*** The Hood (Classic) ***

ClydeFrog76

Yep. Mine's 5/1/1 after getting some flukey token drops and managing a few top spots back before death brackets came into effect.

I've got little to no chance of getting the 4 remaining blacks and 2 yellows I need from placements now, so I'm beholden to the mighty RNGesus to bestow them on me.

So, basically, I'm fecked.

Unknown

People dont use Hood for his yellow power. That nerf is laughable.....

The Sentry one I think his rupture needed to be adjusted. I dont really like a double nerf to any power though. Pick one thing and see how it goes IMO. It's been an issue with this game you wait to long to make adjustments and then you adjust too much. Why not just increase the ap without making 3 turn tiles and see how it goes for a couple weeks or a month? But I think his doesnt need to take more damage on his yellow. Every ability he has does damage to him/team. There is no reason to up the damage on yellow. Clearly way of D3 wanting people who use sentry to pay for health packs even more.

NorthernPolarity

bonebreak wrote:

People dont use Hood for his yellow power. That nerf is laughable.....

The Sentry one I think his rupture needed to be adjusted. I dont really like a double nerf to any power though. Pick one thing and see how it goes IMO. It's been an issue with this game you wait to long to make adjustments and then you adjust too much. Why not just increase the ap without making 3 turn tiles and see how it goes for a couple weeks or a month? But I think his doesnt need to take more damage on his yellow. Every ability he has does damage to him/team. There is no reason to up the damage on yellow. Clearly way of D3 wanting people who use sentry to pay for health packs even more.

Christ people.
"Demiurge nerfs a character" - Obviously a ploy to sell more health packs by making games harder to win on offense.
"Demiurge buffs a character" - Obviously a ploy to sell more health packs by making games harder to win on defense.
"Demiurge introduces a new PvE event" - Obviously a ploy to sell more health packs by making people want to actually play the game more.

"Demiurge makes any single little gameplay change" - Obviously a ploy to sell health packs, because all we do on this forum is complain, and we see any little change to the status quo as a cash grab because Demiurge is obviously this evil entity that wants to steal all our money.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

bonebreak wrote:

People dont use Hood for his yellow power. That nerf is laughable.....

The Sentry one I think his rupture needed to be adjusted. I dont really like a double nerf to any power though. Pick one thing and see how it goes IMO. It's been an issue with this game you wait to long to make adjustments and then you adjust too much. Why not just increase the ap without making 3 turn tiles and see how it goes for a couple weeks or a month? But I think his doesnt need to take more damage on his yellow. Every ability he has does damage to him/team. There is no reason to up the damage on yellow. Clearly way of D3 wanting people who use sentry to pay for health packs even more.

Christ people.
"Demiurge nerfs a character" - Obviously a ploy to sell more health packs by making games harder to win on offense.
"Demiurge buffs a character" - Obviously a ploy to sell more health packs by making games harder to win on defense.
"Demiurge introduces a new PvE event" - Obviously a ploy to sell more health packs by making people want to actually play the game more.

"Demiurge makes any single little gameplay change" - Obviously a ploy to sell health packs, because all we do on this forum is complain, and we see any little change to the status quo as a cash grab because Demiurge is obviously this evil entity that wants to steal all our money.

Unknown

bonebreak wrote:

People dont use Hood for his yellow power. That nerf is laughable.....

No, but people who use Hood use his yellow, and the nerf makes it unusable. It's gone from being a power like his black - usable but nothing special; at least it won't cause problems - to something like functionally useless and that could actually lose a match for you.

NorthernPolarity

Ben Grimm wrote:

bonebreak wrote:

People dont use Hood for his yellow power. That nerf is laughable.....

No, but people who use Hood use his yellow, and the nerf makes it unusable. It's gone from being a power like his black - usable but nothing special; at least it won't cause problems - to something like functionally useless and that could actually lose a match for you.

I'm still surprised that everyone is calling this ability unusable. 15AP for 5.7k damage, maybe a cascade, and guaranteed CD tile destruction is really not that bad, and while ending the turn sucks, if your turn would only consist of a match-3 anyways, its not even that big of a deal.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I'm still surprised that everyone is calling this ability unusable. 15AP for 5.7k damage, maybe a cascade, and guaranteed CD tile destruction is really not that bad, and while ending the turn sucks, if your turn would only consist of a match-3 anyways, its not even that big of a deal.

It's because the ability leaves Hood in front with a largely fresh board. It's usable as a finishing move, but if there's anyone left, there's a reasonable likelihood, at higher levels, that they'll take Hood out completely the next turn. The AI tends to save moves for when he's in front.

scottee

Ben Grimm wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I'm still surprised that everyone is calling this ability unusable. 15AP for 5.7k damage, maybe a cascade, and guaranteed CD tile destruction is really not that bad, and while ending the turn sucks, if your turn would only consist of a match-3 anyways, its not even that big of a deal.

It's because the ability leaves Hood in front with a largely fresh board. It's usable as a finishing move, but if there's anyone left, there's a reasonable likelihood, at higher levels, that they'll take Hood out completely the next turn. The AI tends to save moves for when he's in front.

This is an exaggeration. You leave Hood in front anytime you make a match with his color. Let's say it sets Hood up to take a match-4 in the face. That doesn't insta-kill him.

I'm convinced the MPQ forums emit some drug that cause posters to catastrophize everything.

orionpeace

scottee wrote:

This is an exaggeration. You leave Hood in front anytime you make a match with his color. Let's say it sets Hood up to take a match-4 in the face. That doesn't insta-kill him.

I'm convinced the MPQ forums emit some drug that cause posters to catastrophize everything.

You are correct. It is not unusable. But the end of turn nerf is not needed, warranted or justified for his Yellow power.

GSBW can accelerate the collection of Green through Purple. Her Green attack, at level 5, costs 19AP does 3,912 damage (up to 11,736 total + tile damage) to all enemies and destroys tiles in a pattern centered on a chosen tile. And does not end the turn.

Now her tile destruction is not as controlled as Hood's ability, but the damage difference is huge.

If they just came out and said, we think Hood would be too powerful and too necessary if he could do massive damage and not end the turn, that would be something. (And it still wouldn't be true).

But they didn't say that. They said it was more fun.

I would prefer the ability do about 4K at 5 Covers and not end the turn than 5.7K and end the turn. It would be more useful, more effective and less risky. The last thing I want to do when I shake up the board, is end my turn.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

... that they'll take Hood out completely the next turn. The AI tends to save moves for when he's in front.

I dunno if this is a thing but I feel the same when I'm using OBW. I see a big nuke coming next turn. AI has enough AP for it. Then I make a match other than purple/blue/black leaving someone more tanky. Surprise! AI wants to wait. Ok, I'll do another non-OBW match. Another turn goes. Ok. Now I have to make a match with OBW. There is no other match. OBW dead next turn.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I'm still surprised that everyone is calling this ability unusable. 15AP for 5.7k damage, maybe a cascade, and guaranteed CD tile destruction is really not that bad, and while ending the turn sucks, if your turn would only consist of a match-3 anyways, its not even that big of a deal.

It's because the ability leaves Hood in front with a largely fresh board. It's usable as a finishing move, but if there's anyone left, there's a reasonable likelihood, at higher levels, that they'll take Hood out completely the next turn. The AI tends to save moves for when he's in front.

This is an exaggeration. You leave Hood in front anytime you make a match with his color. Let's say it sets Hood up to take a match-4 in the face. That doesn't insta-kill him.

I'm convinced the MPQ forums emit some drug that cause posters to catastrophize everything.

Let's say it sets up a huge cascade. You're blowing a big hole in the board; if you don't, it doesn't do full damage. It's reasonably likely to set up a favorable board for the AI.

It's not just like making a normal match. You're risking a fresh board whenever you use this power, and that tends to favor the AI.

Unknown

It's just as likely the new configuration can immediately match itself as opposed to one move away from some devastating match.

If you don't like taking risk you can always do top corner, but let's say you destroy a 6X3 area on the bottom, it's exactly as likely to get:




versus:




The chance of the red showing up on the higher row (good for AI) is the same as the red showing up on the lower row (good for you). Well you'll leave them with a crit tile in this case but you shouldn't be complaining too much if you got a match 5.

scottee

When I checked the Hood character page around the time the nerf was announced, around a third of the people already favored 3/5/5, so for 33% of players, the announced change is a 0% nerf.

For the other 2/3 of the player base that had yellow at 5, what percentage do you feel this lowered Hood's effectiveness? 5%? 10%? 30%? I like his old yellow, but only end up using it between 5-10% of matches, and the majority of those times, I have other options that would win the match almost as efficiently.

People are essentially saying that the overall nerf to Hood, including the end turn on 5 cover yellow, is too much of a nerf. I would still argue that even after the change, DA alone still makes him top tier.

When see a Hood in a node, will you now say, "I didn't like facing him before, but now that his yellow sucks, bring him on."? Or is anyone here planning to use him less now that his yellow is nerfed?

I don't know about you, but whenever I bring Hood, it's 100% purely for his blue. I still maintain that he could have Prehistoric Arms and Ballistic Salvo, and I'd still bring him for DA.

PuceMoose

scottee wrote:

I still maintain that he could have Prehistoric Arms and Ballistic Salvo, and I'd still bring him for DA.

If only he had Prehistoric Salvo and Ballistic Arms! *that creates a few confusing mental images*.
I agree though, in that I bring Hood along for the ride for his scary Blue, and his yellow or black is only a happy accident if I manage to make one of the two go off.

Pylgrim

I see lots of people saying "pfft who cares about his Yellow anyway. And even if you care, it's not that the nerf is very drastic." But there's also the point of principle. Twin Pistols did not need a double nerf. Hell, it didn't need a nerf at all other than figure a way to stop it interacting with charged tiles. But sure, change it away. The issue appears when the introduce an even more unnecessary change with the weakest of reasons that further nerfs the ability.

If we are trying to make the game varied, abilities that are not broken should not be nerfed. Making a yellow middle-to-good ability like Twin Pistols weaker, just encourages people to increasingly only use Battleplan or Thunder Strike for their yellow needs.

Unknown

If you were using Twin Pistols to get a couple missing AP to finish someone off in the past you can just kill them with Twin Pistols now. If you're using The Hood with Sentry it's pretty much unfathomable why you'd be holding your yellow in the first place over just dropping another Sacrifice unless you're trying to conserve your health for some reason. Except for the ultra high level PvE fights there isn't going to be a case where you're going to use Twin Pistols more than once because things just don't have that much HP in the first place for you to make 10 yellow matches before the game is decided unless you spent the whole time matching the wrong colors. Now it does matter for PvE against extremely high level opponents because these games do last long enough for you to use Twin Pistols more than once and the AP gain does matter when you can use it more than once, but they're (hopefully) a very small part of the overall game experience. I don't think I have any fight in TaT where I could've possibly used Twin Pistols more than once. The really hard ones you don't even have the time, and sure it's probably a bit better to be able to grab 3-4 AP of whatever color you need to fire off a move like Surgical Strike than straight up 5K damage, but then you also could be sitting at 3 black and will be nowhere close to that. There's only a small handful of moves that's better than a 5K hit. They'd have to be at least Rage of the Panther tier, and you've to already start out pretty close to hitting it because counting on a 5 yellow match move to provide the last AP is just a generally bad idea. If I need Surgical Strike I match black. I don't start trying to find 15 yellow on the board so I can hit a few more black anywhere on the board.

dr tinykittylove

scottee wrote:

When I checked the Hood character page around the time the nerf was announced, around a third of the people already favored 3/5/5, so for 33% of players, the announced change is a 0% nerf.

For the other 2/3 of the player base that had yellow at 5, what percentage do you feel this lowered Hood's effectiveness? 5%? 10%? 30%? I like his old yellow, but only end up using it between 5-10% of matches, and the majority of those times, I have other options that would win the match almost as efficiently.

People are essentially saying that the overall nerf to Hood, including the end turn on 5 cover yellow, is too much of a nerf. I would still argue that even after the change, DA alone still makes him top tier.

When see a Hood in a node, will you now say, "I didn't like facing him before, but now that his yellow sucks, bring him on."? Or is anyone here planning to use him less now that his yellow is nerfed?

I don't know about you, but whenever I bring Hood, it's 100% purely for his blue. I still maintain that he could have Prehistoric Arms and Ballistic Salvo, and I'd still bring him for DA.

If he had prehistoric arms and ballistic salvo, I would be firing ballistic salvo at least once every match, like I do with TP now. Stun, aoe and board shake? Sounds like a good deal. Plus it wouldn't end the turn. He'd steal back the drained ap in 2 turns anyway.

Trisul

Pylgrim wrote:

I see lots of people saying "pfft who cares about his Yellow anyway. And even if you care, it's not that the nerf is very drastic." But there's also the point of principle. Twin Pistols did not need a double nerf. Hell, it didn't need a nerf at all other than figure a way to stop it interacting with charged tiles. But sure, change it away. The issue appears when the introduce an even more unnecessary change with the weakest of reasons that further nerfs the ability.

If we are trying to make the game varied, abilities that are not broken should not be nerfed. Making a yellow middle-to-good ability like Twin Pistols weaker, just encourages people to increasingly only use Battleplan or Thunder Strike for their yellow needs.

I don't understand the "principle". Abilities are not measured by themselves, otherwise Twin Pistols would already be garbage tier. Demiurge was looking to nerf Hood (perfectly reasonable considering his top-tier status), and in the context of all Hood abilities, the devs opted to nerf an already mediocre ability rather than nerf the insane passive.

The alternative philosophy is to balance all powers individually (so you'd buff Thor Red, nerf Thor Yellow/Green) but that's kinda boring too. Characters having unbalanced power levels across their three abilities is fine as a design choice.

(FWIW I would have preferred that they nerf Hood passive because it is truly insane, but whatever).

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

If you were using Twin Pistols to get a couple missing AP to finish someone off in the past you can just kill them with Twin Pistols now. If you're using The Hood with Sentry it's pretty much unfathomable why you'd be holding your yellow in the first place over just dropping another Sacrifice unless you're trying to conserve your health for some reason. Except for the ultra high level PvE fights there isn't going to be a case where you're going to use Twin Pistols more than once because things just don't have that much HP in the first place for you to make 10 yellow matches before the game is decided unless you spent the whole time matching the wrong colors. Now it does matter for PvE against extremely high level opponents because these games do last long enough for you to use Twin Pistols more than once and the AP gain does matter when you can use it more than once, but they're (hopefully) a very small part of the overall game experience. I don't think I have any fight in TaT where I could've possibly used Twin Pistols more than once. The really hard ones you don't even have the time, and sure it's probably a bit better to be able to grab 3-4 AP of whatever color you need to fire off a move like Surgical Strike than straight up 5K damage, but then you also could be sitting at 3 black and will be nowhere close to that. There's only a small handful of moves that's better than a 5K hit. They'd have to be at least Rage of the Panther tier, and you've to already start out pretty close to hitting it because counting on a 5 yellow match move to provide the last AP is just a generally bad idea. If I need Surgical Strike I match black. I don't start trying to find 15 yellow on the board so I can hit a few more black anywhere on the board.

Not...really? You could easily use it to fuel 2 different powers, which is a lot more useful in the more likely use case where you have 7k health left split between 2 enemies rather than just on one.

And is still a totally different point to what most people were talking about. Namely, that it now ends the turn with hood stuck in front.

MarvelMan

Did they really just stealth push this?