The Unknown Facts to DS Skills

So, I see a lot of confusion out there in regards to skills and what they do at level 20 (& even before 20). Therefore, this post will be made to clear a few things up. Ohhhh, where to begin...

Preemptive Strike: Lvl 1-19 it's first strike, first turn (blah); lvl 20 it's first strike, EVERY turn (great way to trump an enemy monster's speed; aka agility) (so an all Pre team could work).

Slumbering Breath (this one will take a bit of explaining): Lvl 1-19 it essentially puts the monster asleep until attacked or until it awakens one (or two?) turn(s) later. So that means a lvl 1-19 Slumb B needs to be the last monster to attack so that why you don't nullify it's skill cast!! Otherwise, monster 4 puts it to sleep then monster 5 attacks & it awakens. Lvl 20, is boss. It puts it to sleep for the entire time... No matter who attacks it, etc. Yeah... Think abt that for a moment... Agi Up + Slumb B= 5v4. Lots of variables in this but I'll get into that more at the bottom of my post.

Venomous Breath: Spell attack. It uses the monster's attack value (or some portion of it) while ignoring enemy defense. Does not miss either. Also has a chance of poisoning the enemy creature hit. Thus dealing a few hundred damage each team after poisoned. I would love to note the differences in levels from 1-20, but I can't. Sry guys. Obviously, my thought is: a higher level = more dmg. At level 20 is it 100% of atk value or %150, etc? Hard to tell since spell dmg ignores defense.
Hell's Blaze, Arctic Tempest, & Celestial Lightning are all spell dmg also, thus ignoring defense. From what I've READ, a lot of people that use these skills say they're only good on level 20. A lot of them also say that they're too weak to be viable till they're a high level. I can't vouch for this. Sry. So, a lot of that is rumor. But I believe it.

Agility Up: Increases team speed. Monster base speed values are as follows: A's: 28; A+'s: 30; AA's: 32; AA+'s: 34; AAA's: 36; AAA+'s: 38. So, an all A+ form w/ lvl 20 Agi Up will not have the first turn over an AAA+. Also, if all monsters have the same speed, then attacker gets priority over the player in defense. Lastly, there are a FEW that don't follow these guidelines. Like, 5 total, or so. & they're mostly crap cards so we don't care abt them enough for me to mention them by name.

Increase Dodge Rate: Okay, this one annoys me, like Crit does. A-Team has not yet specified what a creature's natural dodge rate is. So, I'll explain how it MODIFIES. If every creature naturally dodges 5% of attacks then a level 20 IDR skill raises that to a whole whomping 7.15%! Huge buff right? Hell no it isn't. Fact is, it does not just suddenly give your team a whole 43% chance to make the enemy miss!! It simply modifies monsters' hidden dodge value by +43%. Here's something VERY open to opinion: Does Dodge effect the entire team or just the individual monster casting it?
Here's some things I've observed: #1. Read the in-game skill tool tip then compare it to IPA, or DEA, or Cov Down, etc. It reads differently. Question is - why (factually, a lot of them read slightly different from each other)? #2. During the pre-battle skill cast phase, only IDR and Crit Rate Up are cast by multiple monsters. IPA, or DEA, etc are only cast once by the holder with the highest skill. #3. Watch the animation as it's cast. IPA, or PAP, etc are all cast in the center of the team... IDR & Crit Rate Up monsters have their animations cast over themselves, not centered and over the entire team. Best way to compare this is when they're all level 20, since the animation for a level 20 skill is bigger and prettier.
What I've observed from battles: With two creature wielding level 20 Critical Rate Up... I am not impressed. As a matter of a fact, I've found them to be a big let down. I still RARELY get a crit & when I do it's never on either of the 2 that have the skill. Would this suggest that Crit Rate Up is a team manipulating skill? Or, just random luck? & Dodge... I see myself miss more than the enemy. MY monster has the Dodge but it's ME that misses more often. WHAT?! But it's just what I've observe & may just be bad luck. Btw, I watch almost every fight that I do with my team. ;)

Critical Rate Up: Works just the same as dodge. Level 20 modifies the hidden crit value, of the casting creature, by +43%. DOES NOT GIVE YOU A 43% CRIT CHANCE. Skill tool tip in game is misleading. But if you re-read it a certain way, you'll see that I'm right. With no need of testing the skill yourself.

Impulse/Covert/Psycho Down: 20% DEA & DED @ lvl 20.
Species (demon, brute, etc) Down: 40% DEA & DED @ lvl 20.
So what happens when we stack Impulse Down + DED against an enemy Sin team? It's multiplicative not additive. Aka, it has a diminishing effect. (100-20%)-(25%)= 60% of original value.
Something else - does order of skill cast matter? Aka, IPA then PAP or PAP then IPA?? So, is it order of operations or is it all based on original values?? If you've ever noticed, the order of your form doesn't effect skill cast order, unless it's a spell cast during combat phase, of course. So, in all fairness I hope that skills modify original values, not already modified values.

Lastly, if I have my low bp winged AA+ demon team (with a B+ winged demon for the Agility Up skill bonus) all have lvl 20 Slumb B set to Battle Freely... Then I could effectively make it a 5v1 by the end of turn 1 battle 1, right? :D I do plan to test that. So, 4x AA+'s w/ Slumb B(20) & my B+ w/ Agi Up(20) (winged/demon/impulse combos in effect). Then those super high BP teams with awesome skills will mean nothing. If my 4 Slumb B spells attack all different creatures... Then it WILL be a 5v1. Lol. "Battle Freely" is risky though!
Additional info on skills is definitely welcome! :D
Hope this will help some people out.

Great post but there is one misconception that you do have about agi. I can honestly say that an A+ team with agi(20) will go before anything up to and including AAA. I'm not sure about AAA+, but then nobody has one of those, so no way to test.

Armitaage wrote:Great post but there is one misconception that you do have about agi. I can honestly say that an A+ team with agi(20) will go before anything up to and including AAA. I'm not sure about AAA+, but then nobody has one of those, so no way to test.

I have an ally with a AAA+ war arm god. viper1315 is the name.

He's talking about a FULL AAA+ team ie: 5 monsters.

And as hybrid team of 4 AA+ and one A+ with agility WILL go first. I've tested it with clan mates.

Jsog, as far as can be confirmed, there is no bonus to agi for having 5x of the same rank so full AAA+ vs just one AAA+ makes no difference. As far as we can confirm, full forms of any rank(assuming every monster is maxed) only give you 10% atk and def(rarity) and 5% atk(level). But no bonus to agi.

Wall of text, perhaps we could use paragraphs and line headings here to make it more readable?

A+ team with agi up 20 = 30*1.25= 37.5 in agility. AAA+ having 38 base agility, they will still attack first like OP said. That has nothing to do with bonus team or anything else.

About skill order it doesn't matter at all since its percentage and multiplicative:
1000 base attack
25% IPA
15% DEA

Let's try IPA before and DEA after:
1000*1.25=1250
1250*0.85=1062.5

Let's try the opposite:
1000*0.85=850
850*1.25=1062.5

I base this from battle experience and the fact that all combo stack that way (ex having level rarity and guild combo will multiply stats by 1.05*1.1*1.1=1.2705 and not just 1.25) so it would be surprising they use a totally different rule for skills.

The real problem is when PAP, PDP, PHP and integer bonuses from relica are added.

Armitaage wrote:Great post but there is one misconception that you do have about agi. I can honestly say that an A+ team with agi(20) will go before anything up to and including AAA. I'm not sure about AAA+, but then nobody has one of those, so no way to test.

Thanks & you're right. An A+ form w Agi(20) will have first turn until there's an AAA+ involved. Of course, that's excluding an enemy form that's 4x AA+s w/ an A+ or B+ w/ Agi Up(20). So even if you're the attacker the 4x AA+'s will have the first attack phase.

bbr wrote:Wall of text, perhaps we could use paragraphs and line headings here to make it more readable?

That entire post was from my phone. I'll be making it more aesthetic here within the next few days or so.

Hecatonchyr wrote:The real problem is when PAP, PDP, PHP and integer bonuses from relica are added.

Ya know, that's what I was suppose to be talking about! --Not the % modifiers! Thanks for calling me out on that. I'll be adjusting the OP accordingly.

Armitaage wrote:I'm not sure about AAA+, but then nobody has one of those, so no way to test.

I once fought someone with 4 AAA+s.

I didn't enjoy it.

So I contacted A-Team in regards to Dodge... The answer was a joke. I'm pretty sure I had someone reply to me that has never played the game nor has NOTHING to do w the developmemt side. This person has a vague understanding of the game & just fed me some BS answer that took no thought.

FYI, I updated the paragraphs abt Dodge & Crit to better reflect self in-game testing.

Don't forget the attacker bonus to agi. I've used an A+ team with agi(18) to attack an A+ team with agi(20). I've still gone first before the defending team.

Regarding combos and skills, order does matter because ATeam uses integer multiplication and division. That is 14320*1.15=16468. 16468*1.1=18114 not 18114.8 or 18115. So order does matter, though the difference is usually very small(about 1 point by the time that all combos are used. Ditto for skills)

Very good....GOOD POST +3

#1. Read the in-game skill tool tip then compare it to IPA, or DEA, or Cov Down, etc. It reads differently. Question is - why? #
IPA - increases your atk by X%
vs
IDR - Dodge rate increase x%
vs
AGI - you monsters will speed up X%

BOTH IPA and IDR sounds like single monster to me, but we know that IPA is a team skill.

2. During the pre-battle, skill cast phase only IDR and Crit Rate Up are cast by multiple monsters. IPA, or DEA, etc are only cast once by the holder with the highest skill. Reason

That is because Crit and IDR will STACK.
It is already said that some skills will stack and some skills DOESN'T.


#3: Watch the animation as it's cast. IPA, or PAP, etc are all cast in the center of the team...

What about other skills? Does all the party skills only cast on the center? You sure that's the only way to determine whether it is single or party buff?


Before you share something, please do consider that many of your opinions could be just your assumptions.

Also, you example is biased against IDR. What if the natural dodge is 50%, from 50%, changing it to 71.5% is IMBA.

From my personal experiences, both IDR and Crit are team skills. Rationale is as simple as my caster casts it, but I see the crits being more frequent on my other monsters and not the caster. Due to the fact that we don't have natural figures, we can't tell how effective these skills really are, but i was saved by my IDR and crit several times (I thought I will lose cause I was down early in the battle, but when I see the entire, I turned the tide).


As for slumbering and venomous, they are good skills and your points are valid. Though most ppl prefer DED/DEA/IPA/IPD because if you apply DED+IPA, high chance to 1hit most enemy monsters. DEA+IDP somethings cause them to hit you for like 100 dmg only.

Slumbering may not be permanent, but the battles are always too short to see the full effect of the skill. If you attack is too low, and you're fighting those DEA+IPD buff strong AA+ teams, you may see that eventually after hitting them 100+ each time, the monsters will wake up and wipe you immediately. Try and you will know what i mean.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my first post, but venomous breath is more than just a spell damage skill. Venomous breath is also the only DoT(damage over time) skill in the game. The higher the skill level, the higher the chance that it will poison the enemy, which hits the enemy for a few hundred points of damage at the end of the turn. You won't see this extra effect if you use the skill at the beginning of the fight as only the monster hit with the skill gets poisoned; if it dies, the poison effect dies with it.

speaking of v-breath

this guy had it on his AAA+, and it did less dmg than the AAA's normal atk lol

Dyles wrote:That is because Crit and IDR will STACK.

With all sincerity, I would LOVE to know where you got this info from!

Dyles wrote:Before you share something, please do consider that many of your opinions could be just your assumptions.

I agree. & as such I've changed my word-play in my Dodge paragraph to better reflect so.

Dyles wrote:Also, you example is biased against IDR. What if the natural dodge is 50%, from 50%, changing it to 71.5% is IMBA.

Realistically, it's only about 5-10%. Probably varies depending on the monster. The amount of attacks that I've watch & the amount of times an attack misses, supports this.
Fact of the matter is, Dodge and Crit are sketchy. No one has any real proof so it's all speculation. If Dodge works for YOU, go for it! I just have bad luck with it.

Dyles wrote:Slumbering may not be permanent, but the battles are always too short to see the full effect of the skill. If you attack is too low, and you're fighting those DEA+IPD buff strong AA+ teams, you may see that eventually after hitting them 100+ each time, the monsters will wake up and wipe you immediately. Try and you will know what i mean.

I know for a FACT level 20 Slumbering is permanent. I've watched it happen endlessly on my tablet (primary acct is on a phone). It's a AA+ Creation team w/ a Rot Cast skilled w/ Slumb B(20). It's a permanent sleep even if the enemy's attacked and is also an AA+

Armitaage wrote:Venomous breath is also the only DoT(damage over time) skill in the game.

You're right! & I totally forgot abt that as well! I updated my OP to reflect. Nice catch!

They say it stacks because a team with more than one IDR or crit, regardless of level, will also trigger (if you have two monsters with crit(20), both will happen). But since the skill animation is on the monster, while skills we know for sure affect the team are always centered regardless of the monster position that owns the skill, it probably affects only the monster.

This elegantly solves the "stacking" problem, since its not stacking, because only the monster that triggers the skill is affected (if monster A does crit(20), it will increase only monster A crit. Logically, since monster B is not affected by monster A's crit, monster B can also do crit(20) to increase his crit).

To me, this makes way more sence than having IDR and crit for the entire team. Venom breath, slumb breath etc, all skills that also "stacks", only affect one monster.

About crit and dodge rate, I don't think its a fixed percentage. Like agility is a fixed integer with a formula attached to calculate attack order, crit and dodge rate probably follow the same pattern (i.e they are integers, not percentages). We recently discovered through Relica a variable nobody heard of, but which was probably here since the beginning: accuracy. I think monster's chance to hit is calculated from a formula that involves both dodge and accuracy. Which one ? How much is the random variable compared to accuracy and dodge ? No idea.

https://imgur.com/TdNQXHL
Evidence that IDR casted twice and buffed twice by 2 monsters.
If you had an IDP/IDA/DED/DEA, it will not cast twice.
Also evidence that it's a team buff "Your monsters' dodge chance has been increased by X"

I'm not saying it's superb, but it's useful in its own way. The issue is that because it stacks, A-Team can't add a solid 43%.. imagine 5x43% = 215% chance to dodge? In this game, you don't have to win. As long as you don't get killed, you win after 5 rounds as long as you manage to kill something. If it stacks and gives such a buff, it'll be overpowered. I'm saying it works because I'm seeing more crit and dodge ever since I had them. Last time I rarely observe crit or dodge.

As for your slumbering breath, did you encounter a team whereby you hit that "Sleeping monster" for few turns and it's still sleeping? How many times did you see the enemy got hit and not wake? My point is that in this game, most enemys get killed in 1-2 hits. At 1-19, it may be one hit and it wakes, but at 20, it could be 5 hits, could be 10 hits. Most teams will have monsters that gets killed in 1-2 hits, causing it to appear as if the skill is perm. Only if you've met a team with high defense, and after hitting the "sleeping mob" for like 3-4 turns and every mob is hitting it, then you can say that it's perm. and for what I've seen to date, no data presents information that it is a FACT. (If you manage to prove it, take a screenshot of the battle log and share with us).

Based on personal experience, the idea that Crit and Dodge are team skills makes a lot of sense.

When I first leveled crit(20), I watched every single battle. My Poseidon of Wrath did not crit for a week. I emailed Ateam thinking that perhaps the skill was broken? However, I sure did notice a lot more crits than normal among my other monsters.

So, assuming base chance to crit is 5%, 5% * (1.48) = 7.4% crit. Throw another crit(20) on there and you get 7.4% * (1.48) = 10.952% crit. Throw on a third - 10.952 * (1.48) = ~16.21% crit. At this point, you should start to see your team critting pretty regularly.

1x crit(20) = 7.40%
2x crit(20) = 10.95%
3x crit(20) = 16.21%
4x crit(20) = 23.99%
5x crit(20) = 35.50%

These are assuming a base chance of 5%, and that it's multiplicative. Which would make sense, since each monster individually casts it's Crit skill.

This also makes each crit(20) more valuable than the last. Especially since the 5th would also give you a 5% ATK bonus for having the same skills.

I'm tempted to build a team to test this for real... if dodge works this way as well... I'd love to have a 35.5% dodge team with some Dodge relica! Though leaving everything to chance with a squishy team and having no skills to kill anything would be a problem! Haha.