7 min read · May 5, 2020
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Back when I finished Vanilla Persona 5, I made a post about my NG+ team. With recently being able to finish Persona 5 Royal, it felt natural to make another post of the Personas I used this time around, including some of the best & strongest ones in the game.
Related:
- Persona 3 Reload Party Member Builds (New!)
- Persona 5 Royal Party Member Builds
- Persona 4 Golden Builds
- P5R Fusion Calculator (with Skill/Trait Descriptions)
In Royal, there’s a relatively simple way to raise any Persona’s stats to 99. What you need are Ryuji’s Rank 7 ability Insta-Kill, Chihaya’s Rank 8 ability Celestial Reading and 20k Yen. Get Chihaya to raise the chances of a fusion alarm on a day you’re going to Mementos. Go into the first floor, and insta-kill 2–3 shadows to trigger an alarm. Go back to the Velvet Room, fuse any two Personas together, then use that new fused Persona (it’s name will be in yellow) to strengthen the one you want maxed stats on. The strengthening will not result in any XP gain, but you will get a total of +10 to random stats. You can keep doing this until all of a Persona’s stats are at 99.
Last thing: 3 of the Personas here are from the new DLC, but there’s plenty of great Personas in the base game/free legacy DLC, which are more than enough to complete any challenge the game throws at you (I cover some more at the end of this post). Optimizing Personas to this extent is mainly only useful for Super Bosses, otherwise you can basically use whoever you like and get through every Palace just fine. If you’re looking for good Personas during the early stages of the game, check out this post.
Yosh*tsune
Yosh*tsune is back, still as strong as ever. Hassou Tobi is a top 3 damaging skill in the game, alongside Myriad Truths and Shining Arrows, and now can even be boosted by traits. The best trait to have on Yosh*tsune is Undying Fury, originally from Zaou-Gongen, which raises the damage of Phys skills by 30%.
The only essential skills that are a must to have on Yosh*tsune are Hassou Tobi and Arms Master. Otherwise, you can go with adding a bunch of Drain skills, making it so you only take damage from Gun and Almighty. Or, you can go with more utility moves like Apt Pupil, Regenerate 3, etc.
Satanael
The main thing to know about Satanael is that his original trait, Pagan Allure, doesn’t exceed the damage cap (see at 1:40 in the Satanael video). So, if you are planning to use him for Magic and want max damage, Mighty Gaze, Intense Focus or Will of the Sword are better (all are +20% and exceed the cap). While Satanael’s original trait doesn’t exceed the damage cap, his exclusive skill Tyrant’s Mind (1.25x boost to all attacks) can. Here’s a link to a Persona traits post if that was confusing.
Given that info, there’s a number of different builds you could go for with Satanael. Excluding the new DLC, Satanael with Intense Focus or Will of the Sword and Black Viper provides the highest Almighty damage in the game.
Or you could go for a Gun build, because with Will of the Sword and Tyrant’s Mind, it provides the highest Gun damage possible. Another option is putting multiple elements on Satanael and adding Magic Ability. Pagan Allure, Magic Ability and Tyrant’s Mind would then give 2.34x damage (1.5*1.25*1.25).
Arsene
Have to keep the Starter around, and I wanted to replicate Arsene’s moveset from Persona Q2 and Persona 5 Scramble, being Curse and Gun-focused.
Here’s a video guide on building this type of Arsene. I also included a fusion path for an Almighty build with Megidolaon.
Raoul
At the start of the game, I knew I wanted to use Raoul for something, and I eventually landed on simply using him as more of a Support Persona. The Vitality of the Tree trait (originally from Attis) lets you use Thermopylae (full party Heat Riser) in normal conditions, while the other skill slots were filled with Charge, Concentrate, Debilitate and Raoul’s exclusive skill Phantom Show (high chance of Sleep to all foes). To get Vitality of the Tree on Raoul, re-fuse him by using Attis and Agathion. Orpheus’ Neo Cadenza (see below) is better than Thermopylae, but is only available through the paid DLC, while Vitality of the Tree+Thermopylae can be transferred to any Persona you want.
Maria
Maria has two exclusive passives, one being Holy Whisper which restores 15% HP and 15 SP every turn, and the other being Holy Embrace which restores 25% HP every turn.
If you transfer the Demon’s Bite trait from Ongyo-Ki, which doubles own HP recovery, you can recover 80% HP per turn with Maria equipped. By adding the Regenerate 2 and 3 passives, it becomes 100% per turn. Instead of Regenerate 2 and 3, I opted to go with other passives like Ali Dance, Enduring Soul and Drain Fire, because 80% HP per turn is really more than enough.
Izanagi-no-Okami
The strongest Persona available, for sure. Can one-shot the Reaper, one-shot most story bosses, even makes Super Bosses feel tame. Izanagi-nO has an exclusive trait called Country Maker, which increases Attack/Defense based on Inmate registry completion. With a full Persona compendium, Country Maker doubles your damage and halves damage taken.
Myriad Truths (3 times Heavy Almighty damage to all foes) is already a strong move, but it can be boosted by Almighty Boost, Almighty Amp and Magic Ability, giving you a 2x multiplier on it. Then boosted again by Country Maker, giving you 4x. Needless to say, nothing much stands up to it. Atlus seems to love making DLC overpowered, but they may have gone a bit overboard here.
Orpheus
Orpheus’ exclusive skill Neo Cadenza heals 50% HP of the party, and also provides Heat Riser for the whole party, while only costing 24 SP.
If you pass down the Wealth of Lotus trait from Lakshmi, Neo Cadenza’s buffs will be extended by 2 turns. It also works with the 3 Auto skills, making them last 5 turns at the start of every battle. In the video to the left, I showed a fusion path for getting Wealth of Lotus on Orpheus, as well builds for Thanatos & Messiah.
