*** The Hood (Classic) ***

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

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.

Touche on the it not mattering as much in DA PvEs, which is true. I was specifically thinking of Gauntlet / Simulator events, where having the pistols has saved me in countless matches involving level 300+s by continuing ability loops that wouldn't be possible without AP Pistols. I didn't mean that it was ever a main reason to play Hood or a very strong ability, but it definitely is good enough to be considered more than what you're putting it at. Getting it for free with the Hood instead of just "using battleplan or thunder strike" is also pretty good when you're limited to 2 characters + featured in PvP, since you can't go XF + Hood + Featured + Battleplan/Thunder strike. You're never going to prioritize it, but it has a meaningful impact on the game if you get to cast it due to a lucky board or yellow surgical.

NorthernPolarity

gamar wrote:

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

I think that 15 yellow AP for ~14 useful AP in other colors is a much better ability than 15 yellow AP for 5.7k damage assuming your team is reasonable and has outlets for 5+ colors, but would need math to prove that that I don't have time for now.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

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?

Well I hope they'd notice Dormammu's Aid is overpowered and change it, but I have no problem with the guy with the least HP in the game havign the best damaging move. Of course that + the current Dormammu's Aid would be way over the top.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

gamar wrote:

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?

Well I hope they'd notice Dormammu's Aid is overpowered and change it, but I have no problem with the guy with the least HP in the game havign the best damaging move. Of course that + the current Dormammu's Aid would be way over the top.

Well sure, that's why we have characters like GSBW and Human Torch, but that doesn't mean all low-health characters should or must have a high damage move, especially Hood (although there's the persistent problem that the glass cannons, even at their "better than Hood" HP class, still die too fast to be useful)

scottee

Only read the first half of the thread. I'm glad the forumites aren't in charge of game design. I find the changes to both characters pretty close to spot on.

Hood - DA is clearly the only reason to run him. Nerfing it by adding +1 tile requirement would make him unplayable. So the only way to nerf him is to make his other two abilities useless. I would still run a level 166 Hood if he only had his blue ability. I don't know why people are overreacting here. Twin Pistols was like 5% of Hood's effectiveness, and now it's like 2%. And this is coming from someone who's been using him at 5/5/3. Hood was incredibly strong, and now he's a little closer to balanced, but still very strong.

Sentry - The changes were spot on. Sentry's always been great at giving a high % chance to win the match, but by taking damage in return. He still does that well, and his probability to win a match only went down slightly. The main thing that needed addressing was the speed with which a boosted match could be won. That's been addressed by adding 1 green match and +1 to countdown tiles. The +1 only slightly lowers World Ruptures effectiveness, but again, it was the speed that was the problem. If World Rupture typically got off like 12 countdown tiles before, now it's probably at something like 10.5.

Good job devs, I think these were great changes.

Xeonic-Ice

"David wrote:

Moore"]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.

Can we eventually get a better solution than increased sell prices? Most people that are dissatisfied are likely so because they sold off extra covers of an ability that, if they knew it was going to be changed, probably wouldn't have sold them in the first place. I'm perfectly fine with updating gameplay for the health of the game. For many players, it literally takes months to gain enough covers and iso to fully max a single 3 star character (The Hood took me 8 months personally). Even if you fast track that progression, it's a huge investment into a single character. The sell price doesn't even come close to the investment value.

I'm dissatisfied with the sell prices but not because I want to sell them, but because I have no good way to redistribute my points after you completely change an ability. I don't want to have to wait another month or two or whenever you feel like putting the rewards out again so that I can slog through a pvp/pve event just for an opportunity to change my build if I felt the change made one build better than the other. I understand game design and game philosophy and this system is not beneficial to the players, but to the developers feeding off of reactionary players.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

gamar wrote:

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?

Well I hope they'd notice Dormammu's Aid is overpowered and change it, but I have no problem with the guy with the least HP in the game havign the best damaging move. Of course that + the current Dormammu's Aid would be way over the top.

Well sure, that's why we have characters like GSBW and Human Torch, but that doesn't mean all low-health characters should or must have a high damage move, especially Hood (although there's the persistent problem that the glass cannons, even at their "better than Hood" HP class, still die too fast to be useful)

I think characters with low HP should have a passive that reduces damage taken from AP consuming moves, so that they're still vulnerable to strike tile/attack tile/anything that creates crits/match damage boosts but not be roadkill for any halfway decent move. Or at least tie the damage reduction to whatever move that is considered weak. I don't think you can even hope to balance a character like The Hood otherwise. He can often go down to a single X Force or even a single Fireball (he'd have taken a healthy amount of match damage by the time you have enough red) so he does have to do a lot before he's taken out by a 3 match move. Currently he does way too much, but it can't be much less either because of how fragile he is. If he only takes 50% damage from AP consuming moves, he'd still die very quickly to attack/strike tiles but it'd give you more room to balance him as you don't have to worry about a X Force/Fireball instant kill.

Spoit

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Touche on the it not mattering as much in DA PvEs, which is true. I was specifically thinking of Gauntlet / Simulator events, where having the pistols has saved me in countless matches involving level 300+s by continuing ability loops that wouldn't be possible without AP Pistols. I didn't mean that it was ever a main reason to play Hood or a very strong ability, but it definitely is good enough to be considered more than what you're putting it at. Getting it for free with the Hood instead of just "using battleplan or thunder strike" is also pretty good when you're limited to 2 characters + featured in PvP, since you can't go XF + Hood + Featured + Battleplan/Thunder strike. You're never going to prioritize it, but it has a meaningful impact on the game if you get to cast it due to a lucky board or yellow surgical.

Which is exactly what phantron, with most of his playtime being pves that have purple/green as their primary colors doesn't get. Depending on their order, in pvp, your SS has a 50/50 chance of being yellow for most fights, depending on whether it's hood or sentry on the left (or an under-leveled x-force)

T_REZ5000

Maybe my experience differs from the norm, but usually if I have enough ap for TP something has gone terribly wrong and my other 2 characters are KO'd.

In that situation I would much rather have 6k Dmg than 18 ap.

As far as Sentry is concerned, I'm totally fine with the changes.

I think the devs did a great job here. Looking forward to the changes to the 2 cover 3*s.

Spoit

Xeonic-Ice wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]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.

Can we eventually get a better solution than increased sell prices? Most people that are dissatisfied are likely so because they sold off extra covers of an ability that, if they knew it was going to be changed, probably wouldn't have sold them in the first place. I'm perfectly fine with updating gameplay for the health of the game. For many players, it literally takes months to gain enough covers and iso to fully max a single 3 star character (The Hood took me 8 months personally). Even if you fast track that progression, it's a huge investment into a single character. The sell price doesn't even come close to the investment value.

I'm dissatisfied with the sell prices but not because I want to sell them, but because I have no good way to redistribute my points after you completely change an ability. I don't want to have to wait another month or two or whenever you feel like putting the rewards out again so that I can slog through a pvp/pve event just for an opportunity to change my build if I felt the change made one build better than the other. I understand game design and game philosophy and this system is not beneficial to the players, but to the developers feeding off of reactionary players.

See: Them only having 1 tourmament for cmags after the change, before going and vaulting him for who the hell knows how long

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Touche on the it not mattering as much in DA PvEs, which is true. I was specifically thinking of Gauntlet / Simulator events, where having the pistols has saved me in countless matches involving level 300+s by continuing ability loops that wouldn't be possible without AP Pistols. I didn't mean that it was ever a main reason to play Hood or a very strong ability, but it definitely is good enough to be considered more than what you're putting it at. Getting it for free with the Hood instead of just "using battleplan or thunder strike" is also pretty good when you're limited to 2 characters + featured in PvP, since you can't go XF + Hood + Featured + Battleplan/Thunder strike. You're never going to prioritize it, but it has a meaningful impact on the game if you get to cast it due to a lucky board or yellow surgical.

Which is exactly what phantron, with most of his playtime being pves that have purple/green as their primary colors doesn't get. Depending on their order, in pvp, your SS has a 50/50 chance of being yellow for most fights, depending on whether it's hood or sentry on the left (or an under-leveled x-force)

I sure don't see too many featured character under level 166 after level boost when they also have a maxed Sentry and The Hood.

Spoit

That's not what I was seeing. Unless it's a good character that has had multiple giveaways like LT, having the featured character high enough to matter has been not consistent at all, like I can count the number of times that there was a colossus that was high enough to be a speed bump in his tourney, and he's actually decent, unlike, say, the beast tournament soon before that one. Hell, even an older character like falcon or cap marvel rarely had him high enough to matter

over_clocked

If you are going to nerf Pistols' utility just because of one single character (while we don't have any other charged tile users), why not just remove the synergy but leave the spirit intact? Make Pistols purple (loss of synergy with oBW/Mystique as well), make it red (also losing some synergy with LC and cMags), make it blue for all I care. Making it black would be helpful for transitioners even since their options are quite limited, while weakening XF/Hood synergy greatly (good for anti-Daken team though).
Some points are good and very close to truth, like:
a) you don't use Pistols that much anyway - personally, I use them a lot (more often than Battleplan and Thunderstrike for sure, because I rarely run BP/Thor at all) and not just for cool points;
b) Hood is now not useless if he's left standing last - that's... okay for defense I guess, but still, you made the move so much more usable for the AI and not US, HUMANS;
but we lack good AP gain abilities like current Pistols. I take the proposed change as turning Pistols into glorified GSBW red. It's like removing a viable mechanic from the 3* tier because no one uses Mohawk for her green for sure outside of PvE, and other decent AP gain skills are on XF, MMN, cStorm and modern Storm - not 3*s.
What's the true reason for Hood's change? The overall desire to make him weaker? Doesn't seem to be so logically, so must be just because of charged tiles.
Are we getting new charged tile characters? Gambit, Scarlet Witch, whoever? If they don't appear before we have a full 3 cover release of 4or, I fail to see the reason for nerfing Hood this early but can understand why just changing Pistols' colour would be pointless.

So if that's not the general desire to weaken Hood, that must mean devs also don't see Hood as OP in general, which is of course true, unless they pull a fast one on me and next propose a nerf to Dormammu's Aid.
Sick and tired of 'Dormammu's Aid is broken' arguments, just because it's unique and we lack 100% non-Hood counters for it. Espionage is unique, Anger is unique, Pheromone Rage is unique, Redwing is unique, The Thirst is unique, now what? All of them, except Redwing, accelerate your offense and slow down/hamper the opposition, Hood just happens to do it even better, but not overwhelmingly so like current Sentry overwhelms Captain Marvel, Captain America, Human Torch, Patch, Punisher, Hulk, Thor, BP, GSBW, IM 40, cMags, Fury, etc, etc; he just goes well with the current top characters, not getting in their way, and he was nowhere as ubiquituos before Sentry's arrival, oBW's nerf (Level Shift) and XF's buff which should be taken in complex regarding Hood, imo.
Here, some suggestions for future characters' skills to be counters/sidegrades/variations/etc., even if forumites suck at character design:

1) Dr. Strange, conditional passive: returns whatever has been taken from you for the last x turns, be it health or AP, if some conditions met (like dunno 10 blue tiles on board). Or cheap active.
2) Scarlet Witch, conditional passive/cheap active: shift reality, add 3 random AP every turn, make the enemy lose 3.
3) Sabertooth: active strike tile skill + passive attack tile skill. Strike/attack tiles out of the gate would be helpful for brute types like Sabertooth. And a passive that ramps up values if you don't spend any AP for x turns, as soon as you use a skill, all vaues revert to base ones.
4) Carnage, 5 purple: deal the damage proportionate to the enemy's AP.
5) Black Cat: modified Espionage. She's a better thief than Hood for sure.
6) Crystal, passive: gives you 1 red/1 yellow/1 blue/1 green every turn if you have x purple.
7) X-23 with regen, passive: increases her match damage depending on the enemy's health, the weaker the enemy, the higher her match damage on them.
8) Emma Frost, Diamond Form: can't cast her other skills, but is immune to any and all active damage skills while matching her colours, for x turns.
9) IW redesign, Invisibility (should be cheap, 8 AP maybe?): hides weakest team member for x damage and AP tanks as well until her shield breaks, etc.

Spoit

Or hell, just carve an exception into the coding for charged tiles that prevents them from being boosted by anything other than pure matching

Pylgrim

Argh, the Twin Pistols nerf is entirely unexpected and obviously comes around right after I respecced my Hood from 355 to 553.

As others have stated, 5.7 k + some board shuffle is very expensive, compare to cMags's Magnetic Translocation. Can you please make it cheaper or at least not make it end the turn? 15 AP is something that you're willing to gather when the outcome is going to be 18 AP. Or 10k damage. 15 AP for less than 6k damage barely scores above other famously expensive skills like Yelena's and Bullseye's.

Sentry's nerf seem fair. I like how at 5 covers, the nerf to Supernova is almost non-existent, but at 3 covers is quite harsh. Now that Sacrifice no longer gets a second reduction of self-damage at 5 covers and strike tile is much weaker, anyway, there might be an argument to go 553 with him.

Here's a suggestion : What if instead of increased sell prices we get the chance to respec fully covered characters for free? I don't want to sell my maxed Hood, no matter the sell price. Building him all over again would be much, much more expensive than that. But I don't want to have to expend other 2500 HP worth in respeccing him if his yellow is truly going to become that weak.

GrumpySmurf1002

I know I'm repeating myself, but Hood is not here because he's considered overpowered (even if we think he is), he's here because they found something in Twin Pistols that was or is going to be exploitable. And given the history of the nerfs of this game, that exploit is very likely some type of infinite turn mechanic, which is why they removed the AP generation.

As I thought about this, I agree that it would be odd to switch out Twin Pistols because of it's interaction with 4Thor. So there must be something additional in the pipeline that would be broken with Twin Pistols as is. Maybe it's more charged tiles, maybe it's something else, but it's obvious that the AP generation here was going to be a problem.

In Sentry's case, that's why the damage was barely touched. Sentry's damage dealing isn't the exploitable skill. The speed in which he does it is. So they nerfed, or at least attempted to nerf, his speed kills. Longer countdowns and a weaker 5-sacrifice tile are potentially going to leave more people standing

Everyone keep equating nerf = overpowered character. That's not why they're nerfing people, and they basically said that's not why. It's "exploitable abilities." If you can't use an ability to eliminate the basic game play, it's not getting nerfed. And Dormammu's Aid doesn't eliminate basic game play.

Unknown

Why new Twin Pistols ends turn? If it no longer generate AP, there is no point... This should not end turn, at least for 5 covers (similar <red> skill from GSBW does not end turn, and it's still very average).

radav

How is it ok under any circumstances that people are forced to potentially SELL a character and have to try and rebuild it when there might be MONEY involved? People spend HP on shields to try and gain covers. You could spend HP to buy the power outright. This really isn't fair at all.

Unknown

Just to balance the complaints, overall I'm OK with the changes, seems a decent job of something that could easily have been done worse. And I had a 5 Y maxed hood for a very long time and have done more than my share of sentry hopping!

Oldboy

I'd just like to add my voice to those who like the changes to Hood and Sentry. The only thing negative is that 5 Yellow now ends Hood's turn

I have a 5/4/4 Hood and have already been planning to spec him at 5/5/3 mainly because I don't use Sentry due to lack of covers and that I don't like using Sentry anyway.