Let me preface by saying that I’m grateful the devs were willing to listen to my piece about the problem with his guaranteed value. They took a step in the right direction at least, but… apparently thought drastic compensation was warranted??
Dolph was already an insanely good monster. Guaranteed rocks aside, TU is an absurdly good move, given how common stuff like stun converter is, and he only needs one kill in order to get sweeping. Not to mention he also had that niche combo potential with the OG dolph to get an upgraded stun flash. And Unmovable, which was obviously a weakness overall since it prevented diamondoid abuse, still offered the nifty perk of being immune to knock back.
And now… we have the behemoth that is Dolphin Bond. Stun Immunity, double attack AND double defense for both of them? I’m sorry, but that really is just overkill. It honestly undoes a lot of the effort that was put into making the diamondoid summon a more fair move; now he just has to get one turn, and then he gets the rocks for free. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to get that turn when you’re stun immune and have double defense. There’s a LOT of critical moves that are easily walled out by that much resistance.
I appreciate the gesture to help out Dolphoenix, of course, but like… he’s still not on the same level as 'freeze, and now basically has a dependency on him in order to be viable. That’s just not how I envision low tier monsters getting their chance to shine.
Honestly, it’d probably be fine if it wasn’t quite so enormous a package as stun immune and double attack and defense. I’m not really picky about what changes could specifically be made, just make something happen I suppose. And if anyone could use a compensation buff this time around, it’s 'phoenix, not 'freeze lol. He’s event exclusive now, might as well give him a little more love.
And one more thing… if he’s not gonna have an entrance effect anymore, then why does he still have Unmovable? It’s just an objective benefit in this state, and one that he hardly needs in order to be effective.
I hate Dolphfreeze and Dolph bond cuz I can’t stun them also more than half of my team has GT,TT, Roaring entrance also 1 converter.It sucks when your non chrono Monsters are hit by Time’s up.
Reduce the stat buff to +50% and remove unmovable from Dolphreeze (so you can more easily knock it back and leave the enemy team with Dolphoenix).
Make Dolphin Bond give +100% stats + unmovable, no stun immunity (so they must be run with stun protection - like most monsters in the game).
Personally I’d choose option number 2. It makes the pair harder to just throw into teams as well as stopping some seriously powerful front lines (e.g. as Sherlock showed: two dolphins, Canishogun, Sanctistag… 5 protectors while you have 3 stun immune sweepers). The unmovable granted to them both should be a nice bonus on top of the stats boost that people still have fun running it.
Honestly you’re kinda right. And to make matters worse there’s the truly brutal counter that is converter and counter, which certainly keeps stunners in check to a degree, but also brutally punishes certain monsters unfortunate enough to have a single stun skill that’s not even integral to their game plan(y’all already know who I’m thinking of). So in a way we’ve kinda got the worst of both worlds here
