Quote Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
How in the hell do I use Shingen properly? I just unlocked her - so no spear yet (been told that's the go-to weapon).
Basically what ChronosNotashi said - Shingen is the fastest soul currently available, so if your soul was previously the bottleneck for FB, she's the one you want. You will want her spear if you want to use PF reliably without outside help or have a super-speed team she needs to keep up with.

Quote Originally Posted by ChronosNotashi View Post
As long as you've got 3 tiaras of any grade (preferably SSR) to equip on a hime with 5 acc slots (for the combo rate boost), you're good to go, and you can worry about getting better accessories later.
Given that the poster just started doing AQ4, he is unlikely to be farming rags consistently to unlock acc slots yet (unless he has strong friends, in which case, good for him!) Accessories are well worth farming even if you don't have slots unlocked though. Fully upgraded accessories give non-trivial boosts to your himes.

As far as I've read, Ancient accessories aren't a HUGE upgrade over normal SSR accessories, so don't worry about not having them right now
Going from SSR to Ancient is not as big a jump as SR to SSR, but it is still a noticeable jump - it's not just the raw stats that improve, new and stronger effects appear on ancient. Obviously there's still a lot of RNG and it's possible to get regular SSR that are better than ancient ones, but if you want to hit the next level, you will want to start farming AQ5 eventually. Pace yourself though, AQ5 is the first solo content that you cannot turtle through (even GO you can sort of turtle with the right setup; well maybe except Jack...) If you just started clearing AQ4, expect to take some time before you can beat AQ5.

something useless, like Mode Gauge x3
I actually have a MGR x3 tiara, lol. Kept it because it's a tiara... Also, MGR is gone from ancients, but they put in a new useless skill in its place - burst gauge up - useless 'cos its effect is so small that it gets rounded off. >.>

Quote Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
So if I understand correctly then, Shingen is more or less an endgame or burst time soul. Outside of burst time, I should use a different soul, assuming that I cannot guarantee a quick - in your statement, ~6 turns - burst cycle. Would that be an accurate conclusion?
If your team is slow, consider using Hercules instead. With her axe, she's still pretty fast, she'll solve most of your def down problems and she's much more durable than Shingen.

Btw, you can also Ex PF on Hercules or Arthur if you don't want to run Shingen but still want those big burst numbers.

With that in mind, assuming I ever get to the point where I can actually make use of Shingen, what extra would I be using, outside of the unlock you mentioned? I assume sniper shot, unless I could guarantee debuffs from another source, which I can't - currently running D'Artagnan.
Depends on your team and situation. Shingen or not, the Ex slot is meant to fill whatever gaps your team has. If your team lack B frame debuffs, sure Ex SS, but if the boss is debuff resistant, Ex something else.

Quote Originally Posted by toastedsnow View Post
Anyway, was also curious, is Shingen's bow useful at any point? Or is it just all spear, all the way
Problem with the bow is that PF alone will hit the burst multiplier cap, so if you have exceed weapons, those are wasted (you will still need exceed weapons to raise the burst dmg cap though, PF doesn't raise the dmg cap.) Also, if you can't FB, PF is not that strong, and it's harder to guarantee that Shingen can FB with the team after PF if you don't use the spear. The bow also boosts hp instead of elemental atk.

There probably is some limited use case like maybe if you're trying to MVP a raid event boss during BT and can get Shingen back to 100 BG after PF from hime abilities, and you have no exceed weapons, but unless you're drowning in regalia, I would skip the bow.