*** The Hood (Classic) ***

Pwuz_

KevinMark wrote:

I disagree with you there. To me, a player who doesn't have a decent Sentry, Hood's black was always meh. His yellow was decent but usually not used because it was expensive and there were usually cheaper and better skills to use in that color. Now the situation is you have a one meh, and a bad skill instead of a decent one. For me there is no debate between 5 yellow vs 5 black because it is not a discussion worth my time anymore.

5706 damage and 1043 damage most if not all of your CD tiles vs. 1836 damage and 1390 damage and definitely all your CD tiles.

I think there is still a good argument for 5 Yellow when looking at those numbers. 5 Yellow makes it a circumstantial, but powerful attack. 3 Yellow is just meh.

Spoit

Pwuz_ wrote:

KevinMark wrote:

I disagree with you there. To me, a player who doesn't have a decent Sentry, Hood's black was always meh. His yellow was decent but usually not used because it was expensive and there were usually cheaper and better skills to use in that color. Now the situation is you have a one meh, and a bad skill instead of a decent one. For me there is no debate between 5 yellow vs 5 black because it is not a discussion worth my time anymore.

5706 damage and 1043 damage most if not all of your CD tiles vs. 1836 damage and 1390 damage and definitely all your CD tiles.

I think there is still a good argument for 5 Yellow when looking at those numbers. 5 Yellow makes it a circumstantial, but powerful attack. 3 Yellow is just meh.

Yeah if you don't go five yellow, 055 would be better. It wouldn't disrupt any other yellow powers on your team that way. Hell even if you don't have any other yellow powers on your team, ending your turn for like 2k damage might actually be more harmfulthan doing nothing

Pwuz_

Spoit wrote:

Yeah if you don't go five yellow, 055 would be better. It wouldn't disrupt any other yellow powers on your team that way. Hell even if you don't have any other yellow powers on your team, ending your turn for like 2k damage might actually be more harmfulthan doing nothing

Good luck getting enough levels on Hood at 0/5/5 for him to Tank any of his colors...oh wait.

DD-The-Mighty

Pwuz_ wrote:

Based on the original design of the ability; it's likely that the developers had intended the move to End the Turn, otherwise why did it End the Turn at all levels except for 5?

--or its because they wanted you to have an incentive to go level 5. But speculating on Dev intention without proven confirmation from the actual Dev is a weak argument. Stupid at worst; pointless at best.
A turn ending twin pistols is just giving your opponent a free potential match 4 or 5. and it doesn't even gain AP anymore. And to top this off none of this changes the fact that there are more yellows in the 3* game that do more and don't leave you open to unnecessary damage. It's about as smart as doing IM40's yellow when he is the last man standing.

Mawtful

Going to add my voice to the masses, Hood + 4or was definitely going to be a power couple, so a change was inevitable but this seems poorly thought out.

Hood's actually got a lot going on with each of his abilities. He's a fragile support character, but also a huge threat.
Hood currently fills two roles.
1) AP Generation; through both Dormammu's Aid and Twin Pistols. (NB: I'm not implying that people run Hood specifically to use TP for AP generation, simply pointing out that it's a part of what that skill does.)
2) Speeds up Sentry bombing.

He's actually a bit all over the place, and these current changes certainly displace him. Like a lot of the "balance" changes that have come before, the solution has been to nerf a character out of popular usage and wait to see what rises to the top next.

I think we can change the Hood enough from his current form and still keep him interesting and usable. I'm not intimately familiar with the character, so I'm going to work based on a quick skim read of Wikipedia.

Twin Pistols
Understandably, we can't continue to use this to generate AP. However it makes little sense to change this into a damage skill, since we want him to be a support character.

Twin Pistols should be more about creating a diversion. Parker is essentially hoping to create an opportunity to capitalize on.
The ability should still clear 2 3x3 areas and keep the current damage output.
It no longer creates AP based on tiles cleared, instead it depletes enemy AP corresponding with the tiles destroyed. By Rank 3, it would deplete yellow, blue and black. By going to Rank 4, it can also deplete red, green, purple. By going to Rank 5, it can also deplete Team Up AP, and no longer ends the turn.
I also think that we should reduce the cost. Not sure, maybe 12 AP?

This means that the skill can't be used to generate infinite turns, but can be used to give you a little more breathing room.

Dormammu's Aid
So the AP Theft of this ability is actually more inline with Parker's career as a thief than with the power that Dormammu gifts him.

I would be tempted to make this a kind of "thorns" ability. Essentially, deal damage back to the attacker everytime The Hood gets hit. Parker has a kind of demon manifestation that can occur when he's under duress, so this is a way to represent that power.

Intimidate
I think we still need some kind of AP steal, since he is a thief. So we probably need to fit it back in here. I tried to come up with some kind of "Hood Recon". Here's what I've got:

The Hood sets a plan into motion. He creates a countdown tile and is "out of play" (like when a character is thrown by Fastball Special). While the countdown is in play, whenever an opponent would use an ability, the Hood steals 1 AP from that colour. When the countdown ends, Hood returns and for each time he stole AP, he reduces 1 friendly countdown by 1.

This is a bit of a "do everything" ability, but because it has a lot going on, I think different parts can be locked to rank 3, 4 and 5, in order to make builds require a little more thought.

Anyway, I probably need to flesh this out a little more, but the core concept is to make Hood a support character who's mainly interested in self preservation. He depletes enemy AP and has "targeted" board shake up, so you can kind of set up some small cascades. When he's attacked, he manifests into a demon form covered in spikes that reflects some damage back to the attacker. Lastly, he's described as both a ciminal mastermind and a crime boss, so stealing opponent's resources or masterminding his own teams plans isn't out of place. This also makes him annoying if you don't deal with him, and he spends a lot of time dissuading you from doing that, but we can leave his hit points intact, since once you do get your hands on him, you'll probably make quick work of him. I think it also keeps him in a support role - by himself, he's not really a huge threat.

ClydeFrog76

Ben Grimm wrote:

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.

So much this.

Free respec after a nerf instead of increased sell price would be much better customer service.

I love TP. I run Patch/Hood a lot and I like saving up enough yellow for a TP before I bust out one (or more) Berserker Rages. I can rarely get rid of all the enemy strike tiles, but it still makes a difference.

I can't even see the infinite loop with Lady Thor that everyone keeps going on about. Getting 9 blue from a TP will never be guaranteed. Or am I missing something?

Spoit

Targeted AP depletion would be an interesting ability. All we have right now is blanket, random, or strongest color, most of which are either overkill or not always that useful

GothicKratos

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

I can't even see the infinite loop with Lady Thor that everyone keeps going on about. Getting 9 blue from a TP will never be guaranteed. Or am I missing something?

It's not something that would happen every game (probably not every third game, even), but it's overwhelmingly easier to get 9 Blue from Charge Tiles in conjunction with Twin Pistols, than it should be, since you only need to get 3 tiles and since Hood's Pistols hit 18 tiles (two 3x3 squares), that's a pretty good chance, considering they don't need to really be that close together.

I didn't play The Hood with Thoretta, because I don't have any Blue covers and I don't normally use him because of that, but judging by the games I played and the amount of AP I netted from just 3-/4-/5-matches was gargantuan. To the point, I feel like Charge Tiles shouldn't be outside the realm of 4*s. The amount of games I would Power Surge, match three, and be able to do it again the next turn was tragic.

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

I can't even see the infinite loop with Lady Thor that everyone keeps going on about. Getting 9 blue from a TP will never be guaranteed. Or am I missing something?

It's not something that would happen every game (probably not every third game, even), but it's overwhelmingly easier to get 9 Blue from Charge Tiles in conjunction with Twin Pistols, than it should be, since you only need to get 3 tiles and since Hood's Pistols hit 18 tiles (two 3x3 squares), that's a pretty good chance, considering they don't need to really be that close together.

I didn't play The Hood with Thoretta, because I don't have any Blue covers and I don't normally use him because of that, but judging by the games I played and the amount of AP I netted from just 3-/4-/5-matches was gargantuan. To the point, I feel like Charge Tiles shouldn't be outside the realm of 4*s. The amount of games I would Power Surge, match three, and be able to do it again the next turn was tragic.

Except you need 27 blue AP to stun 3 guys at 9 blue AP each, or that you need 15 yellow to use Twin Pistols in the first place. The chance of hitting 3 blue tiles is NOT very good at all because only 4 blue tiles will be charged on average with a maxed Power Surge (charges 12 tiles, spread between 3 colors) and that's across the entire board. People seem to think that just because in LR you often kill one weak guy before you even have 10r + 9blue, and then you Power Surge one guy and Smite the second guy and downing him and then stun lock that somehow works when you're facing teams that are appropriately strong. Not even The Hood is going to die as fast as the cupcake teams that you can roll over during that LR, and using a 4 match + 3 match move to kill a single character is significantly worse than X Force because Surgical Strike + X Force is far more potent and has no drawbacks. If anything that real potential problem is something like Power Surge -> Surgical Strike -> get 30 AP of R/blue/Y -> profit, but that's dependent on the enemy team composition and cannot be reliably done each fight, though it's not as hard as it sounds because R/Y accounts for a significant portion of the top PvP characters.

Spoit

You don't need to stun lock 3 people, once you get the charge tiles out, they'll drop like flies from her red. And again, the 3rd featured person is rarely a threat

Mawtful

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

I can't even see the infinite loop with Lady Thor that everyone keeps going on about. Getting 9 blue from a TP will never be guaranteed. Or am I missing something?

I'm not sure of the details but I guess it's something like use Thor blue to stun, followed by TP hitting 3 blue for another 9, stun a second character, then theoretically use Thor Red to take out 1 opponent. Then you can take 2-3 turns matching. Remembering that charged tiles grant 3 AP. The turns don't even need to be infinite, necessarily, I think it's more about using TP to guarantee charge tiles, which only fuels Thor's moves. Of course, eventually, you still want a stack of charged tiles in play to make Red a 1hit Kill on anything big.

In the end, it's Hood's AP generation (as a sum total across AP Theft and Twin Pistols) that's the cornerstone here. He's used for rushing other abilities. This is at the core of my redesign, to put the focus on taking away from an opponent and dismantling their plans, rather than simply getting "free" AP.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

I can't even see the infinite loop with Lady Thor that everyone keeps going on about. Getting 9 blue from a TP will never be guaranteed. Or am I missing something?

It's not something that would happen every game (probably not every third game, even), but it's overwhelmingly easier to get 9 Blue from Charge Tiles in conjunction with Twin Pistols, than it should be, since you only need to get 3 tiles and since Hood's Pistols hit 18 tiles (two 3x3 squares), that's a pretty good chance, considering they don't need to really be that close together.

I didn't play The Hood with Thoretta, because I don't have any Blue covers and I don't normally use him because of that, but judging by the games I played and the amount of AP I netted from just 3-/4-/5-matches was gargantuan. To the point, I feel like Charge Tiles shouldn't be outside the realm of 4*s. The amount of games I would Power Surge, match three, and be able to do it again the next turn was tragic.

Except you need 27 blue AP to stun 3 guys at 9 blue AP each, or that you need 15 yellow to use Twin Pistols in the first place. The chance of hitting 3 blue tiles is NOT very good at all because only 4 blue tiles will be charged on average with a maxed Power Surge (charges 12 tiles, spread between 3 colors) and that's across the entire board. People seem to think that just because in LR you often kill one weak guy before you even have 10r + 9blue, and then you Power Surge one guy and Smite the second guy and downing him and then stun lock that somehow works when you're facing teams that are appropriately strong. Not even The Hood is going to die as fast as the cupcake teams that you can roll over during that LR, and using a 4 match + 3 match move to kill a single character is significantly worse than X Force because Surgical Strike + X Force is far more potent and has no drawbacks. If anything that real potential problem is something like Power Surge -> Surgical Strike -> get 30 AP of R/blue/Y -> profit, but that's dependent on the enemy team composition and cannot be reliably done each fight, though it's not as hard as it sounds because R/Y accounts for a significant portion of the top PvP characters.

Except that as I already explained to you, I WAS doing this to top-tier teams with consistency during the LR because hitting 3 blue tiles with TP was actually really frequent even with only 4 covers in power surge, and you can kill 8500 health charaters with one TP on charged tiles + smite, so it works even without a "cupcake" to target

scottee

Just checked in on this thread. I can't believe people are still complaining about the Hood changes. I would run a 0/5/0 Hood if I could level him to 166, because DA is that good. That's the only reason to run him. It's arguably the strongest ability in the game. He could literally have one power and still be top tier.

NorthernPolarity

scottee wrote:

Just checked in on this thread. I can't believe people are still complaining about the Hood changes. I would run a 0/5/0 Hood if I could level him to 166, because DA is that good. That's the only reason to run him. It's arguably the strongest ability in the game. He could literally have one power and still be top tier.

Most of the people on this thread are complaining because the nerf to pistols seems poorly thought out/done (end the turn), not because it actually nerfs the hood in any meaningful way.

scottee

NorthernPolarity wrote:

scottee wrote:

Just checked in on this thread. I can't believe people are still complaining about the Hood changes. I would run a 0/5/0 Hood if I could level him to 166, because DA is that good. That's the only reason to run him. It's arguably the strongest ability in the game. He could literally have one power and still be top tier.

Most of the people on this thread are complaining because the nerf to pistols seems poorly thought out/done (end the turn), not because it actually nerfs the hood in any meaningful way.

Poorly thought out because they're comparing it in isolation to other abilities in isolation.

If Hood had DA and two other useless abilities, like Ballistic Salvo and Prehistoric Arms, he'd STILL be top tier. My point is, I think they're purposefully making it a completely useless ability, because DA is that strong. The problem of course that is if raise DA's threshold by one tile, it makes it completely useless, and he'd unplayable. There's no way to balance it better without completely reworking it, and subsequently all his abilities. So it's either make this other two abilities useless to help balance him, or wipe all his abilities and start over.

NorthernPolarity

scottee wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

scottee wrote:

Just checked in on this thread. I can't believe people are still complaining about the Hood changes. I would run a 0/5/0 Hood if I could level him to 166, because DA is that good. That's the only reason to run him. It's arguably the strongest ability in the game. He could literally have one power and still be top tier.

Most of the people on this thread are complaining because the nerf to pistols seems poorly thought out/done (end the turn), not because it actually nerfs the hood in any meaningful way.

Poorly thought out because they're comparing it in isolation to other abilities in isolation.

If Hood had DA and two other useless abilities, like Ballistic Salvo and Prehistoric Arms, he'd STILL be top tier. My point is, I think they're purposefully making it a completely useless ability, because DA is that strong. The problem of course that is if raise DA's threshold by one tile, it makes it completely useless, and he'd unplayable. There's no way to balance it better without completely reworking it, and subsequently all his abilities. So it's either make this other two abilities useless to help balance him, or wipe all his abilities and start over.

Yes, and that's accomplished elegantly and justly by converting the ability from granting AP to dealing damage. Most of us are complaining about why they tacked on the end the turn clause unnecessarily to the ability. I understand the reasoning behind targeting Pistols as opposed to dormammu's aid since its easier to tweak, but that end the turn clause is just straight up distasteful.

GothicKratos

Spoit wrote:

You don't need to stun lock 3 people, once you get the charge tiles out, they'll drop like flies from her red. And again, the 3rd featured person is rarely a threat

Yeah, pretty much this. You only need to stun one and wallop one the second with other skills made faster by Charge Tiles. Re-stun original target, if need be, and kill it. Finish third, which would be the wimpy loaner. Twin Pistols isn't an end all, be all and neither are Charged Tiles, but it's pretty undeniable, even if you don't hit 1 Charge Tiles that isn't even a Blue Tile, a return of anywhere from 18 to 24 AP (and even more in more ridiculous and unlikely events) from 15 AP is pretty amazing, but wait (!), there's more (!), you get to use all that AP now, and then make a match too. Pretty cool. Whether or not you create a loop with it, that's extremely cost effective and borderline "exploitable".

over_clocked

Please help sway the devs not to overnerf Hood's yellow.
New Twin Pistols (always costs 15 yellow AP, always destroys 2 selected 3x3 blocks, never earns AP, always ends the turn, does some damage, about 5,7k at max) is a severe utility nerf to Hood, which is a crying shame. This game already lacks usable utility skills up to 11!

***
Edited to add final poll results.

Item - Votes - % of Total Votes
Yes, I'm cool with not gaining AP AND ending the turn - 8 - 4%
Yes for covers 1-4, no for cover 5 (variable, cover 5 always keeps the turn) - 66 - 29%
No, it should never end the turn because it creates a new board which is unfavourable for the user - 36 - 16%
One of the two needs to go: either the no-AP-gain part or the end-the-turn part - 116 - 51%

Unknown

I've gone on record, their justification is bogus. If there is another reason, they should not try to pull the wool over our eyes or insult our intelligence with false justifications.

If polarity is correct, and the real reason is because of charged tiles, they should just say so. That is something players could understand. But also, if that is the reason, just change twin pistols to only getting regular ap from charged tiles, not triple. There is no reason to ruin a character, when just a minor tweak will suffice.

over_clocked

stephen43084 wrote:

I've gone on record, their justification is bogus. If there is another reason, they should not try to pull the wool over our eyes or insult our intelligence with false justifications.

If polarity is correct, and the real reason is because of charged tiles, they should just say so. That is something players could understand. But also, if that is the reason, just change twin pistols to only getting regular ap from charged tiles, not triple. There is no reason to ruin a character, when just a minor tweak will suffice.

As much as I like Twin Pistols, nerf to the skill will not 'ruin' Hood but it is, in a sense, ruining my preferred play style. I love running Hood and using his yellow in PvE with MMN and cStorm; the team that rolls in AP. With Patch or XF, with oBW or cMagneto, with Human Torch or Punisher, with Lazy Cap or Deadpool. I don't care about 2-3 new characters that will use charged tiles, including 4or, if the devs need to nerf one good AP gain skill we have among 3*s (Mohawk's green is decent but Mohawk sucks herself for being outcompeted on all 3 colours), change something else, why nerf a good, not OP skill?