Red Hood

Red Hood

Psychos

Southerners

Some might say he has a repulsive character

Skin "Machete" was inspired by Vigi

Main Stats

Type

Heavyweight

Rarity

Exclusive

Health

1300

Melee Damage

250

Melee Damage (crit.)

275

Crit. Chance

30%

Crit. Damage

10%

Speed

6

Prepare Time

35s

Courage Cost

30

Behavior Stats

Agility

60

Aggression

85

Detection Range

80

Agility Penalty

10%

Aggression Penalty

10%

Priority Targets

• Witch
• Pooch
• Runner

Morale Stats

Charisma

350

Valor

400

Charisma Radius

• 120 (in front of it)
• 120 (behind it)

Abilities

Perks

(When SA is unlocked with psi-like attack)

Knockback Strength

50

Ability Cooldown

35s

Special Ability

The wave deals damage. The wave's damage equals to 5% of melee damage for every 50 points of valor.

Melee Range

30

Resistances

Knockback

100%

Unlock Requirements

Price

Reward for opening Christmas Cases

Player Level

Any

Internal Data

Internal Name

h_xmas

Red HoodMachete

Red Hood is a large brute armed with a heavy machete and dressed in an American flag print jacket vest, a black and yellow shirt with blue highlights, black pants, and a brown and red-stained GP-5 gas mask.

Machete is Red Hood’s first exclusive skin. He is armed with a machete (hence his name), a red poncho with green highlights, a gray long sleeve shirt underneath the poncho, a black sombrero, black pants, and a black gas mask. He also sports a brown belt with a brown pouch attached at the right side of his hip. He also sports brown, medium-length hair.

He can be acquired during the Christmas Event by opening a Christmas case with an extremely low chance of obtaining him.

Overview

Red Hood is a melee Heavyweight, and has slightly above-average stats for his class. His attack speed is moderately slow. Red Hood possesses a unique critical attack: he will raise his machete, and strike his target with it, releasing a cosmetic psi wave.

Red Hood is immune to poison and knockback. Some time after dying, he turns into a Sergeant.

Special Ability

Red Hood's special ability allows his cosmetic psi wave to deal damage equivalent to 20% of his usual melee damage in a small area of effect. Every 50 points of valor further increases the multiplier by 5%. With his base valor of 400, Red Hood is guaranteed to receive eight ticks of the buff. The maximum possible bonus is +110%, making the wave deal a total of 130% of his damage. This has the small upside of turning enemies around should they get hit from behind, making them move away from the bus. Although it is functionally similar to the lure perk, it won't make enemies stray from their fixed path to move directly towards Red Hood. This ability will not effect Red Hood's wave unleash perk.

For the most part, this ability increases Red Hood's damage slightly, though the pulling effect is much more valuable for defensive play, making it valuable for anyone who frequently uses him in their decks.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Red Hood can be cosidered an offense-oriented heavyweight. Thanks to having tolerable attack speed, high melee damage, and the ability to cause knockback, he ends up being a heavy who is more focused on applying pressure to zombies rather than being a living shield. While he can still fulfill heavyweight's core function, Red Hood's performance as a tank is limited, since he lacks crucial protective perks. That said, the only one he has – poison resistance – can be surprisingly valuable for missions with toxic fog, since Red Hood is one of the few units who has it and can be acquired without spending . Outside of that, Red Hood's meatshielding mainly proves useful against dangerous end-game zombies, such as SWAT, Escapee, and Crank. While these zombies are generally countered by heavies, Red Hood proves to be the best of all options, since he excels on offense, while still having high health and full knockback immunity, making him a step above someone like Lionheart or Chopper.

Red Hood is one of the few units whose special abilities make them much stronger than they are normally. While the ability's bonus to melee damage isn't very high, the lure it enables can prove to be game changing: aside from giving Red Hood more use cases, it serves as a powerful way to prevent zombies from getting close to the bus by confusing them and making them circle around Red Hood.

Despite his upsides, Red Hood still suffers from heavyweights' universal struggles which cause him to be a poor choice for vast majority of levels, especially before locations 8 and 9. There's generally no reason to bother with Red Hood before his special is unlocked, with only toxic fog missions providing a valid environment for him.

Skirmish

In League, Red Hood is completely useless due to his lack of useful resistances, meaningful team synergies, massive cost, and very low speed. If he is somehow acquired very early on, he can be used in place of Chopper in low-level Skirmish. Beyond that, it is highly recommended to look for other options.

Item Sets

Gentleman proves to be the best option for Red Hood, as it allows to take advantage of his naturally high crit. chance, and capitalize on his burst damage potential, even if it's not as great as on some other units. Surgery can work in case you try to turn Red Hood into at least moderately competent tank, but it proves to be a riskier strategy.

Gambling is also a reliable option, making him push back enemies more frequently rather than doing his normal attack, which causes no knockback. Gambling is the only reliable item set for dealing with enemies like Escapee and Tough Blue, causing them to either pause or to be pushed back greatly. Additionally, it can also be useful for other enemies too, causing raw, heavy damage, and also a good way to keep enemies away from the bus too.

Red Hood gets most use out of prep. time watches, with agility bonuses acquired as secondary buffs. He can receive a significant boost from percentage bonuses to health. The same buffs to melee damage are also preferable to flats once he is close to being maxed out. Among books, he gets most use out of +crit. chance, as respective builds provide him the highest increase to damage, especially with his SA unlocked. Crit. damage buffs are also important to Red Hood, even if he isn't using crit. rate books.

Skins and Synergies

Red Hood, along with his respective skins, is a part of two teams: Psychos, and Southerners.

Skin	Sprite	Team	Unlock Req.
Red Hood		Psychos	Obtain via gacha during Christmas Event
Machete		Southerners	50 (Shards Shop)

Red Hood proves to be one of the best members of Psychos, thanks to his high crit. rate playing nicely into both 2/2 and 3/3, while also providing easy access to knockback (at least when compared to Court Jester). Even though universal heavyweight issues still bring him down, he turns out to be a powerful pick once his SA is unlocked, which allows him to offer extra defense to the team.

As for Southerners, Red Hood is one of the few tanky units on the team, and hence he can benefit from the healing provided by 3/3 more than the rest, and the SP granted by the 2/2 allows him to tank even more damage, although the 5/5 is limited in applications due to his high courage cost.

Trivia

• Red Hood's design was inspired by one of the thugs from Penguin's Crew – a recurring faction in Batman: Arkham series.
• Prior to update 3.9.4, Red Hood lacked poison immunity, and his special ability did only 9 damage. He also possessed a unique attack behavior: when above 95% health, Red Hood performed his floor-scraping slash that only caused knockback on critical hits. When below 95%, Red Hood switched to his two handed psi blast strike which always dealt knockback. If Red Hood were to be healed back up to 95% health, he would return to using his floor-scraping slash attack again.
• Internally, Red Hood is referred to as "Xmas".
• Red Hood's description changed to its current one in update 4.0.7. Prior to this, it used to be "Can give out Christmas spirit when touched." His old description referenced both his internal file name and the fact that he is a Christmas event exclusive unit.
• Red Hood's Southerners Skin is based on the eponymous Mexican character, who also wields his namesake weapon.
• Prior to update 4.1.8, Red Hood had a normal knockback perk rather than his unique wave unleashing perk. Despite losing this perk, Red Hood can still deal knockback to enemies on critical hits.

Gallery

• 

  Red Hood utilizing his special ability to strike and lure in nearby zombies, as seen prior to update 3.9.4.
• 

  Promotional Christmas Spritetwork of Red Hood, Lester, Christmas Mechanic, Christmas Cashier and Christmas Welder.