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In Defence of Hound

Let me preface this by saying that I do think Hound could still use a slight buff to his melee attacks in some form or another, and there's been that many complaints that I'm sure Kabam will have another look at Hound in the coming weeks.

That being said, I think Hound is suffering from Galvatron Syndrome - he needs (needed in Galvatron's case) a slight tweak, but a lot of the difficulties people are coming across are more about adapting to a bot with a pretty specific playstyle.

Firstly, there's been a few posts in threads I've seen where people have been arguing that Hound being a ranged specialist is redundant, because TFTF doesn't favour ranged combat. Put simply, if your ranged game isn't a match for your melee game, then you probably need to work on your ranged game. Firing off one or two shots at a time is preferable, as firing three ranged shots results in a slightly different animation where bot movements are delayed for a fraction of a second. This can stick you in place if you miss ranged attacks and the opponent dashes in to counter. Once you get out of that habit, dodging back and forth while firing off ranged shots becomes pretty easy, and this is a skill that becomes essential when you're using Hound, especially with his signature ability unlocked.

The main thing with Hound is that, despite him being a big 'ol bot, his effectiveness doesn't come from brute force. Hound's real strength lies in knowing and using his abilities to full effect. For example, people have been complaining about how useless his burn debuffs are, but no one seems to be mentioning the fact that burning enemies take 50% more critical damage from Hound's ranged attacks. Want to stack up some big damage? Hit an enemy with SP1 and give them a burn debuff for 15 seconds (numbers are coming from my R3 4* so bear with me). Follow up with a heavy attack and you've got a +20% critical hit rate from the resistance debuff (and a bit of armour) for 6 seconds. Back off, switch to precision ammo (+40% crit rate) then start dodging and weaving as you fire off shots. If you can land a few hits when his sig ability activates, then even better. This also works with SP3, where I'm currently getting a 40% crit rate buff for 28 seconds. That's a lot of damage potential if you apply it right.

The above describes a particular scenario, obviously, but you get the idea - Hound is the kind of bot where some of his abilities set up others, like Rhinox's melee bonus from bleeds or Ratchet's increased stun chance on SP1 from shock stacks. It takes some getting used to, but when you've got the technique down, the damage potential is huge. All of this is before mentioning the fact that Hound has some of the best synergies in the game, and his precision ammo counters any and all Evade abilities (which the enemy AI will lean on when it gets chance, much to their disadvantage), as well as Mirage and Windblade's invulnerability to ranged hits during heavy attacks, giving a key advantage against two of the best bots in the game.

Again, I'm not saying that Hound is 100% fine as he is - a minor buff is definitely in order to make him more accessible. The reason I refer to 'Galvatron Syndrome' is that I saw the same thing after his featured month - he had enormous damage potential but because he had a slightly unorthodox playstyle that was hampered by a couple of niggling issues (getting dark burn out of his SP2 was an exercise in frustration) a lot of people dismissed him out of hand, blaming any and all difficulties they had getting used to fighting with him on the bot. Hound will get better, I'm sure of it, but for the meantime I'd suggest people give him a try with an open mind, and allow themselves to try adjusting their play style a little to see if they get something more out of him.
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