Sea Dog

[KillerKea]

I finally saved up enough LC to buy the Sea Dog. Too bad I didn’t have enough to buy him before the Into the Void event because my Sea Dog would have 12,000 more mastery and be level 5 instead of 1. Had I known that he wouldn’t get those mastery points I would have spent $1 to buy 15 LC.

Below is a combo I thought of and I’ve been wanting to try, but I didn’t know if the game mechanics would work. I was worried that the Sea Dog’s Gang Up might not work with things like Egg Surprise or Ambush. Now I know it works with both. Following is a pretty devastating combo that would have worked really well in the Into the Void event.

Princess, Sea Dog, Marksmen

Princess attacks to force enemies to attack a single enemy. Marksmen casts Ambush on that bird. The Sea Dog casts Gang Up on the Marksmen. In my case the enemy attacks my Princess, but eventually my Sea Dog will have more health than the Princess. Marksmen get to counter. If the target is still alive, the Sea Dog gets to counter the same target doing his enormous damage plus extra damage due to the Marksmen. The Scissors and BEEP sets do the most damage of all the sets so the amount of damage you do goes up exponentially if you can equip with those sets. It is like your enemies are being continuously carpet bombed.

I tried this strategy in SRC and despite my Sea Dog only being level 1 mastery I was able to kill WizPig before he got to attack. I got scores of 139K and 140K for SRC and I don’t even have Scissors.

Edit: Less than a week after I posted this awesome strategy, Rovio made sure both the Scissors and BEEP attack sets were nerfed and for good measure they also nerfed the Candy Bomb set, but only cut that one in half. The scissor set used to have a 33% chance to do an extra 100% damage to all enemies and the BEEP set had a 45% chance to do an extra 75% damage to all enemies. Now Scissors only does an extra 35% and BEEP only does an extra 25%. This is still a very effective strategy even though the damage output has been cut tremendously.

Topic

[MVNLA2]

I love Sea Dog, but I don’t normally use Marksmen. Will have to try your combo. You mean if you buy a new bird, it starts out a level 1? I guess it’s fairly easy to get through the first few levels, but…

[KillerKea]

Yes, so make sure you buy a headset right before an event finishes instead of right after so you get the mastery bonuses from the event. It’s going to take me a long time to grind and get those 12,000 mastery points I missed out on.

[MVNLA2]

@KillerKea — Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll have anywhere near enough LC to buy a headset. May depend on how long the event is.

[KillerKea]

After I tried my combo out a few times, I’m getting a score of 142k+ now with my best being 144,786 and the Sea Dog is still only level 2. Sometimes I can kill WizPig before he even starts the first round of his charge attack. Some tips for this group.

1. You usually don’t want the Sea Dog to attack directly. Unless the Princess is healing always cast Gang Up on the Marksmen, then cast it on the Princess.
2. If the Marksmen is the focus of all attacks, you should still cast Ambush on the Princess.
3. When it is obvious that a single bird can take out the last enemy or two you should use that opportunity to cast Ambush and/or Gang Up so those will already be active for the next wave.

[Bubbley]

This is a very interesting and useful way to use these birds. I have never played my marksman and have rarely used princess. She is level 8 and marksman 7 thanks to the dojo regularly offering them up. I bought sea dog like you at the end of the event and have been working him. He is 5. I just tried this. It’s great. Thanks.

Doesn’t work so well now that seadog has gone up a level.

[KillerKea]

Try replacing the Princess with the Paladin and having the Paladin cast devotion on the Sea Dog. You’ll still have the Marksmen cast Ambush on the Paladin and the Sea Dog cast Gang Up on the Marksmen first, then the Paladin. This way the enemies always attack the Paladin. I’m not sure if the Paladin will do enough healing, but Red has so much health it should work for SRC.

Another option is to have the Sea Dog equip with a strong weapon like candy bomb and a weak offhand item that improves damage or equip with a weak version of paper if you have the Scissors set. That way you maximize damage and keep the enemies focused on the Princess.

[CDRGuy]

For some reason, devotion doesn’t work with ambush as you think it might. Apparently, the ambush depends on the attacking bird’s intent, not who is actually attacked.

With the scenario described above, you’ll only get the ambush when the pigs attack red, not when they attack bomb and red intercedes. You’d need to cast ambush on both red and sea dog for it to work as you like.

[KillerKea]

Thanks CDRGuy. I thought that might happen so option 2 where you equip the Sea Dog with a weak offhand item to lower his health might be better. The main reason to cast devotion on the Sea Dog is to prevent the Sea Dog from taking damage which lowers his ability to do damage. I know that intentionally weakening the Sea Dog sounds like a non-optimal strategy, but it will work well.

Another problem is that Ambush doesn’t work against 2 or 3 round charge attacks.