*** The Hood (Classic) ***

simonsez

soursenseless wrote:

I have a theory that it's meant to be challenging

I have a theory it's meant to cost ISO and HP...

dider152

I finally did it, but like the posters above me said, it's a mixture of AP boosts and luck. I finally did it with Falcon (his pet bird is a boon here), OBW (increase countdown timers/give fake health) and Classic Human Torch. With increased AP and a lucky red 5 match cascade I was able to hit him with a fireball with an added cascade that took him out (2 turns in). From then, it was a cakewalk taking out the goons. I hate it when the game becomes so luck based. Especially when it seems like there is only one specific combination of characters you have to use.

Unknown

I think they tested those guys at level 100 and figure it must be the same thing at 200 or 395, even though not being able to take out The Hood with a strong move sort of changes the fight completely.

Unknown

All ap stealers have low health and obw is a 2* so i don't think ap stealers are a problem at all. They can all easily be killed if you prioritize them. The strongest ap powers include dormammu's aid, aggressive recon, mischief, starlord yellow and red. Aggressive recon is in 2* land so she isn't a problem. Mischief can be controlled if you avoid 4-matches. Starlord's powers have not been played enough to make a conclusion. All in all, ap powers aren't a problem

Unknown

If The Hood was released today, Dormammu's Aid would never see the light of day. It breaks too many of the current power design conventions. First, it doesn't care what level The Hood is, it's 100% effective from level 40 to level 166 (something they showed they didn't want with the change to Falcon's Yellow). Second, it has an infinite AP gain ratio, at cost 0 to any amount of AP gain. Most other AP related powers will only net 3-6 AP on use, which is why IM40's yellow keeps going up in cost as you cover it up. Unfortunately we are down the rabbit hole now, with no way of correcting for DA's existance and the HP creep that followed. Thor's 10k hp and all those that followed basically made Hulk irrelevant all so The Hood's tiny 5100 HP is his main drawback. OBW's main drawback was her health and look how much she gets used. It's not really a balancing factor at all.

Personally, just from a game balance perspective, I'd much rather see The Hood with 6800 HP and Dormammu's Aid act more like Aggressive Recon at a 3* level. D3 has this weird thing about duplicating powers. Basically the only 2 powers that have anything in common are Marvel Now Magneto's Purple and GSBW's Purple. It's ok for powers to share some of the same feature, and I have no idea why they fight so hard against it.

Marty17

I just give myself a cookie each time I DIDN'T take damage from Twin Pistol. None so far, but I'm adamant there's a way.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

If The Hood was released today, Dormammu's Aid would never see the light of day. It breaks too many of the current power design conventions. First, it doesn't care what level The Hood is, it's 100% effective from level 40 to level 166 (something they showed they didn't want with the change to Falcon's Yellow). Second, it has an infinite AP gain ratio, at cost 0 to any amount of AP gain. Most other AP related powers will only net 3-6 AP on use, which is why IM40's yellow keeps going up in cost as you cover it up. Unfortunately we are down the rabbit hole now, with no way of correcting for DA's existance and the HP creep that followed. Thor's 10k hp and all those that followed basically made Hulk irrelevant all so The Hood's tiny 5100 HP is his main drawback. OBW's main drawback was her health and look how much she gets used. It's not really a balancing factor at all.

Personally, just from a game balance perspective, I'd much rather see The Hood with 6800 HP and Dormammu's Aid act more like Aggressive Recon at a 3* level. D3 has this weird thing about duplicating powers. Basically the only 2 powers that have anything in common are Marvel Now Magneto's Purple and GSBW's Purple. It's ok for powers to share some of the same feature, and I have no idea why they fight so hard against it.

The problem is that D3 has this design philosophy where false drawback = justification for something to be more powerful. The best example would be the original Rage of the Panther where it usually killed everyone on the other team but hey, they got 5 AP in their strongest color so it's totally balanced. It's been toned back some compared to its original incarnation but ROTP is still nowhere near balanced compared to the average character. ROTP, like DA, falls under the design philsophy of 'it takes a bigger imbalance to hide an imbalance'. DA is obviously broken, so to make this up they allow X Force to one shot anyone under 5K HP half of the time in 5 turns, and figure that'll fix it. Well, it sort of does, except you just ended up destroying the viability of most characters in the Loki/The Hood HP class, just like how Surgical Strike makes ROTP looking not quite as broken.

The weird corollary is that stuff with serious drawback, like say, all of Star-Lord's abilities, are surprisingly weak. If we assume X Force as balanced, Star-Lord's abilities all need to at least instantly kill one person every single time they resolve because the CD drawback is very real. From my observation, D3 seems to greatly overvalue stuff like self damage or an ability that requires you to have some remote awareness of the board (as in abilities that require such thing are way too good), while CDs are greatly undervalued.

BTW, a 3* AR would still be totally overpowered. OBW is another person they tried to get rid of by giving her very few HP. I'd argue the whole level shift was an attempt to prevent OBW from being used in the high end (she has relatively less health after the 3*/4* all got a bigger level buff).

Unknown

Even if you manage to kill Hood...he stalls out the fight for a 10k HP muscle who will kill your entire team with a tommy gun...

I've been using Daken/Wolverine/OBW, but I barely survived both times. Really thinking about leveling up Ms Marvel and subbing her in for daken. She adds a little board control for after the hood goes down.

Unknown

Stun hood, goons cant make matches, you have total board control, win game.

ClydeFrog76

Switchman wrote:

Stun hood, goons cant make matches, you have total board control, win game.

Check out Sherlock Holmes here!

Unknown

Yeah I usually save my verse boosts you win for 100 points for these fights, cause the only way I get past it with any sort of sucess is to go in with xforce with 6 AP in green and black and hope the board is nice enoough to have enough but not too much black or green for me to nuke hood ASAP and get a nice cascade to feed my other abilities to finish him off.... Its definately not a fight you want to go in where most of your abilities cost more than 6-9 AP.

To be honest I rather goons didnt generate AP at all when they are teamed up with a hero/villian cause it makes those fights about luck more than anything else.

Unknown

Goons shouldn't generate AP while they've someone who can move the board. I don't mind if the goons generate AP while the villian is stunned or when the villian is downed. It's not like goons don't already have super powerful moves that often make most villian move look weak, so they shouldn't be getting free APs when they're able to collect more AP via moving the board.

dkffiv

Phantron wrote:

Goons shouldn't generate AP while they've someone who can move the board. I don't mind if the goons generate AP while the villian is stunned or when the villian is downed. It's not like goons don't already have super powerful moves that often make most villian move look weak, so they shouldn't be getting free APs when they're able to collect more AP via moving the board.

Goons should honestly just generate Team Up AP and have all their moves cost that. You'd have the controllable character rush a **** low level TU and then after that they'd spam tiles. The downside is you can't steal their AP with OBW or Hood but I'd much rather have that.

Unknown

dider152 wrote:

How is this game more than a year in and the devs still don't understand that it's not fun to play against a character whose powers hit hard and has two goons feeding him AP that he needs? Getting hit with a potential one shot like Twin Guns from the Hood within two turns is not fun. Why can't they balance that?

i really agree with you.. the levels with Hood and Juggernaut are terrible.. (Hood at the second round of the fight already does the "2 Guns" and kills a character and Juggernaut, with Maggia who increase the power of the "head", takes off 4000 points...)

I think that the difficulty is too high especially for those who have not yet organic really strong !!!!!

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Goons shouldn't generate AP while they've someone who can move the board. I don't mind if the goons generate AP while the villian is stunned or when the villian is downed. It's not like goons don't already have super powerful moves that often make most villian move look weak, so they shouldn't be getting free APs when they're able to collect more AP via moving the board.

Or just mark Goon generated AP as "only useable for this goon ability". It's the feeding that's the problem, not the goon design itself. If the goon fires off his ability instead of handing over his AP it's usually winable. Same goes for green fed Ares or blue fed Magneto.

Nellobee

I keep feeling like the villains (who get used more in story events for obvious reasons) tend to have the more annoying abilities-stuns, AP drains, self-damaging abilities like Sunder and Headbutt, etc.

Maybe I am just crazy, though.

hurcules

dider152 wrote:

How is this game more than a year in and the devs still don't understand that it's not fun to play against a character whose powers hit hard and has two goons feeding him AP that he needs? Getting hit with a potential one shot like Twin Guns from the Hood within two turns is not fun. Why can't they balance that?

Marvel Puzzle Quest.

It's a puzzle. A challenge. Solve it with the resources you have.

Chrono_Tata

Another strategy I use when fighting that node is bringing in high HP characters like Hulk to "absorb" the Twin Pistols hit. If your scaling isn't too stupid it's possible to take a few hits. You can keep an eye on the AI's AP count to predict when it's going to use the ability.

But yeah it's a challenging node and is really annoying to grind. I would like it as a Gauntlet level but in the classic PvE where you have to grind down the nodes to score well, it's not very fun.

OzarkBoatswain

I don't have much else to add, but this is a civil and informative discussion.

dkffiv

Chrono_Tata wrote:

Another strategy I use when fighting that node is bringing in high HP characters like Hulk to "absorb" the Twin Pistols hit. If your scaling isn't too stupid it's possible to take a few hits. You can keep an eye on the AI's AP count to predict when it's going to use the ability.

But yeah it's a challenging node and is really annoying to grind. I would like it as a Gauntlet level but in the classic PvE where you have to grind down the nodes to score well, it's not very fun.

If a threaten goes off it doesn't matter how high your hp is, you're going to die to match damage within a turn or two. Bringing Hulk is mostly a losing proposition because his damage is so low and if you don't deal with the Hood and Muscle quickly its game over. You need to bring a fast rainbow team and hope you can down Hood and then kill off the muscle before everyone is dead.

I like when threaten goes off and then the ai cascades 5 times, generating 4 anger tiles with hulk dying to the fifth match.