Marksmen vs Spies

[AndyK4483]

Anyone have any insight as to which class is better for Blue, Marksmen or Spies?

I currently have Spies and love it, it’s probably my favorite class of the bunch, I like the ones that deal damage to each enemy, but the Marksmen does sound intriguing and the fact that it’s behind a friendship makes it even more alluring (playing hard to get and whatnot). But before I shell out 500 coins, I wanna know if it’s worth it.

OK, ABE community, your turn…

Topic

[cosmo2503]

Spies without any doubt is the best class for Blues. In my opinion it is better then Skulkers which is premium Blues class and cost 275 lucky coims. I have Marksmes too, and used it only on several battles in Bamboo Wood.

[Danke_]

Marksmen are better for enemies who dodge more powerfull attack, they have little use, only in volcano island they are reliable. The friendship gates are supposed to be opened as soon as discovered, helping for the moment in your adventure.

[Woods]

@cosmo2503 The price for Skulkers is 150, not 275.

I usally use Spies when I encounter Ghosts or Spirits, but not that useful againest single enemy. Marksmen is good againest a single enemy that dodges high damage, say Ninjas or Prince Porky.

[RedBirdy639]

Spies (can ignore all shields, ironclad and dodge)

[GrauGeist]

Marksman is good if you have a single target, like a GP. Mark it, and have triple hitters like Samurai, Cannoneer go to town.

Spies is generally better, more versatile due to the healing.

[Anonymous]

@redbirdy639 Spies can’t ignore that stuff after the last update.

[KillerKea]

Both the Marksmen and Spies are excellent classes to use. It all depends on the situation. Marksmen are best for battling boss type enemies and Spies are best for battling groups. Spies can do quite a bit of healing too. However as I explained in the “Sea Dog” post the Marksmen in combination with the Sea Dog and Princess is far better than Spies at dishing out an obscene amount of damage to any size group. However most people don’t have the Sea Dog so they can’t use my strategy.

[KillerKea]

Another advantage to using Marksmen that I forgot to mention that applies well to the current event and most people don’t know is that if you hit an ironclad enemy with the marksmen your samurai or any character that doesn’t do enough damage will now damage the enemy. For example, if you are level 37 you have to do 225 damage or more to hurt the Shogun and less than 235 damage to hurt enemies with dodge. I downgraded my Marksmen to use a weapon and off hand item so they do 234 damage plus 167 damage for each attack. I don’t have a weapon/off-hand combo where my samurai is doing damage in the sweet spot. My samurai which does 219 x 3 would normally do zero damage to the Shogun, but now he is able to do 3 x 167 or 501 damage each round. This has the added benefit of filling up your rage chili too. This in my opinion is better than using your samurai to shield every round.

[KerrAvon]

I think it depends on the battle situation and on the weapons you have. There are very few specific battles where Marksman is really useful. But I use Marksman a lot more than I do Spies. I have 2 sets of the Robot with the Remote Control. The attack level for Marksman with my weaker Robot was just right for the recent ninja battles – KillerKea’s sweet spot – below the dodge value but above the ironclad value. In battles with the Shogun (using Samurai, Rainbird, Marksman), I would set ambush on Rainbird, who they always seemed to target. Marksman would reply each turn with a couple of shots along with the bonus damage from the Robot set to everyone. I was also able to use a similar tactic against the ninjas in the Chronicles caves (using Pigiana’s counter on Marksman).

However, I am aware that other players like to use Spies against specific foes (e.g. against ghosts) or make use of his healing abilities. But I think it comes down to the balance of birds you like in your team and the tactics you employ. Spies just never fit into my bird teams.