevant.
600 - 1200 - You can push this stretch directly without any shields with XF / Hood.
1200-1600 - 1 shield every 3ish attacks.
1600+ - Very dicey as XF/Hood, Sentry is required here.

Now the thing is, what score is required to top 5 a normal bracket? I would say that in the event a new character is released, 1500-1600 is on the upper end of what you need to score unless you get an insane death bracket, so this means that you can pretty much X-Force / Hood your way to victory to get a score high enough to get all of the prizes practically speaking, meaning that Sentry / Hood is in no way required to accomplish what you want to accomplish if you have XF-Hood. If you are a crazy like the X-Men, then sure, but for most people, a 5/5/3 Hood is fine assuming they have an X-Force.

Unknown

Isn't X-Force/C.Mags better than X-Force/Hood anyway? Not that Hood isn't great, he is, but X-Force/Hood/Guest might leave you with no Red power, a common top color choice on many enemy teams (including Sentry).

My choice may be biased by only having a 3/3/3 X-Force, but 3/5/5 Hood helps get to 5/5/3 X-Force faster so.... That's what I am at for now. I agree 5/5/3 Hood is better for everyone but Sentry, but Sentry is too prominent right now for most people I feel.

Unknown

Hood is an enabler. Enablers can only do so much.

You could pair Sentry with a OBW with lvl 1 recon and he'd get to demolish opposing teams almost as fast.

This isn't true for xforce. There is no way to argue that xforce can ever even hope to kill an opposing team as fast as a sentry composition.

Unknown

Arith wrote:

I don't see Sentry as a problem as we know he'll get fixed.

I'm baffled with this statement. Maybe the devs should announce "The Hood is getting a nerf at an unspecified time in the future." Then Hood will no longer be a problem for the OP because, you know, we know he'll get fixed.

GothicKratos

hurcules wrote:

Out of curiosity. Were you playing MPQ before shield system was implemented?

I didn't, however, I do understand that PvP was still rather flawed before their implementation (and I'll touch on this a little more in a second). It was essentially whoever could get the most wins in the last two hours of the event was the winner. I guess I really should have elaborated originally I kind of got into it in my second post, but the problem isn't strictly shielding, but being able to hop from shield to shield with little to no risk. This is why Sentry is God Tier, this is why Boosts create such a huge advantage, and this is part of the reason The Hood is so effective (though without Sentry, The Hood will still be the best Support in MPQ). Shields themselves are a great, healthy way to encourage players not to kill themselves grinding (not to mention great for non-US Timezones). I don't know how exactly to bridge the gap between being able to shield and not being able to hop, because pretty much everything I can think of either has loopholes or are pretty drastic (and/or unfair).

But back to what you mentioned, I totally understand your point on Shields bringing a lot to the table on the positive side of the spectrum, but my counter to that would be that realistically, the whole "you need to play ay this time" and so on and so forth is worse. It's not like you don't still have to play the last two hours of the event. It's not like you don't have to play to 600-700 on the first day, climb to 800-900 the next, and then hop to 1100+ on the final day to place well.

The perfect situation would be to be able to shield, but not be able to hop, in my opinion. Sentry would go down to a B-Lister, Boosts would just be Boosts, and The Hood would just be The Hood.

energythief

I obviously suck at this game. I have a 3/3/3 Hood and he just seems inferior to many other options. People talk about pairing him with X-Force Wolverine and Sentry... Can anyone explain how those combos work?

Thanks, sorry for such a newbie question.

reckless442

You need 5 blue to get the full benefit of his steals. There obviously is a big benefit to stealing AP from your opponent and getting extra AP. With Sentry, you want him with five black because, because he speeds up countdown tiles by one turn. So when you play Sentry's World Rupture, on the next turn, you can play Sentry's Sacrifice and Hood's Intimidation. That means the AI has no chance to match the sacrifice tile.

mohio

For sentry there is just the normal hood goodness which I will get into in a minute, then there's the combo. Combo goes like this. Boost +3G/b, +3r/y, +3all. Match green, match black, use world rupture, match yellow, use sacrifice, use intimidation, game over. This does imply using a 3/5/5 hood btw.

As for hood and xforce the only real combo potential is that when you use surgical strike it eliminates a color which makes hood's steal better. Otherwise, you just have hood being awesome. The reason he's so good in general is that he can be like obw, both offensive in stealing ap so you can use them and defensive in draining the ap from the opponent so they can't use abilities. If you take a few seconds to study the board you can figure out what colors you will steal and match other colors to maximize how much you can steal. All that and it's purely a passive ability.

energythief

reckless442 wrote:

You need 5 blue to get the full benefit of his steals. There obviously is a big benefit to stealing AP from your opponent and getting extra AP. With Sentry, you want him with five black because, because he speeds up countdown tiles by one turn. So when you play Sentry's World Rupture, on the next turn, you can play Sentry's Sacrifice and Hood's Intimidation. That means the AI has no chance to match the sacrifice tile.

Ok, I get the synergy there... And the Sacrifice is just so the World Rupture hits harder, right?

The only issue is that it beats the hell out of your own team too. I guess at highly competitive levels of play people just buy Health Packs?

Flare808

energythief wrote:

reckless442 wrote:

You need 5 blue to get the full benefit of his steals. There obviously is a big benefit to stealing AP from your opponent and getting extra AP. With Sentry, you want him with five black because, because he speeds up countdown tiles by one turn. So when you play Sentry's World Rupture, on the next turn, you can play Sentry's Sacrifice and Hood's Intimidation. That means the AI has no chance to match the sacrifice tile.

Ok, I get the synergy there... And the Sacrifice is just so the World Rupture hits harder, right?

The only issue is that it beats the hell out of your own team too. I guess at highly competitive levels of play people just buy Health Packs?

Intimidation ensures that all of your rupture tiles explode with Sacrifice in play. Without Sacrifice, rupture tiles disappearing can lead to other rupture tiles falling into matches or worse, the Sac tile getting matched. Intimidation sets them off all at once, without a chance of cascading screwing you.

You can Sentry hop without buying health packs. You only need to use health packs on Sentry and Hood (the PvP character loaner is usually good enough). Sentry bombing is preferred at high levels for its speed.

Spoit

energythief wrote:

reckless442 wrote:

You need 5 blue to get the full benefit of his steals. There obviously is a big benefit to stealing AP from your opponent and getting extra AP. With Sentry, you want him with five black because, because he speeds up countdown tiles by one turn. So when you play Sentry's World Rupture, on the next turn, you can play Sentry's Sacrifice and Hood's Intimidation. That means the AI has no chance to match the sacrifice tile.

Ok, I get the synergy there... And the Sacrifice is just so the World Rupture hits harder, right?

The only issue is that it beats the hell out of your own team too. I guess at highly competitive levels of play people just buy Health Packs?

Yeah, or you only do like 2-3 fights per shield hop, which is plenty of time to regen more health packs

energythief

Awesome, thank you guys for replying so quickly. I guess I need to research shield hopping more, as that seems to be the key technique.

mohio

energythief wrote:

reckless442 wrote:

You need 5 blue to get the full benefit of his steals. There obviously is a big benefit to stealing AP from your opponent and getting extra AP. With Sentry, you want him with five black because, because he speeds up countdown tiles by one turn. So when you play Sentry's World Rupture, on the next turn, you can play Sentry's Sacrifice and Hood's Intimidation. That means the AI has no chance to match the sacrifice tile.

Ok, I get the synergy there... And the Sacrifice is just so the World Rupture hits harder, right?

The only issue is that it beats the hell out of your own team too. I guess at highly competitive levels of play people just buy Health Packs?

Yeah with 5 in world rupture and 5 in sacrifice you get 16 tiles doing like 700 damage each. Sure it hurts you, but you only do it for the last few fights over 800 before shielding and then for shield hops, which is maybe 4 matches. You can usually get in 3 matches before you need a health pack if they go well, but maybe just 2, especially if you're risk averse.

dr tinykittylove

Since I got his 5th blue in the last pvp that allowed stealing for yellow and black, I have been faithfully firing his pistols every match at least once, sometimes 2 or more. It is a joy to use, collecting ap and cascades.

During one match againsy xf/lcap/hood that went badly because of a cascade, Hood was left last man standing against near full-health lcap. Mano a mano. He pistolled/intimidated lcap to sleep. Pistols are also good for denying enemy ap and rearranging unfavourable boards.

In sum, 553 makes him a versatile support character and fun to play in addition to being the ridiculously useful character he is.

over_clocked

I have been hopping just fine with 5/5/3 Hood. Even if Sentry will be running unscared for another Season or two, I am not respeccing my second Hood 3/5/5 because Intimidation is absolutely unnecessary in the first place.
At 3 covers, it's nice as a finisher, as a means of staggering WR/Sac so that you don't overkill the AI and don't overdamage your own team, as a black AP dump if there are no better options.
At 5 covers, it instead minimizes chances of Sacrifice being lost and also allows you not to skip 5/3/5 Falcons and 4/4/5 She-Hulks in their respective PvPs. Which happens about as often as every other 2 months? And most people have the PvE builds of 5/5/3 for Falcon and 5/3/5 for She-Hulk. As mentioned, stun TUps achieve the same role too, or you can bring in Daken over Hood to confuse 5/3/5 Falcons and 4/4/5 She-Hulks.
XF/Hood allow me to climb to 1100, 1200+ without shields or HP boosts in regular PvPs as mentioned by Polarity, and even if I Sentry-hop, I never boost 3 all AP boosts and only boost 2: 3 yellow/red, 2 green/black, 2 all AP. This means you have to make 1 green and 1 yellow match to deploy a Sentry bomb. Most of the time I only boost ISO boosts when Sentry-bombing, and thus don't rely on Intimidation either. From my experience, extremely few losses happened thanks to the Sac tile being lost or not enough WR tiles surviving; most wipes of mine happened for sheer cascades way before I could deploy a bomb, for my underhealed heavy hitters, for my glaring mistakes, etc.
Meanwhile maxed Pistols go nicely with the following characters:
LC - his own yellow sucks but Hood's helps collect AP for shields;
XF - no comment, yellow only goes to XF if he needs a heal stat;
cMags - his own yellow is mediocre;
Patch and all other characters without an active yellow ability - obviously; etc., etc.
Not to mention 4or's yellow is really mediocre as well outside of dire situations and PvE but she's so much better for PvP. 5/3/5 all the way, yellow for Pistols.

Phaserhawk

I've pretty much come to the conclusion you need 2 Hood's nowadays. A 5/5/3 to push with X-Force and a 3/5/5 to shield hop. When Sentry gets nerfed you can respec 3/5/5 to 5/5/3 and save on some health packs in the future. That's what I have decided to do.