EX Monsters

Personally, I'd go with health up > guild down > ipa > ded > ipd

Guild down 2nd because it can lower enemy attack. Combined with health up, that makes a good combo. It also makes a good combo with the 3rd skill, ipa, since it also lowers def. The 4th skill, ded, is just icing on the cake. Personally, I consider ipd an afterthought, since any Ex or higher form will easily punch through an Ex's def anyway.

Armitaage wrote:Personally, I'd go with health up > guild down > ipa > ded > ipd

Guild down 2nd because it can lower enemy attack. Combined with health up, that makes a good combo. It also makes a good combo with the 3rd skill, ipa, since it also lowers def. The 4th skill, ded, is just icing on the cake. Personally, I consider ipd an afterthought, since any Ex or higher form will easily punch through an Ex's def anyway.

Do we know how the equations for defense works? I was under the impression that even when you get monster stats in the 20,000s, a couple thousand more defense can make a huge difference. My Saws of Time with DEA(20) and IPD(20) does way better in defense than my Obliterating Golem. At least more than I would expect given it only has ~15% more base defense.

Plus,  I would think DEF and HP would combo together nicely, since ATK can't combo with any -HP skill in retaliation.

But if monster attack starts to overwhelm monster defense when you get to EXs, then I'd love to know.

The thing is, all the Ex forms have significantly more attack than def. Psycho, of course, has the highest def(164921) but all 3 Ex forms have at least 181195 attack(sin has 199135+, even) which is more than enough to overrun the Ex defense. AAA+m forms on average have attack that is easily comparable(if not higher than) the Sin Ex form's attack, so if sin can overwhelm Ex Defenses, so can any AAA+m form. At the Ex rarity and higher, it's all about who strikes first. The edge that Ex have over AAA+m is the skills. Here guild down+ and health up+ go a long way toward increasing survivability.

I understand the argument that you are making Armitaage.  But what if you face a covert or impulse guild team or mixed guild team while your EX has psycho down.  IS it worth considering skill changing the guild down to DEA?  How do you think that would affect the over all stats?

Xcalibre wrote:I understand the argument that you are making Armitaage.  But what if you face a covert or impulse guild team or mixed guild team while your EX has psycho down.  IS it worth considering skill changing the guild down to DEA?  How do you think that would affect the over all stats?

I think double health up would be the best even fighting AAA+ teams or am I wrong?

I wouldn't go with double health up, personally, and I hesitate to skill change the guild down + too. While I would be weak to Covert teams, Covert is a minority anyway, so it doesn't concern me too much. At the present, Ex forms are pretty much rock, paper, scissors, so I don't mind. The ability of bringing down Psycho attack by 30% is one I would never pass up. Psycho attack would be brought down to AA+ levels, and defense too, and that is after ipa+ and ipd+. Also, I don't fret over facing the exact same form as mine, as out of guild forms are quite a bit weaker, lol.

Armitaage wrote:The thing is, all the Ex forms have significantly more attack than def. Psycho, of course, has the highest def(164921) but all 3 Ex forms have at least 181195 attack(sin has 199135+, even) which is more than enough to overrun the Ex defense. AAA+m forms on average have attack that is easily comparable(if not higher than) the Sin Ex form's attack, so if sin can overwhelm Ex Defenses, so can any AAA+m form. At the Ex rarity and higher, it's all about who strikes first. The edge that Ex have over AAA+m is the skills. Here guild down+ and health up+ go a long way toward increasing survivability.

That makes a ton of sense then - thanks for explaining.

So as a follow up - technically speaking, would it be wise then to replace DED+ with IPA? You lose 5% in maximum skill effectiveness with the switch, but you double up an excellent skill. I don't know how skill stacking works, but either way 200,000 attack would become 310,000 or 325,000. That double boost of attack should be more useful than a single boost of attack and a single decrease defense. It should at least create a larger stat difference between attack and defense.

This is of course ignoring that it's probably a bad idea to change a skill that can't be changed back, especially knowing that A-Team is probably going to turn everything on its head again eventually.

TheFury wrote:This is of course ignoring that it's probably a bad idea to change a skill that can't be changed back, especially knowing that A-Team is probably going to turn everything on its head again eventually.

That alone is reason enough why I wouldn't risk skill changing Ex monsters. There's also that ded+ and guild down+ can bring even Psycho's 164921 def to a jokingly low 105k. Not to mention that the two skills together can work even against AA+ and AAA+ teams too, and those can't match the skill hits, which are nearly as strong as species down, each.

It is my understanding that skills do not stack.  If you have multiple monsters with Health Up, only 1 of them (the one with the highest skill) works.  Any skill that effects a whole party (Health Up, DED, IPA, IPD, DEA, Agi Up) only the top skill level from the party will be used.  Meanwhile skills that have singular monster impact (Crit Rate, Pre Strike, Slumber, Venom, PAP, PDP, PHP, ect.) can be used by multiple monsters within a single formation without canceling each other out.

As for the guild down discussion.  Being as I am Tyranny, and the tyranny EX  monster has Covert Down, which is the smallest guild, I am considering changing the skill to DEA.  If it was Impulse Down I would keep it, but I am attacked by Coverts once for every 30-40 impulse attacks.  I like the guild down skills, but would rather have DEA than Covert Down. 

Just my 2 cents...

If Health and Health+ were considered the same skill, then why can't you use Health stacks to level Health+?

ryesteve wrote:If Health and Health+ were considered the same skill, then why can't you use Health stacks to level Health+?

If that is true than the skills may actually work if an EX monsters skill was changed to Health Up and not Health Up+.  I haven't gotten my EX monsters to the point yet where I can level up their skills so I did not know that regular stacks can't level up the + skills.  Good to know though.

Tryptich wrote:It is my understanding that skills do not stack.  If you have multiple monsters with Health Up, only 1 of them (the one with the highest skill) works.  Any skill that effects a whole party (Health Up, DED, IPA, IPD, DEA, Agi Up) only the top skill level from the party will be used.  Meanwhile skills that have singular monster impact (Crit Rate, Pre Strike, Slumber, Venom, PAP, PDP, PHP, ect.) can be used by multiple monsters within a single formation without canceling each other out.

As for the guild down discussion.  Being as I am Tyranny, and the tyranny EX  monster has Covert Down, which is the smallest guild, I am considering changing the skill to DEA.  If it was Impulse Down I would keep it, but I am attacked by Coverts once for every 30-40 impulse attacks.  I like the guild down skills, but would rather have DEA than Covert Down. 

Just my 2 cents...

Tryp, I am sorry to say that you are wrong on a few points:
1. Stage 4 Ex skills do stack with the regular skills. That is because "Health Up +" is not the same skill as "Health Up"
2. Pap, pdp, and php are party skills, which means that they will not stack with another of the same skill. The difference between pap, pdp, and php, and ipa, ipd, and health up, is that the latter add a percentage, while the former add a fixed amount, but they all affect the whole party.
3. When you have two of the same skill in a party, from the non-stackable skills(ipa, ipd, dea, ded, hu, pap, pdp, php, ipa+, ipd+, ded+, etc), it is not whichever is the highest that is activated, but rather whichever appears first in the party. The skill order, assuming that you have two of the same skill is the same as the attack order(when all monsters have the same agility):
2nd-----3rd
----1st-----
4th------5th
So if 1st and 5th have the same skill, with 5th having max skill while 1st has skill 1, the one that will activate is the skill 1, not the skill 20

Here's Isaac and Enve stacking:

The EX monsters offer a great cheap way to have great Attack and Def decks.  On Attack you could use IPA, IPA+, DED, DED+, Guild down.  The on defense use DEA, IPD, IPD+, HP, HP+.  What do others think?

HeroBaby wrote:The EX monsters offer a great cheap way to have great Attack and Def decks.  On Attack you could use IPA, IPA+, DED, DED+, Guild down.  The on defense use DEA, IPD, IPD+, HP, HP+.  What do others think?

ATK: you're good on strategy, just need to switch to the guild you're hitting
DEF: Is there dea+ ? I would go dea, (if there is) dea+, ipd, ipd+ and hp+. severely crippling opponent's attack is worth it. with ipd and ipd+ that's just hax lol

So I just finished my Ex form last night (well, there's a few more SoS I'll need to track down at some point, but its to the point I wanted it to be before I started using it). I opted for a mostly defensive formation (IPD+, IPD, DEA, Health Up+, IPA+). Haven't done enough battles yet to say a lot about how well it works overall, but I can def say that AA+ teams have virtually no chance, even with agility. Fought a couple AAA+/AA+ mixed teams that I easily beat too. Definitely need to test it in the coming days against other Ex teams, and AAA/+ teams. I'm sure those will be much tougher opponents.

I also opted to go with the Psycho Ex monsters even though I'm Sin. There's a couple reasons for this. First of all, the Sin Ex monsters are Demons and there's a enough people running Demon Down(20) that I didn't like the idea of being stuck with Demons. I've been using Brutes for a long time and almost never saw anyone using Brute Down(20), so this seemed safer. Second reason for using Psycho Ex was that it makes it very unlikely for me to run into a problem due to Guild Down+(20) from other Ex monsters. The only monster with Psycho Down+ is one of the Sin Ex monsters. Since I'm guild Sin, I'll almost never run into someone using that. This also means that against an opponent using an Ex form, if they leave their skills alone they're fighting me with one monster who doesn't have a skill. The last reason I went with the Psycho Ex monsters is because they're pretty and the Sin ones are ugly.  haha

As for why I opted for the skills I did, there's reasons for that as well: I figure that with this form, if I attack first I'm going to win almost all the time. Boosting attacking ability seems pointless since it'll just mean I win in Round 1 instead of Round 2 or 3. So if I can win when I go first, the best course seemed to be focusing trying to win even when my opponent goes first. In order to do this, I need to lose as few monsters in the initial attack as possible, then be able to effectively take down my opponent's monsters when it's my turn to attack. First thing to do was put the lowest HP monster as leader to double HP and keep her in the fight longer (she also has the best attack, so keeping her around longer helps there too). Needing to be able to kill opponent's monsters meant I didn't want to completely eliminate offensive skills, so I kept one, IPA+, that would help boost the already high Atk of my monsters high enough that they can deal significant damage. That left me with DED+ and Covert Down+ to change. DEA was an easy choice to replace Covert Down+. If I had tons of Randoms to burn I'd have tried until I got Health Up (combined with Health Up+ this would almost double the Hp of every monster!) but I don't have the resources to pull that off so I went with IPD instead. 

So the skills are: IPA+, IPD+, IPD, Health Up+, DEA. Bonuses at max skill level are: Party Atk +30%, Party Def +55%, Party Health +50%, Enemy Attack -25%. I also switched my relica to a defensive set including: Hp +870, Def +1300, Def +5%, and Enemy Atk -7%.

So, I'll let you know how it holds up against stronger forms. I know some people were saying it's kinda dumb to make a defensive Ex form, but I decided to try it anyways. If it sux at least anyone reading this can avoid trying it, since it will have been tested in practice and not just in theory.   Wish me luck!

Nice post, but I have a small correction: multiple skills stacking on top of each other to boost the same stat, such as ipd and ipd+, are applied multiplicatively, not additively. That is, your party def doesn't increase by 55%, but by 62.5% instead, though that is in the absence of enemy ded/+ or guild down/+ skills.

Oh sweet, I didn't know that! Thanx, Armitaage! 

And thanx also for recommending I get the stones from the last tower event instead of through battle. I ended up taking your advice and redoing my skill points to get stones from the tower. Definitely turned out to be a good call!

Awesome Phantasma! I am running the almost exact same thing just Sin instead of Psy, I also don't have the cash right now to finish skilling them all up. I switched to all defensive relics as well running a -6% attack and a -12% enemy winged attack. I am really curious to see a full EX def team vs an AAA+ team. Please let me know how it works out!

Phantasma, I agree with you on some points, but I do think that it is still better for Sin players to use Sin EX.

1) I've been running a sin brute team for some time, and I do see some brute downs. It depends a lot on who you are fighting against. The EX are chosen according to the most popular race; Sin - Demons, Rancor - Wyrm and Tyranny - Brutes. There are lots of brutes around for sure and just as many brute downs from what I've seen. If you really want something against "Species down", you should have gone Rancor. Simply because you can't get Wyrm down spirit from anima summon (IIRC - pls correct me if i'm wrong), making it a rarer skill.

2) If you use a different guild formation, you'll tend to lose out in events because the progs requires you to be of the same guild to get best advantage. Progs and events are the best way to earn and sustain in DS and it is thus good to have a team that the prog can fit in.

3) As skills stack multiplicatively, attack skills will have more effect when stack, whilst defend skills tend to suffer deminishing returns.

(To be continued..)

Can't swear that you can get wyrm down from anima, but they gave out wyrm down spirits during Devil's Triangle, so I'd have to assume it's possible.

And there's no reason why a prog needs to be the same guild as your formation.

Dyles wrote:
3) As skills stack multiplicatively, attack skills will have more effect when stack, whilst defend skills tend to suffer deminishing returns.

(To be continued..)

Slight clarification... at least what I think you're getting at anyway.  Any "Increase" skill will have added effects as they stack while any "Decrease" will have diminishing returns when stacked (not attack/defense).

For example if there's an increase 25% and an increase 30% the math looks like:
Apply 25%:  100% * 1.25 = 125%
Apply 30%:  125% * 1.30 = 162.5% (more than a 55% increase which would have been 155%)

For decrease it looks like this:
Apply 25%:  100% * .75 = 75%
Apply 30%:  75% * .70 = 52.5% (not as severe as a 55% decrease which would have been 45%)

You guys are correct about the diminishing returns of a decrease stack vs an increase stack, but there's something else you're not considering...

ryesteve wrote:You guys are correct about the diminishing returns of a decrease stack vs an increase stack, but there's something else you're not considering...

Just to be clear I'm not promoting any strategy here just clarifying what I think he meant as "attack/defense" was not correct

New Ex monsters, by the looks of it Sin undead, covert beast, and tyranny crawler, lol. Guess now my question about how Grand Species Combo(the 5% one) works isn't that strange, lol. Now you would only give up 15% atk and def in exchange for 5% hp(and maybe accuracy), depending on whether or not the new Ex monsters have a skill that makes it worthwhile, but not guild combo and no loss of achievement bonus, lol.