EX Monsters

So before I give an update on my battle results so far, let me address a couple things that have been mentioned here. I agree that in the long run it is definitely advantageous for sin players to use a sin Ex form. At this point in time, avoiding Guild Down+ balances it out. I'm sure Ateam will eventually make other Guild Down+ skills on other Exs to get rid of this advantage, but I'll worry about that later. Even now though, I'd still probly recommend sin players to use a sin form for best results. I just play mainly for fun and don't mind running a sub-optimal form that I like.  (I simply won't use monsters whose art I don't like for example, and I just love the art for the Psycho Exs so that was a big factor haha)

So anyways, on to my battle results:

vs. AAA+ teams: These are admittedly pretty tough to win. I usually lose, though I did win one fair and square without any lucky misses by my opponent or timely criticals by me. Now... my IPD+ is my only skill not yet maxed, it's at (12), so there's another 9% for it to go up, and if you used a form matching your guild you'd have another 10.5% on defense. Would this extra ~20% make enough of a difference to swing the results in the Ex team's favor? I honestly don't know and wouldn't really be surprised either way. If I had to guess, I'd guess that it wouldn't be enough to help based on the fact that I usually lose like 75-80% health from each AAA+ attack. That number would have to fall below 50% to make a real difference (that way I'd be left with 4 monsters after their initial attack) and I doubt it would help that much, but who knows? Maybe it would. Maybe running Health Up instead of IPD would help too.

Still though, I did manage to win one match against a good AAA+ m(20) form (user: spicewon, ranked 80th overall) based purely on my strategy. So there's that I guess. 

vs. Ex teams: I haven't lost a single match against another Ex form. It may be too soon to tell for sure with these though. I didn't fight anyone whose skills were as far up as mine, but I guess I honestly don't think that would've made a difference. It seems as though whoever goes first in an Ex vs. Ex match has a HUGE advantage. However, when I woke up this morning I noticed I won on defense against someone else using a full Psycho Ex form. No clue what their monster's levels, skills, skill levels are though. That'd be pretty sweet though if this form could consistently win on defense against other Ex forms.

vs. AAA+/AA+ teams: These were also all wins for me, and none were even particularly close. My battle strategy worked exactly as it's supposed to against these forms. And I wasn't facing chump forms with 4 lame AA+ and one underleveled AAA+, these were legit forms. I fought 3 different demon forms that were running 4 AAA+ demons and the new agility up AA+ monsters. I also fought a form that included two of the Divinity monsters. I also fought plenty of 350-380 bp mixed forms, and like the rest these were all easy wins.

vs. AA+ teams: Nothing even came close here, even the ones running the Agility Up demons. AA+ are no match for Ex.

vs. AAA (not AAA+) monsters: Based on the fights I've had, it seems safe to say that Ex monsters can handle non-plussed AAA monsters. I don't really know if the AAA monsters I fought were max leveled or not, but I definitely didn't have any trouble with any AAA monsters I've seen so far.

So in conclusion, if you're running a defensive EX form and hoping to go toe-to-toe with the AAA+ forms, I don't think they're a reliable way to do that. Maybe if you matched your form to your guild, ran Health Up instead of IPD, and maxed all your skills you could win maybe 40-50% of your matches against AAA+ forms, but I can't even say that for sure. But I can say this though: focusing on an EX party's attack instead of defense will not win against AAA+ forms either. They'll all go before you and wipe you out before you can use your awesome Attack numbers.

If you're cool with not being able to handle AAA+ forms very well, the defensive EX form does outstanding against literally everything else.

My apologies, I was busy yesterday and in a rush. Thus, I didn't phrased myself well.

Like lenon said, I was refering to "Increase" vs "Decrease" instead of "attack" vs "defense".

@ryesteve
You are right regarding wyrm down, I'm not sure why I kind of had that wrong impression. However, there are reasons why it is good to have prog being same guild as formation. For some events, the guild bonus provides additional stats boost that can determine how well you perform.

@Phantasma
Great sharing of battle results. I think it is just that a 250bp form can hardly win a 500bp AAA+ form. Regarding the choice of Attack/Defensive formations, will be great if a Sin EX attack based formlation player gives a review.
In theory, as long as the Sin Ex formation also dies in 2 hits (maybe instead of taking 70% dmg, he takes 90%), then it will fare as well (or maybe even better) vs AAA+.
The thing is, to date, I've yet to seen dmg mechanics on how dmg is being calculated.

I do agree though that the psycho or convert Ex are much nicer to look at. However, the good thing about Sin Ex is their much higher overall stat. (Due mostly to the fact that winged +15% atk further boost the difference. If winged for convert/psycho does +15%hp or +15%defense instead, it will be real awesome.

Imo, for Ex to be able to reliably defeat AAA+, they need dea(or dea+), appropriate guild down+, ded+, ipa+, and health up+, as well as well chosen relica(ideally one that further takes away enemy attack, has some winged monster enemy debuff, and raises agi by at least 10%). The bottom line is, to stand a chance against AAA+, you really want to reduce their attack to non-existence.

Dyles wrote:However, there are reasons why it is good to have prog being same guild as formation. For some events, the guild bonus provides additional stats boost that can determine how well you perform.

The stat bonus you get from a prog relates to matching YOUR guild, not the guild of your formation.

True steve, but I think he's getting at events like the current mobius type event, where a guild matching prog is much more effective when it also matches your form's guild, not just yours.

In an event like this, you should be running 5 A+ progs.

ryesteve wrote:

Dyles wrote:However, there are reasons why it is good to have prog being same guild as formation. For some events, the guild bonus provides additional stats boost that can determine how well you perform.

The stat bonus you get from a prog relates to matching YOUR guild, not the guild of your formation.

Maybe I shall make this clearer.

1) STATS boost I'm refering to = Atk/Def which is affected by the +10% atk/def COMBO bonus.
2) If you get a prog matching your guild, but not your formation, despite getting the appropriate EVENT bonus, you still suffer from STATS bonus.

Hope you'll understand my terminology.

ryesteve wrote:In an event like this, you should be running 5 A+ progs.

I'm sure you can think of something better than this.

Yeah, 5 AA+s would be better, but hardly cost effective. Maybe you could clarify that comment?

Means there're more cost effective strategy?

Depends what you're doing in this event. Given that the reg progs were going for 2-4 ep each, if you're trying to rank, no, there's not a more cost-effective strategy.

You may be right, but everyone would have their own ways and methods

Anyway, let's not go off-topic.

True, but when it comes to math, only one of them is correct.

Back to the topic at hand...

Question.

So I missed the event that will practically giving out these EX stone, but is there another way of getting the stones? I've been battling, but only been getting the yellow ones.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Divinity raids, though that's an expensive path.

just wait for next event so far both events have offered ex stones as rewards.

I managed to summon a Matilda Ex pdq, so here's how the final stats look: prior to combos and guild bonus being applied, Matilda form has had 1680 atk and 1680 def removed and 3360 health added. After combos and bonuses have been applied, the form has 195544 atk, 147092 def, and 123771 health, a delta of -3591 atk, -2972 def, and +5847 health, compared to the Elith form. Skillwise, it's identical to the Elith form, except that it has Covert down instead of Psycho down. Don't know about the eventual stats of the new Covert and Psycho forms, but I do know that they get Psycho and Impulse down, respectively, so you really have no excuse for running another guild's form, except for aesthetics. Sorry phantasma, your Psycho form is no longer safe from Psycho down, lol.

Yeah I figured they'd do that eventually, I just hoped it wouldn't be so soon. Oh well, I still like the art the best out of all six Ex monsters so I'm happy! haha 

Oh, I was wrong about the attack stat of the new sin undead Ex form, seems they're not winged even though they clearly have wings at the last stage. Also, the grand beast isn't winged either, but the grand crawler is.

Do I have to level up the skill for an stage 4 EX monster? In other words, if I have an EX with IPA +(1) or IPD + (1), do I have to sacrifice monsters with a IPA skill to it? Or are the IPA +(1) or IPD +(1) skills already maxed out?

The stage 4 EX monsters can go to skill level 20.  Unfortunately there are no skills available to sacrifice to them to increase the skill.  The only way to do so is to use Soul of Skills (+) to increase skill level by 1 (or 2 using + version).

Good luck!

Xcalibre wrote:The stage 4 EX monsters can go to skill level 20.  Unfortunately there are no skills available to sacrifice to them to increase the skill.  The only way to do so is to use Soul of Skills (+) to increase skill level by 1 (or 2 using + version).

Good luck!

You COULD sac level 4s into level 4s, i believe...

At the sell rate of SOS (+) these days, might actually be cheaper

Ologolos wrote:

Xcalibre wrote:The stage 4 EX monsters can go to skill level 20.  Unfortunately there are no skills available to sacrifice to them to increase the skill.  The only way to do so is to use Soul of Skills (+) to increase skill level by 1 (or 2 using + version).

Good luck!

You COULD sac level 4s into level 4s, i believe...

At the sell rate of SOS (+) these days, might actually be cheaper

Actually, that would be more expensive, as the sheer number of SoE+ needed to reach stage 4 AND the cost of getting the not so tradable stones would far exceed the cost of a SoS/+.

Case in point: to reach stage 4, you have to get through 220 total levels. Assuming that you can get 10 levels for every 2 SoE+, that's 44 SoE+ just to get one monster to stage 4, level 1. Times 4, we have 176 SoE+. That's assuming that you don't fail once in getting from skill 1 to skill 4. At 5:4 for SoE+, that's 141 ep.

1 - He was being sarcastic

2 - You don't need to use SOEs to level.

Yea, as ryesteve says, you can do first mission that cost 1 energy to get noob monsters to sac, indeed they give less power but it's cheaper...