New to the forum, and looking for some team critiques

Heya folks, been cranking away on this game for a bit, learning as I go (and google keeps bringing me back here so why not register) and I've got a decent team for my level...but I want to fine tune it and get better. SOOO looking for some advice/suggestions/etc...

Here's the deal, I started out reading about things, and decided based on what I had back when I was like lvl 20 to build a Sin Brute team. It went decently, even managed to summon/evolve my own Hilda, I thought things were great but kept getting hosed vs Demon teams. So I scrapped that team (still have parts of it) and built up a Demon team and finally at lvl69 I've gotten them all A+ and max lvl (4x Combo):

Blunt Blade Devil+ (1)
Paimon+ (4)
Flame Kagutsuchi+ (4)
Devil of the Abyss+ (7)
Child of Pit+ (9)

Current Point layout: 324/200
Clan Rank: Garnet - Atk 2.5% Def 1.5% HP 1.5% (listing since I'm a Lieutenant)

Now I'm able to beat about any Covert team I come across, and I find I don't get attacked very much at all. I'm active in all the events as they come about, but I don't spend any real $$ to get dark summons/EP etc... I'm about to start up a trade thread and work towards selling off my spare cards for EP so I can get some upgrades, but I'm not sure what direction to go?

Also, I've been trying to do skill ups for my formation but it seems damn near impossible to bump any of their skills. Is it just that much harder to skill up cards once they are at 70?

Appreciate any of the help, Thanks!!!

I'm guessing that you are in sin guild

Your formation is pretty decent, and sin demons are very popular, but there are a few changes that could be made.

Flame Kag, and Child of Pit are standard sin demon formation members, but the other three (BBD, Paimon, Abyss) all have superior alternatives!

Paimon should be switched for Balrog eventually

Abyss should be switched for Asura, or the new Devil Ripper which is stronger than Abyss, although Asura is still considered the best IPA sin demon

and Blunt Blade Devil should be switched for Spite Devil Mage, because BBD is the weakest (well, child of pit is weaker, but pit has agility which is crucial) one on your team at the moment, and Spite Devil Mage has the second highest attack of all sin demons (second only to balrog) and a far more usefull skill; DEA to BBD's Dodge


The De-Facto sin demon team is

Balrog
Kag
Spite
Asura
Pit

Which is not to say that your current formation isn't good, but the balrog/asura/spite one is considered to be the best sin demon A formation.


The thing with the skills is that the higher the skill is, you need to use higher leveled skills to level higher leveled skills! As in; you can use (1)s to level your monsters up to (3), and (2)s to level up to (5), and (4)s all the way to 20 with minimal losses, but you could try sacrifice 10 (2)s to a skill (10) and fail every single time. Hence the whole market for skill stacks (4) since those are basically supposed to be good enough to get all the way to 20 with very few failures.

I don't think there is any correlation between monster level and skill advancement.

JessicaMD wrote:I'm guessing that you are in sin guild

Correct! I learned that early on...was debating about swapping to another guild since I seemed to collect Tyranny cards all the time.

For now I think my best bet would be to save up and try to get a SpiteDM, as you said the BBD is a decent mob but the skill just seems lacking. I've built mostly from things I've collected in events, and I swear at one point I had 5 BBDs so I just went with it.

I've got one each of the last event Demons, Devil Ripper and an Ebony Demon, so I may grab one more DR and push that direction as you said to replace the BBD. Just trying to see if the investment in time/money/EP to level these guys is worth it, or if my current setup is decent enough for now and start collecting anything in the AA range?

Or is a Demon team as you described good enough to last for many more levels?

Thanks for the advice on the skill-ups, that makes sense on the stacks. I'll have to assemble more lowbie cards to work on that.

The demon team I described can be seen all over the rankings

I'm not going to guarantee that it'll beat every single AA team you run into, but it's a really solid team.

as for the investment?

You've got two of the members of the final team, which is certainly worth it.

Fortunately, the two out of the other three are pretty popular for "non-optimal" demon teams with lower level players who cannot afford Balrog/Asura/Spite, so you really shouldn't have a very hard time selling Abyss, and Paimon, although I think I remember that event you're talking about with dozens and dozens of BBD, so there really isn't a market for BBDs since everyone got tons of them

I really appreciate your help on this, what you've said makes total sense. I'll slowly work towards the final team setup, unless of course I come across any AA cards that seem worth it (or get some kind of skill change card LOL yeah right).

Seems like you spend 98% of your time tweaking a team on this game!!

Scratch102 wrote:

Seems like you spend 98% of your time tweaking a team on this game!!

That's the fun part


and it gets even crazier once you're getting into AAs

The single most important improvement for your team is get pit max skill. With a max skill pit, you can trounce a lot of team. Invest in an asura will help a lot as well as it is much better than abyss and at the moment not that expensive.

Jessica's other suggestion will help but it won't make as much of a difference I think as your team has enough firepower to down almost any team just a matter of making sure you get to go first which will be getting pit max skill.

Honestly a team consisting of only pit+20, asura+20, kat+20 and any other 2 max level demon will beat just about any A+ team (except for the demon down 20 one) and many hybrid teams so if it was me that's what I'll focus on doing that replace paimon and bbd afterward for the optimal setup.

Kyan
Kyan's Store

Thanks Kyan very good point. I ran into a Covert team with a +14 agi Bayard and got trounced. I keep forgetting I'm only at +9 with my Pit. I really do need to work on skill ups. Also know that I know more about HOW these skill stacks work, I can hopefully get a better rate of return on the sacrifices.

Had I known it to start, my Pit would have been even higher, as I burned single skill Agi cards to get it up to 9 with a LOT of failures.

...it's a learning curve. bleh

yup, agi is disproportionately powerful compared to the other skills.

an AA form backed up by 15 agi will first strike against an A form with 20.

I'd say getting agi up there is absolutely crucial if you want to get on/be on the rankings...

I've been trailing the rankings for a while, intentionally keeping a few points away until I finish maxing my AA+s, and yesterday I miscalculated the honor point gain from a battle, and ended up on the rankings for a couple of minutes... My A wyrm form immediately got trounced by a psycho brute form with agi, ipd, crit (20), imp down (18 or something), and psy down (3) [ ok don't really care about the psy down (3) that much lol ]. I found out those skills when I counterattacked against the defensive loss, and was promptly defeated once again.

The thing is, my current form is a placeholder until I get my AA+s leveled (btw; excruciating in this current event which has unprecedentedly bad sac fodder drops, so bad that I actually decided to drop one of my 4 AA winged wyrms, and just level up 3 of them instead), so I don't really upgrade my A wyrms (skill-wise) since they're just place-holding, and due to the defensive nature of impulse wyrms, agi isn't even that crucial; similar to cov mystics which don't really need agi since they can soak up damage very well. Even though this is a defensive form, there is no conceivable way I could have won a defensive battle due to that high imp down, and 20agi vs 20agi attacker still goes first. although arguably, I should have been able to win the offensive one if I had higher agility, as I did manage to take 3 enemy monsters out over the course of the battle while they were attacking first every time, purely thanks to sin wyrms ability to absorb damage and DEA/IPD and If I had first strike, I'm fairly certain I would have won.

I made the mistake of stumbling onto the rankings with an insufficiently skilled formation, and had I climbed any higher, my w/l ration would be absolute garbage by now. So basically I'm sitting on my hands as far as battles go until my AAs are ready... Going to try trail the rankings so it'll be easy to hop back on, and I have about 1k worth of honor points in battle potions saved up for when I'm ready to make my climb.

It's a very good idea to find a single formation with members you are comfortable and happy with and stick with it, and work on their skills.

I made the mistake of building a whole bunch of formations, switching frequently, resulting with full psy demon team, full covert winged wyrm team, full sin winged brutes, sin winged wyrms, sin regular wyrms, most of which are +m and have skills in the ~10 range, while what I really should have been doing was building a single form with all (20).

To that end, I would suggest getting those monsters Jessie mentioned; balrog, spite, asura asap. Not so much because they are significantly stronger than your current alternatives, but so that you can start leveling up their skills. Particularly asura as IPA is the foundation of the sin demon team.

Spite and Balrog shouldn't be too huge of a hurry. Covert Down is arguably the least useful of all the guild down skills as covert has the smallest playerbase, and thus you won't be using it all that often; which is not to say that it doesn't make a major difference when it IS contextually useful, but Balrog is valued more for stats than skill.

Similarly with Spite; DEA is not all that useful for sin demons, it certainly helps, but the prioritization of dea in a low def high offense team is obviously lower (e.g. must haves for sin demons; IPA/DED, must haves for sin wyrms; IPD/DEA due to respective offensive/defensive nature of forms) Spite is valued for stats more than skill.

If you can though, I would suggest picking up all three of these monsters now, due to the ep recession their prices are at an all time low.

lol @Larry still being ptsd about one loss (seriously, he was going on about how this was going to happen all of last night after ranking, and complaining about the loss all morning)

PEOPLE SEE YOUR RANKING NOT YOUR W/L..........

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hahahahahaha

JessicaMD wrote:lol @Larry still being ptsd about one loss (seriously, he was going on about how this was going to happen all of last night after ranking, and complaining about the loss all morning)

PEOPLE SEE YOUR RANKING NOT YOUR W/L..........

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hahahahahaha

lol. Once you're high in the ranking you get use to losing. There is no unbeatable defensive team so the best you can hope for is your team is strong enough for revenge.

Kyan

Ok...so for now I'm not going to worry about rankings...heck I'm around 13000 or so, so I doubt I'll be hunted anytime soon. ;-)

I will do some work on building up this traditional demon team, just a shame it will be unique just like ALL the others. I *just* came across another Devil Ripper, it is so tempting to build it and pass on Asura...or just sell it while the demand is high.

One nice change, since we can see the Auction owner level, giving gold and MLP to a lowbie can score a steal!

Is there any chance of a winged demon with Agi? Or is that just to overpowered with the winged ATK bonus? It would just kill me to sell a new winged demon. I do need EP to get Spite...after everything you all have said, I look at my BBD with a bit of contempt!!

given that sin demons have taken a huge hit in relative strength recently, what with rancor wyrms having demon down and impulse down, rancor beasts and tyranny demons breaking the 62k atk barrier with agi and without winged bonus, i imagine that sin demons MIGHT just be getting winged agi some time soon, given how very far behind we're falling(only 58k atk, and the top teams have far more than that). don't get me wrong, sin demons are still a good team and still the best sin team, but compared to the other guilds, we're seriously hurting now, lol.

Scratch102 wrote: just a shame it will be unique just like ALL the others.

As an impulse player, once I found a little more about the game (i.e. signing up for this forum), I was pretty disappointed to find out that demons were the 'go-to' form. Primarily for aesthetic reasons; Pit is wacky looking, asura has those dumb witch noses, (no problem with endless, balrog, and spite (this was before kag came out)); and unfortunately pit has no alternative (agi), and asura didn't have any alternatives at the time except abyss who also looks kinda dumb in my opinion with the 70s style glam rock leather pants lol.

To top it off, the fact that demons were the official sin cookie-cutter formation put me off entirely. Hence began the search for alternative impulse formations that don't look like ass (well don't look like ass to ME) that are also functional

There are actually a number of them.

Hybrid Winged Brutes;
Despair, Hilda, Cruel BW, Blazing, WWE; 4x combo
This team has a decent skill-set of agi, ded, imp/cov down, and crit. And you can easily swap WWE out for a Scorn BW to boost the whole thing to 66k attack which was pretty useful for the mobius event where raw attack was much more important than agility. I used this particular team for a rather long time.
The basic team (without scorn) is also only 86bp to use, which means more battles per full bp charge, and also being pretty useful for mobius

Sin Wyrms;
MLD, NWD, Kanna, Nid, Ring; 4x combo, 99bp
This team has an EXCELLENT skill-set of agi, ipd, dea, demon down, and crit; sin wyrms are defensively oriented, and they possess the defensive essentials. Demon Down is also a game-changer; as the cookie cutter formation for tyrrany is ALSO demons. This team has the ability to soak up some serious damage thanks to MLD and Ring, and although crit is generally considered to be a 'bad' skill, it actually functions very well on NWD with his high attack, the fact that crit is so cheap to level up means NWD will be 1shotting half health remaining AA+s with ease.

The other thing about this formation that I like is the abundance of good winged sin wyrms means it is highly customizable. Other than the ones named above, you've got Dragon of Uranus who has a crap skill, but pretty good stats, Furnace Dragon with Preemptive Strike, Magma Dragon with Brute Down (arguably not that incredible a skill for an A; Brute Down is very good at AA level, but A-brutes are on average weak enough that the species skill is redundant), and finally; one non impulse wyrm; Lindwurm. Who is a covert winged wyrm with agility. This means it is very easy to swap to a winged wyrm formation for some extra attack power anytime you so choose, additionally, the guild combo loss is minimal due to the fact that Lindwurm is a fair measure stronger than Nidhogg, and the winged combo adds more attack than losing guild subtracts.

One final thing; there is no wyrm down skill.



Ultimately, if you look at it purely numerically, Sin Demons are essentially the 'best' sin A-form when it comes to stat totals (112bp), arguably wyrms are better, but take into account the comparative difficulty of maxing Demon Down (which by the way can and has been done), fully optimized sin wyrms with Demon Down(20) are rare enough to be considered nonexistent for averaging purposes.

Cookie-Cutter Demons are Kag, Balrog, Spite, Asura, Pit; 4x combo have Agi, ded, ipa, dea, cov down; which is a good skillset as it covers the offensive essentials of ipa, ded which fully capitalizes on the offensive stats of sin demons. The dea/cov down are nice additions, but not really all that important in the long run.

It IS a cookie-cutter formation, but it is THE cookie-cutter build for a reason.
It's damn good.



However, if you don't want to go that route, as mentioned above there certainly are other viable formations out there which can absolutely play competitively with the sin demons (brutes with imp down with same or greater agi as a demon team can rip em apart when attacking, and demon down does exactly what is in the name). The only thing about brutes is that they are a horrible defensive formation, unless you have significantly higher agility than your attacker, brutes require very little damage to get knocked out.





A fun fact is that once you get into AAs, the whole species/guild rigamarole ends. Hybrid formations are making a serious come-back in the AA arena since species down nuked species combo AA teams, as species down (20) is not really a rarity in terms of AAs, and being hit by guild down/species down (20) will reduce a guild/species team's combat effectiveness to that of a single carbuncle. The only species currently immune to this is wyrms; since there is no wyrm down, which means a hybrid team of AA+ wyrms is essentially impossible to optimally counter through guild and species down.

Aside from wyrms, AA forms are best built by looking at monster skill synergy rather than species/guild combo compatibility.

err, larry, i have only two points to make. point one:

which picture looks worse:

or

sorry to disappoint you, but imo pit is the most beutiful in the world when compared to meatbag zombie. *shudders*

point two: wyrm is not the only species w/o a down skill; there is no crawler down skill either.

Lol first time i looked at meatbag full pic. Looks like a pinata bursting at the seams with red gummy bears.

Fair enough about the crawler down. I should rephrase.


Wyrms are the only species that MATTER that cannot be countered with a down lol

Are there any AA crawlers other than hazeling? I think the 2nd one ever might be with this event's rewards. Not 100% though

There's already death blade epetamu and continent devourer. And crawlers can do ok if their agi is high enough. Weakest agi team but still viable, lol.

Doh forgot about continent. Thought db was brute for some reason

Eh i guess A crawlers are better than 0x no agi combo. But i reckon down wouldbe even more redundant than brute down for As

death blade is creation.

Kyan

Thanks kyan for clearing up dblade, multitasking watching the x files and posting from my phone usually ends in me not knowing what im talking about

The series of AA is confusing. Adan, db and Nyar. I thought they were brute, crawler and demon based upon picture and they turned out to be all creations. lol.

Kyan

larry378 wrote:x files and posting from my phone usually ends in me not knowing what im talking about

lol I told you just because the phone vibrates you don't need to respond immediately! think it throughhhhhhhhh and do it in the morning haha

although it would be pretty great to have Henry Weems do all of our summons. turning 20k ally points into 100 AAs

LOL this is great though folks... I really appreciate the discussion and the other possible groups that could be built. The brute add-ins are interesting since i was looking at that from the get-go (and getting my own Hilda+ made me happy) but never being able to find a good +agi made me switch out to something I could win with.

Spending a weekend browsing the AH and the trades here...I'm just getting turned down on going with the full-on Imp/Dem team. It's just been done to death and seems boring.

Granted, right NOW is probably not the right time to throw out a team and start over since it seems NO ONE has EP to spend. I am keeping an eye out on some of the suggestions you all have mentioned. I did like the Wyrm concept but the cost of MLD etc was SO high.

I may start another post completely about a full account scrap and start-over (I have some clan-mates who can hold/move cards for me) since I've learned a LOT since starting out.

You all rock.

[quote="JessicaMD"]

larry378 wrote:turning 20k ally points into 100 AAs

THIS... I have like 56k Ally points just sitting here. No idea what to do with them. BLEH.

Hehe Jess you forget the downside of the weems situation. Team building would be impossible because all you would summon are annas through glitch, and your entire clan/allies can then only get ghw/puri/bloodblobs for their summons