All Persona 5 Tactica skills, ranked

It didn’t take me long to realize that getting the right balance of skills in my team was one of the keys to success in Persona 5 Tactica. Using them while progressing through the campaign I’ve slowly ranked them, the results of which you’ll find below. 

While each character has an inherent skill, you can expand their repertoires by using Personas, which themselves are interchangeable from mission to mission. This means that, as long as you create a solid set of Personas, you can always choose your favorite blend of skills. But which to choose?

Best skills in Persona 5 Tactica

It’s important to note that while I’ve numbered this list in order, from worst to best, these are purely my opinions. Most missions and quests in Persona 5 Tactica can be completed in a number of ways and you should put your team together in a way that suits your playstyle. Take these as a guideline, experiment as much as you can, and you won’t go far wrong. 

All skills will damage the target to a certain degree, as well as apply their unique ability. Where descriptions say target, this translates to targets if you're using an area effect version of the skill. Note I’m ranking these skills as if they’re all on an even footing in terms of targets being affected, so a large area effect skill doing heavy damage is almost always going to trump a single target skill doing light damage.

10. Dizzy

Target will do random moves for 1 turn

A random move is rarely going to be useful and the target can still attack afterwards. Where’s the joy or usefulness in that? Unless you don’t want to be chased, I can see little use for this skill. Especially as they may chase you by accident anyway…

9. Shock

Ryuji’s main skill: Stuns target for 1 turn

There’s a joy to the simplicity of this skill, especially as you can keep damaging a target after hitting it with Shock and it’ll still be stuck. This is great for bigger boss-style melee units, so use it versus those. But otherwise, I find it of limited value when put up against the competition. 

8. Hypno

Haru’s main skill: The target walks towards you in a trance

The ultimate in niche skills as far as Persona 5 Tactica is concerned. Hypno pulls a target towards you, around obstacles, which can be useful to get them out of cover. However, lots of other skills do this with more useful or fun side effects.

7. Despair

Joker’s main skill: Steals the movement of the target for 1 turn

This is quite a situational skill, as it not only stops a target moving next turn but also gives you their movement points next turn. This stacks, so area effect usage can give you a massive turn. However, how often do you need a huge move? Stopping an enemy in its tracks is often useful, but with so many ranged units in the game, it has limited use.

Related: Quietly Storming the Castle guide (Persona 5 Tactica)

6. Sweep

Mona’s main skill: Blows target away (including over obstacles)

This is a great skill for advanced players or in certain specific situations. It basically gives you a ranged version of your melee attack skill. However, while sometimes valuable, you need to angle it right to make it work well and it often adds no real benefit. A favorite as a backup skill but not as a primary.

5. Burn

Ann’s main skill: Knock’s target back and does additional burn damage for 1 turn

Knockback is situationally useful but can usually be achieved by a melee attack. Burn for a turn is useful if you use abilities that do extra damage versus targets with ailments but again, as it only lasts one turn, it is quite tough to get it to synchronize. As a package of OK effects though, Burn is a great backup skill to have on Personas. 

4. Sleep

The target will take no actions for 2 turns. They will wake if they take damage

What’s better than Freezing a unit for one turn? Masking it sleep for two turns, that’s what. However, with Sleep the target will regain HP and SP at the end of each turn and will still wake up if damaged. This makes the skill more situational, as you only want to Sleep undamaged units. And how often do you need to keep the crowd controlled for multiple turns? This makes it a little niche, however powerful it may be. 

3. Forget

Erina’s main skill: The target will not attack for 1 turn

Making a target not be able to attack you for a round is invariably useful, so I always want this skill in my arsenal for a battle. Sure, the target will still move into cover, but if it’s not trying to take my head off, that’s always a good thing.  

2. Vortex

Makoto’s main skill: Pulls the target towards the skill user

While I often complain about situational skills, Vortex is too much fun not to have around. It pulls all nearby (about two spaces) enemies towards the target, damaging them all. This can be devastating because pulling your enemies closer makes your other area effect attacks even more valuable. It’s a little tricky to use well, but boy is it effective when you do.

1. Freeze

Yusuke’s main skill: Target cannot move or act for 1 turn unless they take damage

Once the enemies start piling up, a bit of crowd control can usually come in handy. The same is true if you’re in a hurry-up scenario, needing to get from A to B in a set number of turns. The fact the targets can take no action is awesome, as they can’t shoot you, making this a go-to skill for me. 

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