*** The Hood (Classic) ***

dkffiv

raisinbman wrote:

no nerf!

I honestly almost never use him. PvP I usually boost and knock him out fast but if forced to I use him to counter the enemy's Hood. PvE wise half the functionality would still be good enough for the situations I currently use him in. Against him in PvE it would help massively.

He's not a fun character to play with or against and I have a feeling She-Hulks green will feel the same.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

no nerf!

I honestly almost never use him. PvP I usually boost and knock him out fast but if forced to I use him to counter the enemy's Hood. PvE wise half the functionality would still be good enough for the situations I currently use him in. Against him in PvE it would help massively.

He's not a fun character to play with or against and I have a feeling She-Hulks green will feel the same.

that's a small sample size

over_clocked

I find Hood to be very interesting to play with, even if I usually run Loki in PvP for better rainbow choices. I can name a bunch of favourite teams with Hood where even situational Pistols and Intimidation can play a role, and not a small one. A self-respecting PvE all-star lazy Captain team can't be imagined without Hood.

It can be frustrating to play against Dormammu's Aid on a bad board, but Hood is never truly broken outside of being fed 4 yellow AP every turn in PvE (and maybe being overscaled to bejesus, but that's community scaling for you). It's also fun to play around Dormammu's Aid and it's alright to have characters that are an absolute priority to take down, imo. When you face Hood it means that you have to counter Dormammu's Aid (which is weak with fewer than 4 covers) but that you also are to face one very squishy character with an expensive yellow and a very situational low damage black.
Blade, Daken, Falcon, Professor X, Deadpool, oBW (especially with blurple match damage boosts), Mohawk, Patch, Ares, Punisher, Devil Dino, modern Hawkeye with MMN, Kingpin, Luke Cage can all dispatch Hood efficiently. That's not few.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

no nerf!

I honestly almost never use him. PvP I usually boost and knock him out fast but if forced to I use him to counter the enemy's Hood. PvE wise half the functionality would still be good enough for the situations I currently use him in. Against him in PvE it would help massively.

He's not a fun character to play with or against and I have a feeling She-Hulks green will feel the same.

They're obviously leaving his HP alone and hope that is enough of a nerf. She-Hulk isn't going to be fun to play against but at least she uses a primary attack color to drain AP so her team isn't going to have access to one of the best offensive color in the game too. She-Hulk would be a case where no one gets any toys. The Hood just takes your toys. I'm guessing at some point he and the rest of the 'lower than Storm' HP tiers will have their HP raised and abilities nerfed accordingly but this is probably quite complicated so they're probably hoping people just wouldn't touch these guys by giving them so few HPs.

OnesOwnGrief

I would like to state that after the XF change in two days, the only characters with any kind of threatening Green will be Odinson, Iron Fist, and Kamala in terms of damage. I don't value Patch that highly and he's not getting a health boost if I'm not mistaken. I would consider Red and Black to become a bigger threat overall after the 17th.

It's also going to be a little problematic that of those 3, only IF has that color as his strongest. Characters like Fisk will not be able to drain that color. Red should be manageable though since characters with really strong reds tend to have that as a primary color.

dkffiv

over_clocked wrote:

Blade, Daken, Falcon, Professor X, Deadpool, oBW (especially with blurple match damage boosts), Mohawk, Patch, Ares, Punisher, Devil Dino, modern Hawkeye with MMN, Kingpin, Luke Cage can all dispatch Hood efficiently. That's not few.

Patch is a terrible counter, assuming you can get enough AP by around turn 4 or so you're going to fire off Berserker Rage immediately? Cage is also pretty bad if you're assuming you can get off 12+ AP moves.

Almost all those characters are relying on a single color and if the board doesn't give those to you immediately you're going to be drained of it all before you can get a move off.

Hood usually increases the AP cost of all your moves by 2 on average. If there's enough of a color that you're considering going for that then he's probably stealing 1 per turn. If there isn't enough then you're hoping that matches are going to be forming after moves / the AI isn't going to deny those when they do show up. Elongating the game alone isn't so bad but he's also feeding his team's abilities. Without boosts its very likely that the AI will be the one alpha-striking. Removing half his functionality while compensating him via health + yellow or black buffs would still make him a very good character and not nearly as bad to face. Its obvious that the devs know that he has problems, otherwise they wouldn't have **** his yellow + black and health pool. He's the only character that goes from good to Bagman tier if you happen to have a 5/3/5 build.

She Hulk is going to result in matches where neither side has AP and eventually someone generates 20+ in a single turn and wins. Its going to take forever and be very frustrating as a result of poor design.

over_clocked

Cage works because he can work off 6 + 6 black. It's much easier to get than 11 or 12 black (forgot Psylocke I guess). Patch can match damage Hood fast, especially a 3/5/5 build or Patch with true healers, Doom, Spidey, Bullseye, mHawkeye, etc. It's not ideal, but you also can't counter oBW perfectly without oBW of your own. However she's a 2* with tiny hitpoints.
Pardon me for siding with devs on this one, but they obviously feel that Dormammu's Aid doesn't need correction and imo 'balancing' it via Hood's health and making his other skills situational and average is fine. We have characters that have three relevant skills. There are also other characters that revolve around one particular skill, like Hulk/Anger, or Lazy Captain America/Star-Spangled Avenger, or Iron Man 40/Recharge.
Hood is hardly the toughest opponent you get to face, and while I agree he can be oppressive on bad boards, so can Blade, Daken, Loki, Iron Fist, etc. It's actually interesting to have a character that makes rainbow boosts a bad proposition, makes you pick up matches carefully and often warrants a mirror matchup or finding another staregy for dealing with him given available resources.

CrookedKnight

That said, Hood backed up by Maggia goons is absolute nonsense.

Trilateralus

Outside of PVE I've never had any difficulty downing Hood and I rarely use boosts.

Vhailorx

As some predicted ahead of the health shift, even a backdoor non-healthbuff nerf doesn't seem to have held hood back at all since his main nemesis is now gone. I have seen him an awful lot in skipping nodes above 900. And fighting him is a lot more irritating now.

What's is the ideal strategy for dropping a maxed hood now that I can't match green twice and drop him with xforce?

Is iron fist the best solution? back to using your own hood to counter the ap steal and just hope for the best?

Unknown

I've had some success with Iron Fist, use purple, make board black, either use black to kill him or something else cheap, while he can only steal black from you.

The best strategy is still to bring your own Hood to balance the steal and then kill their hood first.

Mawtful

Vhailorx wrote:

As some predicted ahead of the health shift, even a backdoor non-healthbuff nerf doesn't seem to have held hood back at all since his main nemesis is now gone. I have seen him an awful lot in skipping nodes above 900. And fighting him is a lot more irritating now.

With such a large number of characters undergoing changes simultaneously, it has been interesting to see what has floated to the top. The Hood certainly doesn't have to worry about taking an XForce to the face for about 90% of his health, so even without an increase in hitpoints, he's gained some small bonus to survivability. I feel that it's only temporary, however. There's still a lot of discussion about what to do with XFW - where does he rank now? who replaces him? does he even need to be replaced? what's his best build? Meanwhile The Hood came through this round of balance unchanged. To some people that's seen as a nerf, but ultimately what it means is that he plays the same today as he did yesterday - and that's not something that can be said about XFW. The Hood has picked up a few points on the ranking scale - he's a known quantity and people feel comfortable using him since they can fall back on older team lineups that they're comfortable with using - Thor3 and The Hood have some history together, so go with what you know.

Edit: If I was going to suggest a character that might be best suited to counter the Hood, I'd probably consider either Punisher or Psylocke. Both have cheap abilities which means being able to output damage fast. Psylocke is probably better for dealing with Hood faster, Punisher is probably slightly slower but has better contribution to late game as well (via Retribution).

puppychow

For me, the best hood killer is actually deadpool red. If you're starting with four red ap boosted, that's just a 3-match away from triggering his ability to knock out most of Hood's health.

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

As some predicted ahead of the health shift, even a backdoor non-healthbuff nerf doesn't seem to have held hood back at all since his main nemesis is now gone. I have seen him an awful lot in skipping nodes above 900. And fighting him is a lot more irritating now.

What's is the ideal strategy for dropping a maxed hood now that I can't match green twice and drop him with xforce?

Is iron fist the best solution? back to using your own hood to counter the ap steal and just hope for the best?

The best strategy for combatting Hood has always been use your own hood, or another AP stealer/denier, or anyone with cheap powers that do a decent chunk of damage. I'm not sure saying that you can't one-shot him in 2-turns is really a valid complaint though. He was already squishy, now even more-so (beyond XF obviously). Most characters I don't think are intended to be taken out that quickly, unless you're using boosts or the featured character.

Hood always had low-health which was counteracted by the fact that his allies could destroy you if you ignored him. His AP is useful, but still somewhat situational since it's board dependent and doesn't always reliably fire/prevent characters from downing him quickly, even more-so now that his health has effectively been reduced. His twin pistols is incredibly slow, unless he's being fed by goons in PvE, but other over leveled characters with cheap powers present similar problems in PvE.

Some would argue that XF (and the 4-star tier in general) should be considered permanent, nerf-proof featured characters, given how much time and/or money it takes to develop them. I think THAT part is a pretty valid complaint, but that isn't really Hood's fault. I felt the same way about putting money into 3*'s a year ago when I was transitioning from 2-3*s. Then they introduced death brackets, and even more expensive 4*'s, so I quit the game for ~8 months, and have been playing a lot more casually since I got back. They've improved some things, although others are pretty much the same.

What you're indirectly pointing out is the fact that MPQ has always had a problem with grind, especially at the competitive level, that only temporarily gets ameliorated by spending HP / money to upgrade characters who worked well together to counteract that. Not sure what the best solution is, other than making rewards easier to get, and/or offering a premium subscription like some other F2P's have instead of micro transactions, and then give you some fixed amount of HP, boosts, guaranteed 3*+ tokens, etc.. every month. Whether that's feasible is hard to know though. Depends a lot on how much money they make from whales, vs. how much they'd be able to get from subscribers. They also do need to lock down the cost of roster slots to something like 700/800 HP max. And then instead of walling off vets in PvP, give them some other mode that's slightly less brutal and lets them use a wider range of all the characters they collected.

Getting way off topic, but random post-taco morning thoughts.

Oh, and they need to rename Devil Dinosaur's third power Prehistoric Arms Race instead of just Prehistoric Arms. Much more important than any nerf or buff.

Pylgrim

I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Hood.

That's all the strategy you need.

Vladdy

Pylgrim wrote:

I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Hood.

That's all the strategy you need.

Yes, I only feel really comfortable with my Hood facing the other Hood.

Unknown

Unless you've a maxed IF, I'd only feel comfortable fighting The Hood with my own.

Unknown

Hood works as a counter ofc but that implies there is no other option and that's a good way to get him nerfed (some ppl might like that ). Someone suggested psylocke/Punisher but, although their dmg abilities are cheap, they are also a bit weak to down him quickly.

The best non-Hood option is probably IF. His passive alone kills Hood in not all that many turns as a worst case scenario and his purple helps overload the board with black to either kill Hood or at least limit what he can steal . Alternatively Loki's steal can outmatch Hood's if you leave the AI a 4 match or 2.

While nerfing XForce certainly removes the quickest Hood counter it also removes one of the best Hood beneficiaries. Hood's only decent damage comes from a 15 AP ability which you should be able to stop happening before you can kill off such a low health target. That means his usefullness depends on who he is with and lots of ppl won't have a scary featured to worry about (varies by PvP ofc with some heroes being more prevalent than others). This all winds up to there often only being one scary damage dealer on the enemy team to worry about. While Hood's steal is annoying it isn't that fast at fueling one or 2 colours, especially when you are looking to actively deny them both denying matches AND reducing on board numbers to make it unlikely they will steal that colour.

So all in all... the need to specifically counter hood is a bit situational. Sometimes his presence is scary, other times an irritation.

Now in high score hops there is a particular need for speed and a higher chance of a scary level featured offering more colours. Then your best bet is probably, sadly, your own Hood (or still maybe IF).

Unknown

If using IF you usually want to do something like purple + 2 -> match purple -> immediately do his purple. Half of the time you need to do it anyway or he's going to steal a purple and putting more black tiles on the board greatly reduces the power Dormammu's Aid since The Hood yelling at you for 1500 damage is one of the least threatening things he can do, and since The Hood conveniently has a black power at 9 AP, even if the opposing team has a top tier black power it's often quite easy to make sure to let The Hood clean out their black AP stockpile just before you down him.

Wonko33

And....... A level 300 yellow goon fed hood in PvE good luck without your xforce