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
Phantron wrote: The Hood is a classic trap of people thinking support means depth or complexity or something. There's nothing deep about a character who basically just stands there and doubles the effectiveness of everyone else, which is what The Hood is. For that matter there's nothing balanced about such a character to begin with. There's something around 33% chance that the board will have 10 or more tiles of a given color, so with 6 colors you're expected to steal 2 AP a turn (less if they don't have certain colors but generally not an issue after a few turns). If a normal turn where both teams make 1 match this means you get 5 AP while the opponent gets 1 AP. Even if there's a 2-chain that's still 8 versus 4. The Hood conservatively doubles the effectiveness of your team for just standing there, and of course that's what he does because you sure aren't counting on him for Twin Pistols or Intimidation so if he didn't improve everyone else so much why would you bring him? As a result of him being way overpowered he's also at least on the receiving end of at least most indirect offense imbalances to get rid of him. Whether it's double Feral Claws, Magnetic Field, or X Force he's always on the receiving end of the latest ultra quick kill trick so that you can get rid of a guy that doubles the effectiveness of the team, and doubling the power of your team isn't much if that guy is gone by turn 5.
onimus wrote: Unless you bring your own Hood. And that is really the biggest strength of Hood. If you want to guarantee a win against a Hood team, just bring your own Hood. You just won. You can protect your Hood. They can't protect their Hood on defense. So that's the main strength of Hood. He requires the other team to bring Hood, so that knocks out a certain percentage of the player base from ever wanting to attack you. But other than that, he is not overpowered at all. It is definitely difficult to beat a Hood if your Hood died or you don't have one. But that's literally all he has going for him. So while it is a strong strategy to use Hood as a defensive deterrent it isn't strong enough to stop people from running Xforce Thor teams and it certainly isn't strong enough to re-define the meta.
morph3us wrote: onimus wrote: Unless you bring your own Hood. And that is really the biggest strength of Hood. If you want to guarantee a win against a Hood team, just bring your own Hood. You just won. You can protect your Hood. They can't protect their Hood on defense. So that's the main strength of Hood. He requires the other team to bring Hood, so that knocks out a certain percentage of the player base from ever wanting to attack you. But other than that, he is not overpowered at all. It is definitely difficult to beat a Hood if your Hood died or you don't have one. But that's literally all he has going for him. So while it is a strong strategy to use Hood as a defensive deterrent it isn't strong enough to stop people from running Xforce Thor teams and it certainly isn't strong enough to re-define the meta. Do you think it demonstrates a lack of depth in the game, that your options are essentially bring your own Hood or X-Force, to counter an opposing Hood? One of the reasons why I raised the question was that after reading the thread about the relative position of X-Force and 4*Thor compared to the other 4*s, it set me to thinking about Hood's role relative to other AP manipulators, such as Mystique, and even Starlord.
morph3us wrote: onimus wrote: Unless you bring your own Hood. And that is really the biggest strength of Hood. If you want to guarantee a win against a Hood team, just bring your own Hood. You just won. You can protect your Hood. They can't protect their Hood on defense. So that's the main strength of Hood. He requires the other team to bring Hood, so that knocks out a certain percentage of the player base from ever wanting to attack you. But other than that, he is not overpowered at all. It is definitely difficult to beat a Hood if your Hood died or you don't have one. But that's literally all he has going for him. So while it is a strong strategy to use Hood as a defensive deterrent it isn't strong enough to stop people from running Xforce Thor teams and it certainly isn't strong enough to re-define the meta. Do you think it demonstrates a lack of depth in the game, that your options are essentially bring your own Hood or X-Force, to counter an opposing Hood?
Phantron wrote: The bigger problem with DA is what happens to the entire The Hood and even Loki HP class? X Force can one shot The Hood and pretty close to anyone in Loki's HP class as well. It's hard to imagine this to be the result of a freak accident, and although it's not a good balance, it is indeed fair to say a super cheap ability is probably fair if the user of that ability can be relatively easily one-shot. But what happens to everyone else who shares the same HP class as those guys? Why should Storm, HT, GSBW, Falcon, and Mystique all have to fight with the threat of being one shot by X Force while clearing not wielding power compare to DA? And what happens if you do nerf X Force so that The Hood no longer gets one-shot? While X Force is quite overpowered, it's still preferable for X Force vs X Force versus The Hood mirror matches (DA has basically no effect here and it's a snoozefest), and The Hood versus someone without The Hood or X Force is a very nasty mismatch too. I much prefer to fight Thor than The Hood but that's just trading one problem (The Hood being overpowered) for another (Thor being overpowered).
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?
Muspel wrote: Those aren't your only options, they're just the best ones. Characters like Daken or Blade that can do significant damage without needing AP also work well, as do characters with cheap, hard hitting powers like Psylocke or Torch. What I think causes the perception of him being overpowered is that unlike some 3* characters, Hood is very difficult for 2* teams to handle, since they lack the damage output to kill him quickly. This means that a lot of newer players (or those with less developed rosters) aren't able to beat Hood teams reliably, or at least not without taking very large amounts of damage. So even though he has plenty of counters among his 3* peers, people who are trying to punch above their weight class in PvP tournaments will find him more difficult to handle. And personally, I don't think that's a problem. Characters shouldn't be tuned around the assumption that the enemy will be using a weaker team.
onimus wrote: There has to be a best. If not Hood, Loki would become the next "it" support If both are nerfed, you'll see a ton of Dakens. There will always be an optimal team. But Hood, as he stands today, is not allowing people insane scores, insane speed or insane victory rates (beyond what one would consider reasonable) on defense. Ragnarok, Magneto and Sentry had to be nerfed because they were creating scenarios where you could win in 3 to 4 turns, making the top end of PVP way too fast and extremely chaotic. And Spiderman made you invincible and sustained on offense and defense. Hood isn't doing anything like that. He just helps his teammates go a little faster and makes the enemy team go a little slower. I don't see him to be a problem. He's just a strategic advantage to have him on your team. Just like Xforce and 4hor, as well as the other top tier 3 stars are an advantage as well.