*** Loki (Dark Reign) ***

Unknown

My experience is that while I'm playing Loki I found The Hood would've made a better deterrent and while playing The Hood I found Loki would've made a better deterrent. So yeah, that's about 50/50.

Trisul

I imagine Hood is more of a deterrent, since he inherently counters the most broken mechanic in the game... AP boosts.

(Not really a super hard counter since AP boosts are just too strong, but is better than anyone else)

Unknown

I have 135 Loki 140 Hood 130 4Thor.

I've been having about 50% defensive win success rate in Sim Shield fwiw. These are low HP chars and people probably think my Thor is undercovered since it's low level too so some of the wins have been coming from 94-115 lvl teams. I love playing Hood & Loki together with a heavy damage dealer. I rarely have to face any AI attacks besides an occasional LDaken 5ap attack.

I'm anxious to 166 loki/hood to see how much of a def deterrent they can be.

Unknown

Switchman wrote:

I have 135 Loki 140 Hood 130 4Thor.

I've been having about 50% defensive win success rate in Sim Shield fwiw. These are low HP chars and people probably think my Thor is undercovered since it's low level too so some of the wins have been coming from 94-115 lvl teams. I love playing Hood & Loki together with a heavy damage dealer. I rarely have to face any AI attacks besides an occasional LDaken 5ap attack.

I'm anxious to 166 loki/hood to see how much of a def deterrent they can be.

If you have both of them you're just going to provoke whoever attacks you into boosting green and immediately X Force The Hood and then you have nothing left unless the featured character is exceptionally strong.

Unknown

WesFaram wrote:

Who do you suspect is the better defensive deterrent: Loki or Hood?

Hood may get the nod for better on defense, but Loki has proven much better for sustained offense in my experience. I climbed about 1000 points in simulator with Xor/Loki and Loki used zero health packs. Hood on the other hand lasts 3-5 fights before he eats a health pack. Also, I find that you recover from devastating AI cascades and bad boards much better with Loki, and this often proves to be the decisive factor in battles since you typically select battles in your favor, and the major x-factors out of our control are the board and cascade randomness you get.

Phaserhawk

WesFaram wrote:

Who do you suspect is the better defensive deterrent: Loki or Hood?

Also, if you collect 11 black AP, how does the computer decide on whether to use XF surgical strike or Loki trickery? Is it just a random 50/50 chance?

It's a toss up. Hood slows you by obviously draining your AP, however Loki makes you change your play and his steal is not controllable like Hood, at least with him you can match colors to stop him from bleeding you, but Loki you can't dictate what he steals all you can do is try not to match 4.

I'm more scared of Loki, because he completely changes the way you play, but I'm more annoyed with Hood because he just keeps bleeding you.

My find. Loki is generally better for offense (doesn't tank yellow and blue like Hood too) and Hood seems to be a better defensive deterrant.

To me you can still play around Loki and with Boosts smash him quickly with X-Force, but Hood could drain you of boosts first turn and the board could not be favorable. I find I win more games with Loki but lose more to Hood.

Unknown

In terms of versus boosts Loki and The Hood are about the same because Loki does have more HPs. If you start with 3g, by the time you pick up 2 more green matches you usually can kill The Hood but this will likely not quite enough for Loki, but this is offset by the fact that The Hood could delay your 2 matches while Loki probably isn't going to do anything fancy on 2 green match 3s. The Hood is far harder to hide behind X Force/Thor due to his color coverage so he'll end up costing you significantly more health packs (pretty sure he gets yellow/blue/purple over Thor + X Force, versus Loki who only has purple in the same scenario).

Conceptually, The Hood should be better for sustained while Loki should be better to prevent losses. That is, suppose an enemy team makes 3 green match 3s for an X Force. The Hood might be able to drain enough during those 3 matches to prevent it, while Loki has relatively little he can do and that's still the most likely scenario you'll take an X Force. Now, taking an X Force isn't going to cost you the game, but will probably cost you a health pack or at least close to. However, Loki is obviously much better for the big cascades that can flat out cost you the game compared to The Hood. In reality, due to The Hood tanking 3 colors when paired up with X Force + Thor this makes him worse on sustained in general because even match damage is significant compared to how little HP he has, and if you're fighting X Force who has a 4X crit modifier, you can often take 800-1K on a crit match 3 which is enough to put The Hood's HP in dangerous territory against even relatively weak moves, and due to him covering 3 colors over Thor/X Force, you might not even be able to hide him from a big move even when you got two characters that can shrug off all sorts of damage.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

WesFaram wrote:

Who do you suspect is the better defensive deterrent: Loki or Hood?

Also, if you collect 11 black AP, how does the computer decide on whether to use XF surgical strike or Loki trickery? Is it just a random 50/50 chance?

It's a toss up. Hood slows you by obviously draining your AP, however Loki makes you change your play and his steal is not controllable like Hood, at least with him you can match colors to stop him from bleeding you, but Loki you can't dictate what he steals all you can do is try not to match 4.

I'm more scared of Loki, because he completely changes the way you play, but I'm more annoyed with Hood because he just keeps bleeding you.

My find. Loki is generally better for offense (doesn't tank yellow and blue like Hood too) and Hood seems to be a better defensive deterrant.

To me you can still play around Loki and with Boosts smash him quickly with X-Force, but Hood could drain you of boosts first turn and the board could not be favorable. I find I win more games with Loki but lose more to Hood.

Loki also makes hops very difficult by spamming purple, which has a pretty long animation.

To me it's not a toss up, it's straight up loki. I'm never cheering against my own cascades the way I do when Loki is staring at my face with his 5 evil green covers.

You can sorta get around Hood most times by keeping the number of tiles of a color lower. Loki? Nothing you can do. You either choose to purposely get less AP than you should or you actively lose AP. And much like OBW when you're in 2* land, Loki turns cascades into tragedies.

hurcules

To me, they are used in different times of PvP.

Wanna leave a defensive team in PvP or Shield Sim overnight but don't want to shield? Hood.

Wanna do time-sensitive 3 match shield hop? Loki.

People also tend to underestimate the AP-generation ability of Illusion even at just 3 covers.

Unknown

It's also probably worth mentioning that Which one you use differs depending on comp. I know xforce and 4thor together is the supreme being of MPQ atm but for some people who don't have both hood or loki might be better. For example I only have 4thor and Loki is infinitely better than hood for pvp for me because he is extremely good at making sure I always have a red or blue match to make with his purple and his passive helps slow things down for my enemies long enough to build the combo. if I boost b/p and r/y it is very rare that the enemy gets an ability off. Hood on the other hand stalls out and since I am heavily collecting blue + red I don't often steal those colors. I don't have a maxed xforce but I imagine that it is somewhat similar where you are just targeting g/b.

On the other hand in simulator where you get to run xforce 4thor + hood/loki I would imagine hood might be better because you want to be collecting 4 colors at any given time which hood can supply easier than loki.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Switchman wrote:

I have 135 Loki 140 Hood 130 4Thor.

I've been having about 50% defensive win success rate in Sim Shield fwiw. These are low HP chars and people probably think my Thor is undercovered since it's low level too so some of the wins have been coming from 94-115 lvl teams. I love playing Hood & Loki together with a heavy damage dealer. I rarely have to face any AI attacks besides an occasional LDaken 5ap attack.

I'm anxious to 166 loki/hood to see how much of a def deterrent they can be.

If you have both of them you're just going to provoke whoever attacks you into boosting green and immediately X Force The Hood and then you have nothing left unless the featured character is exceptionally strong.

Yeah I only run that team in sim when I can have all 3. iw ould never just play loki/hood/featured since loki hood are not AI offense strong.

Unknown

mageofshadow wrote:

It's also probably worth mentioning that Which one you use differs depending on comp. I know xforce and 4thor together is the supreme being of MPQ atm but for some people who don't have both hood or loki might be better. For example I only have 4thor and Loki is infinitely better than hood for pvp for me because he is extremely good at making sure I always have a red or blue match to make with his purple and his passive helps slow things down for my enemies long enough to build the combo. if I boost b/p and r/y it is very rare that the enemy gets an ability off. Hood on the other hand stalls out and since I am heavily collecting blue + red I don't often steal those colors. I don't have a maxed xforce but I imagine that it is somewhat similar where you are just targeting g/b.

On the other hand in simulator where you get to run xforce 4thor + hood/loki I would imagine hood might be better because you want to be collecting 4 colors at any given time which hood can supply easier than loki.

Loki is infinitely superior with all the thors. If you're producing tiles you want to use, having them get shuffled around right after you use the skill means you get two chances for a big cascade.

Unknown

Offense: Loki is a no-brainer. Loki is definitely easier to use with illusions, and it's easy to trigger mischief, just leave the AI match-4's. Downside is gives the AI at least 8 AP at once. With Hood, I find myself changing my attack pattern as well to try to steal more AP. Each of their black powers is conditional, but Loki's is generally more useful.

Defense: I think I personally hate Loki more, though maybe I've gotten used to Hood stealing my AP. I do feel more helpless to Hood's steal rather than Loki, but Loki's illusions often seems to end up in some death cascade with multiple criticals.

Unknown

Illusions is a very strong move to face. It can be avoided by matching purple but due to its cheap cost and that you might not have a purple power yourself, it isn't always practical to match purple. If you do have all the colors covered then it's still harder to deal with The Hood but it's very common to have purple missing as an active power.

Unknown

mageofshadow wrote:

It's also probably worth mentioning that Which one you use differs depending on comp. I know xforce and 4thor together is the supreme being of MPQ atm but for some people who don't have both hood or loki might be better. For example I only have 4thor and Loki is infinitely better than hood for pvp for me because he is extremely good at making sure I always have a red or blue match to make with his purple and his passive helps slow things down for my enemies long enough to build the combo. if I boost b/p and r/y it is very rare that the enemy gets an ability off. Hood on the other hand stalls out and since I am heavily collecting blue + red I don't often steal those colors. I don't have a maxed xforce but I imagine that it is somewhat similar where you are just targeting g/b.

On the other hand in simulator where you get to run xforce 4thor + hood/loki I would imagine hood might be better because you want to be collecting 4 colors at any given time which hood can supply easier than loki.

Here is the problem with The Hood: He steals AP of colors you are not actively chasing. This typically winds up being Yellow and Purple every round with the occasional round of black thrown in. At least with Loki you can steal up to 8 AP every time they gain 8 AP, and even if it is random it's more likely to be in a color you want than Hood.

Hood is great against Goons, where you can leave the 10 tiles up and collect a color from them every round until you have enough to match 3 and cast. Loki in contrast sucks against goons because they never match 4. Other than that one situation I see Loki as being better than Hood, and more aggravating to face so better defense as well.

Unknown

There's no denying strategy against The Hood because being fixtiated on a particular color is generally the worst thing you can possibly do in this game. Out of the 6 colors most likely he's not going to take the 2-3 that are most actively taken in the last 5-6 turns and you have no idea what those are because the AI does whatever they want. Sure if you have a case where you just match green and then immediately match green again you can be pretty sure he won't be able to steal green, but those are fairly unusual situations especially when you're trying to make the best overall move. When you're looking for cascades, trying to move stuff so that the enemy can't easily match their strong colors, or outright denying a particular color because they're one match away from Surgical Strike, you don't always have a choice on what color you can get. Dormammu's Aid is pretty much a fixed cost of attrition and that's also what makes The Hood really hard to deal with, though Dormammu's Aid is not really enough to stop a match 4 or better as that will almost always provide you with enough AP to do something before he has enough time to steal it, since whatever you're making the match 4 on is almost certainly no longer vulnerable to Dormammu's Aid after just removing 4 of those from the board.

Varg138

Replying again since I'm sure many others felt the pain of the slowness of these tiles during Cage Match, where everyone's favorite teammate for Patch was Loki. Please, please, please fix the speed of these tiles going off.

Unknown

I would actually like a toggle to shut of all special power animations. I would do fine with just a text cue.

mjh

vudu3 wrote:

I have mine leveled to 140. Here are his stats--

5023 11 10 12 69 54 61 3.0x 36

I have mine @ 133 (powers up to a nice even 200)

4771 11 10 12 66 52 59 3.0x 35


133 powered up to 200

7124 12 11 13 83 65 74 3.0x 43


for good measure:
166 and 79 70

250 XF 72 81

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

mageofshadow wrote:

It's also probably worth mentioning that Which one you use differs depending on comp. I know xforce and 4thor together is the supreme being of MPQ atm but for some people who don't have both hood or loki might be better. For example I only have 4thor and Loki is infinitely better than hood for pvp for me because he is extremely good at making sure I always have a red or blue match to make with his purple and his passive helps slow things down for my enemies long enough to build the combo. if I boost b/p and r/y it is very rare that the enemy gets an ability off. Hood on the other hand stalls out and since I am heavily collecting blue + red I don't often steal those colors. I don't have a maxed xforce but I imagine that it is somewhat similar where you are just targeting g/b.

On the other hand in simulator where you get to run xforce 4thor + hood/loki I would imagine hood might be better because you want to be collecting 4 colors at any given time which hood can supply easier than loki.

Here is the problem with The Hood: He steals AP of colors you are not actively chasing. This typically winds up being Yellow and Purple every round with the occasional round of black thrown in. At least with Loki you can steal up to 8 AP every time they gain 8 AP, and even if it is random it's more likely to be in a color you want than Hood.

Hood is great against Goons, where you can leave the 10 tiles up and collect a color from them every round until you have enough to match 3 and cast. Loki in contrast sucks against goons because they never match 4. Other than that one situation I see Loki as being better than Hood, and more aggravating to face so better defense as well.

It's not just that. If you reduce an important color to like 3-4 tiles, not much can go that wrong with Hood. With loki, you're in danger of getting a cascade of a color you don't need every turn. God help you it it's a double cascade.

That, plus a purple skill that actually interacts beautifully with both post-surgical and post-Power Surge boards means he's a better enabler imo. Every time I use hood now instead of loki I cringe when I'm matching purple. Such a waste. And when I get two purple matches on one illusion? It feels delightfully filthy.