Table of Contents
N Corp. Sinclair arrives as the final ID banner for Season 1 of Limbus Company. Right now, he's probably the most unique ID to date, as his main gimmick utilizes negative coins instead of positive coins.
To give a quick breakdown of how negative coins work, they essentially function in a manner opposite to positive coins. If a positive coin skill starts at its lowest base power and increases its power the more heads you flip, a negative coin starts at its maximum power and decreases its power the more heads you flip.
As a result, having high SP can be detrimental to making sure you get negative coins, as they increase your chances to flip heads and thus decrease its power. Instead, you want less SP, preferably negative SP even, to flip tails. The big question is, how do we make N Corp. Sinclair work?
Coerced JudgementSkill 1: N Corp. Sinclair's skill 1 is probably his weakest one. Its max power is only 8, making it pretty weak and not really that suitable for clashing. It does have two coins to go through, however, with each heads flip deducting 2 power. This skill also reduces N Corp. Sinclair's SP by 7 upon use, helping in managing his SP somewhat, especially when his Passive is active.
What makes this skill still useful despite being weak, though, is that other than being a Gloom battery, it can also apply Fanatic to Sinclair by simply hitting tails on its second coin. And yes, it stacks, so if N Corp. Sinclair has two skill slots and uses two Coerced Judgment skills in the same turn for instance, he can gain two Fanatic on the next turn. The skill also inflicts 2 Burn when the attack connects, but it's more of a cherry on top.
Amoral EnactmentSkill 2: N Corp. Sinclair's skill 2 is much more impressive in terms of power and clash prowess, as it starts off at 16 power. It has 4 coins to go through with each heads flip deducting 4 power from the skill.
This skill has some interesting interactions and synergy with his first skill. First off, N Corp. Sinclair loses 10 SP when this skill is used. Again, important to help manage his ever fluctuating SP. Second, this skill deals +10% damage if Sinclair has Fanatic active, meaning that it can hit even harder than it already does if you time your skills right and get a bit lucky with skill 1.
As for the coin effects themselves, they follow up on N Corp. Sinclair's skill 1, being mostly attuned to Burn. Coin 2 and 3 have the same skill effects: inflicting 1 Burn on hit and inflicting an additional 2 Burn if the coin from this skill hits tails. Coin 4 inflicts 2 Bleed on hit and 1 Burn Count for a tails flip instead.
Self-destructive PurgeSkill 3: N Corp. Sinclair's absolute nuke of a 3rd skill starts off at a massive 30 power and loses 12 of it for every heads flip, while the skill itself has 3 coins to go through. That's potentially 90 damage without any modifiers active!
Because negative coin skills lose a coin every time they lose a clash, this actually makes them stronger overall until they run out of coins. What this essentially means though, is that this skill 3 at its worst still has a whopping 18 power that an enemy must outclash to win against. There are barely any enemies that have skills which are strong enough to even compare, like the Headless Ichthys's Blood Cannon (which also needs to roll heads to outroll it). And that's just the clash prowess of this skill.
For the actual effects, the skill has a bunch of On Use effects: making N Corp. Sinclair lose 15 SP, dealing +15% damage if Fanatic, and dealing +10% damage if the enemy is a Mechanical Amalgam type. The first two should be self-explanatory already. The third deals bonus damage against certain enemies, though right now this only appears to apply to the Tour Robot and Heart Abnormality that can be found in Refraction Railway.
The coins themselves also have additional skill effects. The second coin has an On Hit effect of raising the stagger threshold of an enemy, making them even easier to stagger (or even staggering them outright), especially if N Corp. Sinclair rolls tails on both coins. The third coin has two effects: first is an On Hit effect of inflicting 5 Burn if the target has 5+ Bleed, and an On Kill effect of giving N Corp. Sinclair 1 Blunt Power Up. The effects themselves are unreliable and you don't need to take them into account much during battle.
Defense (Enough..., Block): A Block skill that starts off with 17 power but can lose 7 power if its single coin hits heads. It also has an added effect of healing 5-10 SP on combat start.
Block skills are generally unimpressive at the moment, and this one is no different other than its extra effect. Its one additional effect of healing Sinclair's SP might seem a bit contradictory to him relying on negative SP for his attacks, but it can also be used as a way to control his SP, especially if other SP buffers like N Corp. Faust are unavailable.
Passive (Mad Flame, 2 Owned Wrath): “Heal 50% less SP from winning a clash or defeating an enemy.”
Sinclair's Passive is practically mandatory to have active in order to keep him from healing too much SP in battle. Clash wins can easily snowball the amount of SP N Corp. Sinclair gains, which he does not want since we want him to continuously roll tails as much as possible.
Thankfully, it's relatively cheap to activate, as you only need 2 Wrath owned. Sinclair's skill 3 is already Wrath, but it will take a bit longer for it to cycle back in again after it's used, so you may want another ID that also has a Wrath skill to activate the Passive early.
Support (Cornering, 6 Owned Wrath): “1 ally with the least SP deals +10% Blunt damage.
If said ally is below 0 SP, further boost their Blunt damage the lower their SP is. (Max 10%)”
As it currently stands, this Support Passive is too expensive to be worth it. 6 Wrath will take a while to accumulate, even with Sinners that have Wrath skills on the team, and there isn't really any Sinner who can fully take advantage of the the negative SP requirement to boost Blunt damage, as N Corp. Sinclair is currently the only ID that utilizes negative coins for all of his skills.
It might have potential use in the future when we get more negative coin Sinners, but at the moment, it's too expensive to be worth it.
Strengths
- Can self-apply Fanatic with skill 1 easily.
- Skill 2 and 3 are nukes, even without Fanatic active.
- Paralyze actually buffs him, as it fully negates the deductions towards his coins when he is afflicted by it.
- Skill 3 is very unlikely to ever lose a clash.
- Very high potential damage ceiling, thanks to how negative coins work.
- Skills inflict a decent amount of Burn.
Weaknesses
- SP requires massive amounts of micromanaging.
- Always in danger of corroding/panicking when at negative SP.
- Skill 2 and 3 can actually drop to 0 damage if all coins flip heads, making them potentially unreliable for skill checks.
- May have difficulty keeping SP low in stages that have multiple enemies (e.g. human battles).
- Needs Mad Flame to be active to be able to actually lose SP when clashing.
- Not as consistent in flipping tails compared to IDs that only need to flip heads.
Potential Sinner Synergies
Faust - The One Who Grips,Rodion - N Corp. Mittelhammer,Meursault - N Corp. Großhammer,Heathcliff - N Corp. Kleinhammer,Don Quixote - N Corp. Mittelhammer,Ishmael - LCCB Assistant Manager,Meursault - Liu Section 6,Gregor - Liu Section 6,Hong Lu - Liu Section 5Analysis
N Corp. Sinclair is probably the most experimental character that has been released to date, and it's thanks to his interesting mechanics of utilizing tails for his coins instead of heads.
As mentioned earlier, he starts off with very high power but slowly loses it the more he flips heads. As a result, getting him to negative SP ASAP is important to reach his damage potential much faster. His skills already help him with that, and even more so if Mad Flame is active.
However, corrosion can be problematic to deal with. If N Corp. Sinclair hits -45 SP in a single turn, he is guaranteed to corrode on the next turn, even if he tries to heal it by winning clashes. This means that to 'play things safe', N Corp. Sinclair also still needs to be able to gain SP somehow, so Sinners like N Corp. Faust with her Whistles Passive can be very helpful in ensuring that N Corp. Sinclair doesn't dip too far in the red.
As a clasher and damage dealer, this guy is just straight-up a monster. His skill 2 and 3 already deal insane amounts of damage, especially if they don't flip tails, but they can deal even more if he manages to apply Fanatic to himself with his skill 1 or with an N Corp. ally's assistance. He will very rarely lose clashes with both skills, though his skill 1 leaves much to be desired and his defense skill isn't really that noteworthy as Block skills aren't good at the moment.
Funny enough, thanks to his skills applying Burn, he can also be slotted in with the Liu IDs to inflict more Burn all around, though honestly N Corp. Sinclair is so strong that the Burn effects of his skills are more additional bonuses rather than the meat of his prowess.
All in all, a really solid ID to cap off the season with. His insane damage potential is balanced by how unstable his coin flips are and how much you need to micromanage him to get him to work. But when he does work though... He just bulldozes everything.
