Defense is by far better. At low stats it might not seem that clear but the way defense works is your defense stat is subtracted from their attack after a damage multiplier is applied. The easiest way to see this is use a -70% team with a very high defense. Everyone will start only doing one damage to you. If you can boost your maximum number of hits from 15 to 50, that extra bit of attack you are getting really is not going to matter as you will do more damage in the long run just because you are able to survive forever.

EDIT: Also, the ship battles are the easy part of the missions, the deck battles are where the real damage to your units occurs, and as you lose units, your buff later may drop significantly. I
have 378,184 whale ship attack without buffs or helper. Thus for every unit I lose, that is a lose of 3.8k attack later on. And that is a lot of attack if you are losing an entire deck squad (5 units = 19k attack, much higher that what a few rings if going to give you)

Originally Posted by JellyWoW

Defense is by far better. At low stats it might not seem that clear but the way defense works is your defense stat is subtracted from their attack after a damage multiplier is applied. The easiest way to see this is use a -70% team with a very high defense. Everyone will start only doing one damage to you. If you can boost your maximum number of hits from 15 to 50, that extra bit of attack you are getting really is not going to matter as you will do more damage in the long run just because you are able to survive forever.

EDIT: Also, the ship battles are the easy part of the missions, the deck battles are where the real damage to your units occurs, and as you lose units, your buff later may drop significantly. I
have 378,184 whale ship attack without buffs or helper. Thus for every unit I lose, that is a lose of 3.8k attack later on. And that is a lot of attack if you are losing an entire deck squad (5 units = 19k attack, much higher that what a few rings if going to give you)

This train of thought is why I use a 70% squad (well, a 70/70/55 squad to be exact) in the lead spot of all of my whales along with having Lantana as a part of each whale for some healing nodes. The squad doesn't steamroll deck fights unless the RNG is kind but none of the Knights are in serious danger of getting KOed either and one healing node is usually enough to get all five Knights to near full health.

has anyone got a +10 earring leveled up? need stats for it (not getting my hopes up)

+10 Ring lvl 40 has +1670 atk (more PITA than its worth for Warrior Ring upgrades that have 1507 ATK)
+10 Bracelet lvl 30 has DEF 1078 (this is actually a useful upgrade)
+10 Necklace lvl 30 has DEF 834 (not really useful for my team)
+10 earring lvl 40 ??????? EDIT: Finally got one of these is ATK 373 (useless)

Has anyone got EX equip???

Has anyone pulled EX equipment yet?
interested in the stats.

You can find the stats online. Use the Japanese Wiki.