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:
- P5R Party Member Builds
- Persona 4 Golden Builds
- P4G Party Member Builds
- 3rd Sem NG+ Super Boss Guide (Spoilers)
- P5R Persona Traits Write-Up
- 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.
Besides the Personas listed here, having one (it can be any of them) with the skills Auto-Mataru/Maraku/Masuku is useful, as having them equipped starts every battle with an automatic party Heat Riser. The Wealth of Lotus trait (originally from Lakshmi) extends these buffs by 2 turns for everyone, so it?d be good to pair with this type of Persona.
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.
Yoshitsune
Yoshitsune 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 Yoshitsune is Undying Fury, originally from Zaou-Gongen, which raises the damage of Phys skills by 30%.
Video guide on building Yoshi
The only essential skills that are a must to have on Yoshitsune 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 something like Firm Stance and multiple Regenerate skills to heal up to 12% per turn.
Satanael
Almighty Build
Gun Build
Elemental Build
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.
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.
Video guide on building Maria
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 last 5 turns instead of 3. To get Wealth of Lotus on Orpheus, fuse Lakshmi with Cait Sith to get Power. Fuse Power with Angel to get Archangel. Fuse Archangel with Mandrake to get Orpheus F. For Orpheus F Picaro, do the same steps except fuse Archangel with Mokoi last.
Other great Personas:
Miscellaneous Persona 5 Royal Builds
More P5R builds.
medium.com
- Kaguya: Shining Arrows is a top 3 damaging skill in the game, making her the 2nd best Magic Persona, only exceeded by Izanagi-nO. But Kaguya comes free with the Legacy P5 DLC, so she?s a great option if you don?t want to get the new DLC. Kaguya also gets a trait called Inviolable Beauty, which triples the damage of all Counter/Repel skills.
- Lucifer: Morning Star is a very strong move, and Lucifer went from having some of the worst resistances in Vanilla P5 to some of the best in P5R. A Megidolaon with Satanael will do more damage than Morning Star due to his unique skill Tyrant?s Mind, but Satanael is locked to NG+, and due to that Lucifer remains a great option.
Reaching 900K dmg with M-Izanagi (Note: 3rd Sem characters in vid)
- Magatsu-Izanagi: M-Izanagi?s trait Hollow Jester increases Attack by 40% per enemy inflicted with an ailment. Damage boosts in P5 are all multiplicative, so when 2 enemies have an ailment, your attack is 1.96x (1.4). This can go all the way up to 5.37x when there are 5 enemies with a status ailment.
- Fafnir and Alilat both have great resistances, and can be made to block everything except Almighty, making them good for Support roles.
- Alice and Daisoujou: Die for Me! and Samsara are the best insta-kill skills, and are exclusive to these two Personas, making them the best for that niche.
- Ariadne: One of the Personas from the legacy DLC, what you want her for is her exclusive trait Tag Team (Allows use of consumables without expending them after Baton Pass). If you Baton Pass to Joker when he has Ariadne equipped, you can use items without losing them. This means you can basically have unlimited Somas.
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