*** The Hood (Classic) ***

Unknown

I think what some people are missing is that a lot of people's annoyance is coming from the fact that we just sold a black Hood cover that we're going to need to respec him now. They timed this incredibly badly. This is like the third time they've done this lately, and it's getting incredibly annoying. Now I've got to respec another character, and odds are they won't offer his covers again and then they'll vault him at the end of the season.

If they give us a free respec at the end - let us shift him from 5/5/3 to 3/5/5 without needing the covers - I'd be a lot less annoyed.

simonsez

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.

Wow, this is really short-sighted. The only thing I agree with is that you don't get it. Yes, I do use Twin Pistols regularly. If I'm sitting somewhere around 4 green and 6 black, twin pistols is a great way to recharge XForce and Surgical Strike and end the game. To propose that Recovery is a better use of the AP in that situation is crazy talk.

Unknown

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.

That could be said about a ton of abilities in this game (a sample below). The truth is their justification for the change is not a justification. The truth is this one ability that does not need to be fixed. Have we really reached the point where we're going to ignore the broken stuff in the game to "fix" abilities that are fine the way they are?

All storms green
M and mo storm yellow and black
Thor and Lt yellow
C mags blue and red
Mmn purple and red
Both dakens green and blue
A wolvie green
Patch red and green
M Hawkeye all abilities
Gsbw purple
Beast blue and green
Moonstone purple
Sentry red and yellow
And so forth.... So when will all these other abilities be changed following the logic of the justification for this one?

Unknown

Since Hood's yellow is being nerfed could we at least get a buff on his black, so that it not only makes friendly countdowns go faster but to delay enemy countdown tiles? So we at least can get some sort of utility out of Hood?

simonsez

NorthernPolarity wrote:

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 answered this question when you explained how Twin Pistols works with XForce. The goal of these nerfs is to slow down the game. With the Sentry nerf, XForce becomes a contender for fastest way to end a match, but if you take away the possibility of Surgical Strike leading directly into Twin Pistols and another Surgical Strike and an XForce, then this becomes way slower too.

simonsez

Now that Hood's yellow is going to do some serious damage, can we please have a moratorium on those PvE nodes where Muscle feeds yellow to Hood???

radav

simonsez wrote:

Now that Hood's yellow is going to do some serious damage, can we please have a moratorium on those PvE nodes where Muscle feeds yellow to Hood???

You're kidding right? Now every other node is going to have that exact scenario play out. lol

Aidonis

How will hood's yellow interact with strike tiles? I didn't go through all nine pages, if this has been answered I apologize.

Seems to me if it's on a per tile basis and sentry's strike tile is out, he will one shot anyone in the game for 15ap.

CrookedKnight

"Destroy X tiles for Y damage per tile" always gets a single bonus from strike tiles, to its total damage.

NorthernPolarity

Aidonis wrote:

How will hood's yellow interact with strike tiles? I didn't go through all nine pages, if this has been answered I apologize.

Seems to me if it's on a per tile basis and sentry's strike tile is out, he will one shot anyone in the game for 15ap.

The strike tiles are only applied once: see strike tiles interacting with other tile destroying abilities like xforce and polarizing force.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

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 answered this question when you explained how Twin Pistols works with XForce. The goal of these nerfs is to slow down the game. With the Sentry nerf, XForce becomes a contender for fastest way to end a match, but if you take away the possibility of Surgical Strike leading directly into Twin Pistols and another Surgical Strike and an XForce, then this becomes way slower too.

So now we're nerfing abilities on the possibility that one of the AI's strongest colors will be yellow and that said character will have the highest color strength on the AI's team and be in the correct order that surgical strike will get yellow AP?

The ability costs 15 AP and was not ever overused by anyone. How many times have you played with Hood? How many times (including PVE) do you actually use his yellow? How many times has the AI used it on you (not counting miracle cascades or with goons feeding yellow)?

Moreover, given that they don't need justification to make the change, since they said they were making the change to give more damage capability (as has been illustrated in previous posts); there is still no reason for it to end the turn. GSBW red doesn't, C Mags Red does, MMN red doesn't, Storm greens don't, etc. They are actually creating an imbalanced character. He's already one of the lowest health (lowest?) 3*'s.

I understood the spidey nerf (still think they overnerfed). I understood the Sentry nerf (I think they undernerfed). I understood the c mags nerf (think they got it balanced correctly). I don't understand this change, and the bottomline is they are getting in wrong on many levels. From the justification for the change to ending the turn after yellow is used now, it's just wrong. This has been a really bad week on MPQ's part, and I personally hope it does not carry over into next week.

I'm also hoping someone was on vacation this week and some of the errors of this week will be corrected and/or attoned for next week. It's just a shame after getting so much right all the bad stuff fell on on week (although if you look at all the time without bad MPQ decisions, I think they have caught up).

Unknown

I would like hood's new yellow power but it ends the turn. Makes it a lot less powerful. Also, sentry NERF will only make a battle 2 turns longer.

Unknown

I think some of the devs love Sentry so much that they are not content nerfing him enough. Instead they chose to confuse us with nerfing Hood.

Unknown

unless this hood yellow nerf is a prelude to a new character coming soon that is an obvious exploit once it is released...

NorthernPolarity

silverrex wrote:

unless this hood yellow nerf is a prelude to a new character coming soon that is an obvious exploit once it is released...

1. If it is, then the nerf was 100% accomplished when they switched it from ap to damage. Why did they add the end the turn clause arbitrarily?

2. Why didnt they just straight up say so? We can argue about this nerf on the assumption that it was done because of that interaction, but we have no idea if this is actually true. The lack of reasonable justification for hoods nerf is incredibly frustrating.

scottee

Mattfal wrote:

I would like hood's new yellow power but it ends the turn. Makes it a lot less powerful. Also, sentry NERF will only make a battle 2 turns longer.

To use it ideally, it takes one additional +3 boost. It also takes an extra green match, which will often take more than one turn. Under perfect conditions, this change makes it +2 turns, but I'd reckon this will average something like +3.5 or +4 turns. There's been plenty of shield hops where getting one green and one yellow match hasn't worked out so well. This makes it probably twice as bad. The 3-turn countdown also lowers the effectiveness of WR, by probably around 10%, assuming the AI matches away between 1 and 2 countdown tiles during that extra turn (including both matches and ability cascades).

So a Sentry bomb is now more expensive HP wise, and less guaranteed to work the way you want it to. Still doable, but I think this change will slow even the whales down.

BTW, my standard Sentry bomb, I only use the iso boosts. It requires two green matches and two yellow matches. It can very often go wrong and take longer than it should, and actually has a chance of losing. So this new Sentry sounds balanced, because the risk is much higher.

Unknown

i hope the hood's end turn was a mistake since they changed the 5 yellow covers and may have forgotten to add 'does not end turn' back in some where.

considering it does not generate AP and damage is not the best for 15ap, I am quite shocked that it has a end turn clause.

simonsez

stephen43084 wrote:

So now we're nerfing abilities on the possibility that one of the AI's strongest colors will be yellow and that said character will have the highest color strength on the AI's team and be in the correct order that surgical strike will get yellow AP?

The ability costs 15 AP and was not ever overused by anyone. How many times have you played with Hood? How many times (including PVE) do you actually use his yellow? How many times has the AI used it on you (not counting miracle cascades or with goons feeding yellow)?

Why are you getting aggravated at me, as if I'm the one who did the nerfing?

Surgical Strike doesn't necessarily need the enemy strongest color to be yellow to lead to Twin Pistols. The resulting cascade can help get you there too. As for how many times I've played with Hood, I'd say way more than you, by the sound of it. And no, any Sentry-bombing you've done with Hood isn't relevant to a Twin Pistols discussion. And what the AI does with Hood is even less relevant. The AI resembles intelligent play only by coincidence. I can't believe you even went there.

And yes, I've already said earlier that it makes absolutely no sense for Twin Pistols to end the turn. So if you need to keep ranting about that, please do, but don't quote unrelated comments of mine in the next post where you decide to do so.

dkffiv

I think I've come up with a better way to balance the Hood.

For everyone: charged tiles only proc if they are matched. This alleviates problems with Hood / Storm/ Xforce.

Hood yellow: No change

Hood black:
5 covers only affects 4 tiles instead of all, but procs twice. Picks up to 4 random CD tiles, reduces by 1, then picks another 4 (could be the same ones) and reduces by 1 again. Would double tap with Human Torch green and synergize with Psylocke/IM40/CapAm/ and the new Sentry nerf.

There is currently almost no incentive to put 5 into black other than sentry bombing.

Hood blue:
One option is to leave it mostly as is but change 4 covers to affect black and 5 to affect yellow (split the 5 cover bonus and remove the 9 tile requirement perk and leave it at 10). At 10 it doesn't proc that often and will reduce the strength quite a bit.

The other option is to leave the cover bonuses as is but rather than occurring at the beginning of the turn passively, it only happens when you match the tiles (like espionage). It does not occur all the time like espionage, only when there are 9 or more of that color when making your match. If this is severely underpowered then perhaps lower the number of tiles required to 8.

*Now that I think about it the second option is probably best. When the computer has Hood, I tend to get screwed when there is a lot of the color that I need but its all spread out on the board and unmatchable, resulting in me losing all my AP without being able to do anything about it. As a player I could target specific colors that the AI has a ton of to try to reduce the odds of them getting an ability off.

Unknown

I just noticed yellow Hood does not generate AP anymore. ****? Well, it certainly prevents charged tile exploit but why still end the turn then? It's just a stupid, overpriced damage ability now.