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Bard features in my favored party for the Mouth Pool battle, which I do every day with a borrowed bird for additional snoutlings – if you can take out the Spirit Caller before he runs away, he drops ten each wave, but it’s nearly impossible to do that without stunning him a lot. When I did that fight today I only missed killing him on one of the waves, and my party was Samurai equipped with stun weapon, Bard equipped with yin/yang set for faster rage build, and a borrowed Wizard. Using rage chili on Chuck at every opportunity gives you plenty of chances to stun especially when Samurai gets three shots with each hit, and with Chuck’s hitting multiple enemies with each attack you can pretty much ignore everything but the Spirit Caller, as the splash damage will make cleanup of other enemies easy before the Spirit Caller can revive to try running away again.

Bard also does well in other fights where I need high damage more than defense or healing, when I have Paladin in the party as well to supplement Bard’s low-ish healing ability. DPS tanking, as they say.

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What I like about the Bard is the HUGE single-target damage she does. Her regular attack has the highest power of any of the birds (second highest is Bomb’s Cap’n class), and the high chance of stun is icing. This is without legendary equipment or any attack-boosting shield items.

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Yeah, he seems to have been pretty forgotten – I’m just going by the “strike from an unusual angle, but requires patience to use” aspect of his in-game properties, because there is no character data beyond game mechanics. It seemed to fit a “martial artist mystic” concept.

Unless he’s a tough-as-nails Australian outback survivor, with the boomerang thing and all ;) This is equally plausible of course. Wild speculation is fun!

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I had good results against the Burning Plain ninjas using Samurai, Druid, and Pigiana Jones. The key is to take out the smaller high-damage enemies as fast as possible, thus reducing incoming damage enough to make attacks from Shoguns survivable – if there’s a Master Ninja around, take him out first, so Samurai can use his defensive ability reliably; take down Ninja Archers second because they have relatively low HP and do a lot of damage. With Pigiana in your party, you don’t need to worry about flash bombs causing you to miss; if your primary target has that buff just hit with Pigiana before your other birds, otherwise have him dispel the Shogun’s critical buff. You will be using Matilda’s rage ability a lot, especially in the earlier parts of battles. Lastly, if you are about to knock out the last pig in a stage and can do it without using Pigiana’s attack, use his Counter buff on Matilda for a good chance at getting some vines onto multiple enemies in the next stage right away.

I did this at level 25, and Pigiana’s attack was right in the sweet spot where he can hit both Dodging and Ironclad enemies.

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In a fight against large numbers of fairly weak enemies or against a single very large boss that likes to summon, I find that a team consisting of Paladin/Princess/Adventurer Pig or Cannoneer is pretty much indestructible – use Princess to direct all incoming attacks to one target, put the Paladin’s Devotion on that target, and use the Adventurer or Cannoneer’s Counter ability on Paladin. Paladin then counters every attack, making damage inconsequential and putting much bigger dents in the enemy than he otherwise would, and in between refreshing buffs your other birds can also attack normally.

Adjust this when fighting pirates by replacing Princess with a higher-damage AOE bird like Spies or Wizard (Wizard for faster rage building via using his buff on Paladin, Spies for additional healing; use whichever you prefer or whichever is available for borrowing) and use Devotion on both allies, because Dirty Tricks will prevent Princess from directing the enemies.

Unfortunately this does not work in Cure Cavern because the Counter ability tends to get dispelled by the enemies there, and if Paladin becomes stunned the whole thing breaks down, but I’ve had good results everywhere else.

It also won’t work on Ninja enemies with their dodging that prevents the Paladin’s heal from going off. However, there may be some possibility of a variant to this strategy using Archers’ Ambush ability instead of Cannoneer/Adventurer, though I have not investigated this option.

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Thanks guys. It got easier once I passed the first fight – I have been using Paladin/Prinvess/Adventurer Pig as well, and it’s worked fantastically except in taht one fight because the combination of enemies present stop me from countering (Tiny Snowpigs dispel EVERYTHING), which drops my healing ability to unsustainable levels. I’m doing better now.

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Good idea. Thanks.

I have found that Pigiana is absurdly useful with a team of Paladin/Princess in the other two slots, especially against large numbers of enemies (smack an enemy with Princess, put Devotion on whatever the enemies target, and throw Pigiana’s Counter buff on Paladin – took out the bosses of caves 2 and 3 this way; the team becomes practically unkillable) but the strategy doesn’t work when buffs keep getting dispelled.