*** The Hood (Classic) ***

Moral

energythief wrote:

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.

It's the technique after you cannot progress without it. Most people that do it can break 1000 before using their first shield.

Unknown

energythief wrote:

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.

Actually, this isn't why hood is good. Oh, it's a factor - Hood/Sentry/X vs. A/B/C on offense means that "X" doesn't matter, and neither does "A", "B", or "C" - whereas with just Sentry, you might have to actually worry about slowing down a little if they're running Hood or Falcon.

But the thing with hood is his blue. At 5 covers, each time your turn begins and there's 10 or more of a color on the field, you steal one AP of that color. Ideally, this can mean stealing 1 AP of each color per turn. This can be huge. It's hard enough to power expensive abilities, and now you have to fight your way through that mess? He also helps nullify boosts (if you start with boosts, the first thing that happens is that Hood takes a chunk out of 'em), accelerate your own characters (need that one extra AP? Hood's got your back), and generally make life hard for your opponent. He's the best AP thief in the game, bar none, which makes him completely amazing as a support character. Not great on his own, mind you - his actives are somewhere between "conditional" and "unplayable", and he has the lowest life of any 3* in the game. But throw him up next to XForce and all of a sudden denying 8 green AP goes from "hard" to "oh my god I'm going to die aren't I".

Unknown

I wish sentry would just be removed. He's no fun to play with or against. Felt that way for months. I like having to use all 3 guys. Not just Match green. Match yellow. Win 99% of the time.

Spoit

Greetings all,

We wanted to give you a heads-up on changes to Sentry and The Hood that will be going into effect shortly before Thanksgiving (late November).

While Sentry and The Hood are mighty heroes, under certain circumstances, ability exploits could arise. We wanted to address these exploits and make the game more fun for everyone.

We hope that you will be pleased with the new updates for Sentry and The Hood. For anyone dissatisfied with the updates, please be aware that we will be increasing sell prices for both characters, for a limited time, after the updates are implemented.

As always, anything listed below is subject to change before release.

Here's word from IceIX:

The Hood
We're balancing this ability so that it retains its high cost, high return capability. Instead of returning AP per tile destroyed (which could be great or horrible depending on how the board was laid out), it now deals an increasing amount of base damage. In return for this increased damage capability, The Hood also had to lose the Level 5 reward of not ending his turn on usage.

Old

Twin Pistols - Yellow 18
Parker Robbins fires his twin Lorcin .380’s, destroying two selected 3x3 blocks of tiles, earning AP and dealing damage. Ends the turn.

Level 2: Costs 1 AP less. Level 3: Costs 1 AP less. Level 4: Costs 1 AP less. Level 5: Doesn't end the turn.

New

Twin Pistols - Yellow 15
Parker Robbins fires his twin Lorcin .380’s, destroying two selected 3x3 blocks of tiles, dealing 11 damage per tile. Does not generate AP. Ends the turn.

Level 2: Deals 21 damage per tile destroyed. Level 3: Deals 32 damage per tile destroyed. Level 4: Deals 54 damage per tile destroyed. Level 5: Deals 100 damage per tile destroyed. Max Level: Deals 317 damage per tile destroyed.

***
Original post:

15 is ridiculously overcosted for a sub-3k damage power.

Oh wait, sorry I miscalculated, it's about 5.7k, which is still a terrible value proposition.

AND it ends the turn? Yeah, that's pretty much completely worthless now.

Unknown

So... Looks like 355 may be the preferred Hood build soon.

mags1587

That seems like a really harsh nerf for Hood's yellow. I understand removing the AP gain or having the move always end the turn, but I don't understand doing both.

Unknown

Twin Pistols got super nerfed? It was already expensive, but usable.

Now it's expensive and lame. Also, the old says it cost 18, but it doesn't. It costs 15 pre-nerf.

Unknown

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised about the change to The Hood's yellow. I wouldn't have even expected that particular power to have been under consideration for change. Having it always end the turn makes it a "never use" ability for me.

Spoit

adamLmpq wrote:

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised about the change to The Hood's yellow. I wouldn't have even expected that particular power to have been under consideration for change. Having it always end the turn makes it a "never use" ability for.

It's because Polarity pointed out the combo with 4hor

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

15 is ridiculously overcosted for a sub-3k damage power.

Oh wait, sorry I miscalculated, it's about 5.7k, which is still a terrible value proposition.

AND it ends the turn? Yeah, that's pretty much completely worthless now.

What it means is that for players it's worthless but scaled PvE hoods will randomly ruin your day

Ryz-aus

I am assuming the twin pistols nerf is because of the synergy it would have wih 4* Thor. Since it's just damage after the change, I don't understand why it should end the turn but removing the AP gain makes sense. I would much rather have it have a little lower cost, and reduce the damage to whatever seems reasonable with it not ending the turn. Then again, most 3*s have one fairly useless power so I don't know why I expect hood to be different.

World rupture nerf seems promising - raising it to 12 ap is a giant change.

Spoit

gamar wrote:

Spoit wrote:

15 is ridiculously overcosted for a sub-3k damage power.

Oh wait, sorry I miscalculated, it's about 5.7k, which is still a terrible value proposition.

AND it ends the turn? Yeah, that's pretty much completely worthless now.

What it means is that for players it's worthless but scaled PvE hoods will randomly ruin your day

Maggia goons feeding him is the only way to realistically hit 15 AP, yes

Ryz-aus

Spoit wrote:

Ryz-aus wrote:

I am assuming the twin pistols nerf is because of the synergy it would have wih 4* Thor. Since it's just damage after the change, I don't understand why it should end the turn but removing the AP gain makes sense. I would much rather have it have a little lower cost, and reduce the damage to whatever seems reasonable with it not ending the turn. Then again, most 3*s have one fairly useless power so I don't know why I expect hood to be different.

World rupture nerf seems promising - raising it to 12 ap is a giant change.

Outside of 2 (sentry and LC), maybe 3 (IM40, though who would ever use him is beyond me), characters, his black is SUPER worthless, especially with black actually being a power color now

I use hood with im40 and Cap all the time in pve - they are fantastic. That might be warping how useful I find his black in general.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Outside of 2 (sentry and LC), maybe 3 (IM40, though who would ever use him is beyond me), characters, his black is SUPER worthless, especially with black actually being a power color now

Yeah, I always thought his black was generally pretty bad and had very limited usefulness. It wasn't until Sentry's World Rupture that it really became an ability than more than a handful of people used, I think.

I'd like to see them update that ability while they're rolling out changes for him

Unknown

So hood change right after hood rewards have been applied.

Sigh.... It's 3* Daken all over again. Y'all just asking for complaints. I don't feel bad because y'all deserve them between this and the disaster of changing MMR back with 10 hours to go in PvP.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

gamar wrote:

Spoit wrote:

15 is ridiculously overcosted for a sub-3k damage power.

Oh wait, sorry I miscalculated, it's about 5.7k, which is still a terrible value proposition.

AND it ends the turn? Yeah, that's pretty much completely worthless now.

What it means is that for players it's worthless but scaled PvE hoods will randomly ruin your day

Maggia goons feeding him is the only way to realistically hit 15 AP, yes

We'll always have surgical strike against the PVP teams that inexplicably use Spider Man

HailMary

Spoit wrote:

adamLmpq wrote:

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised about the change to The Hood's yellow. I wouldn't have even expected that particular power to have been under consideration for change. Having it always end the turn makes it a "never use" ability for.

It's because Polarity pointed out the combo with 4hor

Silver lining: at least we know who to blame.

At first, I was going to say that 3/5/5 just became the clearly optimal Hood build, since Twin Pistols no longer generates AP. But, maxed-to-the-limit Twin Pistols will deal 5K damage, which isn't terrible (though ending the turn no matter what still sucks), and WR is still the only playable ability that'll put out enough CDs to make 5-cover Intimidation meaningful. Hmmm.

In broad strokes, the Sentry nerf looks unsurprising (slower, pricier, lower-damage Sac Rupture), and isn't as harsh as some of the worst-case scenarios we dreamed up, but Hood's really gonna be feeling that one for a while.

Spoit

HailMary wrote:

Spoit wrote:

adamLmpq wrote:

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised about the change to The Hood's yellow. I wouldn't have even expected that particular power to have been under consideration for change. Having it always end the turn makes it a "never use" ability for.

It's because Polarity pointed out the combo with 4hor

Silver lining: at least we know who to blame.

At first, I was going to say that 3/5/5 just became the clearly optimal Hood build, since Twin Pistols no longer generates AP. But, maxed-to-the-limit Twin Pistols will deal 5K damage, which isn't terrible (though ending the turn no matter what still sucks), and WR is still the only playable ability that'll put out enough CDs to make 5-cover Intimidation meaningful. Hmmm.

In broad strokes, the Sentry nerf looks unsurprising (slower, pricier, lower-damage Sac Rupture), and isn't as harsh as some of the worst-case scenarios we dreamed up, but Hood's really gonna be feeling that one for a while.

I mean, yeah, without 5Y, it is literally worse than ballistic salvo, so you might as well go 0/5/5

EDIT:bah, I meant unibeam.

HailMary

I was just reminded that, like UDaken, Hood's nerf announcement comes shortly after an event that awarded Hood covers.

Sigh.

DD-The-Mighty

So you nerfed one of hood only decent -non blue- moves because of a possible good synergy with a character only a select few will even have and 10-15% of the player population will ever have to face with any consistency. None of which address the point that he scales horribly and is pretty much a waste of a slot if he doesn't have any decent levels in blue.
nice.

At least you may have gotten sentry right.