[ Guide ] Choosing your team and formation in Tensura: King of Monsters

With each character having their own strengths and weaknesses, picking a team is an ever-present struggle in Tensura: King of Monsters. Compared to other gacha RPGs, the 9×9 square grid adds an additional layer of depth to team formation.

Ultimately, throughout your plethora of Tensura: King of Monsters, it is inevitable that you will try out different characters in your team. This guide will help you get a better understanding of how to choose your team members.

Note that this guide takes into account version 1.2.3.011 of the game. Future patches might change how some of the characters work. However, the general philosophy for choosing your party and formation should remain largely the same.

Let’s dive into this guide!

Team Members’ Roles and Responsibilities

While the game does assign roles to characters, many of them are not entirely accurate (e.g. Hakuro [Kijin] is described as Control). Rather than having to salvage and decipher the game’s lacklustre translation, this guide will classify characters into the following roles:

DMG dealer: Characters who deal a lot of DMG, be it through auto attacks or ultimate skills
Tank: Characters whose job is to soak up DMG so that your other allies can stay alive
Crowd Control: Characters who have a reliable method of making enemies waste turns
Synergy: Characters who can trigger synergy or have powerful synergy skill effects
Support: Characters who do not have a direct impact on a fight, but can make allies perform better

Note that it is possible for a character to have more than one role. For example, Shion [Kijin] is a decent DMG dealer, synergy and crowd control character. She may not be the best character in all 3 roles, but her flexibility usually makes her a solid choice when you’re looking for the last character to fill up your last party slot.

That said, let us look into each role in greater detail.

DMG Dealer

DMG dealers are more or less mandatory for your team. They kill enemy units before they kill you. Generally, DMG dealers can either be those who rely on auto attacks (AA DMG dealers) or ultimate skills (US DMG dealers).

Characters whose kit include a 180% DMG (minimum) auto attack and aptitudes that complement said auto attack can be considered as AA DMG dealers. Likewise, those who have a powerful ultimate skill, capable of hitting upwards of a minimum of 240% DMG are usable as US DMG dealers. Rimuru can hit these numbers, but since he cannot equip Gear, he is not viable as a DMG dealer.

AA DMG dealers deal consistent DMG in every round and have a high impact throughout the fight. US DMG only come online whenever their ultimate is off cooldown and the player has enough mana to cast it. As a result, US DMG dealers are more of a burst damage kind of dealer.

Regardless of whether you decide to go with auto attacks or ultimate skills, beginners should build their team around the DMG dealer(s). In most fights, dealing damage is the highest priority, so having allies who complement the DMG dealers well make better teams. For example, having Gabiru and Shion [Reindeer Emissary] in your party works really well as the former’s repeated auto attacks can easily trigger Candy Cane Assistance.

Viable AA DMG dealers include:

• Shizu
• Gabiru
• Hakuro [Kijin]
• Shion [Reindeer Emissary]
• Shion [Kijin]
• Shuna [Princess of Presents]
• Souei [Ogre]
• Ryota Sekiguchi
• Kenya Misaki

Viable US DMG dealers include:

• Milim
• Benimaru [Ogre]
• Benimaru [Kijin]
• Ifrit
• Gobta
• Yuuki Kagurazaka
• Gail Gibson
• Phobio

Tank

One of the most respected roles in RPG history, tanks are useful because they keep your team alive. However, their usefulness drops immensely if the rest of your team can survive without difficulty. Hence, if your key teammates such as DMG dealers can stay alive just fine, tanks are not necessary.

However, as you progress through the game, you will definitely meet enemies who can easily kill your allies in 1 or 2 hits. That is where tanks come in.

The skills that make a character viable as a tank include cloning, invulnerability and resurrection. Tanks have the greatest impact when positioned at the front lines, serving as meat shields for your allies.

Viable tanks include:

• Shion [Ogre]
• Souei [Ogre]
• Souei [Kijin]
• Ifrit
• Ranga
• Rimuru

While Rimuru does not really have great skills for tanking, his sheer stats also make him a viable tank.

Special mention goes to Trya, who can turn anyone into a tank for a single round.

Crowd Control

There are times when even your tanks cannot protect your backliners. Enemy ultimate skills can sometimes target those at the back. If you cannot kill these enemies fast enough, the other solution lies in crowd control characters.

These units must have a reliable method of preventing enemies from taking actions. This can be a stun, freeze, disarm or silence. Note that while stun and freeze are mechanically identical (stop enemy from attacking/using ultimate skills), disarm only prevents auto attacks. Silence prevents casting of ultimate skills, but the silenced target can skill auto attack.

Viable crowd control characters include:

• Eren
• Ranga
• Shion [Reindeer Emissary]
• Shion [Kijin]
• Souka
• Trya
• Chloe Aubert

Adventurer – Warrior can silence an entire column while Adventurer – Mage can stun, but using them is not advised.

Synergy

Synergy characters are special in a sense that they only shine when coupled with other compatible synergy characters. Without characters capable of following up upon synergy activation, their synergy is useless.

That said, while all characters in the game have a synergy skill, this guide only considers those who can trigger synergy easily or those with powerful synergy effects/DMG as synergy characters. These characters form the backbone of a synergy team. Without them, a synergy team is no better than any other team.

Those who can reliably trigger synergy include:

• Gobta
• Shion [Kijin]
• Shion [Ogre]
• Hakuro [Kijin]
• Hakuro [Ogre]
• Souka
• Gido

Those with powerful synergy effects/high synergy DMG include:

• Souka
• Souei [Kijin]
• Gobta
• Hakuro [Kijin]
• Shuna [Princess of Presents]
• Shizu
• Saika
• Touka
• Rimuru (with Mana Abundance)

Note that Souka, Saika and Touka have two synergy skills each (after first breakthrough). Shizu and Milim have a semi-reliable chance of triggering synergy with their auto attacks.

Support

Supports are basically characters whose value lie in aspects not mentioned above. This can characters with skills such as healing or buffing. While there are characters who can debuff enemies like Hakuro [Kijin] and Saika, their effects are so negligible that they can hardly be considered as true supports for their debuffs. Note that Hakuro [Kijin] is considered a support not because of his ultimate (which can lower DEF), but because of his aptitude which causes the ally with the highest ATK to follow up with an auto attack.

Support characters may not have a direct impact on fights, but their abilities can make fights a lot easier.

Characters with support-oriented skills include:

• Rimuru
• Shuna [Princess of Presents]
• Shuna [Kijin]
• Shuna [Ogre]
• Souka
• Touka
• Hakuro [Kijin]
• Benimaru [Kijin]
• Trya
• Gelmud
• Kaval
• Bryne
• Treyni
• Chloe Aubert

Note that how viable these characters are as supports depend entirely on the rest of your team.

Also, while they do not directly strengthen or heal your allies, Shion [Reindeer Emissary] and Shion [Kijin]’s abilities let them deal DMG to enemies when an ally performs an auto attack or get hit.

Formation

Once you understand how characters in Tensura: King of Monsters operate in a team, it is time to understand how to get them in formation.

The 9×9 grid determines the turn order of the units. Priority in turn order is as follows:

Characters in the first row, first (left) column will move first, while characters in the third row, third (right) column will move last. The exception to this are clones, who move after all non-clone characters have moved.

Another rule is that after every allied unit takes an action, an enemy unit will take theirs.

In addition, another important factor that determines how we should place our units is the enemy’s formation. This is because of how the AI determines the auto attack target.

Without certain skills taking into effect, characters will always perform an auto attack on the closest enemy unit in the same column. If there are no enemy units in the same column, the AI will pick the closest target in the first (left), second (middle) or third (right) column in that order of preference.

In terms of single target ultimate skills, enemies will always target units in the front most row, with preference going from left to right columns. However, do note that this is only true for ultimate skills cast by the enemy in the first round. Occasionally, enemy AI will target your other units, but this tends to happen on the second round onwards.

With all these factors in mind, we can now choose the formation of our units.

Firstly, determine who are the highest priority targets. These are typically the most dangerous enemy units with the most immediate impact. Examples include Shizu, Gabiru and Souei [Ogre]. Our formation should focus on these enemies, as they have the hardest hitting auto attacks from the enemy. Special mention goes to Shion [Kijin], who can be incredibly annoying with her RNG-dependent counter.

If our DMG dealer cannot take them out before they move, then placing a tank to soak up the attack is advisable.

Next, consider who are the potentially troublesome enemies. These are enemies who do not have as immediate of an impact as the ones mentioned above. Typically, these are enemies with crowd control or damaging ultimate skills.

With proper timing, a good crowd control ultimate skill can deal with these units. If our team lacks the crowd control to do that, then we have to ideally position our DMG dealers to take them out right after taking out the highest priority targets.

The last category of enemies are those with little to no impact (I’m looking at you, Shuna [Ogre]). Essentially, you can pretty much save these enemies for last.

Note that you can pretty much ignore all the above advice if you are strong enough. The formation is more critical if you are weaker than your enemies stat-wise.

Synergy

Synergy-focused teams in Tensura: King of Monsters have an additional mechanic to consider in their unit placement. Unfortunately, the game does not tell you that synergy also depends on the turn order described in the previous section.

Let’s look at the following example:

In these two images, we can see the same team members (Note: Rimuru has the same synergy equipped in both pictures). However, the maximum number of synergy (located at the bottom right) is lower in the first image when compared to the second.

This is due to how the AI selects which unit to follow up on their synergy when an enemy goes into a certain state.

In this first image, when an enemy is suspended, both Gabiru and Shion [Reindeer Emissary] have met the conditions to trigger their synergy. However, the game chooses Gabiru to trigger his synergy before Shion [Reindeer Emissary], because he has an earlier turn in the turn order. As a result, the rest of the allies never put get to suspend the target again, causing Shion [Reindeer Emissary] and Rimuru to miss their synergy skill activations.

Do bear this in mind if you are planning to main a synergy team.

Suggested Team Compositions

This part is a recommendation on who to put together in a team in Tensura: King of Monsters.

Once more, feel free to skip this section if you are strong enough. With good enough gear, skills and stats, you can get away with tanks or crowd control characters since you will kill the enemies before they move anyway.

Standard Beginner Team
Rimuru – Gabiru – Eren – Shion [Ogre] – Benimaru [Ogre]

This team can get you through many of the story content. Gabiru is your DMG dealer, while Eren is your CC. You can replace Shion [Ogre] with any tank. The fifth unit can be pretty much anybody. Use Souei [Ogre] if you need another tank/DMG dealer, or Shion [Kijin] for stun and DMG. Gobta is also viable, in the event that the fight drags on.

Auto Attack Team
Rimuru – Gabiru – Hakuro [Kijin] – Souei [Ogre] – Eren

With an emphasis on auto attacks, you can deal great auto attack DMG on round 1 (assuming your units don’t die). Eren is for preventing nasty enemy ultimate skills on round 2. Strategic timing with Souei [Ogre]’s ultimate can let your clones tank some of the DMG.

Permastun Team
Rimuru – Shion [Reindeer Emissary] – Gobta – Hakuro [Kijin] – Eren

This team relies on spreading Shion [Reindeer Emissary]’s sugared effect to enemies with synergy so that she can stun them on Round 2. With proper placement, you can stun up to 3 enemies on Round 2. Eren is for providing CC on round 3, and if the fight drags on to round 4, every enemy can be sugared by then. Coupled with Rimuru’s Mystery Cooldown + Effective Use, the enemy will be stunned forever beyond that point.

Orc Disaster Subjugation Team
Rimuru – Ryota Sekiguchi – Trya – Eren – Gelmud

A popular team for tackling Orc Disaster, especially when you are underleveled/undergeared. For video reference on how to pull this off, watch this video:

Synergy Team
Rimuru – Souka – Souei [Kijin] – Gobta – Shion [Ogre]

A standard synergy team. True to its name, the team synergises really well with each other. Souka triggers synergy with a high enough combo, letting Rimuru restore 20 mana each time he follows up with his synergy. Souei [Kijin] fills up the 9×9 grid with his clones, making his ultimate hit harder while Gobta gets stronger as the battle goes on.

Ifrit Team
Rimuru – Ifrit – Ranga – Gabiru – Eren

For those who adamantly want to use Ifrit, you may consider this team. This team has good survivability and crowd control. Gabiru provides consistent DMG against the enemy team while Ifrit can provide decent burst DMG.

Closing

With more and more characters coming in the future to Tensura: King of Monsters, team formations will definitely change. However, with the knowledge from this guide, hopefully, you will be able to form your team with the new and existing Tensura: King of Monsters characters in mind.

Check out our other Tensura: King of Monsters guides:

• Beginner Guide
• Character Guide
• Space Gap Guide

Follow the game on Facebook to stay updated.

Download

Tensura: King of Monsters

Publisher: Hoolai Game Ltd

Developer: Hoolai Game Ltd

Release Date: 2020-12-15

Android, iOS

I'm not an evil Slime! Would you like to hide in my stomach?

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: King of Monsters is a mobile strategy multiplayer online RPG game, an official game adaptation of the anime under the original writer Fuse's supervision! The game employs the state-of-the art 3D cel-shading technology to present to gamers the Jura Tempest Federation from the anime. In the game, players may summon monsters, collect characters from the original anime and build up powerful monster combat lineup. The game features a unique Devour system that allows players to develop their own Rimuru!

Join Us!