*** The Hood (Classic) ***

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

To me there is a very, very, very simple fix that just chips away at his blue power and that could easily be monitored and tweaked. What is it, first it has been stated before but I think it's the right thing and that is a threshold. I would start it off exactly as Falcon's, requiring 5 blue AP for Dormmanu's to kick in, that's it. If it's too much you can tweak it down to 4 or 3, if' it needs a little more you can try 6.

What does this do? Well it adds strategy, just like when you run Daken/Falcon, is it worth using the Chemical Reaction if it means losing the special tile destruction? For Hood it would be the same way, is it worth Power Surging now if it means losing AP steal for a few turns?

If this brings in his power too much, like I said you can change the threshold or perhaps beef up other skills, like have intimidation do more damage

This would make having Hood pointless.

As I've said in other posts, Hood's nice to gain and take away their AP, yes.

But his biggest strength is forcing the requirement to bring your own Hood if you want to attack him.

If they did this with the threshold even at 1 ap, he'd be totally wrecked on defense, and would therefore have absolutely no purpose.

You can't trust the AI to know it needs 1 blue match in order to "activate" one of its characters.

This change would make Hood the worst defensive character in the entire game haha.

Chrono_Tata

dkffiv wrote:

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.

Bringing in Hulk doesn't stop you from bringing in other fast hard-hitters. You can bring in X-Force with Hulk and use the generated green to take down Hood quickly, although having X-Force tanking green and black isn't ideal I guess.

Anyway it doesn't have to be Hulk, just any relatively meaty character to absorb the damage while your other characters collect AP to nuke the Hood.

Unknown

This one is pretty obscene, though I think Mag/IM35 with a Don was worse. Twin Pistols for 7000 approximate damage every 15 AP is better than Magnetic Translocation for north of 10K every 10.

I miss that one run of the simulator, back when IW and X-Force were terrible and we had them matched up with Goons. You could almost save the 4 stars until last...

Swordstorm

I just witnessed Hood squeeze off his twin pistols 3x in 6 turns. What's more dangerous though is his passive ability. Usually Steve Rogers and a power up take hood out quickly.

tanis3303

I've had good luck so far with Blade/Daken/Xforce on this node. Hood HATES strike tiles. Took a +3 Green/Black boost and some OBW team-ups. Both times I've attempted it, I killed Hood with an X-Force hit before he got the pistol off. They were lvl 225 I believe when I fought them last. This was 95% luck tho. One time I started the match with a 5-of-a-kind green match, and the other with a 4-of-a-kind black that cascaded into a bunch of green. Matches like this are basically a coin flip, and if the board looks terrible, sometime I just retreat. Hey, at least you only have to do it every 8 hours, not every 3!

GuntherBlobel

As others have said, Hulk was the key to one of my clears. I added Blade so that his Anger would pack a bit more punch.

I could have also used Spidey for a cheap stun. You don't need to stunlock Hood, you just need coerce the goons to fire off Threaten just before Twin Pistols is charged. Stunning Hood for 1 turn will do that.

If you can't win against the goons firing off threaten, then Hood isn't really the problem.

Lastly, you've got 8 hrs. now to clear that node. If you wipe once or twice trying to figure it out (like I did), then its really not a big deal.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

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).

Totally off topic, but on the subject of power balance and CD weakness:

CDs are a real weakness, when they are randomly placed. Most CDs that are strategically placed will resolve, so the weakness lies in the delay. Power's like Rocket & Groot's I Have A Plan just go to show how little respect D3 has for that delay as a weakness. It costs friggin 11 AP, AND 2 turns additionally, so it's earliest effectiveness is turn 7. But since it's a placed CD it will likely resolve. Captain America is another example of where the CD isn't a real weakness to his ability to deal damage.

Back when Hawkeye's CD's were random they were some of the worst powers in the game. They wouldn't resolve consistently so their average damage output was substantially lower than advertised. Fast forward to today and we have Star Lord in the same boat. Random placed CDs are terrible design, unless destroying them grants you a boon, a la X-Force and his healing yellow. Star Lord would be less stupid if his Red did the damage listed even on matching the tile, so you could trade your AP denial for instant damage if it placed somewhere it could be matched.

Somewhere along the line they got away from "Lets have a power do a thing, and then a minor bonus thing on a CD" (Captain America, Ares, Punisher) and moved into "Lets have a power do a thing 3 rounds later" which is just stupid.

onimus wrote:

This would make having Hood pointless.

As I've said in other posts, Hood's nice to gain and take away their AP, yes.

But his biggest strength is forcing the requirement to bring your own Hood if you want to attack him.

If they did this with the threshold even at 1 ap, he'd be totally wrecked on defense, and would therefore have absolutely no purpose.

You can't trust the AI to know it needs 1 blue match in order to "activate" one of its characters.

This change would make Hood the worst defensive character in the entire game haha.

I don't usually bring a Hood to kill a Hood. It is a good strategy, but it's only one of a few that work on him. His HP are so low you can typically kill him with a Green/Black AP boost and XF alone. Also weather or not the AI 'knows' it needs blue, it will still take blue because the AI is random as hell. Since you don't see Hood/Thor/XF in PvP unless its a Hood featured, you are likely going Featured/XF/Hood in which case you may not even have an active blue, so the AI will turn on the DA eventually. And isn't the point of his low HP to make him a terrible defense character in the first place? He is a climbing offensive powerhouse, but so is iMags and C.Storm but defensively they are weak. He wouldn't see any less use IMO if DA took 3 blue AP to activate, and that number is low enough the AI can bumble into it, not to mention you could just boost it on offense to have it active right away.

dkffiv

I don't care about this PvE so I'm just having fun and not using boosts. I've cleared it every time I've attempted a rotation (3 so far) with various teams.

Most recently I did groot, deadpool, Thor. Groot + thor are actually fantastic together, groot tanks yellow + green for him. Twin does just shy of enough to down him so yellow boosts him back up. Blue strike tiles and dp's red hits pretty hard.

Previous attempts I've done IM40/Punisher/OBW (not as effective b/c hood gets off pistol turn 3), Patch GSBW Psylocke, and some other weird teams. I think I'm at a 50% success rate per attempt but its been cleared every rotation.

Unknown

My main takeaway from these nodes is that Muscle goons should be the first 5* cover.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

onimus wrote:

This would make having Hood pointless.

As I've said in other posts, Hood's nice to gain and take away their AP, yes.

But his biggest strength is forcing the requirement to bring your own Hood if you want to attack him.

If they did this with the threshold even at 1 ap, he'd be totally wrecked on defense, and would therefore have absolutely no purpose.

You can't trust the AI to know it needs 1 blue match in order to "activate" one of its characters.

This change would make Hood the worst defensive character in the entire game haha.

I don't usually bring a Hood to kill a Hood. It is a good strategy, but it's only one of a few that work on him. His HP are so low you can typically kill him with a Green/Black AP boost and XF alone. Also weather or not the AI 'knows' it needs blue, it will still take blue because the AI is random as hell. Since you don't see Hood/Thor/XF in PvP unless its a Hood featured, you are likely going Featured/XF/Hood in which case you may not even have an active blue, so the AI will turn on the DA eventually. And isn't the point of his low HP to make him a terrible defense character in the first place? He is a climbing offensive powerhouse, but so is iMags and C.Storm but defensively they are weak. He wouldn't see any less use IMO if DA took 3 blue AP to activate, and that number is low enough the AI can bumble into it, not to mention you could just boost it on offense to have it active right away.

You and I see Hood very very differently.

I play him for his defensive prowess, not his offensive prowess.

On offense, I already know I'm going to win. Having someone feed me AP accelerates it minorly, but ultimately, I'm winning regardless.

Defense is where you need to shine in this game.

And because of DA, Hood shines on defense.

Back in the Sentry bombing days, you could not sentry bomb against a Hood unless you boosted like mad or you brought your own hood. Boosting 2 yellow and getting 2 yellow matches is very easy to do until there are 10 yellow on the board and they are 1 or 2 blocks away from being matchable. Then you lose 1 yellow per turn until a cascade properly gets them in place. By then, your speed was shot and you have taken way too much damage by that point.

Hood may not stop you, but it stops A LOT of people. When you're at 900 and need 3 matches to get to 1k, you don't want to waste time on a Hood who, by chance, got a nice board to appropriately **** you over.

You'll eventually win, but he slows you down so bad, it will probably be a net loss or maybe a break even when you come out and have been hit by someone else.

The key to getting to 1k, now that shield hopping is gone, is scarecrow defense paired with seamless offense. And Hood gives you that.

But he not anywhere near an offensive powerhouse.

Unknown

Nope, Starlord is "Better" according to certain ppl on the forum, so how could Dormammu's aid be OP

Unknown

Dormammu's Aid is powerful. However, The Hood is a major PVP liability, alongside OBW. I target them because their low HP means an easy kill, so I only have to deal with two enemies.

He's a minor nuisance for a few turns, and usually dead before he's done much harm. Compare that with X-Force. He's not usually dead before he does massive harm. He is OP.

Unknown

Hey guys! If I am levelling Thor and Patch to 166, what level should Hood be at? Since his "tweak" do I just ramp him to 166 as well?

Unknown

hermanbloom wrote:

Hey guys! If I am levelling Thor and Patch to 166, what level should Hood be at? Since his "tweak" do I just ramp him to 166 as well?

If it's for pvp, Hood should always be maxed.

Unknown

Ok, thankyou. Yes it's for PvP. have bumped Patch and Thor up to 166 and have Hood in mid 150's. Will get him to the top and then concentrate on x-force.

Hulk11

Ok how the heck does this fricking ability work? Steal one ap of that color, why do I drop several?

Salgy

With 5 covers, he can steal 1 of each color from you as long as:
A) you have collected them and
there are more than 9 of that color on the board

Hulk11

I dropped from four or 5 down to one in one move. I was watching my blacks to get inferno.

GTannen73

Was OBW on the enemy team too? If she tanks black (though how she would on a Hood team is unclear, unless she's boosted and/or Hood is underleveled), she steals one with every black match.

There's also Blade's Nightstalker. It steals from the enemy's strongest color at the start of every turn that his countdown tile is still out.

Hulk11

It's one fight in the first wave towards the end. I know one was sentry and hood forget the last, it might be blade.