*** The Hood (Classic) ***

wymtime

pS Dev's stop posting Nerfs on Friday so you can avoid the wrath of your community.

Spoit

wymtime wrote:

pS Dev's stop posting Nerfs on Friday so you can avoid the wrath of your community.

Let's be honest, it's not like they're around THAT much to begin with

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]
...ability exploits could arise. We wanted to address these exploits...

Unknown

OK, changes I can live with. Though I'm surprised at the change to Hood's - what exactly is the advantage that would give along with Thorette?

Unknown

Sentry is a reasonable and welcome change. Hood is not, simply too much, makes yellow unusable...

Unknown

Rico Dredd wrote:

OK, changes I can live with. Though I'm surprised at the change to Hood's - what exactly is the advantage that would give along with Thorette?

When you start using Twin Pistols to collect AP from Boosted yellow and blue tiles it doesn't take much boardluck to be able to chain TP and Power Surge enough times to get more than enough AP to slaughter the enemy team

Unknown

Rico Dredd wrote:

OK, changes I can live with. Though I'm surprised at the change to Hood's - what exactly is the advantage that would give along with Thorette?

Charge tiles, match for up to 15 yellow, destroy more charged tiles with Twin Pistols, repeat until enemy is dead or board is clear of U/R/Y.

As for the changes: eh. They're pretty solid. Sentry is still usable, still relatively niche, but no longer "most broken thing since Yawgmoth's Will". I don't like that Twin Pistols now always ends the turn, but giving hood a (let's be honest here) pretty damn meaty direct damage attack is neat. Feels like D3 is getting better at this.

HailMary

gamar wrote:

Yeah, but Fireball is what Torch DOES. ROTP is what BP DOES.

1) Like I said earlier, Hood's moves actually "cost less" because he's the Hood.
2) A hypothetical ability that, say, does 4k damage for 10 AP is MUCH STRONGER on a character like Hood or Falcon than on Thor or Patch. You really can't look at an ability given to Hood and say "but it doesn't hit as hard/efficiently as an ability on a striker"

1. I'll meet you halfway on this one, since any team with Hood on it basically gets a discount on all active powers, regardless of who owns those powers.
2. I agree that a "bonus" damage power on a utility character like Hood is more notable/important than yet another damage power on a hitter. However, the straight-up damage-per-AP numbers are already low. Add to the fact that you cannot take direct advantage of your own board shakeup, and the fact that squishy little Hood will always stay out front to take it in the face after Twin Pistols.

Edit: typo

Chrono_Tata

At a glance, Sentry nerf seems to be okay. He looks to still be devastating if his abilities can fire, but he won't be able to win games so fast anymore, and will be ending matches with a lot less health.

However, the changes to the damage number is slightly worrying though. The "small" nerf in individual tile damage could add up to a huge damage nerf, especially now that it takes 3 turns to fire. Will have to actually test him out to see how well he fares now. Personally I think the AP increase and 3 turn countdown would have been more than sufficient to balance Sentry, but I guess the devs can't resist to try to overnerf him.

On the other hand, the Hood definitely got overnerfed with double pistol ending the turn no matter what. Like others have said, there are a lot of other abilities that do similar damage for similar costs with board shake up that don't end the turn. Not sure why the Hood is being given the short end of the stick on this.

mjh

So I sold 2 Hood during S7, will you, D3, now give those back to me? I would gladly pay 2x the

His is so bad I wouldn't fire it off if I had 30

The Sentry changes I can live with. It will slow down hopping which is a good thing. He will be on par with xforce for hopping speed.

Unknown

Hood's yellow is just totally useless now. It's a desperation-only move, like Supernova.

Sentry's Hood is helpful, hopefully it will be enough. Not totally sure it will be.

EDIT: Also really annoying that I would have kept a black Hood cover from the other day if they had let us know in time. Can you let us unsell those, possibly?

Unknown

The Twin Pistols change is not because they're afraid of some hypthetical Thor scenario that'd take way more luck than just running X Force with a favorable board. Moves that can destroy more than a certain number of tiles have a chance to lead to some really broken/infinite combo. This is why Force Bubble Crush ends the turn because it destroys potentially 24 tiles and collects AP for them, and while it's not likely to pull this off even if Force Bubble Crush didn't end the turn, it's just not a good idea to leave the possibility open. Twin Pistols originally collects 18 AP and can also be targeted which in theory can lead to setting up better shots to get even better than results. Nobody really does that because The Hood is generally powerful enough that you can win just by firing Twin Pistols into whatever AP you still need, but no character is meant to be so powerful that you don't even need to bother trying to setup an infinite combo. I'm not sure why they chose to change Twin Pistols over Dormammu's Aid, though, since it should be rather obvious that The Hood's power comes from Dormammu's Aid, not Twin Pistols, so I assume they're still waiting to post change to Dormammu's Aid. Otherwise the devs are a lot more out of touch than people accuse them for if they cannot tell that Dormammu's Aid >>> Twin Pistols.

Of course one might ask why doesn't Unstoppable Crash doesn't have the same restriction applied, as it sure creates plenty of insane combo and if the AI doesn't have the 'once per turn' limitation, which effectively kills all infinite combos, I'm sure we'll see plenty of fights Juggernaut or Ragnarok take 15 turns in a row by just cycling Unstoppable Crash/Godlike Power.

Unknown

So. New Hood Twin Pistols. Anyone changing their vote? Specifically and D) are really bad choices now.

Hood will no longer get the "quit ending my turn" thing after 5 covers. That's a major downer. It also doesn't generate AP anymore. What it does do is 6k damage to an enemy, and that ain't bad. It's sort of close to what I wish GSBW's Pistols could do.

With Sentry now at 3 turns a CD, Intimidation is practically mandatory to make it manageable. Otherwise you are losing far to many to matching. I like the AP cost increase, I don't love the CD timer increase. Not sure if the Hood change increases the divide between "I love Sentry" and "I love Hood" or if it pushes more Hoodies into Sentry camp because of changes.

Also good bye Goddess of Thunder synergy.

atomzed

Phantron wrote:

Otherwise the devs are a lot more out of touch than people accuse them for if they cannot tell that Dormammu's Aid >>> Twin Pistols.

I beg to differ. Any change to dormammu aid will over nerf hood. He is a support character, and he needs a hitter to win games. He doesn't win games by himself.

Even an increase of 1 tile requirement, will make DA less effective.... and then hood will not be used anymore. Is that the case that we want? A useless character, with low hp and no offense capability?

I rather they keep DA as it is. And I hoping that d3 recognise any change should try to keep the essentials of the character.

Unknown

Chrono_Tata wrote:

At a glance, Sentry nerf seems to be okay. He looks to still be devastating if his abilities can fire, but he won't be able to win games so fast anymore, and will be ending matches with a lot less health.

However, the changes to the damage number is slightly worrying though. The "small" nerf in individual tile damage could add up to a huge damage nerf, especially now that it takes 3 turns to fire. Will have to actually test him out to see how well he fares now. Personally I think the AP increase and 3 turn countdown would have been more than sufficient to balance Sentry, but I guess the devs can't resist to try to overnerf him.

On the other hand, the Hood definitely got overnerfed with double pistol ending the turn no matter what. Like others have said, there are a lot of other abilities that do similar damage for similar costs with board shake up that don't end the turn. Not sure why the Hood is being given the short end of the stick on this.

This is more an indicator I think of those abilities being over powered rather than Hood's being terrible. It's not terrible. If fully covered and fully leveled it's a 400 damage per AP ability (ish) that lets you target bad areas on the board and blow them up.

I do wonder about the damage nerf to Supernova. That ability was under represented on Sentry anyway, and you want to make it worse?

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The Twin Pistols change is not because they're afraid of some hypthetical Thor scenario that'd take way more luck than just running X Force with a favorable board. Moves that can destroy more than a certain number of tiles have a chance to lead to some really broken/infinite combo. This is why Force Bubble Crush ends the turn because it destroys potentially 24 tiles and collects AP for them, and while it's not likely to pull this off even if Force Bubble Crush didn't end the turn, it's just not a good idea to leave the possibility open. Twin Pistols originally collects 18 AP and can also be targeted which in theory can lead to setting up better shots to get even better than results. Nobody really does that because The Hood is generally powerful enough that you can win just by firing Twin Pistols into whatever AP you still need, but no character is meant to be so powerful that you don't even need to bother trying to setup an infinite combo. I'm not sure why they chose to change Twin Pistols over Dormammu's Aid, though, since it should be rather obvious that The Hood's power comes from Dormammu's Aid, not Twin Pistols, so I assume they're still waiting to post change to Dormammu's Aid. Otherwise the devs are a lot more out of touch than people accuse them for if they cannot tell that Dormammu's Aid >>> Twin Pistols.

Of course one might ask why doesn't Unstoppable Crash doesn't have the same restriction applied, as it sure creates plenty of insane combo and if the AI doesn't have the 'once per turn' limitation, which effectively kills all infinite combos, I'm sure we'll see plenty of fights Juggernaut or Ragnarok take 15 turns in a row by just cycling Unstoppable Crash/Godlike Power.

1) if what you say about TP is true, the change would been made long ago. It's simply about goddess and charged tiles.

3) if they change DA, they might as well delete hood and his meager health points because he'll officially become worst 3* character.

atomzed

stephen43084 wrote:

3) if they change DA, they might as well delete hood and his meager health points because he'll officially become worst 3* character.

Exactly. I don't want a character to be made obsolete. I want all of them to have niche position, if it's possible.

DA is arguably the limit to which any AP steal ability can be. All future ap steal needs to be less powerful than DA. Which is what we are already seeing in the new characters: blade, only steal color for the strongest color. Mystique, only steal color from the color which AI match.

Unknown

I feel Hood's Yellow was over nerfed.

I would suggest make it deal half the damage per tile, but have it costs 12 yellow instead and not end the turn.

Unknown

The Sentry nerf looks fine to me. We'll see more Hood/Xforce combos from now on before the next Lady Thor/Whoever combo in 2015.

As for the Hood nerf, I'm not overjoyed of course.

It would be fair to allow free respec after these nerfs.

There are people who DO pay to get extra covers you know ?

dkffiv

As someone stated before, Hood / Xforce / Storm should destroy targeted tiles and then generate AP based on the color of the tile (without any charge tile modifiers). The hood is fine as is, if anything I'd say limit the number of tiles intimidation affects to 3 or 4 and at 5 covers it reduces the CD by 1 twice (double tick of human torch tile for instance).

I feel as though Hood is perfectly balanced as is and I use him a ton in PvE. If the main concern is over charged tile interaction, fix charge tiles rather than nerfing Hood.

If you're keeping things as proposed, make Hood take 50% (or higher) damage reduction after casting Twin Pistols.