Persona Collab Review

Persona follows the recent collab trends of “niche/useless 5 stars and good 6 stars”. For typical players this machine won’t be worth more than a roll or two, since most of the 5 stars are of questionable value. The 6 star lineup has a interesting leader and two good subs, but nothing metagame defining like Edward or Yusuke in their respective collabs.

The farmables are pretty interesting though, be sure to make some skill cards and king frost capes , including 3 extra skill cards to get Morgana from the trading post.

Mitsuru Kirijo

Mitsuru is a double devil killer sub with the ability to use latent devil killers. Her damage is higher than Mito and Shazel due to higher base attack, but Shazel’s ability to stack other killer latents generally put him on top damage wise. That said, Mitsuru is Blue and has an SBR, which eases up team building in solo and 3p modes.

Her active delays by 1 turn and adds a 5 turn heart skyfall. The skyfall effect can be chained with 2 Mitsuru on the team, but overall it is a low impact active.

Aigis

Aigis’s 20 true damage x 5 times active is another DMeta Tama solution. She can be used as a multi target button against tamadras and such, but her animation is slower than regular all target buttons. The other effect of the active is generation of 5 random light orbs. This is helpful for teams that uses only light orbs but can mess up activation of multi-color teams and it is not predictable enough for swipe teams.

Yosuke Hanamura

The active is a 1 turn 3.5x green burst + orb unlock. Not too bad for tough, board locking spawns like Dark Metatron but times when you need both effects at once is rare and it’s only 1 turn.

Kuma

Kuma is basically the second coming of Baggi Cat , his 25% shield lasts for 9 turns while his CD is 11, for a total ~80% uptime when used as a sub. It’s too bad that Kuma is a terrible as an actual sub, but at least he brings some skill boosts and time extends.

Makoto Niijima

She’s a double orb changer that creates fire and water and clears away hazards. It’s decent for a fire/water leader like Jhoira but the CD is longer than Urd who also creates fire and water, clears away hazards, and puts hearts on the board too.

She’s also a x80 single target fire nuke, but there are many nukes that do more damage (even to green targets).

Goro Akechi

Goro is the first 5% true gravity in the game and he has some cheesing applications where he can slip under the damage void while something stronger cannot, for example one can bypass Ena’s “beat 8 combo shield or die” moveset without comboing by using a Goro inherit to damage her. Gravity aside he’s also a blue to light orb changer.

Makoto Yuki

As a leader, Yuki has a multiplier identical to Rikuu but with different activation requirements. Instead of any 5 colors, Yuki’s lead skill requires 3 specific colors (); instead of 3x ATK/RCV to dragons, Yuki needs to do 6 combos. He also lacks Rikuu’s built-in time extend, making awoken binds more difficult to stall out. Since it’s desirable to run all attributes for skill charge, a Yuki team isn’t necessarily composed of all blue, light, or red main attribute subs. Even completely off color subs like Ragnarok Dragon can work.

Yuki is also a fairly good sub in combo and rainbow teams due to double 7c, balanced typing, useful active, and skill charge. His active is essentially Raijin but 13 CD thanks to a (mostly useless) nuke component. It’s simple but very practical as it unlocks the board, clears hazards, and guarantees any color activation needed. 13 CD is also relatively low for a skill charge sub, making him a good inherit base for long CD actives. Keep in mind that Yuki is just an average 7c sub with mediocre stats if you don’t take advantage of his skill charge.

Farming wise a fire attribute nuke based on the team’s total water attack isn’t particularly sought after right now, but it could change if a strong water multiboost base is released.

Yu Narukami

Yu is the first card to have 2 VDP and deals 6.25x damage when making a box instead of the usual 2.5x, great for farming situations where 7c or TPA takes too much effort. Balanced typing on a VDP sub is very desirable for the latent killer flexibility. That said, a 3×3 box is too orb hungry to activate on random boards, so Yu effectively does 1x damage when not making a box, thus he’s not as generally usable when compared VDP subs with double 7c or killers. Aside from VDP Yu also provide some team support in form of heart OEs, though his base RCV is not high enough to make him notable as a dedicated RCV stick on his own.

His leader skill is far more interesting, 4/100/1 multiplier combined with heart OEs on both leads grants great tankiness and decent damage potential. Yu plays similar to LHeradra as tanky 4x HP 1x RCV leaders that need to blob lights for activation. While he needs 6 lights instead of Lhera’s 5, Yu is much more flexible as he has no typing restrictions, isn’t limited to matching exactly 5 orbs, doesn’t need enhanced orbs, has a SBR, can use VDP, and brings his own heart OEs to patch up the 1x RCV. Although Yu has a blob/row leader skill, he can make use of 7c subs like Ideal without too much difficulty thanks to built-in +2s, which also helps when team is awoken bound.

Yu’s active is defense void plus random spawn of 8 light orbs, it’s a reasonably reliable way to get enough orbs for his leader skill & VDP, and bypass enemy defense at the same time.

Ren Amamiya

Ren’s leader skill requires 3 colors and 2 heart combos for a decent but not exceptional 225x. His shield being tied to having 6 hearts orbs on the board makes it difficult to stay alive.

Ren’s active is what makes him standout, especially in a NA context. He has one of the 4 full awoken bind clear active in the game, the other three being Sakura from Shonen Sunday (which NA will never get), the not inheritable Odindra , and Jhoira from MTG. The side effect of 1 turn delay is only useful when the enemy lacks a status shield, but this does include delaying Metatrons in Alt Arena.

As a sub Ren is a strong addition to the growing pool of Dark FUA subs. Ren’s awakening lineup almost identical to Dark Cotton save for an extra TE. Balanced typing gives him flexible killer selection and the ability to cover FUA and awoken bind clear without sacrificing much damage is useful even if his weighted stats aren’t the best.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth is seemingly designed to be a tanky 5 orb lead, but her middling multiplier and mediocre awakenings doesn’t give her any particular niche. 3 LAtk gives her similar output as 3 TPA but neither are as strong as 7c. A cloud resist that can be used in coop is cool but cloud mechanics can usually be worked around with stalling or more time extends, you can get cloud resist from Jin or Jhoira’s assist evo .

Her active is a bit more unique, being the first color absorb void active that does not mess with the board. There are likely some farming scenarios where this is desired, but teams can usually deal with a bad board from other color absorb voids with an additional board change. She won’t stay unique for long though, as a ranking on JP rewarded Sleipnir , who is also a color absorb void active that does not mess with the board. Aside from color absorb void, the active is also a full heal + bind clear active similar to Base Ceres /Amaterasu .

Note: The equips have long cooldowns when unskilled, very nice when you only want the awakenings.

Dia

The active is similar to Riza as both are single target true damage combined with 3 turns of awoken bind clear. It can be used against DMeta Tama , but 20 damage is not quite enough to kill some variants, forcing you to ping down the rest.

Dia provides 2 autoheals when inherited, similar to Grodin Equip who also gives that plus some extra stats and an arguably more useful active. Dia is farmable though, so it may be nice to stack several of these for cheesing strategies. There was a JP ranking dungeon where you are limited to 10000 HP with RCV disabled, and having autoheal assists on the team was vital for success.

Bufu

This is the first inheritable board lock active, it’s useful for stopping spinners and preventing enemy orb changes (until you match away the locked orbs at least). It also clears away hazards.

Bufu provides 2 blue rows, which is useful for meeting damage thresholds on blue farming teams and for increasing Ibaraki ‘s power. If you care about blue farming and don’t have many Legiana Equips , be sure to grab several.

Agidyne

The active adds +1c for 3 turns and provide 3 turns of Jammer skyfall. 3 turns of +1c is useful for maintaining consistent damage on combo leaders and for dealing with consecutive combo shields in some farming builds but ultimately it’s a low impact effect compared to +2c or +3c. Jammer skyfall provides a way to remove enemy 99 turn jammer or poison skyfalls. Dark Fenrir can do the same at a much lower CD, but Agidyne is free.

Agidyne adds 20% additional chance to resist board blind and/or poisons . It’s a situational equip and there are better options from the REM and MH collab like Sasuke Equip or Rathian Equip for poison resist and Chiyome Equip , Hanzo Equip , or Narga Equip for blind resist.

King Frost Cape

The active voids dark attribute damage for a turn and adds 2 turns of full auto heal. Both effects are fairly niche since dark attribute damage void is spawn dependent and auto heal buff cannot instantly activate HP conditional skills like Zeus Verse .

The ability to get 10% resist against a color that has a matching color changer opens up cheesing possibilities, read more about it here. You can also use King Frost Cape to add a bind clear to something unbindable and create a cleric sub, though a mere 3 turns from heart row isn’t always enough.

Morgana

Morgana has mediocre stats and an awkward active, but he can provide a good amount of RCV through his 2x heart OEs and 2x team RCV awakenings. While his leader skill is really orb hungry for a low multiplier, he’s one of the few farmable 7×6 leaders available. These two traits give him an interesting use on Rushana , where he can function as both a RCV source and the 7×6 swap in leader.

The active can be anything between a 300x rocket launcher or a 50x pea shooter depending on your luck. He is inheritable and hits all targets, so if you have way more multiboost bases than inheritable nukes then getting multiple Morgana might be worthwhile. The other half of his active is random generation of 5 greens, which can be combined with the nuke aspect for fun results.

Justine & Caroline

The twins have the only 9 color board changer in the game, creating . You could combine this active with a changer like Bufu to guarantee 12 orbs of the desired color and rainbow activation, but that requires subbing the twins directly as they are uninheritable. 20% gravity is alright, but you should just make a Hera or Zera .

DO I ROLL?

Unless you intend on completing this machine out of love for the Persona franchise, I wouldn’t bother with more than one or two rolls.

DO I TRADE?

As usual these 4 GFE trades are luxury, none of them does anything revolutionary but if you have some unwanted GFEs it might be worth.

Ren Amamiya is a great sub and situationally better/more fitting than Odindra , plus inheritable full awoken bind is rare in general.

Yu Narukami can clear current endgame content with high consistency, but note that NA does not have access to Aladdin , one of his best subs. See Cate’s Alt Arena guide for some sample teams.

Yuki is a nice sub for rainbow teams and Elizabeth fills some niches, but I don’t think they are worth trading 4 GFEs for.

[speech name=aFireBlaze]I wouldn’t be rolling a couple of packs in this collab if I was not a fanboy.
There’s really not much worth aside from a few exceptions for farming, and even then they still prove niche. The real prize are the farmable equips in this dungeon.[/speech]