Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-108.204.141.62-20131215034355/@comment-64.41.12.21-20131215092138

I didn't find skills important until I was a high level, but for what it's worth, here is how I rank skills from best to worst:

Increase all daemons' attack and defense

Increase all daemons' attack

Increase all daemons' defense

Increase phantom/anima/divina attack and defense

Increase phantom/anima/divina attack

Increase phantom/anima/divina defense

Increase own attack and defense

Increase own attack

Increase own defense

Increase/decrease silver acquisition

After that, you rank by what % increase/decrease it is. Also, increasing both attack and defense is only useful if you want to use the daemon for both. Increasing the daemon's own attack/defense only is not that useful unless it already has good base stats. (If its base stats +13% or whatever are still lower than your other good daemons, the skill is useless.)

Whether phantom, anima, or divina skills are the best depends on your overall team (if your daemons with the best base stats are all divina, you probably want divina increasers, anima attack decreasers, and phantom defense decreasers). Overall, attack is more important than defense, IMO, because you use it in every type of situation including getting event daemons from towers (where defense is not important). Daemons that increase/decrease every type, not just one of phantom/divina/anima are great; I keep those even if they have bad base stats. It's useful to have divina with skills that are good against phantom and divina with skill that are good against anima because each is useful for a different situation. (And the same thing is true of phantom and anima, of course.)

For defending against other players, I think a balanced team is the best because you don't know who's going to attack or when. The best defense is having a daemon as your lead that scares players off (something that hints you might be a cash player with lots of strong daemons is ideal). For attacking, a team with a specific strength usually works best for me, but selecting an easy target is the most important, especially for seal stones. For attacking event daemons, it depends on the daemon. If it has an anima decreaser skill, you don't want a lot of anima in your team unless those daemons have way, way better base stats than your others.

At lower levels, I focused on the story and didn't worry so much about fighting other players. I kept getting daemons with stronger and stronger base stats, and skills couldn't really make up the difference. I chose what to keep by base stats. If it wasn't in my usual attack/defense/conquest team, I fused it. (Remember, this includes conquest team when you're not at full spirit, so it's the strongest daemon at each spirit cost.) The one exception is increase/decrease all skills, which I keep even if the daemon has crappy base stats. At higher levels, I also keep any daemon with either attack or defense at ~9k or above unless I have a lot of daemons with a similar skill profile and better stats. I fuse most increase self-only daemons unless their base stats are very good because, even with the skill, they usually still have lower stats than my others that have increase divina/anima/phantom skills. I have fewer good anima, so I keep any okay ones I get for now. I have tons of good phantom, so I fuse more of those.

Basically, except for the very, very best daemons, the only way to tell what's "good" is by figuring out 1. what you want to use it for and 2. what other daemons you'll be using it with.