Marked for Death is the most powerful shout in the game, for killing anything semi-challenging. Even with just 1 level, it was awesome. At 2 levels, it's even better. Fighting a high level ancient dragon:

Dragon swoops in, lands, I hit it with MFD. Put an arrow or two in it, it's health drops by maybe 5%. It takes off, flies around a bit, maybe does a strafing run or two, then lands again. If the shout cooldown has expired, I put MFD on it again, put a couple more arrows into it, it's health goes down to 75%. It takes off again, flies around a bit, then lands, and I notice it only has about 5% health left, I shoot it once more, it dies.

And that's just with me and my follower attacking it, no other npc's or animals hitting on it. There seems to be a critical mass point not very long after you put the shout(s) on them, where their health just plummets like a rock. They almost seem to die before you know it, with most of the damage to them not even coming from your weapons. You get all jazzed up for the fight, and then they're dead, a pile of bones, and yer thinking "wow, that was quick...".

Definitely one of the most powerful, but not so sure the best. Become ethereal has saved me so many times, and allowed me to kill high level enemies, going invincible until stamina restores then get a free power attack followed by another.

Storm call is pretty devastating as well, by the cool down is to big for my liking.

Slow time combined with necromage vampire lasts for 1.5x as long and the effect is x1.25, which is pretty devastating considering you're not slower as much as the enemy.

OMG really? Its pernament? i was wondering why my follower started to svck

Marked for Death is beyond Overpowered, I don't bother with it. It should be fixed to where it's effects can't stack or something. Lowering an Ancient Dragon fight to a 1 hit encounter with an Iron Dagger is just plain wrong.

You mean the most broken. It can't possibly be working as intended.

That's almost always the case for any RPG with cooldown. Devs never seem to figure this out, something costing too much mana, or having a too long cooldown because it's "very powerful" just never balances out in games like it does on paper.

Every RPG I've ever played with cool downs almost always follows this..early level = way more efficient. Mana can be easier to balance, but they got in wrong in Skyrim.

MMOs tend to always release patches loaded with "reduced mana cost for high lvl spell XYZ" months later. Or "Reduced effectiveness of low level spells on high level mobs"

No one ever gets it right the first time because on paper it looks balanced.

This isn't fixed yet? HOly cow. No wonder my companions blow

Probably right, there. Just saying what it does, not whether it's working as intended.

I used to ignore this shout completely. I thought it simply did the health damage, which is pitiful, combined with a one-time armor reduction of an equally pitiful amount. That is, I thought that all three words would only deal 3 health damage/sec. and lower enemy armor rating by a total of 75 points for a minute, which would be useless given that the few enemies who do have armor rarely have it much higher than that.

I'm gonna have to start using this shout again. Does it affect magic? Will my fireballs deal more damage with it? Either way, this is going to be my go-to shout for my Khajiit monk, hands down.

Not sure about the magic affectation, but it seems to work just as well at finishing off dragons for my destro mage, as it does for my melee/archery chars.

As far as I could tell, wabbajacking did not fix the armor. I tested this on Aela, who I had accidentally Marked For Death. I Wabbajacked her later on after I had married her, and then had Cicero attack her and he killed her in one hit. She just stays at home now.

I assume it's in the same vein as how the enemies' armor doesn't fix itself even after they've respawned.

The thing is, it debuffs all armor rating apparently, even resistance to shout effects, making additional usage of the shout very powerful. Also, if the bugs are still around, it doesnt expire, and even stays on a respawned enemy that uses the same ID. Combine that with the fact that there are almost no enemies in the game with over 70 armor rating and its pretty overpowered.

The Marked for Death shout is one of my primary shouts, and I didn't know doing more of it on a enemy would stack a higher armor rating reduction effect. Thanks for finding out.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I pretty much just use 'unrelenting force'. The one that freezes people is good for a laugh too.

I never even bothered to figure out what 'marked for death' does. I used it once and nothing seemed to happen so just gave up on it. I really should put more effort in to finding and learning what each shout does. I'm probably missing out on a lot of cool stuff.

Shouts are magic effects. That is, they are coded as magic and are affected by resistance and absorption, so if MFD makes enemies more susceptible to shouts, it would only make sense for them to be more susceptible to magic (unless for some reason the devs thought it appropriate to specifically code MFD to work for everything but magic, which would be stupid).

This pretty much answers my question, so thanks

Its one of the only shouts i bother with. I need to dig up a link from about 4 months ago where i mentioned this shout

Since shouts are blocked by wards, this makes sense. Thanks.