*** The Hood (Classic) ***

over_clocked

I have my palm glued to my forehead right now so typing with one hand: 5/5/3 still seems generally better for non-crazy Sentry hoppers, but 3/5/5 gained a lot of points in the light of the Sentry nerf as well. Not going to respec my 5/5/3 Hoods most probably.
Someone help me unglue

MarcusGraves

at that cost there is no reason to ditch the no turn end at rank 5 on twin pistols, thats a dumb **** decision. honestly though thats not the part that really pisses me off, what really irritates me is that they are just going to go ahead and do this change despite what people say.

surprise me D3 and don't get rid of the turn doesn't end at rank 5 for twin pistols, i'll take the swap to damage instead of AP gain but let us keep this.

Unknown

I refuse to participate in the poll. We all know there was zip, zero, none Nada, zilch justification for this change. No one, and I do mean no one, was complaining about twin pistols being too powerful. If anything, some were saying it's ap cost should be lowered.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

IM40 and Magneto have better yellows than hood now.

They have better yellows than hood now, BEFORE the nerf

dkffiv wrote:

I would debatably use CapAm's yellow over hoods now as well as Colossus'.

If you would use "19 AP: durdle" or "8 AP: Do nothing" over "15 AP: Kill an opponent, end the turn" you are nuts

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

I don't get what's all this complaint about the yellow as if you used Twin Pistols on a regular basis in PvP or even PvE. They could get rid of the ability altogether and it'd have a minimal effect on PvP because you should use it for Sacrifice or Thunder Strike or Recovery almost always in PvP already, and PvE it might have an effect against very high level opponents but even then using Twin Pistols in PvE is more about getting some cool points as opposed to actually getting any value back for your 15 yellow AP. This change is baffling to me because I'd assume they know The Hood is overpowered but do they really think people lived in fear of The Hood's mighty Twin Pistols? Did anyone ever complain that Twin Pistols was too good besides some theorycraft with Thor that generally requires one character start out down, and if your 'win fast' strategy requires the opponent start with a guy down, it's really not that fast because games just don't start that way.

Your comments make me think that you've never played X-Force / Hood / C. Mags (which is widely regarded as the best sustainable team on offense) in either PvE / PvP. Any time that team gathers enough yellow AP, do you really think that you would burn it on a dumb defensive ability like recovery or coercive field? Twin pistols provided an extremely good yellow for that team to continue it's ridiculous offensive capabilities by fueling the engine abilities of Surgical / polarizing force / X-Force, while being a board shake up / AP generation ability itself. You might say "oh, but 15 yellow is hard to get when you're not prioritizing so who cares", to that I respond: surgical on yellow, and stupid amounts of cascades resulting in a ton of yellow, both of which are very possible with X-Force / C. Mags. Pistols provides a significant contribution to that team, and losing it means losing a pretty good yellow to continue the sexmagnet train.


As for the Hood nerf, I feel like Demiurge owes us a much better explanation that what they gave.

1. Twin Pistols was never the problem with Hood, it was Dormammu's Aid. How does nerfing Twin Pistols do anything to the Hood's main strength and reason why you bring him on teams in the first place?

In return for this increased damage capability, The Hood also had to lose the Level 5 reward of not ending his turn on usage.

This doesn't make any sense. Level 5 Pistols does what, 5.7k damage? This for 15 AP = 380 AP / dmg, which while is respectable given that it can cause cascades and destroy CD tiles, hardly justifies ending the turn to use the ability. Whales by comparison does 857 AP / dmg, and I don't see that ability ending the turn. Hell, even fireball does more damage / AP, and I don't see that ability ending the turn either. Ending the turn makes sense when the ability is insanely strong or leads to AP generation loops: the new pistols does neither, so I feel like this nerf is very poorly reasoned and explained: some more dev insight as to why they chose to tack on this clause would be much appreciated.

Unknown

locked wrote:

I was playing X-Force/Hood a lot in 4or Lightning Rounds. Trust me I couldn't just steamroll the AI once I got 9 blue.
You imagine it goes like this? Collect blue, use Power Surge, match all the yellow tiles, use Pistols, proceed to steamroll?

It was NOT like that at all!

'
? It WAS pretty much like that for me. Get 9 blue and 9 yellow (which is more like 7ish blue and 7ish yellow with Hood on the team), Power Surge as soon as a yellow match is on board. The enemy gets one turn with boosted tiles so they can't use the extra AP for an ability, and 90% of the time you wipe the enemy team right then

Slower than Sentry bombing, but much faster than anything else you can do aside from maybe surgical strike stealing green, and it's completely safe - no self damage, too fast for enemy to pop any abilities.

Pwuz_

NorthernPolarity wrote:

X-Force / Hood / C. Mags (which is widely regarded as the best sustainable team on offense) in either PvE / PvP. Any time that team gathers enough yellow AP, do you really think that you would burn it on a dumb defensive ability like recovery or coercive field? Twin pistols provided an extremely good yellow for that team to continue it's ridiculous offensive capabilities by fueling the engine abilities of Surgical / polarizing force / X-Force, while being a board shake up / AP generation ability itself. You might say "oh, but 15 yellow is hard to get when you're not prioritizing so who cares", to that I respond: surgical on yellow, and stupid amounts of cascades resulting in a ton of yellow, both of which are very possible with X-Force / C. Mags. Pistols provides a significant contribution to that team, and losing it means losing a pretty good yellow to continue the sexmagnet train.


As for the Hood nerf, I feel like Demiurge owes us a much better explanation that what they gave.

1. Twin Pistols was never the problem with Hood, it was Dormammu's Aid. How does nerfing Twin Pistols do anything to the Hood's main strength and reason why you bring him on teams in the first place?

I think you've actually made a pretty convincing argument for Twin Pistols being changed. I still don't think that Ending the Turn is worth it's cost/damage.

Trisul

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This doesn't make any sense. Level 5 Pistols does what, 5.7k damage? This for 15 AP = 380 AP / dmg, which while is respectable given that it can cause cascades and destroy CD tiles, hardly justifies ending the turn to use the ability. Whales by comparison does 857 AP / dmg, and I don't see that ability ending the turn. Hell, even fireball does more damage / AP, and I don't see that ability ending the turn either. Ending the turn makes sense when the ability is insanely strong or leads to AP generation loops: the new pistols does neither, so I feel like this nerf is very poorly reasoned and explained: some more dev insight as to why they chose to tack on this clause would be much appreciated.

Methinks that Demiurge understands how OP Hood's blue is, and prefer to uglify his other abilities instead of nerf the thing that makes him amazing.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This doesn't make any sense. Level 5 Pistols does what, 5.7k damage? This for 15 AP = 380 AP / dmg, which while is respectable given that it can cause cascades and destroy CD tiles, hardly justifies ending the turn to use the ability. Whales by comparison does 857 AP / dmg, and I don't see that ability ending the turn. Hell, even fireball does more damage / AP, and I don't see that ability ending the turn either. Ending the turn makes sense when the ability is insanely strong or leads to AP generation loops: the new pistols does neither, so I feel like this nerf is very poorly reasoned and explained: some more dev insight as to why they chose to tack on this clause would be much appreciated.

"Even" fireball? Fireball was designed as a move to power a glass cannon, it's one of the most efficient damage/AP moves in the game

I think ending the turn is too clunky but I don't get the point of saying one of Hood's "side benefit" ability is subpar because its damage doesn't stack up against the primary "this is the reason to use this character" abilities of the game's best damage dealers

Unknown

Personally, I think the devs need to be nerfed!!!

Unknown

gamar wrote:

locked wrote:

I was playing X-Force/Hood a lot in 4or Lightning Rounds. Trust me I couldn't just steamroll the AI once I got 9 blue.
You imagine it goes like this? Collect blue, use Power Surge, match all the yellow tiles, use Pistols, proceed to steamroll?

It was NOT like that at all!

'
? It WAS pretty much like that for me. Get 9 blue and 9 yellow (which is more like 7ish blue and 7ish yellow with Hood on the team), Power Surge as soon as a yellow match is on board. The enemy gets one turn with boosted tiles so they can't use the extra AP for an ability, and 90% of the time you wipe the enemy team right then

Slower than Sentry bombing, but much faster than anything else you can do aside from maybe surgical strike stealing green, and it's completely safe - no self damage, too fast for enemy to pop any abilities.

That only worked because you're fighting teams significantly weaker than you in LR where you can easily down one guy and you have The Hood and they do not. Power Surge is only expected to charge 4 blue tiles on average at level 5, which you don't have for LR, though it's certainly not unusual to get 3 blue tiles charged if you're lucky. Still, that's only good for stunning 2 guys because you sure aren't coming up with 27 AP to stun 3 guys, and there's nothing fast about any strategy that requires a person to be downed before it can start rolling.

GothicKratos

Gunna out in my two cents.

Sentry balances are good. Still lets him be a big, beefy tank type with a high-risk burst move. Kicks Sentrybombs in the shins though, which is good, of course.

Hood balances are fine, but the ability to no longer make TP not end the turn is a bit overkill, in my opinion. Since it doesn't gather AP anymore, there's no reason to make it end the turn, since it's not going to feasibly create a turn loop.

NorthernPolarity

gamar wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This doesn't make any sense. Level 5 Pistols does what, 5.7k damage? This for 15 AP = 380 AP / dmg, which while is respectable given that it can cause cascades and destroy CD tiles, hardly justifies ending the turn to use the ability. Whales by comparison does 857 AP / dmg, and I don't see that ability ending the turn. Hell, even fireball does more damage / AP, and I don't see that ability ending the turn either. Ending the turn makes sense when the ability is insanely strong or leads to AP generation loops: the new pistols does neither, so I feel like this nerf is very poorly reasoned and explained: some more dev insight as to why they chose to tack on this clause would be much appreciated.

"Even" fireball? Fireball was designed as a move to power a glass cannon, it's one of the most efficient damage/AP moves in the game

I think ending the turn is too clunky but I don't get the point of saying one of Hood's "side benefit" ability is subpar because its damage doesn't stack up against the primary "this is the reason to use this character" abilities of the game's best damage dealers

I'm not saying it's subpar, I'm saying that the dev's reasoning for changing Twin Pistols just doesn't make a lot of sense. Again, the quote in question:

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.

My bad on saying "Even Fireball does...": I am working on 3 hours of sleep, and meant to say "Fireball does...

My initial thinking was "Okay, so instead of it generating AP, it now deals damage. This seems like a decent decision even though the reasoning the devs gave was strange (great or horrible depending on the board? With a decent team composition that can cover 5 colors, I don't see any case where this can ever be horrible when you're converting 15 yellow AP to ~ 15 AP in other, useful colors + cascades). I would think that the main benefits of this change is that it eliminates the potential for degenerate ability loops involving AP generation abilities, which is a big concern if you think about jungle / desert, etc.

So Twin Pistols minus AP plus damage = reasonable nerf / tradeoff. Then all of the sudden, they throw in this "ends the turn clause" and justify it because of the ability's increased damage capability, and this is what I was really confused about. Twin pistols is already nerfed/changed to some extent by removing the AP: why are they making it sound like the increased damage has more value, and thus warrants an additional nerf to the ability, such as ending the turn? I gave those numbers not because I was arguing that Twin Pistols sucks compared to some of the best damage abilities in the game, I was simply showing how average twin pistol's damage output actually is, and asking the devs why they decided to justify the end the turn clause to gain "damage capability" that isn't even that strong, and already compensates for the lack of AP generation in the ability?

NorthernPolarity

Trisul wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This doesn't make any sense. Level 5 Pistols does what, 5.7k damage? This for 15 AP = 380 AP / dmg, which while is respectable given that it can cause cascades and destroy CD tiles, hardly justifies ending the turn to use the ability. Whales by comparison does 857 AP / dmg, and I don't see that ability ending the turn. Hell, even fireball does more damage / AP, and I don't see that ability ending the turn either. Ending the turn makes sense when the ability is insanely strong or leads to AP generation loops: the new pistols does neither, so I feel like this nerf is very poorly reasoned and explained: some more dev insight as to why they chose to tack on this clause would be much appreciated.

Methinks that Demiurge understands how OP Hood's blue is, and prefer to uglify his other abilities instead of nerf the thing that makes him amazing.

The thing is that the whole reason why people consider the Hood as extremely strong / a necessity is because of Dormammu's Aid, not Twin Pistols / Intimidation. The Twin Pistols redesign is in theory a fine change to prevent infinite AP loops, but the change does nothing to Hood's position in the metagame, which is what they were aiming for I'd imagine.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Your comments make me think that you've never played X-Force / Hood / C. Mags (which is widely regarded as the best sustainable team on offense) in either PvE / PvP. Any time that team gathers enough yellow AP, do you really think that you would burn it on a dumb defensive ability like recovery or coercive field? Twin pistols provided an extremely good yellow for that team to continue it's ridiculous offensive capabilities by fueling the engine abilities of Surgical / polarizing force / X-Force, while being a board shake up / AP generation ability itself. You might say "oh, but 15 yellow is hard to get when you're not prioritizing so who cares", to that I respond: surgical on yellow, and stupid amounts of cascades resulting in a ton of yellow, both of which are very possible with X-Force / C. Mags. Pistols provides a significant contribution to that team, and losing it means losing a pretty good yellow to continue the sexmagnet train.

How can something be 'widely considered as best on offense' when it's a team you can only field on two normal PvP event (Magneto or The Hood featured)? I ran that team plenty of time for PvE and you're wasting your time collecting any yellow because you just loop between X Force/Surgical Strike/Polarized Force. Twin Pistols was something you do if you happen to be sitting on a ton of yellow AP but you're never collecting it and yes using yellow for Recovery is often better anyway because the game is close to over by the time you have 15 yellow so you might as well start preparing for the next one. If an enemy happens to be strong in yellow then sure you can get Twin Pistols going with a Surgical Strike but that's 1 out of 6 games in PvE and 0% in most DA themed events (no DA themed villian is yellow strongest except The Hood but you can't use The Hood if they have him in PvE). Twin Pistols is limited to getting you a couple of green/black AP when you're just a bit short of your moves and while that's useful that's hardly a significant effect for a 15 AP move. If we somehow don't care about Dormammu's Aid you can do much better by using 15 yellow AP for Battleplan/Thunder Strike/Sacrifice instead. People are seriously too attached to how cool Twin Pistols it is. It is a very cool move but a 5 match move should be pretty much be game ending on a top character and The Hood is obviously one and TP is nowhere near game ending. If you start every game with an opening Twin Pistols for free you wouldn't exactly be working with some kind of insurmountable advantage, and that's 15 AP for free!

If Twin Pistols is really an integral part of The Hood's gameplay you wouldn't have all those guys who run 3/5/5 which is only good for exactly one scenario while leaving TP with the same 'ends the turn' restriction that people are complaining about now. By the way I don't have any real strong feelings toward this change, other than that maybe they should putting 'ends the turn' restriction on more moves (though picking TP as the first one is an odd place to start). TP is mostly a 'win more' ability so if they nerf it (which I don't think it's really a nerf) then I just can't win with style, but it's not like any of my games revolve around being able to fire off TP to win. It's always nice to be able to grab TP out of your hat in a tight situation but if it was ever appropriately powerful for a 15 AP move, then you'd never have needed to grab a TP in case of emergency because it should've already ended the game as soon as you hit 15 yellow AP, or at least take out one guy.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

gamar wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

This doesn't make any sense. Level 5 Pistols does what, 5.7k damage? This for 15 AP = 380 AP / dmg, which while is respectable given that it can cause cascades and destroy CD tiles, hardly justifies ending the turn to use the ability. Whales by comparison does 857 AP / dmg, and I don't see that ability ending the turn. Hell, even fireball does more damage / AP, and I don't see that ability ending the turn either. Ending the turn makes sense when the ability is insanely strong or leads to AP generation loops: the new pistols does neither, so I feel like this nerf is very poorly reasoned and explained: some more dev insight as to why they chose to tack on this clause would be much appreciated.

"Even" fireball? Fireball was designed as a move to power a glass cannon, it's one of the most efficient damage/AP moves in the game

I think ending the turn is too clunky but I don't get the point of saying one of Hood's "side benefit" ability is subpar because its damage doesn't stack up against the primary "this is the reason to use this character" abilities of the game's best damage dealers

I'm not saying it's subpar, I'm saying that the dev's reasoning for changing Twin Pistols just doesn't make a lot of sense. Again, the quote in question:

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.

My bad on saying "Even Fireball does...": I am working on 3 hours of sleep, and meant to say "Fireball does...

My initial thinking was "Okay, so instead of it generating AP, it now deals damage. This seems like a decent decision even though the reasoning the devs gave was strange (great or horrible depending on the board? With a decent team composition that can cover 5 colors, I don't see any case where this can ever be horrible when you're converting 15 yellow AP to ~ 15 AP in other, useful colors + cascades). I would think that the main benefits of this change is that it eliminates the potential for degenerate ability loops involving AP generation abilities, which is a big concern if you think about jungle / desert, etc.

So Twin Pistols minus AP plus damage = reasonable nerf / tradeoff. Then all of the sudden, they throw in this "ends the turn clause" and justify it because of the ability's increased damage capability, and this is what I was really confused about. Twin pistols is already nerfed/changed to some extent by removing the AP: why are they making it sound like the increased damage has more value, and thus warrants an additional nerf to the ability, such as ending the turn? I gave those numbers not because I was arguing that Twin Pistols sucks compared to some of the best damage abilities in the game, I was simply showing how average twin pistol's damage output actually is, and asking the devs why they decided to justify the end the turn clause to gain "damage capability" that isn't even that strong, and already compensates for the lack of AP generation in the ability?

Well, like my earlier post, I actually don't think "instead of generating AP it deals damage" is a decent decision, because giving Hood a good or even fair damage-focused ability of any kind is a significant buff, which means it's almost essential that they add an extremely severe downside. I'd rather they just didn't give him a damage-focused ability at all

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Well, like my earlier post, I actually don't think "instead of generating AP it deals damage" is a decent decision, because giving Hood a good or even fair damage-focused ability of any kind is a significant buff, which means it's almost essential that they add an extremely severe downside. I'd rather they just didn't give him a damage-focused ability at all

I think changing it to 12 AP while still ending the turn would be a reasonable tradeoff. As the character with the least HP class in the game, he should have better damaging moves than anyone else or why would you ever use him? Well, having the best passive ability in the game currently makes up for his surprising inability to do damage on his own, but I don't think this game is ever designed that if you have one broken ability it's okay your other two abilities can be very bad, even though this scenario pops up all the time.

turul

My thoughts on nerf:

Hood: Should have been better if they 2*(2x2) the power without loss of AP recycling. (of course AP cost reduction too).
Too bad the changes forecast loss of other heros with AP recycle. We all know who comes next. And finally, even 4or gets nerfed before full release.

Sentry: I hated shield hopping with him. Instead I wanted too play him casually. But i couldn't do it effectively, because only WR itself was playable casually. His other two abilites did too much friendly damage to be playable casual&fun way.

The above problem didnt got solved by nerf. Now he is not optimal for both situations.
Changing sacrifice to casually playable ability, & minorly increasing WR cost would have bin enough.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

gamar wrote:

locked wrote:

I was playing X-Force/Hood a lot in 4or Lightning Rounds. Trust me I couldn't just steamroll the AI once I got 9 blue.
You imagine it goes like this? Collect blue, use Power Surge, match all the yellow tiles, use Pistols, proceed to steamroll?

It was NOT like that at all!

'
? It WAS pretty much like that for me. Get 9 blue and 9 yellow (which is more like 7ish blue and 7ish yellow with Hood on the team), Power Surge as soon as a yellow match is on board. The enemy gets one turn with boosted tiles so they can't use the extra AP for an ability, and 90% of the time you wipe the enemy team right then

Slower than Sentry bombing, but much faster than anything else you can do aside from maybe surgical strike stealing green, and it's completely safe - no self damage, too fast for enemy to pop any abilities.

That only worked because you're fighting teams significantly weaker than you in LR where you can easily down one guy and you have The Hood and they do not. Power Surge is only expected to charge 4 blue tiles on average at level 5, which you don't have for LR, though it's certainly not unusual to get 3 blue tiles charged if you're lucky. Still, that's only good for stunning 2 guys because you sure aren't coming up with 27 AP to stun 3 guys, and there's nothing fast about any strategy that requires a person to be downed before it can start rolling.

You don't need to down somebody to start it rolling. Once you activate power surge and TP once, you're going to have enough AP to activate Power Surge or TP again (if not both), by which time you should have more than enough AP to Smite and if you don't have someone dead by then I don't know what to tell you.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I think changing it to 12 AP while still ending the turn would be a reasonable tradeoff. As the character with the least HP class in the game, he should have better damaging moves than anyone else or why would you ever use him?

The question is, if he had the best AP steal in the game and "better damaging moves than anyone else" why would you ever NOT use him?