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Once you have completed the very first act of Monark, you're free to select your next target. If you head Shin Mikado Academy's Club Block, you'll be treated to a cutscene where Shinya saves you from Akane, one of the Pactbearers you're tasked with taking down.

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Shinya will quickly join your party and prove himself a worthy ally in battle. He's one of the most offensively-geared companions in the game and makes for a fantastic frontline combatant. Here's how he works in battle, and how to use his skill set.

How To Use Shinya

Shinya Awakening

Being a simple human and not a Pactbearer means that Shinya can only use Skills, no Authorities. This means that using his to his fullest extent will leave him with lower HP than your Authority-using pals - unless you Resonate with him and give him some MAD-inducting abilities to use.

On the flip side, this does mean that Shinya will have an empty MAD gauge most of the time, so it's quite viable to defer turns to him multiple times and take advantage of his very high ATK stat.

  • Shinya's physical skills largely fall under two distinct categories: status ailments and stat debuffs and pure damage. As far as status ailments go, Shinya has access to Poison, Sleep, Disable, Confuse, Bleed, and even Seal - this makes him a highly adaptable unit to have in your party.
    • This does not make status infliction Shinya's main talent, though. While he does have skills that only inflict status ailments, you're far better off using his physical damage skills instead. They're far more likely to be useful in the long run, as status infliction skills tend to be on the inaccurate side.
  • With limited access to buffing skills, Shinya can even prove useful when he finds himself too far away to hit an enemy. He can buff allies or improve his critical chance by a whopping three stages in exchange for a small amount of HP - this will turn him into a wrecking ball.

Risk and reward are Shinya's watchwords. All of his Skills cost HP, with the best severely reducing his survivability. This means that he works best with a healer backing him up, which means having the Pride Fiend around for acts where having Shinya and Nozomi together at the same time isn't an option. This is because Shinya spends most of his time in the middle of the fray and can end up feeling a bit fragile as a result.

Notable Skills

Monark Shinya Protagonist

As previously mentioned, Shinya is one of the two companions you'll get that are not Pactbearers. This means he cannot use Authorities without Resonating with a unit that can. Unlike Nozomi, he has a higher AGI, which should help him avoid some enemy attacks.

As far as Shinya's physical attacks go, most of his kit revolves around them.

  • Full-Force Slash is a useful skill, but not as important to Shinya as to the Pride Fiend, who uses it far more often.
  • Instead, Sharp Incision and Knockout Blow are better general-use attacks. They inflict Bleed and Disable, respectively, and should be used when Shinya's up against any particularly scary foes, whether they be very tanky (use Bleed) or downright threatening (use Disable).
    • When Awakened, Shinya's special ability is Lightning Flash, just a souped-up version of Knockout Blow with a higher chance of inflicting Disable. It's definitely a skill to consider grabbing early.
  • Jolting Blow is on the same wavelength as the previous two skills, but Confuse isn't as helpful a status effect as it isn't as debilitating as Disable.
  • Weapon Breaker and Armor Breaker are tricky skills to gauge. If they manage to inflict their stat debuffs, they'll help out immensely in the long run. The problem is that they have relatively low potencies when compared to Shinya's other skills. Armor Breaker is definitely the most useful of the two - an enemy with lower defense will fall quicker, after all.
  • Whirlwind Slice and Schism Slash are Shinya's main area of effect attacks. The former is a simple circle-shaped attack, while the latter is a wedge. Schism Slash is usually the more useful of the two since it's more likely to get multiple back attacks when targeting groups, so consider upgrading that skill more than Whirlwind Slice.
  • Desperate Strike is a great finisher attack due to its very high power. It will reduce Shinya's defense, so either back him up with healing or use it to finish foes off, so you don't encounter too many counterattacks.
  • Choreomania is one of Shinya's final skills, and it doesn't have the features to back it up. It's an incredibly strong attack, for sure, but there's a possibility it might hit an ally or Shinya himself. This makes it unreliable at best and too risky at worst.

When not attacking furiously, Shinya has some buffs to consider.

  • Clear Mind, Full Heart is brilliant for increasing Shinya's critical chance. It's a cheap skill and can make a decent difference considering Shinya's main job is to inflict lots of damage.
  • Speed Hormone and Attack Hormone are very late acquisitions for Shinya, but they're both incredibly useful in their own ways. Speed Hormone increases an ally's MOV stat and is especially useful for characters like the Sloth and Lust Fiends, who often have trouble keeping up with the pack.
  • Despite the range of his spear, Shinya will be taking lots of attacks on the frontline. Counterstance will make his counterattacks even stronger and is worth setting up when you foresee many incoming strikes.

Shinya also has skills dedicated to debuffing and status infliction with no damage attached. These aren't really worth your time, despite their very situational usefulness.

Where To Spend Your Spirit

Shinya Awakening Attack

Shinya's skill tree is separated into three basic 'tiers,' with his better skills located towards the top. As a result, there are some things you should consider when planning how to build him - assuming you don't just auto-allocate your Spirit.

  • From Accelerating Slash, grab skills to the right until you reach Sharp Incision and Knockout Blow.
  • Now grab the skills to the left - including Clear Mind, Full Heart when you can - until you reach Jolting Blow.
  • Pick one of the three status skills you have and make it your main single-target damage tool. Upgrade this before the others, so you're ahead of the damage curve.
  • On the second tier of Shinya's tree, you'll want to move up the left side - grabbing Lightning Flash when you can - and work your way up to Desperate Strike and Weapon Breaker. The right side of the tree is less useful.
  • On the final tier, you'll want to grab the two Hormone skills and head for Ailment Proficiency, a passive skill that improves your ailment-infliction rate.
    • Unfortunately, this requires two levels in the three less-useful Refined status skills, but they should be chump change at this point.
  • Suppose you find yourself using Lightning Flash a lot, nab Concentration and Refined Ego at this point. Otherwise, start mopping up the lower skills you're missing and upgrading your most-used attacks.

As for skills that you should avoid:

  • Leave Choreomania for last. You really do not need it.
  • Imagigear Snare and Imagigear Flashbang look useful on paper, but they won't provide that much use in practice.

NEXT: Monark: Complete Guide