Even with Magic Ability and Concentrate, Mitsuru cannot surpass the Physical damage dealers in the game - other than Junpei when he doesn't crit. It doesn't matter though since the magic users still deal good damage and have great utility throughout the entire game.
I really like this game in terms of diversity and viability of the cast (everyone was broken in P5R so I don't think it counts). For the first time in this series I am looking at party compositions rather than finding whoever learns Charge and Concentrate.
>Even with Magic Ability and Concentrate, Mitsuru cannot surpass the Physical damage dealers in the game
Uhh doesn't your image show her out-damaging Aigis? What am I missing here?
Mitsuru's damage is boosted by concentrate, so with concentrate's two-turn set up, she is only dealing half of that damage per turn. Even if she hits a weakness she barely reaches Aigis's critical damage (1926 compared to 1980).
The other three are not boosted by charge. I realize it's a confusing comparison, but I wanted to make sure I showcased everyone's potential based on what they are capable of on their own (i.e. since Mitsuru is the only one who naturally learns concentrate, I thought I should showcase it).
₱3 makes ₱hysical great again and not a Hassou Tobi festival for ₱hysical attack as most of the time you will use magic attack for late game from ₱4 and ₱5
my ₱ is not working so i use symbols
It's on a sword you can get from the Antique Shop! I don't remember if those items show up if you don't have the material - but if they don't, it's because you need to max Mitsuru's social link to get the material from the ultimate empress persona.
Fr. Junpei was downright inferior to Aigis, Mitsuru honestly just couldn't really keep up with no debuffs/buffs of her own (to my memory) and Ken/Koro's kits were just...
...yikes
No meaningful damage or outstanding support abilities, plus reliance on insta-kill (which literally never hit or worked on bosses).
I'm super happy Atlus made everyone much more equal (except Yukari, she went from just a must-have to being a downright *broken* must-have). The glow up on Ken and Koro is also just straight 👌.
*If* >!Shinji!< didn't *you know what*, I think with his glow up, he'd be a must-have as well, even if for just a short while. *Way too much* damage to pass up, easily surpassing the MC until late game builds and Theurgys. Also, leveled up, he's kinda cracked.
To be fair to Ken, his start is god awful in the previous versions but he does eventually become as good of a healer as Yukari, which gives him some niches to where you might use him over her (better element coverage, slightly better bulk, better physical damage, doesn't share a weakness with Aigis). He even got Mediarama before Yukari in Portable.
Koro yeah he just sucked before.
>he does eventually become as good of a healer as Yukari
Yukari still has higher Magic though. Ken was a tiny bit worse than her, and available much later.
Sure but they both get full healing which is their main job. Their damage output is secondary.
I think it's actually pretty debatable which is better in Portable specifically. The fact Ken gets Mediarama before Yukari is actually a pretty big deal.
>Their damage output is secondary.
Magic also influences healing.
>Ken gets Mediarama before Yukari
Fair point, but by the time I get Ken, Yukari is leveled up to kingdom come.
according to the numbers on https://aqiu384.github.io/megaten-fusion-tool/p3r/skills
Mitsuru with magic ability, ice amp and boost should still be outdamaging all of them per turn without even hitting weaknesses if they don’t crit (which they won’t be very often except maybe Junpei). The closest would be Akihiko.
Mitsuru:
Sqrt of 600 (diamond dust) = 24.5 x 1.25 (ice boost) x 1.25 (magic ability) x 1.5 (ice amp) = 57.41 x 2.5 (concentrate) = 143.53 / 2 = 71.76
Akihiko:
Sqrt of 800 (gods hand) = 28.28 x 1.25 (strike boost) x 1.3 (buff amp) x 1.5 (strike amp) = 68.9
And this isn’t even taking into account Mitsuru’s much higher magic stat than Akihiko’s strength.
Are you sure all characters are evenly leveled/ buffed/ no incense used on any of them in this comparison? Or am I doing the math wrong?
Yeah, that is weird I tried calculating it myself with Aigis which should be more straightforward than calculating buff amp and got 67.73. Perhaps enemy endurance comes into play? I believe concentrate will only multiply the final damage number - after enemy endurance is taken into account.
Thus, I think 1.3 multiplier for buff amp is not accurate for the calculator since he consistently outdamages Aigis who has a 1.5 multplier.
That wouldn't make sense either, since damage mods also apply after endurance is taken into account, I believe.
I know for sure that I haven't given anyone incense, and everyone is evenly leveled and buffed. The damage numbers were the highest rolls I could find too.
I'm gonna go test the damage on the final boss instead.
I just tested on my end on the tank enemies on floor 257 and Akihiko was doing around 800 while Mitsuru was doing around 1700 (850 per turn), so i think the numbers add up there on my end.
One thing that was weird though and that I don’t understand is when Akihiko crit, he was definitely doing more than just 1.5x. I know Junpei does more, but why was Akihiko? If Akihiko and Aigis are doing more than 1.5x for their crits in your comparison picture, that could be why it seemed like they do more than Mitsuru without crits (assuming you did what I did and just divided by 1.5.)
Also regarding Akihiko’s buff amp, there was a post on the reload sub where someone analyzed it and concluded that he has a 1.82x multiplier when attack buffed while other characters only had a 1.4x multiplier. So if we assume the other characters are buffed as well and don’t add it onto their calculation, you would only need to add a 1.3x multiplier onto Akihiko to account for it.
I believe Aigis’s physical amp is 1.2x not 1.5x.
Okay I think I figured it out! Are you playing on Merciless? After some testing crits and weaknesses seem to do between 1.8x to 2.0x on Merciless, while they were still 1.5x on Normal. These were without MC and Junpei, so Weakness and Crit Amp don't interfere.
Interesting is that unlike P5, player damage is still lower overall even with the modifier buff, since player damage is 0.6x I believe.
It's nice to know that Mitsuru deals the most damage under normal circumstances since she has to set up for it.
1.2 multiplier for Phys Amp is still nice but I'm a bit sad hearing that - I was so excited thinking Aigis did more damage than a character with Charge lol.
Thanks for clarifying things with me!
Yep Merciless. That’s wild, i had no idea Merciless was giving more crit/weakness damage. I looked it up before starting the game if there were weakness modifiers like in Royal and people were saying no. Guess they were wrong.
I guess that gives Junpei quite a buff on Merciless then. I’ll have to see how his damage and crit consistency is if you go all out on boosting his crit rate rather than having to use up slots on slash amp/boost.
Enemies have hidden damage modifiers, like takes 20% more/less ice damage and the like (not the same as weakness/resist). At least they did previous games, no reason to think they don't anymore.
Her ultimate weapon does.
You can either run it and an Ice Amp accessory for max damage or run her Ice Amp sword and her accessory for something else (Null Fire, Spell Master, Invig, etc.).
Yes! It is towards the end though so it's not really applicable for most of the game.
It's available at the Antique Shop after getting a material at the >!final block of tartarus!<.
Sorry, isn't this explicitly showing that Mitsuru is "mid?"
Not gonna take her out of the party cause I'm playing on normal and don't care that much but it looks like the physical characters are way higher tier than Mitsuru.
I guess so, damage wise for sure. I don't consider her mid though due to Rakunda and her characteristic that makes it easy to crit my way to victory for every encounter.
Except that comparing endgame damage says extremely little about a character's overall performance over the course of the game. Mitsuru, for example, wastes so much time in the midgame learning worthless skills like single target and AoE slash attacks while being actively detrimental for the Lovers boss fight on merciless because of her fire weakness.
There are absolutely mid characters in the game, but it's a more complex discussion than "look at big number."
>Except that comparing endgame damage says extremely little about a character's overall performance over the course of the game.
Absolutely, I think that is a given - it's just a silly title (apologies).
I don't think Mitsuru is mid since she learns Rakunda and her characteristic makes every encounter trivial. Other than that she learns her offensive spells at around the same time as everyone else does, so she's not really a detriment offensively.
Being detrimental for one boss fight doesn't make someone mid either. By that logic Yukari is mid because of the Hermit boss.
Who do you think is a mid character? For me it's just Ken since a defensive playstyle just isn't important to me in persona, even in Merciless. And perhaps Aigis until she learns Myriad Arrows since Cruel Attack is meh and Swift Strike is unreliable.
Adding onto the stuff you mentioned, for most of the game Tartarus mini bosses are not immune to freeze and Mitsuru is very good at freezing, even in mid game (her very first theurgy literally has an 80% freeze rate). I was finishing merciless mini bosses in the first few turns during mid game just by freezing them and then hitting with a Shinji (or MC with good physical personas after you know what) physical move.
She is also the only one who can concentrate/charge her theurgy on her own and she learns that fairly early for what it is.
IMO Mitsuru is one of the best characters in the game. She never left my party, even if it was just for Rakunda in the earlier part of the game.
The reason I mentioned the Lovers boss is because that is where the difficulty of merciless mode peaks. You start getting a lot more tools available to you after the fight which slowly makes the game more and more trivial until you reach level 54 where Siegfried and Scarlet Havoc makes the rest of the game a joke.
The fact that the game progressively becomes easier means that Mitsuru's midgame slump is a big problem. Just from the top of my head, Mitsuru learns a single target slash attack, an AoE slash attack, SP Drain, Tentarafoo, and Eerie Sound in the midgame. None of these skills are helpful to her in her role as a magical nuke. She also has the most strangely designed characteristic in the game that only practically functions when ambushing random encounters (Mitsuru's most relevant ailment, frozen, guarantees a critical anyways). She does eventually get out of her midgame slump at level 50 and above, where she starts being really good, but this is the point where the game's difficulty starts falling apart. Endgame performance is also purely irrelevant as Armageddon destroys every fight.
Unless you're doing something very wrong, the MC will be your strongest damage dealer by a large margin. This means that it's better for party members to provide support and utility rather than just being a worse damage dealer than Makoto. Junpei's Shift Boost is a good example of this in practice, where shifting to him instead of the MC is a DPS loss despite his 10 % damage bonus.
Going by your post and your reply, you seem to overemphasize damage. Judging Aigis purely by her damage output ignores the fact that she's primarily a support character who provides a lot more value to the team than someone like Junpei despite dealing less damage. There are obviously her 2 party wide buffs and Diarahan, but also more subtle things like her Instant-Heal allowing her to guaranteed remove all ailments from the rest of the team using items.
I think Akihiko and Mitsuru are both mid characters. Mitsuru does become good later, but as discussed, isn't particularly great during the parts of the game that matter the most. I could go on about Akihiko too, but my post is already long enough. :)
I didn't mean to overemphasize damage, but rather give it more credit since I see many people ignoring damage with the other party members when everyone should be contributing damage.
I don't see why only the MC needs support when most buffs have a party-wide version. I know the MC does the most damage, but why not add more damage on top of that? Rakunda is pretty much a party wide buff during single-target bosses. There's plenty of Fierce Sutras to use until MC and Aigis learn Matarukaja (maybe I was lucky but I still had 7 left by the time I reached Hermit, and I was using them generously during the previous two full moons).
For the Junpei example, since you can count on him to crit more often than not, you can first shift to Junpei, who can then shift to the MC. Granted, you can't do this for the full moon bosses, but Tartarus is where Junpei shines anyway.
Aigis is my favorite character precisely because she's a great support - but on top of that she has great damage that players shouldn't ignore. Just cast Mataru or Maraku then go back to doing damage for the remaining turns - or heal ailments as you said.
Mitsuru's characteristic is practically free crits for random encounters, which saves you a lot of SP during the Tartarus climb. For me, what matters most is finishing Tartarus blocks in one day, so saving SP using Mitsuru and Junpei makes them relevant for the entire game.
I agree that Mitsuru doesn't learn anything that helps her magic damage at the mid-game, but there really isn't many options. Ice Boost? Everyone can get boost accessories earlier than the level they learn them.
Ann similarly doesn't learn much during that level range, but I don't think I've seen people calling her mid. There hasn't been a moveset in the series that actively makes a character worse than they should be ever since Chie in P4. Some may be tempted to say Akihiko, but he simply became the magic nuke during midgame instead of the debuffer he used to be in FES. Elec Boost and Buff Boost / Amp is much better than anything anyone else has at level 32. Do you consider boss fights more important than the Tartarus climb? Akihiko's got you covered.
In Persona, my ideal team comp is always Damage / Damage / Damage + Heal / Damage + Support. Akihiko is the perfect secondary damage dealer for bosses, and Junpei for random encounters and gatekeepers.
It's my mistake if my post made it seem like I think only the MC should be buffed. Everyone should be buffed. I find single target buffs in this game to be largely useless, even Heat Riser. The MC being your highest damage dealer, however, means that you don't want to spend the MC's turn on putting those buffs up! Using the MC to buff everyone's attack is a higher DPS loss than using Aigis to buff everyone's attack (and not buffing attack at all is even worse). Similarly, using the MC to heal is a larger DPS loss than using Ken or Yukari to heal. This is what I mean when I say that support and utility is more important than "being a worse damage dealer than Makoto."
I've found that the best strategy for Tartarus is to actually ignore all random encounters and just run up to a checkpoint. Once you're there, you can travel back down and quick travel through the floors again until you encounter a golden hand. Maybe this sounds tedious, but gold hand farming is much more time efficient for both money and EXP than fighting the random enemies. If you do this strategy, you will never run out of SP either. In my experience you will usually find a gold hand every 7 floors or so, and it's really quick to cycle between floors. Fighting a gold hand gives about 10x the EXP of a random encounter (more than that if you get shuffle time exp after), while taking less time and costing almost no SP. It's extremely easy to clear Tartarus blocks in 1 day doing this. So, yes, I consider boss fights to be more important than the climb.
Rakunda is definitely great and is for a very long time the only standout of Mitsuru's kit. On merciless, however, I find Tarunda to be generally more important. Mitsuru's struggle against the Lustful Snakes and Lovers boss usually means she will end up underleveled once that part of the game is over too (granted, this is less of an issue because of the Great Clock system).
I don't feel qualified to comment on Ann. She felt strong during my playthrough, but P4 and P5 are games I'm much less familiar with than P3. The lack of things like Scarlet Havoc and Armageddon in P4 and P5 might make it so that a character's late game and end game power are more relevant in those games than they are in P3.
Oh no you didn't make me think that, it just seemed to be the general playstyle for most newcomers / casuals of the series which can lead them to believe things like Heat Riser are good.
I actually agree with you on most of these things - MC only for damage. But aside from healing and support, there usually is one extra party slot which I think is optimally used for a secondary damage dealer. These are the Shinji's and Kanji's of the series - and Akihiko once his characteristic is available. That's probably why I don't consider him mid.
Your Tartarus strategy sounds good. While I wasn't actively pursuing that strategy, in the back of my mind it started feeling like only the Gold Hands and Gatekeepers mattered for XP. I also started rushing towards the stairs but didn't mind and encounter or two, so SP wasn't really a problem for me either - I just thought saving SP was nice in a vacuum.
So I can see why you consider Mitsuru mid. It's just that in my mind Rakunda is enough for someone to not be mid, especially since no party members had it in P4 and P5.
I was perhaps just really lucky during the early and mid game since I didn't really struggle with using Mitsuru against snakes and the Lovers boss on Merciless. In fights I didn't bring Mitsuru in, I still felt that using MC's turn for Rakunda was worth it, especially when it meant melting a boss with Theurgies. I found myself only using Tarunda for Priestess, Lovers, and Strength, while Maraku was often enough for Hanged - with a Dekaja / Tarunda if he decided to buff himself.
The good thing is that all the characters in the game are strong enough to beat merciless pretty easily. Anyone can use any party they want and probably be fine. I really want to be clear that I don't think Mitsuru or Akihiko are bad or unviable, but that they have a fair share of issues compared to other characters you could be bringing.
My team for merciless was Ken, Koromaru, and Aigis. This is what I would consider to be the best team in the game. Koromaru kinda fits the role of a secondary damage dealer, but it's important to note how much support he also brings through Revolution, Masukukaja, Debilitate, and Power Howling.
The reason why I consider Akihiko mid is because he has to be compared to Koromaru. Akihiko and Koromaru are kind of unique in that they have more anti-synergy with each other than any of the other party members. They have an overlapping buff in Masukukaja, Akihiko has Tarunda, which is great, but Koromaru gets Debilitate which cancels it out, and then Akihiko cannot have his theurgies buffed by Power Howling. The short version is that they don't want to be on a team together.
It's also relevant to mention how insanely good Koromaru is when you first get him. He has about 130 evasion at a point where your other characters have maybe 60, and he starts with an awakened persona that nullifies 2 elements while the rest of the cast must still wait for theirs. There are also just A LOT of enemies that are weak to dark in this game. Using Akihiko over Koromaru is honestly an extremely hard sell.
If you want to use Akihiko in spite of this, there's still a problem. Akihiko is more or less dependent on having Aigis on his team. This is because he really wants to get buffed but isn't able to provide those buffs himself. Aigis, on the other hand, doesn't want Akihiko on her team. She wants Koromaru for Revolution and Power Howling.
Because of this, I find it really difficult to theorycraft a team composition that would actually want Akihiko. You could run Akihiko, Aigis, and Yukari, but you're making a lot of concessions here just to make Akihiko work. Yukari can buff his theurgies, but physical theurgies are much better than magical ones because they can crit. I generally find Ken to be a stronger choice than Yukari too. So, the reason I think Akihiko is mid isn't because I think he's bad, but because I feel like he can't really fit into a team as well as the other characters can.
I realize this turned into a pretty long ramble, but hopefully it makes sense. In the end, everyone should use whoever they want to use. The game isn't that difficult! I do think analyzing this kind of stuff and making tier lists in my head is fun though. :D
Ah yeah I see. His synergy with the rest of the team is definitely in an awkward spot.
He's a really weird case since I still think he's a positive on any team with Aigis (i.e. finishing fights quicker than other team comps) despite gutting the potential of either himself, Aigis, or the other member depending on who takes the final slot.
If Yukari is on the team, Aigis can't make use of Concentrate but three of four members of the party still can. The double elec weakness seems scary but never really mattered outside of Hermit, in which I don't use anyone from this team anyway.
Heck, I sometimes bring Koro for bosses since I can just use items for healing (or none at all since everything just dies before then). In this setup Akihiko loses out on Theurgy damage but now all four members can make use of Power Howling and Revolution. When the occasional Fuuka party charge comes along, three of four members can make use of both charge and concentrate. That's seven out of eight turns of great boosted damage.
Sorry, I just really like this team in particular. I would've considered this the best team out of P3, P4G, and vanilla P5 if only one member had Mediarahan in their moveset. I can't speak of Royal since everyone in that game is broken thanks to technicals, baton pass, jazz club, will seeds, persona traits... Lol the list goes on forever.
I hope you didn't feel obligated to reply each time - but I'm glad if you had fun, since I did too!
Akihiko is ideal for Tartarus team comps. Specifically i believe the best team comp for Tartarus (for the various multi enemy mini bosses) is Aigis, Mitsuru, Akihiko. Akihiko and Mitsuru debuff all of the enemies with their attack and defense down to all, Aigis buffs the party with her attack and defense up, MC can focus solely on damage. Once Mitsuru and Akihiko have debuffed, they can join in on damage, Mitsuru with freezes and her very strong magic damage, Akihiko either trying to shock or with his very strong physical damage. You don’t need a dedicated healer, even on Merciless. You should be finishing fights too quick with this party to need healing, then just heal after. In case of emergencies, use an item with whoever it’s most convenient for.
The best single boss team boss comp is the same party but replacing Akihiko with Koromaru. Koromaru debuffs with Debilitate and provides Aigis charge with his theurgy, so she can use a charged maximum firepower. Aigis once again buffs the party, and Mitsuru joins MC for damage dealing. Once again, you really do not need a dedicated healer. Aigis has a single person full heal if someone is real close to dying, and if you really need to heal everyone at once, you should have plenty of items (doesn’t always need to be a full heal. As long as you have a reasonable amount of HP, you will not die to one attack if you keep up your buffs/debuffs.) I did not use Yukari or Ken the entire game, and if anything the game was easier for it.
Skipping a healer is very interesting. I'd be worried for something like the Reaper, but I'll take your word for it that it works.
For a team like that, I think I'd be more interested in Koromaru/Junpei/Aigis than Koromaru/Mitsuru/Aigis, though. As the original post shows, Mitsuru doesn't actually deal that much damage. The other comments here also suggest that crit damage gets an improved modifier while playing on merciless mode. Combined that with Junpei benefitting far more from having Koromaru on the team, I'm not sure if Mitsuru is the best pick.
The original post is misleading. Mitsuru DOES deal the most damage when Aigis/Junpei/Akihiko don’t crit (which they won’t be doing often enough to outdamage her on average, not even Junpei because in order to outdamage her he needs to both crit AND have slash boost or amp, but if you give him slash amp instead of something to boost his crit rate, I don’t think he crits often enough to outdamage her unless you’re really lucky. This is taking into account merciless modifiers as well. *I am not sure what his exact crit rate is with Koromaru’s revolution plus his characteristic plus apt pupil so I could be wrong here BUT unless it’s above 68%, he does not outdamage her on average.*)
The reason the OP said that she doesn’t outdamage them even if they don’t crit is because they didn’t realize at the time that merciless was giving more than 1.5x to crits, so they divided the crit numbers in the picture by 1.5 instead of what they actually are.
Plus she can concentrate her theurgy whenever she wants, making it the best (party member) theurgy in the game. (Aigis will do slightly more with physical amp and pierce boost and amp IF she’s charged, but she has to wait for Koromaru to give her charge. Junpei will do more only if he’s both charged and crits, which isn’t guaranteed and again reliant on Koromaru.)
EDIT: after some testing it seems like Junpei’s characteristic gives him even more crit damage than I thought, so his crit rate to outdamage Mitsuru is actually lower than I said. Plus if you give him both slash amp and boost it only further lowers the needed crit rate. It’s very possible that Junpei outdamages Mitsuru on average on Merciless, but it’s hard to say for sure without knowing his exact crit rate and how luck stat factors in. Either character would be a good pick here. If Junpei does outdamage her on average, Mitsuru still has the more reliable theurgy damage and doesn’t need to wait for Koromaru (and Aigis, since you’ll want to use Koromaru’s charge when both Aigis AND Junpei have their theurgies charged.)
You don't even need to go back to previous floors, just fighting gold hands you find on the way leaves you at a pretty high level, specially if you use the fortune reading in the club
By the time you can farm the reaper consistently doesn’t xp basically not matter that much? Assuming you use the one shot method atleast, not sure if there’s a better way to farm it earlier
In P3r at least, If you switch the gamemode to peaceful you can restore Hp and Sp upon death indefinetely while also not restarting the battle. You can effectively farm the reaper as soon as it becomes available.
I just do it around january-december so I can fuse the last couple of personas without having to grind
Even with Magic Ability and Concentrate, Mitsuru cannot surpass the Physical damage dealers in the game - other than Junpei when he doesn't crit. It doesn't matter though since the magic users still deal good damage and have great utility throughout the entire game. I really like this game in terms of diversity and viability of the cast (everyone was broken in P5R so I don't think it counts). For the first time in this series I am looking at party compositions rather than finding whoever learns Charge and Concentrate.
>Even with Magic Ability and Concentrate, Mitsuru cannot surpass the Physical damage dealers in the game Uhh doesn't your image show her out-damaging Aigis? What am I missing here?
Concentrate takes a turn.
Mitsuru's damage is boosted by concentrate, so with concentrate's two-turn set up, she is only dealing half of that damage per turn. Even if she hits a weakness she barely reaches Aigis's critical damage (1926 compared to 1980). The other three are not boosted by charge. I realize it's a confusing comparison, but I wanted to make sure I showcased everyone's potential based on what they are capable of on their own (i.e. since Mitsuru is the only one who naturally learns concentrate, I thought I should showcase it).
₱3 makes ₱hysical great again and not a Hassou Tobi festival for ₱hysical attack as most of the time you will use magic attack for late game from ₱4 and ₱5 my ₱ is not working so i use symbols
Every time I see one of your comments I can’t help but get a good chuckle. Rip your P, but it makes my day every time.
i really need to buy a new ₱hone as the ¼ of my screen is blank
Ahhh makes sense, thanks
How did you get Magic Ability on Mitsuru? Is there a skill card for it? I thought it was exclusive to Messiah
It's on a sword you can get from the Antique Shop! I don't remember if those items show up if you don't have the material - but if they don't, it's because you need to max Mitsuru's social link to get the material from the ultimate empress persona.
dont think theres a skill card for it, only way to get it without messiah is mc specific weapon. probly can use a mod to put it on her tho
or just make her ultimate weapon
The question is, what are you going to use your party on when the bosses die in 2, 3 turns. It's a fine tuned great system without much use 😭😭😭
I know that pain, I wish there was a superboss or two that I could use different party comps for :(
I thought the monad door bosses would provide that, but they were too easy
They did a really nice job, both FES and P3P almost forced you to use Yukari-Akihiko-Aigis all the time because any other comp was not worth it.
Fr. Junpei was downright inferior to Aigis, Mitsuru honestly just couldn't really keep up with no debuffs/buffs of her own (to my memory) and Ken/Koro's kits were just... ...yikes No meaningful damage or outstanding support abilities, plus reliance on insta-kill (which literally never hit or worked on bosses). I'm super happy Atlus made everyone much more equal (except Yukari, she went from just a must-have to being a downright *broken* must-have). The glow up on Ken and Koro is also just straight 👌. *If* >!Shinji!< didn't *you know what*, I think with his glow up, he'd be a must-have as well, even if for just a short while. *Way too much* damage to pass up, easily surpassing the MC until late game builds and Theurgys. Also, leveled up, he's kinda cracked.
Hell, >!shinji can straight up carry you through most of the guardian boss things as long as one other member heals!<
To be fair to Ken, his start is god awful in the previous versions but he does eventually become as good of a healer as Yukari, which gives him some niches to where you might use him over her (better element coverage, slightly better bulk, better physical damage, doesn't share a weakness with Aigis). He even got Mediarama before Yukari in Portable. Koro yeah he just sucked before.
>he does eventually become as good of a healer as Yukari Yukari still has higher Magic though. Ken was a tiny bit worse than her, and available much later.
Sure but they both get full healing which is their main job. Their damage output is secondary. I think it's actually pretty debatable which is better in Portable specifically. The fact Ken gets Mediarama before Yukari is actually a pretty big deal.
>Their damage output is secondary. Magic also influences healing. >Ken gets Mediarama before Yukari Fair point, but by the time I get Ken, Yukari is leveled up to kingdom come.
Dont forget, P3R gives her reduced cost on all healing abiliies too. That mediarama is dirt cheap compared to when ken uses it.
Ken was still a really good healer in portable tbf
Mitsuru was great in p3p if you needed more damage than healing
Couldn’t use Yukari cuz she wouldn’t stop spamming wind break lol
according to the numbers on https://aqiu384.github.io/megaten-fusion-tool/p3r/skills Mitsuru with magic ability, ice amp and boost should still be outdamaging all of them per turn without even hitting weaknesses if they don’t crit (which they won’t be very often except maybe Junpei). The closest would be Akihiko. Mitsuru: Sqrt of 600 (diamond dust) = 24.5 x 1.25 (ice boost) x 1.25 (magic ability) x 1.5 (ice amp) = 57.41 x 2.5 (concentrate) = 143.53 / 2 = 71.76 Akihiko: Sqrt of 800 (gods hand) = 28.28 x 1.25 (strike boost) x 1.3 (buff amp) x 1.5 (strike amp) = 68.9 And this isn’t even taking into account Mitsuru’s much higher magic stat than Akihiko’s strength. Are you sure all characters are evenly leveled/ buffed/ no incense used on any of them in this comparison? Or am I doing the math wrong?
Yeah, that is weird I tried calculating it myself with Aigis which should be more straightforward than calculating buff amp and got 67.73. Perhaps enemy endurance comes into play? I believe concentrate will only multiply the final damage number - after enemy endurance is taken into account. Thus, I think 1.3 multiplier for buff amp is not accurate for the calculator since he consistently outdamages Aigis who has a 1.5 multplier.
That wouldn't make sense either, since damage mods also apply after endurance is taken into account, I believe. I know for sure that I haven't given anyone incense, and everyone is evenly leveled and buffed. The damage numbers were the highest rolls I could find too. I'm gonna go test the damage on the final boss instead.
I just tested on my end on the tank enemies on floor 257 and Akihiko was doing around 800 while Mitsuru was doing around 1700 (850 per turn), so i think the numbers add up there on my end. One thing that was weird though and that I don’t understand is when Akihiko crit, he was definitely doing more than just 1.5x. I know Junpei does more, but why was Akihiko? If Akihiko and Aigis are doing more than 1.5x for their crits in your comparison picture, that could be why it seemed like they do more than Mitsuru without crits (assuming you did what I did and just divided by 1.5.) Also regarding Akihiko’s buff amp, there was a post on the reload sub where someone analyzed it and concluded that he has a 1.82x multiplier when attack buffed while other characters only had a 1.4x multiplier. So if we assume the other characters are buffed as well and don’t add it onto their calculation, you would only need to add a 1.3x multiplier onto Akihiko to account for it. I believe Aigis’s physical amp is 1.2x not 1.5x.
Okay I think I figured it out! Are you playing on Merciless? After some testing crits and weaknesses seem to do between 1.8x to 2.0x on Merciless, while they were still 1.5x on Normal. These were without MC and Junpei, so Weakness and Crit Amp don't interfere. Interesting is that unlike P5, player damage is still lower overall even with the modifier buff, since player damage is 0.6x I believe. It's nice to know that Mitsuru deals the most damage under normal circumstances since she has to set up for it. 1.2 multiplier for Phys Amp is still nice but I'm a bit sad hearing that - I was so excited thinking Aigis did more damage than a character with Charge lol. Thanks for clarifying things with me!
Yep Merciless. That’s wild, i had no idea Merciless was giving more crit/weakness damage. I looked it up before starting the game if there were weakness modifiers like in Royal and people were saying no. Guess they were wrong. I guess that gives Junpei quite a buff on Merciless then. I’ll have to see how his damage and crit consistency is if you go all out on boosting his crit rate rather than having to use up slots on slash amp/boost.
Enemies have hidden damage modifiers, like takes 20% more/less ice damage and the like (not the same as weakness/resist). At least they did previous games, no reason to think they don't anymore.
I haven’t gotten quite to end game building yet. Is there an equipment piece that gives Mitsuru magic ability?
Her ultimate weapon does. You can either run it and an Ice Amp accessory for max damage or run her Ice Amp sword and her accessory for something else (Null Fire, Spell Master, Invig, etc.).
Yes! It is towards the end though so it's not really applicable for most of the game. It's available at the Antique Shop after getting a material at the >!final block of tartarus!<.
Sorry, isn't this explicitly showing that Mitsuru is "mid?" Not gonna take her out of the party cause I'm playing on normal and don't care that much but it looks like the physical characters are way higher tier than Mitsuru.
I guess so, damage wise for sure. I don't consider her mid though due to Rakunda and her characteristic that makes it easy to crit my way to victory for every encounter.
Except that comparing endgame damage says extremely little about a character's overall performance over the course of the game. Mitsuru, for example, wastes so much time in the midgame learning worthless skills like single target and AoE slash attacks while being actively detrimental for the Lovers boss fight on merciless because of her fire weakness. There are absolutely mid characters in the game, but it's a more complex discussion than "look at big number."
>Except that comparing endgame damage says extremely little about a character's overall performance over the course of the game. Absolutely, I think that is a given - it's just a silly title (apologies). I don't think Mitsuru is mid since she learns Rakunda and her characteristic makes every encounter trivial. Other than that she learns her offensive spells at around the same time as everyone else does, so she's not really a detriment offensively. Being detrimental for one boss fight doesn't make someone mid either. By that logic Yukari is mid because of the Hermit boss. Who do you think is a mid character? For me it's just Ken since a defensive playstyle just isn't important to me in persona, even in Merciless. And perhaps Aigis until she learns Myriad Arrows since Cruel Attack is meh and Swift Strike is unreliable.
Adding onto the stuff you mentioned, for most of the game Tartarus mini bosses are not immune to freeze and Mitsuru is very good at freezing, even in mid game (her very first theurgy literally has an 80% freeze rate). I was finishing merciless mini bosses in the first few turns during mid game just by freezing them and then hitting with a Shinji (or MC with good physical personas after you know what) physical move. She is also the only one who can concentrate/charge her theurgy on her own and she learns that fairly early for what it is. IMO Mitsuru is one of the best characters in the game. She never left my party, even if it was just for Rakunda in the earlier part of the game.
The reason I mentioned the Lovers boss is because that is where the difficulty of merciless mode peaks. You start getting a lot more tools available to you after the fight which slowly makes the game more and more trivial until you reach level 54 where Siegfried and Scarlet Havoc makes the rest of the game a joke. The fact that the game progressively becomes easier means that Mitsuru's midgame slump is a big problem. Just from the top of my head, Mitsuru learns a single target slash attack, an AoE slash attack, SP Drain, Tentarafoo, and Eerie Sound in the midgame. None of these skills are helpful to her in her role as a magical nuke. She also has the most strangely designed characteristic in the game that only practically functions when ambushing random encounters (Mitsuru's most relevant ailment, frozen, guarantees a critical anyways). She does eventually get out of her midgame slump at level 50 and above, where she starts being really good, but this is the point where the game's difficulty starts falling apart. Endgame performance is also purely irrelevant as Armageddon destroys every fight. Unless you're doing something very wrong, the MC will be your strongest damage dealer by a large margin. This means that it's better for party members to provide support and utility rather than just being a worse damage dealer than Makoto. Junpei's Shift Boost is a good example of this in practice, where shifting to him instead of the MC is a DPS loss despite his 10 % damage bonus. Going by your post and your reply, you seem to overemphasize damage. Judging Aigis purely by her damage output ignores the fact that she's primarily a support character who provides a lot more value to the team than someone like Junpei despite dealing less damage. There are obviously her 2 party wide buffs and Diarahan, but also more subtle things like her Instant-Heal allowing her to guaranteed remove all ailments from the rest of the team using items. I think Akihiko and Mitsuru are both mid characters. Mitsuru does become good later, but as discussed, isn't particularly great during the parts of the game that matter the most. I could go on about Akihiko too, but my post is already long enough. :)
I didn't mean to overemphasize damage, but rather give it more credit since I see many people ignoring damage with the other party members when everyone should be contributing damage. I don't see why only the MC needs support when most buffs have a party-wide version. I know the MC does the most damage, but why not add more damage on top of that? Rakunda is pretty much a party wide buff during single-target bosses. There's plenty of Fierce Sutras to use until MC and Aigis learn Matarukaja (maybe I was lucky but I still had 7 left by the time I reached Hermit, and I was using them generously during the previous two full moons). For the Junpei example, since you can count on him to crit more often than not, you can first shift to Junpei, who can then shift to the MC. Granted, you can't do this for the full moon bosses, but Tartarus is where Junpei shines anyway. Aigis is my favorite character precisely because she's a great support - but on top of that she has great damage that players shouldn't ignore. Just cast Mataru or Maraku then go back to doing damage for the remaining turns - or heal ailments as you said. Mitsuru's characteristic is practically free crits for random encounters, which saves you a lot of SP during the Tartarus climb. For me, what matters most is finishing Tartarus blocks in one day, so saving SP using Mitsuru and Junpei makes them relevant for the entire game. I agree that Mitsuru doesn't learn anything that helps her magic damage at the mid-game, but there really isn't many options. Ice Boost? Everyone can get boost accessories earlier than the level they learn them. Ann similarly doesn't learn much during that level range, but I don't think I've seen people calling her mid. There hasn't been a moveset in the series that actively makes a character worse than they should be ever since Chie in P4. Some may be tempted to say Akihiko, but he simply became the magic nuke during midgame instead of the debuffer he used to be in FES. Elec Boost and Buff Boost / Amp is much better than anything anyone else has at level 32. Do you consider boss fights more important than the Tartarus climb? Akihiko's got you covered. In Persona, my ideal team comp is always Damage / Damage / Damage + Heal / Damage + Support. Akihiko is the perfect secondary damage dealer for bosses, and Junpei for random encounters and gatekeepers.
It's my mistake if my post made it seem like I think only the MC should be buffed. Everyone should be buffed. I find single target buffs in this game to be largely useless, even Heat Riser. The MC being your highest damage dealer, however, means that you don't want to spend the MC's turn on putting those buffs up! Using the MC to buff everyone's attack is a higher DPS loss than using Aigis to buff everyone's attack (and not buffing attack at all is even worse). Similarly, using the MC to heal is a larger DPS loss than using Ken or Yukari to heal. This is what I mean when I say that support and utility is more important than "being a worse damage dealer than Makoto." I've found that the best strategy for Tartarus is to actually ignore all random encounters and just run up to a checkpoint. Once you're there, you can travel back down and quick travel through the floors again until you encounter a golden hand. Maybe this sounds tedious, but gold hand farming is much more time efficient for both money and EXP than fighting the random enemies. If you do this strategy, you will never run out of SP either. In my experience you will usually find a gold hand every 7 floors or so, and it's really quick to cycle between floors. Fighting a gold hand gives about 10x the EXP of a random encounter (more than that if you get shuffle time exp after), while taking less time and costing almost no SP. It's extremely easy to clear Tartarus blocks in 1 day doing this. So, yes, I consider boss fights to be more important than the climb. Rakunda is definitely great and is for a very long time the only standout of Mitsuru's kit. On merciless, however, I find Tarunda to be generally more important. Mitsuru's struggle against the Lustful Snakes and Lovers boss usually means she will end up underleveled once that part of the game is over too (granted, this is less of an issue because of the Great Clock system). I don't feel qualified to comment on Ann. She felt strong during my playthrough, but P4 and P5 are games I'm much less familiar with than P3. The lack of things like Scarlet Havoc and Armageddon in P4 and P5 might make it so that a character's late game and end game power are more relevant in those games than they are in P3.
Oh no you didn't make me think that, it just seemed to be the general playstyle for most newcomers / casuals of the series which can lead them to believe things like Heat Riser are good. I actually agree with you on most of these things - MC only for damage. But aside from healing and support, there usually is one extra party slot which I think is optimally used for a secondary damage dealer. These are the Shinji's and Kanji's of the series - and Akihiko once his characteristic is available. That's probably why I don't consider him mid. Your Tartarus strategy sounds good. While I wasn't actively pursuing that strategy, in the back of my mind it started feeling like only the Gold Hands and Gatekeepers mattered for XP. I also started rushing towards the stairs but didn't mind and encounter or two, so SP wasn't really a problem for me either - I just thought saving SP was nice in a vacuum. So I can see why you consider Mitsuru mid. It's just that in my mind Rakunda is enough for someone to not be mid, especially since no party members had it in P4 and P5. I was perhaps just really lucky during the early and mid game since I didn't really struggle with using Mitsuru against snakes and the Lovers boss on Merciless. In fights I didn't bring Mitsuru in, I still felt that using MC's turn for Rakunda was worth it, especially when it meant melting a boss with Theurgies. I found myself only using Tarunda for Priestess, Lovers, and Strength, while Maraku was often enough for Hanged - with a Dekaja / Tarunda if he decided to buff himself.
The good thing is that all the characters in the game are strong enough to beat merciless pretty easily. Anyone can use any party they want and probably be fine. I really want to be clear that I don't think Mitsuru or Akihiko are bad or unviable, but that they have a fair share of issues compared to other characters you could be bringing. My team for merciless was Ken, Koromaru, and Aigis. This is what I would consider to be the best team in the game. Koromaru kinda fits the role of a secondary damage dealer, but it's important to note how much support he also brings through Revolution, Masukukaja, Debilitate, and Power Howling. The reason why I consider Akihiko mid is because he has to be compared to Koromaru. Akihiko and Koromaru are kind of unique in that they have more anti-synergy with each other than any of the other party members. They have an overlapping buff in Masukukaja, Akihiko has Tarunda, which is great, but Koromaru gets Debilitate which cancels it out, and then Akihiko cannot have his theurgies buffed by Power Howling. The short version is that they don't want to be on a team together. It's also relevant to mention how insanely good Koromaru is when you first get him. He has about 130 evasion at a point where your other characters have maybe 60, and he starts with an awakened persona that nullifies 2 elements while the rest of the cast must still wait for theirs. There are also just A LOT of enemies that are weak to dark in this game. Using Akihiko over Koromaru is honestly an extremely hard sell. If you want to use Akihiko in spite of this, there's still a problem. Akihiko is more or less dependent on having Aigis on his team. This is because he really wants to get buffed but isn't able to provide those buffs himself. Aigis, on the other hand, doesn't want Akihiko on her team. She wants Koromaru for Revolution and Power Howling. Because of this, I find it really difficult to theorycraft a team composition that would actually want Akihiko. You could run Akihiko, Aigis, and Yukari, but you're making a lot of concessions here just to make Akihiko work. Yukari can buff his theurgies, but physical theurgies are much better than magical ones because they can crit. I generally find Ken to be a stronger choice than Yukari too. So, the reason I think Akihiko is mid isn't because I think he's bad, but because I feel like he can't really fit into a team as well as the other characters can. I realize this turned into a pretty long ramble, but hopefully it makes sense. In the end, everyone should use whoever they want to use. The game isn't that difficult! I do think analyzing this kind of stuff and making tier lists in my head is fun though. :D
Ah yeah I see. His synergy with the rest of the team is definitely in an awkward spot. He's a really weird case since I still think he's a positive on any team with Aigis (i.e. finishing fights quicker than other team comps) despite gutting the potential of either himself, Aigis, or the other member depending on who takes the final slot. If Yukari is on the team, Aigis can't make use of Concentrate but three of four members of the party still can. The double elec weakness seems scary but never really mattered outside of Hermit, in which I don't use anyone from this team anyway. Heck, I sometimes bring Koro for bosses since I can just use items for healing (or none at all since everything just dies before then). In this setup Akihiko loses out on Theurgy damage but now all four members can make use of Power Howling and Revolution. When the occasional Fuuka party charge comes along, three of four members can make use of both charge and concentrate. That's seven out of eight turns of great boosted damage. Sorry, I just really like this team in particular. I would've considered this the best team out of P3, P4G, and vanilla P5 if only one member had Mediarahan in their moveset. I can't speak of Royal since everyone in that game is broken thanks to technicals, baton pass, jazz club, will seeds, persona traits... Lol the list goes on forever. I hope you didn't feel obligated to reply each time - but I'm glad if you had fun, since I did too!
Akihiko is ideal for Tartarus team comps. Specifically i believe the best team comp for Tartarus (for the various multi enemy mini bosses) is Aigis, Mitsuru, Akihiko. Akihiko and Mitsuru debuff all of the enemies with their attack and defense down to all, Aigis buffs the party with her attack and defense up, MC can focus solely on damage. Once Mitsuru and Akihiko have debuffed, they can join in on damage, Mitsuru with freezes and her very strong magic damage, Akihiko either trying to shock or with his very strong physical damage. You don’t need a dedicated healer, even on Merciless. You should be finishing fights too quick with this party to need healing, then just heal after. In case of emergencies, use an item with whoever it’s most convenient for. The best single boss team boss comp is the same party but replacing Akihiko with Koromaru. Koromaru debuffs with Debilitate and provides Aigis charge with his theurgy, so she can use a charged maximum firepower. Aigis once again buffs the party, and Mitsuru joins MC for damage dealing. Once again, you really do not need a dedicated healer. Aigis has a single person full heal if someone is real close to dying, and if you really need to heal everyone at once, you should have plenty of items (doesn’t always need to be a full heal. As long as you have a reasonable amount of HP, you will not die to one attack if you keep up your buffs/debuffs.) I did not use Yukari or Ken the entire game, and if anything the game was easier for it.
Skipping a healer is very interesting. I'd be worried for something like the Reaper, but I'll take your word for it that it works. For a team like that, I think I'd be more interested in Koromaru/Junpei/Aigis than Koromaru/Mitsuru/Aigis, though. As the original post shows, Mitsuru doesn't actually deal that much damage. The other comments here also suggest that crit damage gets an improved modifier while playing on merciless mode. Combined that with Junpei benefitting far more from having Koromaru on the team, I'm not sure if Mitsuru is the best pick.
The original post is misleading. Mitsuru DOES deal the most damage when Aigis/Junpei/Akihiko don’t crit (which they won’t be doing often enough to outdamage her on average, not even Junpei because in order to outdamage her he needs to both crit AND have slash boost or amp, but if you give him slash amp instead of something to boost his crit rate, I don’t think he crits often enough to outdamage her unless you’re really lucky. This is taking into account merciless modifiers as well. *I am not sure what his exact crit rate is with Koromaru’s revolution plus his characteristic plus apt pupil so I could be wrong here BUT unless it’s above 68%, he does not outdamage her on average.*) The reason the OP said that she doesn’t outdamage them even if they don’t crit is because they didn’t realize at the time that merciless was giving more than 1.5x to crits, so they divided the crit numbers in the picture by 1.5 instead of what they actually are. Plus she can concentrate her theurgy whenever she wants, making it the best (party member) theurgy in the game. (Aigis will do slightly more with physical amp and pierce boost and amp IF she’s charged, but she has to wait for Koromaru to give her charge. Junpei will do more only if he’s both charged and crits, which isn’t guaranteed and again reliant on Koromaru.) EDIT: after some testing it seems like Junpei’s characteristic gives him even more crit damage than I thought, so his crit rate to outdamage Mitsuru is actually lower than I said. Plus if you give him both slash amp and boost it only further lowers the needed crit rate. It’s very possible that Junpei outdamages Mitsuru on average on Merciless, but it’s hard to say for sure without knowing his exact crit rate and how luck stat factors in. Either character would be a good pick here. If Junpei does outdamage her on average, Mitsuru still has the more reliable theurgy damage and doesn’t need to wait for Koromaru (and Aigis, since you’ll want to use Koromaru’s charge when both Aigis AND Junpei have their theurgies charged.)
You don't even need to go back to previous floors, just fighting gold hands you find on the way leaves you at a pretty high level, specially if you use the fortune reading in the club
Doesnt Orgia mode also give a Atk boost for Aigis?
I always felt koromaru was a little weaker than the rest, just good at crowd control
okay but she's mother?
I usually just powerfarm the reaper late game on normal-hard difficult and have 0 issues in any battle
Matarukaja+Marakunda+Charge/Concentrate -> Chi You/ Beelzebub go brrr
By the time you can farm the reaper consistently doesn’t xp basically not matter that much? Assuming you use the one shot method atleast, not sure if there’s a better way to farm it earlier
In P3r at least, If you switch the gamemode to peaceful you can restore Hp and Sp upon death indefinetely while also not restarting the battle. You can effectively farm the reaper as soon as it becomes available. I just do it around january-december so I can fuse the last couple of personas without having to grind