After trying him out I feel that after he uses up all his mark attacks he becomes a complete dead weight. My suggestion would be to change his desperate bite to drain survivor. Not a big change, not too overpowered (even Leoronix has it) and gives him purpose beyond the 3 mark kills he can get on his own.
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When we have other mark monsters I’m sure desperate bite will be a much more useful move than drain survivor, offering a retaliation if he gets put down to HG.
I don’t think it’s worth asking for tweaks to any mark monsters until we have a much better idea of what’s going on.
How are you so sure? Besides Desperate bite has a huge TU so that the opponent will have ages to deal with Marrowdake after that. Drain survivor does the same thing and will make him more dangerous to be left out there.
I understand that more mark monsters are coming but do you think it’s OK to design a monster that has such a high probability of becoming dead weight? I highly doubt everyone will have access to the upcoming mark monsters.
It’s a SE and desperate bite is not the main focus of the design so of course it’s not going to be amazing sweeping!
I highly doubt Marrowdrake will become dead weight. As long as there are other mark monsters around it can both mark enemies for them and stun/kill marked enemies. It looks like it has huge potential.
Botanic is another example of a SE strongly tied to an archetype. It can become dead weight if other mortar monsters are killed, only being able to shield allies or kill protectors (both slowly). However, it’s a great SE for sure.
Poison immunity + HG + desperate bite sounds very nice for a SE as a way to make it harder to kill safely.
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It certainly does have potential but it is slow (speedwise and also needs over 200 Tu for one kill) and on his own can get 3 kills max realistically. We need to have a monster with more mark uses for him to reach that potential. I have all of the current mark monsters and they can somewhat combine. However, if you use Nefariodon for marking Marrowdrake’s targets you will compromise Nefariodon because if he doesn’t get his kills he becomes an even heavier dead weight than Marrowdrake.
Also imagine the scenario where your only Mark monster is Marrowdrake? Ok, he is nice for 3 kills which is good if he gets them off but what then?
So it’s not a dead weight? It has a support and damage move so it can always do something. Marrowdrake has to wait for his HP to reach the desperate range and spam useless moves. Therefore I believe drain survivor is better for him, because he is meant to survive and to stay on the field according to his passives.
Well, I just think you’re looking at it in a vacuum way too much. We have only have two proper mark monsters and they’re both super epics. They’re obviously meant to be used alongside mark legendaries. Nefariodon can come in and kill marked enemies, while also having a fast (50TU) mark move. Marrowdrake can infinitely stun two enemies out of play. Both sound incredible to me. Surely it’s best to see what comes?
Like you already said, the potential is there. It will definitely be interesting to see what kind of mark monsters we will get.
I would think that it would be more “looking at it in a vacuum” if I didn’t observe their uses outside their main strategy? Have you tried to play around with the SE yet? They are quite interesting but very one-dimensional. Nefariodon can work as a decent “failsafe” if Marrowdrake is killed too early and can also play around with entrance stuff. Caniswyrm’s role is clear and he has options. Marrowdrake is almost as one dimensional as Nefariodon. I just feel like monsters should have a “plan B” if their main play goes wrong.
That being said the SE lion bros are totally useless without each other as is Sanguinymph without Blossomight or Dracorosa. I would tweak their movesets a little too!
I tested them for about 10 minutes just to get a feel for them, but nope haven’t played with them properly. I decided to wait until I get another mark monster.
To be honest, many SEs are one-dimensional in that regard. It’s partly what makes their movesets worse I guess. Most are built to do one specific thing and have a very mediocre fail-case. For example, Horrorclaw is built to do mirror revenge with protect to draw it in. However, it can potentially line up a desperate strike to do some damage before it dies and if the protect gets messed up (e.g. repulse) then it can do survivor if it sticks around long enough.
To me, both Nefariodon and Marrowdrake have fairly standard fail-cases that are reasonable enough and their potential in the right setup is excellent. That marks them as great super epics in my books (pun intended).
That moveset is already much more versatile! It has TWO failsafe strategies on top of the main use. Actually most of SE have at least two possibly useful plays that don’t require a condition that the monster itself can’t influence but there do exist some rare exceptions. The only ones that really come to mind are monsters that have timestrike and no stun moves (Rattlewyrm for example) and those poison massacre SE who are offense oriented but whose only high damaging play is poison massacre.
That being said Mark and Mark trigger is very powerful, because it’s a forced insta kill. Cornered snipe also does incredible damage. For example Shinobidragon is very one dimensional but sleep entrance is very powerful and he can come in twice, therefore his sleep all is 200 Tu to balance it out after he has slept two monsters on entrance. Maybe the balancing factor for Mark monsters is the prospect of becoming dead weight because mark itself is so powerful? I don’t like that kind of approach, but in the end you are right, time will tell.