Hood Changes - Discussion [Merged Threads]

Memphistophiles · February 2021

Adding my voice to the masses. Hood is my alt account's top champ, has been for a really long time. It's fine that his damage output isn't top tier, that's not why I use him. He's pure utility and denial. His invisibility is how I handle most unblockable SPs and his staggers & fate seals make champs like Hyperion & Annihilus easier to deal with.

One of the best things about him was the simplicity of his utility. Now with the addition of Hex Bullets, it's introduced an unnecessary complication. It's nice playing a champ where we don't have to keep an eye on an ability timer or count. I've always been an advocate of Hood and use him for everything, just like Crossbones is more useful than people often give him credit for.

Despite all this, I can't honestly make an unbiased opinion until I actually play the nerfed version. Here's hoping I'm not completely screwed because he's my alt's best & strongest Mystic champ.

Ezra7676 · February 2021

Pulyaman said:

Wakandas_Finest said:
I refuse to believe anyone ranked up Hood for any reason other than the ghost synergy. There’s at least 10 mystics better than him pre-buff.
Hmm, I ranked up Hood to R2 over Sym supreme and Longshot because of his stagger, regen, power steal, fate seal and bleed. My Sym supreme and longshot were unawakened and I don't like using ghost, never bothered to perfect her and did not pull Hood till I had only 6.4 to explore and did not need ghost for that chapter. So, there are people who liked Hood over other mystics.

I use Ghost on my AQ team so Hood is on my questing team without her most of the time.

It's Hood who benefits from Ghost for me. Starting off fight invisible I could get into a ratation of l2's with high sig. power steal.

Destroys all the cosmics and heavy buff champs.

He is (was) unique and the perfect key to a complete questing roster for me. Really bummed out about it.

I'd take just leaving him alone over a rdt all day every day.

Memphistophiles · February 2021

Added thought: I recall someone mentioning that Kabam would most likely rate the update's success on datamining his usage. *Hopefully* it's taken into account new people using him simply to experience the difference and figure out how to play this transformation. Not too familiar with how the datamining works.

Destroyer123 · February 2021

If anything hood needed a number adjustment no kit changes at all and everyone would be happy. Up his damage leave the rest alone

Woody_feder · February 2021

Nothing to see here lol math was wrong

The_Sentry06 · February 2021

@Woody_feder He can refresh Hexes with mediums. So it's not that impractical.

Woody_feder · February 2021

The_Sentry06 said:
@Woody_feder He can refresh Hexes with mediums. So it's not that impractical.

I totally skimmed over that...

You’re 100% correct, removed my math since you could actually stack up to the amount of bullets plus missed hits and buffs staggered on the first fight. My apologies 😅

Raichu626 · February 2021

DoubleDelta said:
For all those saying its his utility being stripped. Imagine he comes put like the next ghost / corvus.. Will you still be complaining about utility? I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm saying I want to see what his build is like before I pass judgement.

You cannot say something is bad, without seeing it. Yes, they've taken something away, but if what they've replaced it with makes him one of the best champs in the game.. then I'll see how I feel. Until I see his build, I'm not complaining. Once I've seen it, I'll decide for myself if I like the changes or not.

That.
Doesn't.
Matter.

There are hundreds of comments in this thread and many other going into great detail about the problems with this buff. His fateseal is gone. That's a fact, there's nothing to wait and see about it. Maybe he'll overall be better than he used to be, but that isn't the problem. The problem is invalidating the players' rank-up decisions. As I already said in another comment, it sets a bad precedent for future buff decisions:

Raichu626 said:

Would they take away Ronan's stuns in a future update? Could they just rework Vulture out of incinerate immunity? Or remove his special brand of power control? Will Dormammu remain immune to poison, or will he suddenly be immune to incinerate and rupture? When I rank my Magik to 5/65, can I trust she will always have power control, or will I one day login to see 3 Buff Control champions and no power control at rank 5, just because Kabam felt like it?

Mr_Platypus · February 2021

Wakandas_Finest said:

DNA3000 said:

Drenlin said:
Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted
I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
Player investment is the responsibility of the player’s not Kabam’s. Kabam has always reserved the right to make any changes they want at any time for any reason and you know this or at least you should. I swear I have never met so many die hard hood fans before today it hilarious. I’ve seen far more people want to quit the game over pulling a 6* hood than jump for joy. Again it’s very presumptuous of you to make this argument before even testing out the changes. For all you know he could still retain his buff control utility but now with more damage

Ignoring that you don’t understand the dangerous precedent this sets and many aren’t necessarily annoyed about hood, but about what it means for the future (Imagine a Ronan ‘buff’ but they remove the stun lock for example would get the same reaction but a lot worse). Why should anyone treat you as anything more than a troll with comments like this?

Wakandas_Finest said:

But_why123 said:
Why noone talks about his bullets mechanic? If you use him against an opponent which doesn't proc any buffs (for example Deadpool in which you will use Hood to nullify his regeneration buff), you will be able to place upto 28 staggers (without using your sp2). Let's say that this is 14 combos (M-L-L-L-M). That's about 70 hits (14 combos * 5 hit each combo). What that means? If there is a 400K Deadpool you will probably lose all your staggers before you push him to 20% health. And if you can still somehow nullify his regeneration buff (you were boosted for example), in the next fight you won't be able to use Hood as a reliable nullifier cause he won't have any persistant charges
You do know that Deadpool doesn’t have a regen buff right? His regen is passive and can’t be nullified or fatesealed

He does have a regen buff, as others have pointed out. And if you don’t even know that then what would you know about the problems this ‘buff’ causes?

BitterSteel · February 2021

Wakandas_Finest said:

But_why123 said:
Why noone talks about his bullets mechanic? If you use him against an opponent which doesn't proc any buffs (for example Deadpool in which you will use Hood to nullify his regeneration buff), you will be able to place upto 28 staggers (without using your sp2). Let's say that this is 14 combos (M-L-L-L-M). That's about 70 hits (14 combos * 5 hit each combo). What that means? If there is a 400K Deadpool you will probably lose all your staggers before you push him to 20% health. And if you can still somehow nullify his regeneration buff (you were boosted for example), in the next fight you won't be able to use Hood as a reliable nullifier cause he won't have any persistant charges
You do know that Deadpool doesn’t have a regen buff right? His regen is passive and can’t be nullified or fatesealed

Looks like this sums up your knowledge of the game.

BitterSteel · February 2021

DoubleDelta said:
For all those saying its his utility being stripped. Imagine he comes put like the next ghost / corvus.. Will you still be complaining about utility? I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm saying I want to see what his build is like before I pass judgement.

You cannot say something is bad, without seeing it. Yes, they've taken something away, but if what they've replaced it with makes him one of the best champs in the game.. then I'll see how I feel. Until I see his build, I'm not complaining. Once I've seen it, I'll decide for myself if I like the changes or not.

Yes. Absolutely I would still complain about utility. Because if I suddenly loved this buff just because of his damage, kabam would know it’s fine to change champions this dramatically and remove reasons for ranking them up. And what if next time they didn’t get the damage numbers right? It’s happened before. What if we got a daredevil level buff, where they become ok ish, but don’t have much else going for them? Then our utility champ has just been turned into a mediocre damage champ. And I’d never use them over ghost or Corvus, and I couldn’t use them for the purpose I ranked them up for.

Also, if you want to see how hood would perform in buff control fights, it’s pretty easy to do. I used hood all the time in act 6 before I got the best mystics in the game. Occasionally nodes or situations came along where you couldn’t use your sp2. I know how hard it is to get rid of buffs using only stagger.

If you don’t believe me, go and fight a vision arkus with a hood, and don’t use your sp2. Let me know how it goes. It’s like ghosts phasing being removed and people saying you need to wait and see if she’s good, like, no... we’ve all played ghost when we are unable to phase. It sucks. We’ve played without hoods fate seal, and we know it’ll be bad.

I’m not hugely bothered how much damage hood gets given, his utility has been stripped. And that is a fact. I don’t want kabam to “get away with it”, just because they stripped his utility for good damage, because I don’t want them to do it again, and mess up the damage for the next champion they butcher with an update.

CosmicGuardian · February 2021

I’ve seen some people say that this will give Hood a lot of damage, but the thing to remember is that we cannot see what his damage is, or how viable the new mechanic is, until we see some gameplay. The missing utility is a major negative for this update, and it actually has an impact on his hex bullet mechanic. With the new update, Hood’s ability to handle buffs has been significantly decreased, due to his missing fate seal and decreased stagger timers. His persistent bullets recharge through two ways:nullifying buffs, and the opponent missing attacks. The invisibility can only really be counted on to miss 2 attacks reliably, after that it’s all chance. As for nullifying buffs, as I’ve already stated he can no longer handle buffs anywhere as efficiently as he once could, and considering that was the main concept his kit was based on, I feel like they’ve really made a mistake on this one. So if his ability to nullify buffs doesn’t work that well and multiple buffs get missed, then that means that you’ll most likely run out of bullets. We still need to wait for gameplay before making final judgements, but it doesn’t look very hopeful to me.

KDoggg2017 · February 2021

I was taking the "wait till it goes live" approach, but after a couple of days thinking about it... this precedent is a clear and present danger to the core mechanics of rankups we considered safe the last 3-4 years.

How good the Hood update ends up being does not affect this fact.

BitterSteel · February 2021

KDoggg2017 said:
I was taking the "wait till it goes live" approach, but after a couple of days thinking about it... this precedent is a clear and present danger to the core mechanics of rankups we considered safe the last 3-4 years.

How good the Hood update ends up being does not affect this fact.

It’s a very bad precedent to set for sure.

Usually with buffs I do wait and see, but this ones different because it’s not about waiting to see how his damage is. It’s about how noticeably different a hood fight is when you use your sp2 and when you don’t. That’s how people know it’s bad.

KRoNX1 · February 2021

I have a feeling that he is going to be the first champ to go down a tier list after a buff. If it weren't for the bullet limitation, he could atleast get a redemption.

Worknprogress · February 2021

Rockypantherx said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

GroundedWisdom said:

ThatGuyYouSaw235 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

JoshKosh557 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Pulyaman said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

DNA3000 said:

Drenlin said:
Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted
I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
totally agreed.
I think it's also pertinent whether the champion is actually getting ranked up for use of the ability that's removed. When buffing Yellowjacket, i doubt many people would have complained if his stun after power sting expired was removed in place of some new abilities. Nobody is ranking up yellowjacket for that ability. People are ranking up Hood for his buff control, and that is a useful ability. Like you said, people are filling a buff control champ hole in their roster and Hood is much much worse for that role.

There should never be a situation when an ability is removed in favour for new ability (which is arguably just damage in this case)

Imagine, taking this to it's extreme, that Kabam decided Ghost needed a rework (would never happen of course, but bear with), they decided that they would remove ghost's phasing and in place they would give her a chunky fury buff that triggered on special attacks. People ranked up ghost because of what she does, phasing and big damage along with a host of utilities. Removing the phasing dramatically changes her as a champion and the extra damage does not replace what she was ranked up for. Removing some of Hood's buff control capabilities changes him as a champion. You cannot argue that just because he got some more damage it's a justifiable change.

And if you say these situations are different, yeah they are, ghost won't be changed and she won't have her phasing removed, but where do you draw the line of Kabam removing a champions utility in place of adding a bit more damage?
Therein lies a fundamental problem. I'm not entirely sure they're updating Champions to become preferred Rank-Ups. They're updating them to be more useful in the current game climate than they were previously. Certain balancing measures need to be done in these cases because it's not just about adding more. The effects of the Abilities combined need to be considered. So I'm not totally against the idea of having to remove existing Abilities overall. However, I do see it as problematic when it's overly used because it becomes more of a swap-out situation than an update. If that's the case, I'd rather have less buffs a year, and more siginficant reworks. In terms of taking away utility to add something else, that can sometimes happen though. Champs are being changed. There's no guarantee they'll be used for what they were used for before.
There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
Congratulations, now answer their points. Other people do rely on him for buff control. Refer to Cat Murdock

It's not even just the people that rely on him as a main option for this that should be upset either though which is what I don't get. He's a primary member of a very widely used team with Ghost. Currently if you Bring that team into content if you're running most of a path with Ghost but happen to have one or two fights on it when you need to deal with buffs, you can use Hood easily as opposed to needing to bring a whole other champ just for those fights. Now if there ends up being a situation with permanent/existing buffs that have to be dealt with, you have to use a whole other team slot to bring a different champ with you.

It's not always about whether someone is a primary option for something but whether they're a legitimate option at all. Hood always has been a perfectly usable option in these situations even if not someone's main choice. He no longer will be and that's a problem as far as I'm concerned

Rockypantherx · February 2021

Worknprogress said:

Rockypantherx said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

GroundedWisdom said:

ThatGuyYouSaw235 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

JoshKosh557 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Pulyaman said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

DNA3000 said:

Drenlin said:
Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted
I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
totally agreed.
I think it's also pertinent whether the champion is actually getting ranked up for use of the ability that's removed. When buffing Yellowjacket, i doubt many people would have complained if his stun after power sting expired was removed in place of some new abilities. Nobody is ranking up yellowjacket for that ability. People are ranking up Hood for his buff control, and that is a useful ability. Like you said, people are filling a buff control champ hole in their roster and Hood is much much worse for that role.

There should never be a situation when an ability is removed in favour for new ability (which is arguably just damage in this case)

Imagine, taking this to it's extreme, that Kabam decided Ghost needed a rework (would never happen of course, but bear with), they decided that they would remove ghost's phasing and in place they would give her a chunky fury buff that triggered on special attacks. People ranked up ghost because of what she does, phasing and big damage along with a host of utilities. Removing the phasing dramatically changes her as a champion and the extra damage does not replace what she was ranked up for. Removing some of Hood's buff control capabilities changes him as a champion. You cannot argue that just because he got some more damage it's a justifiable change.

And if you say these situations are different, yeah they are, ghost won't be changed and she won't have her phasing removed, but where do you draw the line of Kabam removing a champions utility in place of adding a bit more damage?
Therein lies a fundamental problem. I'm not entirely sure they're updating Champions to become preferred Rank-Ups. They're updating them to be more useful in the current game climate than they were previously. Certain balancing measures need to be done in these cases because it's not just about adding more. The effects of the Abilities combined need to be considered. So I'm not totally against the idea of having to remove existing Abilities overall. However, I do see it as problematic when it's overly used because it becomes more of a swap-out situation than an update. If that's the case, I'd rather have less buffs a year, and more siginficant reworks. In terms of taking away utility to add something else, that can sometimes happen though. Champs are being changed. There's no guarantee they'll be used for what they were used for before.
There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
Congratulations, now answer their points. Other people do rely on him for buff control. Refer to Cat Murdock
It's not even just the people that rely on him as a main option for this that should be upset either though which is what I don't get. He's a primary member of a very widely used team with Ghost. Currently if you Bring that team into content if you're running most of a path with Ghost but happen to have one or two fights on it when you need to deal with buffs, you can use Hood easily as opposed to needing to bring a whole other champ just for those fights. Now if there ends up being a situation with permanent/existing buffs that have to be dealt with, you have to use a whole other team slot to bring a different champ with you.

It's not always about whether someone is a primary option for something but whether they're a legitimate option at all. Hood always has been a perfectly usable option in these situations even if not someone's main choice. He no longer will be and that's a problem as far as I'm concerned

Oh absolutely. I specifically mentioned buff control because that’s what GW was referring to. But he is now going to be significantly worse in the context of Ghost and Kingpin teams

Not to mention his power control isn’t going to as effective. I remember idelest taking Hyperion with his Hood back in the day, and he’s now going to be worse for that as well

I think the main issue is that Hood is losing his identity. What that was to certain players will differ. He was a synergy piece for some players, buff control for others. Maybe he even fulfilled some sort of power control in some rosters

Not to mention people used him for the Thunderstruck lane in act 6, which he’ll be worse for since the refresh no longer exists

Hood has become just another good damage dealer with some ok utility. Let’s be honest, way less people need another ‘good’ damage dealer in their roster, and everything else he did has gotten worse.

That is the biggest problem to me

Worknprogress · February 2021

Rockypantherx said:

Worknprogress said:

Rockypantherx said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

GroundedWisdom said:

ThatGuyYouSaw235 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

JoshKosh557 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Pulyaman said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

DNA3000 said:

Drenlin said:
Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted
I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
totally agreed.
I think it's also pertinent whether the champion is actually getting ranked up for use of the ability that's removed. When buffing Yellowjacket, i doubt many people would have complained if his stun after power sting expired was removed in place of some new abilities. Nobody is ranking up yellowjacket for that ability. People are ranking up Hood for his buff control, and that is a useful ability. Like you said, people are filling a buff control champ hole in their roster and Hood is much much worse for that role.

There should never be a situation when an ability is removed in favour for new ability (which is arguably just damage in this case)

Imagine, taking this to it's extreme, that Kabam decided Ghost needed a rework (would never happen of course, but bear with), they decided that they would remove ghost's phasing and in place they would give her a chunky fury buff that triggered on special attacks. People ranked up ghost because of what she does, phasing and big damage along with a host of utilities. Removing the phasing dramatically changes her as a champion and the extra damage does not replace what she was ranked up for. Removing some of Hood's buff control capabilities changes him as a champion. You cannot argue that just because he got some more damage it's a justifiable change.

And if you say these situations are different, yeah they are, ghost won't be changed and she won't have her phasing removed, but where do you draw the line of Kabam removing a champions utility in place of adding a bit more damage?
Therein lies a fundamental problem. I'm not entirely sure they're updating Champions to become preferred Rank-Ups. They're updating them to be more useful in the current game climate than they were previously. Certain balancing measures need to be done in these cases because it's not just about adding more. The effects of the Abilities combined need to be considered. So I'm not totally against the idea of having to remove existing Abilities overall. However, I do see it as problematic when it's overly used because it becomes more of a swap-out situation than an update. If that's the case, I'd rather have less buffs a year, and more siginficant reworks. In terms of taking away utility to add something else, that can sometimes happen though. Champs are being changed. There's no guarantee they'll be used for what they were used for before.
There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
Congratulations, now answer their points. Other people do rely on him for buff control. Refer to Cat Murdock
It's not even just the people that rely on him as a main option for this that should be upset either though which is what I don't get. He's a primary member of a very widely used team with Ghost. Currently if you Bring that team into content if you're running most of a path with Ghost but happen to have one or two fights on it when you need to deal with buffs, you can use Hood easily as opposed to needing to bring a whole other champ just for those fights. Now if there ends up being a situation with permanent/existing buffs that have to be dealt with, you have to use a whole other team slot to bring a different champ with you.

It's not always about whether someone is a primary option for something but whether they're a legitimate option at all. Hood always has been a perfectly usable option in these situations even if not someone's main choice. He no longer will be and that's a problem as far as I'm concerned
Oh absolutely. I specifically mentioned buff control because that’s what GW was referring to. But he is now going to be significantly worse in the context of Ghost and Kingpin teams

Not to mention his power control isn’t going to as effective. I remember idelest taking Hyperion with his Hood back in the day, and he’s now going to be worse for that as well

I think the main issue is that Hood is losing his identity. What that was to certain players will differ. He was a synergy piece for some players, buff control for others. Maybe he even fulfilled some sort of power control in some rosters

Not to mention people used him for the Thunderstruck lane in act 6, which he’ll be worse for since the refresh no longer exists

Hood has become just another good damage dealer with some ok utility. Let’s be honest, way less people need another ‘good’ damage dealer in their roster, and everything else he did has gotten worse.

That is the biggest problem to me

100%. A lot of people seem to be focusing on "well I have better options for X anyway". Granted, I myself have better buff control and power control options in most situations. However, when running a Ghost team, I'll now need an additional champion in an already crowded roster to cover what Hood was able to cover beforehand.

BitterSteel · February 2021

Rockypantherx said:

Worknprogress said:

Rockypantherx said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

GroundedWisdom said:

ThatGuyYouSaw235 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

JoshKosh557 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Pulyaman said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

DNA3000 said:

Drenlin said:
Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted
I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
totally agreed.
I think it's also pertinent whether the champion is actually getting ranked up for use of the ability that's removed. When buffing Yellowjacket, i doubt many people would have complained if his stun after power sting expired was removed in place of some new abilities. Nobody is ranking up yellowjacket for that ability. People are ranking up Hood for his buff control, and that is a useful ability. Like you said, people are filling a buff control champ hole in their roster and Hood is much much worse for that role.

There should never be a situation when an ability is removed in favour for new ability (which is arguably just damage in this case)

Imagine, taking this to it's extreme, that Kabam decided Ghost needed a rework (would never happen of course, but bear with), they decided that they would remove ghost's phasing and in place they would give her a chunky fury buff that triggered on special attacks. People ranked up ghost because of what she does, phasing and big damage along with a host of utilities. Removing the phasing dramatically changes her as a champion and the extra damage does not replace what she was ranked up for. Removing some of Hood's buff control capabilities changes him as a champion. You cannot argue that just because he got some more damage it's a justifiable change.

And if you say these situations are different, yeah they are, ghost won't be changed and she won't have her phasing removed, but where do you draw the line of Kabam removing a champions utility in place of adding a bit more damage?
Therein lies a fundamental problem. I'm not entirely sure they're updating Champions to become preferred Rank-Ups. They're updating them to be more useful in the current game climate than they were previously. Certain balancing measures need to be done in these cases because it's not just about adding more. The effects of the Abilities combined need to be considered. So I'm not totally against the idea of having to remove existing Abilities overall. However, I do see it as problematic when it's overly used because it becomes more of a swap-out situation than an update. If that's the case, I'd rather have less buffs a year, and more siginficant reworks. In terms of taking away utility to add something else, that can sometimes happen though. Champs are being changed. There's no guarantee they'll be used for what they were used for before.
There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
Congratulations, now answer their points. Other people do rely on him for buff control. Refer to Cat Murdock
It's not even just the people that rely on him as a main option for this that should be upset either though which is what I don't get. He's a primary member of a very widely used team with Ghost. Currently if you Bring that team into content if you're running most of a path with Ghost but happen to have one or two fights on it when you need to deal with buffs, you can use Hood easily as opposed to needing to bring a whole other champ just for those fights. Now if there ends up being a situation with permanent/existing buffs that have to be dealt with, you have to use a whole other team slot to bring a different champ with you.

It's not always about whether someone is a primary option for something but whether they're a legitimate option at all. Hood always has been a perfectly usable option in these situations even if not someone's main choice. He no longer will be and that's a problem as far as I'm concerned
Oh absolutely. I specifically mentioned buff control because that’s what GW was referring to. But he is now going to be significantly worse in the context of Ghost and Kingpin teams

Not to mention his power control isn’t going to as effective. I remember idelest taking Hyperion with his Hood back in the day, and he’s now going to be worse for that as well

I think the main issue is that Hood is losing his identity. What that was to certain players will differ. He was a synergy piece for some players, buff control for others. Maybe he even fulfilled some sort of power control in some rosters

Not to mention people used him for the Thunderstruck lane in act 6, which he’ll be worse for since the refresh no longer exists

Hood has become just another good damage dealer with some ok utility. Let’s be honest, way less people need another ‘good’ damage dealer in their roster, and everything else he did has gotten worse.

That is the biggest problem to me

Exactly, I have plenty of damage dealers in my roster, CGR, Ghost, Prof X, Corvus, Hyp. I was looking forward to Hood getting a buff so I could rank him up as a buff control champion. Unfortunately not, I’m not gonna rank him up now, unless his damage is absolutely game breakingly high, in which case I’ll still be disappointed his utility had gone

Rockypantherx · February 2021

Worknprogress said:

Rockypantherx said:

Worknprogress said:

Rockypantherx said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

GroundedWisdom said:

ThatGuyYouSaw235 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

JoshKosh557 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Pulyaman said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

DNA3000 said:

Drenlin said:
Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted
I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
totally agreed.
I think it's also pertinent whether the champion is actually getting ranked up for use of the ability that's removed. When buffing Yellowjacket, i doubt many people would have complained if his stun after power sting expired was removed in place of some new abilities. Nobody is ranking up yellowjacket for that ability. People are ranking up Hood for his buff control, and that is a useful ability. Like you said, people are filling a buff control champ hole in their roster and Hood is much much worse for that role.

There should never be a situation when an ability is removed in favour for new ability (which is arguably just damage in this case)

Imagine, taking this to it's extreme, that Kabam decided Ghost needed a rework (would never happen of course, but bear with), they decided that they would remove ghost's phasing and in place they would give her a chunky fury buff that triggered on special attacks. People ranked up ghost because of what she does, phasing and big damage along with a host of utilities. Removing the phasing dramatically changes her as a champion and the extra damage does not replace what she was ranked up for. Removing some of Hood's buff control capabilities changes him as a champion. You cannot argue that just because he got some more damage it's a justifiable change.

And if you say these situations are different, yeah they are, ghost won't be changed and she won't have her phasing removed, but where do you draw the line of Kabam removing a champions utility in place of adding a bit more damage?
Therein lies a fundamental problem. I'm not entirely sure they're updating Champions to become preferred Rank-Ups. They're updating them to be more useful in the current game climate than they were previously. Certain balancing measures need to be done in these cases because it's not just about adding more. The effects of the Abilities combined need to be considered. So I'm not totally against the idea of having to remove existing Abilities overall. However, I do see it as problematic when it's overly used because it becomes more of a swap-out situation than an update. If that's the case, I'd rather have less buffs a year, and more siginficant reworks. In terms of taking away utility to add something else, that can sometimes happen though. Champs are being changed. There's no guarantee they'll be used for what they were used for before.
There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
Congratulations, now answer their points. Other people do rely on him for buff control. Refer to Cat Murdock
It's not even just the people that rely on him as a main option for this that should be upset either though which is what I don't get. He's a primary member of a very widely used team with Ghost. Currently if you Bring that team into content if you're running most of a path with Ghost but happen to have one or two fights on it when you need to deal with buffs, you can use Hood easily as opposed to needing to bring a whole other champ just for those fights. Now if there ends up being a situation with permanent/existing buffs that have to be dealt with, you have to use a whole other team slot to bring a different champ with you.

It's not always about whether someone is a primary option for something but whether they're a legitimate option at all. Hood always has been a perfectly usable option in these situations even if not someone's main choice. He no longer will be and that's a problem as far as I'm concerned
Oh absolutely. I specifically mentioned buff control because that’s what GW was referring to. But he is now going to be significantly worse in the context of Ghost and Kingpin teams

Not to mention his power control isn’t going to as effective. I remember idelest taking Hyperion with his Hood back in the day, and he’s now going to be worse for that as well

I think the main issue is that Hood is losing his identity. What that was to certain players will differ. He was a synergy piece for some players, buff control for others. Maybe he even fulfilled some sort of power control in some rosters

Not to mention people used him for the Thunderstruck lane in act 6, which he’ll be worse for since the refresh no longer exists

Hood has become just another good damage dealer with some ok utility. Let’s be honest, way less people need another ‘good’ damage dealer in their roster, and everything else he did has gotten worse.

That is the biggest problem to me
100%. A lot of people seem to be focusing on "well I have better options for X anyway". Granted, I myself have better buff control and power control options in most situations. However, when running a Ghost team, I'll now need an additional champion in an already crowded roster to cover what Hood was able to cover beforehand.

I’m in the exact same position. I’ve got Doom Claire, Kali, Sym. I wasn’t really using him for buff control. Unless I was running Ghost. And I imagine, there are a lot more players than just the two of us in the exact same position.

But it really is players who actually did rely on Hood generally for buff control etc that I feel for. Us players with massive rosters will survive. It’s not great, but we can get past it

This update just guts a mid-tier, upper-mid tier players roster who utilised Hood. And we’ve seen them come out in force. Even ‘endgame players’ like Cat who used hood

It just highlights how unanimously detrimental this update is if it’s affecting the top end and the middle of the game alike. In fact it makes me question what they were possibly thinking when designing this? What was this supposed to add to players rosters?

The entire situation is dangerous and baffling frankly.

Worknprogress · February 2021

Rockypantherx said:

Worknprogress said:

Rockypantherx said:

Worknprogress said:

Rockypantherx said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

GroundedWisdom said:

ThatGuyYouSaw235 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

JoshKosh557 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Pulyaman said:

GroundedWisdom said:

BitterSteel said:

DNA3000 said:

Drenlin said:
Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted
I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
totally agreed.
I think it's also pertinent whether the champion is actually getting ranked up for use of the ability that's removed. When buffing Yellowjacket, i doubt many people would have complained if his stun after power sting expired was removed in place of some new abilities. Nobody is ranking up yellowjacket for that ability. People are ranking up Hood for his buff control, and that is a useful ability. Like you said, people are filling a buff control champ hole in their roster and Hood is much much worse for that role.

There should never be a situation when an ability is removed in favour for new ability (which is arguably just damage in this case)

Imagine, taking this to it's extreme, that Kabam decided Ghost needed a rework (would never happen of course, but bear with), they decided that they would remove ghost's phasing and in place they would give her a chunky fury buff that triggered on special attacks. People ranked up ghost because of what she does, phasing and big damage along with a host of utilities. Removing the phasing dramatically changes her as a champion and the extra damage does not replace what she was ranked up for. Removing some of Hood's buff control capabilities changes him as a champion. You cannot argue that just because he got some more damage it's a justifiable change.

And if you say these situations are different, yeah they are, ghost won't be changed and she won't have her phasing removed, but where do you draw the line of Kabam removing a champions utility in place of adding a bit more damage?
Therein lies a fundamental problem. I'm not entirely sure they're updating Champions to become preferred Rank-Ups. They're updating them to be more useful in the current game climate than they were previously. Certain balancing measures need to be done in these cases because it's not just about adding more. The effects of the Abilities combined need to be considered. So I'm not totally against the idea of having to remove existing Abilities overall. However, I do see it as problematic when it's overly used because it becomes more of a swap-out situation than an update. If that's the case, I'd rather have less buffs a year, and more siginficant reworks. In terms of taking away utility to add something else, that can sometimes happen though. Champs are being changed. There's no guarantee they'll be used for what they were used for before.
There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
Congratulations, now answer their points. Other people do rely on him for buff control. Refer to Cat Murdock
It's not even just the people that rely on him as a main option for this that should be upset either though which is what I don't get. He's a primary member of a very widely used team with Ghost. Currently if you Bring that team into content if you're running most of a path with Ghost but happen to have one or two fights on it when you need to deal with buffs, you can use Hood easily as opposed to needing to bring a whole other champ just for those fights. Now if there ends up being a situation with permanent/existing buffs that have to be dealt with, you have to use a whole other team slot to bring a different champ with you.

It's not always about whether someone is a primary option for something but whether they're a legitimate option at all. Hood always has been a perfectly usable option in these situations even if not someone's main choice. He no longer will be and that's a problem as far as I'm concerned
Oh absolutely. I specifically mentioned buff control because that’s what GW was referring to. But he is now going to be significantly worse in the context of Ghost and Kingpin teams

Not to mention his power control isn’t going to as effective. I remember idelest taking Hyperion with his Hood back in the day, and he’s now going to be worse for that as well

I think the main issue is that Hood is losing his identity. What that was to certain players will differ. He was a synergy piece for some players, buff control for others. Maybe he even fulfilled some sort of power control in some rosters

Not to mention people used him for the Thunderstruck lane in act 6, which he’ll be worse for since the refresh no longer exists

Hood has become just another good damage dealer with some ok utility. Let’s be honest, way less people need another ‘good’ damage dealer in their roster, and everything else he did has gotten worse.

That is the biggest problem to me
100%. A lot of people seem to be focusing on "well I have better options for X anyway". Granted, I myself have better buff control and power control options in most situations. However, when running a Ghost team, I'll now need an additional champion in an already crowded roster to cover what Hood was able to cover beforehand.
I’m in the exact same position. I’ve got Doom Claire, Kali, Sym. I wasn’t really using him for buff control. Unless I was running Ghost. And I imagine, there are a lot more players than just the two of us in the exact same position.

But it really is players who actually did rely on Hood generally for buff control etc that I feel for. Us players with massive rosters will survive. It’s not great, but we can get past it

This update just guts a mid-tier, upper-mid tier players roster who utilised Hood. And we’ve seen them come out in force. Even ‘endgame players’ like Cat who used hood

It just highlights how unanimously detrimental this update is if it’s affecting the top end and the middle of the game alike. In fact it makes me question what they were possibly thinking when designing this? What was this supposed to add to players rosters?

The entire situation is dangerous and baffling frankly.

Absolutely. I just wanted to highlight the fact that a lot of people that may not rely on Hood as a primary choice for buff control should be just as opposed to the change as some of those that use him as a go to already.

Pancake_Face · February 2021

This is so clown. I really thought Kabam was smarter than this.

Cat_Murdock · February 2021

And frankly, some champions just click for some people way more than other ones do, even if tier lists are saying otherwise. And that should be totally fine. There are almost 200 playable champions in this game, Player choice should be important. People shouldn’t have to use Doom or Sym Supreme. For some people, Hood’s particular brand of buff control is their favorite and works best compared to others. Everyone likes different play styles.

Grootman1294 · February 2021

I am genuinely amazed that a mod has not commented on this yet. At least give us a bit of insight into why these changes were made. Even if they took this new kit and restored the fate seal and heavy refresh, I think that champs like doom and SS will still be superior. I just want to hear what Kabam is thinking about this and what the general plan is.

Woody_feder · February 2021

Grootman1294 said:
I am genuinely amazed that a mod has not commented on this yet. At least give us a bit of insight into why these changes were made. Even if they took this new kit and restored the fate seal and heavy refresh, I think that champs like doom and SS will still be superior. I just want to hear what Kabam is thinking about this and what the general plan is.

Yes! Like what specific content did they think hood would now shine for. Or what champs are they targeting to counter with his updates.

Another_Name · February 2021

What does kabam have against the hood? They just needing him because he’d be too OP for the 7.2.6 boss coming soon?

Rockypantherx · February 2021

Grootman1294 said:
I am genuinely amazed that a mod has not commented on this yet. At least give us a bit of insight into why these changes were made. Even if they took this new kit and restored the fate seal and heavy refresh, I think that champs like doom and SS will still be superior. I just want to hear what Kabam is thinking about this and what the general plan is.

It’s the weekend, I imagine they’ll be having meetings tomorrow once everyone is back at work. I may hate this ‘buff’, but they’re still people and deserve the weekend off.

If there is no comment before it goes live, then I’m not going to be happy. But I would very much like to hear the design intention behind these decisions

Hood Changes - Discussion [Merged Threads]

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