Persona 5 Strikers: Tips, Merciless Pointers and Complete Moveset Breakdowns

Just got the game, gimme a quick rundown on what I'm fucking up, because the Bicorns are pushing my shit in on Easy and I want to otherwise figure things out myself where I can

• Back off a bit, damage is the exact same 5m away as it is 5cm away. Your hitbox is deceptively big, about 1.5x what's shown with the visual for most characters, and with no falloff. Furthermore, most combos project damage at a general range/ in a triangle, rather than directly in front of the character (some with a blind spot) - so by hugging you're actually less accurate.
• Use SP more liberally. This isn't the RPG Persona 5 where you're saving SP for bosses because you're trying to clear the Palace in 1 day with no recovery - this is Musou Persona, where you've got more than enough time and recovery options without using any consumables. Using 1 Mabufu for 10 SP to end a normal fight in a 1-2 All out Attacks is cheaper than one ally getting unlucky, and you needing to spend 24 SP for a Recarm to heal them before your party implodes. You get liberal in-palace SP recovery with checkpoints, don't sweat it.
• Stop jumping around, most of your combo damage is going to be grounded; aerial combos are situational at best and suicidal for no real payoff at worst. If you're using it as a 'survival method', it's actually worse than the ground, given you can't chain dodges, can't change your direction, don't have iframes, and most attacks catch you in the air anyways.
• If you're on PC and can turn on native anti-aliasing during cutscenes; do it. The engine is designed for a distant camera musou (which basically requires no anti-aliasing); hence why it's nonexistant in close up cutscenes... which most of the start of the game is, and in a setting / with assets not designed for no anti-aliasing at that (unlike the rest of the game). It's why the VN background scenes in Shibuya look like shit; so turning it on natively will make it just like you remember from P5. Though, you'll probably want to turn it off during gameplay; because unless you've got a good rig, it's off by default for a reason (it will chew through memory more than an Archbishop of Glutton and make vital minor details and movements blurred). Another, less efficient workaround is setting it to a resolution higher than your display can show.
• Play with Japanese audio. Ah, uh no, don't backchat me, just do it. Always play games in their native development language (STALKER in Russian etc). If you haven't been doing it up to this point, you can start now. Also the >American VA's are....just dogshit cringey anime-cute voice. It's definitely not a Geralt of Rivia thing where the two VA's are good enough in either version, the experience it severely diminshed with English audio.
• Yes, the game does grow on you. It's a semi-slow start, but finish the first dungeon before making a judgement. Don't judge a road trip unil you're on the road.

Spoilers are minimal before the line in the contents and explicit after it. If you want to play blind (which you always should), you have been warned.

[Note: I started writing the Merciless Guide (and this doc in general) the after I already beat the game on Merciless, because I felt it deserved one (since everywhere was just faggot shitters saying the equivalent of "just cheese it bro haha" - and you'll be missing on a really solid challenge if you listen to them). I got through a little bit as I did it in combination with my third playthrough, but combined with the burnout from beating the game twice already, doing actual testing on all the kits and this thing being in 6 digits of characters of effort, I just never got around to finishing it.]

[I might finish it up later depending on if I've got the time / if I've got it in me; but for now I figured it'd better to post something to help (You), rather than nothing. Everything here is as accurate as reasonably possible and should greatly help you regardless]

[Enjoy!]

Contents

Beginner / Earlygame tips

• Use checkpoints as free refreshes, the only downside is losing Showtime, in which case just waste it on some mob enemies early in the dungeon for Exp.
• A given Dungeon Boss's weaknesses are hinted in the weapons that chests drop in the dungeon and the party character the boss's mini-arc focuses on.
• Most status ailments are ignorable; and are mostly just some flavour of 'can't do exactly what you want for a while'. Likewise, while Technical damage is good if the opportunity presents, it's not something you really should be actively pursuing, with how niche the requirements usually are. The sole exception to this rule is Brainwash if applied to you. Brainwash can and will wipe teams - keep on top of it, and have plenty of consumables at hand for it.
• The only accessories Futaba can really use are the Health up ones and the various damage resist ones.
• Later / Stronger enemies have tougher shields. While an earlygame Garu can break a Jack o Lantern's shield; in the lategame it'll only crack it a bit vs a Boss Naga. If you want to keep a weak version in earlygame for trashmobs while there's nothing really competing for the 8 Skill slots like you did in P5, fine - but just don't ever use it vs bosses or harder enemies; in this game the SP economy is better using the more expensive attacks that actually break through the shield over tickling them.
• Out of SP, and all teammates are dead? Mash dodge and slash, and pray you can kill the enemy before it kills you. Your goal is to maximise your iframes, while dealing some damage.
• Food/Snacks are much more important compared to P5, due to the lack of Medicine. Try to buy out all the hubs, clean out the grocerie section whenever you're in the shop, and use the Healing skills for most of the game; to save up consumables for bosses/minibosses. SP is limited on the scope of checkpoints, Consumables are limited on the scope of the full game.
• You don't need new Weapons for every Palace. Use the shit you get, save up for consumables otherwise, only spend if you're trailing behind on a character you want to use a lot. Armours are much rarer on the other hand, and the better choice on where to spend your money in terms of shit that you won't get for free.
• Physical and Gun skills are something you should avoid unless you have a reason, on all difficulties. Neutral physical/gun damage is much more reliable, safer, still has decent range and doesn't come with the downside of loaning your health away for a while. Not to say ignore them entirely (they do have situational use); but compared to Elemental skills, Healing or passives you can slot in, they're simply outclassed.
• 1more Attacks are great - they give generous iframes, instantly cure any ailment, on top of being an easy way to maintain the Showtime Up buff.

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Advanced / Lategame tips

• The attacks you bind to your Persona are usully the ones that will be used in combos automatically. If you bind Matarunda to Carmen; then the Tarunda she gets in her autocombo will be also get upgraded to Matarunda, and so on. Furthermore, the actual attacks themselves will be upgraded only to the highest level of attack you have - going back to Carmen, if you only have Maragi and Maragion (Light Wide and Medium Wide), then the attack in her combo will be Agilao (Medium Short), because the highest level equipped is the Medium damage variant. You cannot change the Persona skills set to a combo (for example, you can't change Tarunda to Dekaja), but it's vital you have the highest level of a given chain Persona attack equipped to a character. Not equipping a given type of skill will otherwise automatically set it to the lowest level.
• Recarm is the most valuable skill in the game - Revival Pills are limited and expensive, while Samarecarm is double the price for what is ultimately just a cheaper healing skill on top of the revive. It's extremely important to keep all 3 allies standing, because the long term AI-controlled damage and aggro mitigation they offer is far more than any other skill can.
• You can move and roll around while retaining Ryuji's charge.
• if you cn beat le game wo/ using a singul item and wo/ jumping more then 17 times and then input the konami code b4 the final boss and give me your holografic wartortle pokemon card, then slenderman appears and reveals that the ghost of crismas future will be the antaganist of persona 6....... (and NO its NOT got anything to do with the essay homework, but if you let me copy yours i'll tell you how to unlock anns naked costume).
• The 5th Jail Final boss in your first playthrough is the hardest bar none, and the absolute shitfilter (though it doesn't particularly trail off', just never difficultyspike that high again). If you don't want to git gud; set the game to Easy - it' already tanky as fuck on it. You have the two motorbikes to work with, but they'll only land if the boss is mid-animation. Don't waste them, because the poles are useless. From there, get in it's face so it locks itself in an attack animation, use Wind damage to get a Technical (Nuke does the same damage, but Wind is cheaper), confirm the 1 More, then repeat as fast as possible. When you run out of SP, use SP items. If you run out of those, mash dash and slash, circling the boss and pray to RNGsus you did enough beforehand.
• While time is frozen with your Persona out or while switching between characters; it is instead slowed down an extreme amount while aiming a gun, and finally can be progressed nanosecond at a time by spam-switching between Joker's Personas. Each serve a different function - having a Persona out is for when you need to review a battlefield, having a Gun out allows you to perfectly dodge most attacks with far more forgiving timing, provided you read them in advance (with the tradeoff that you have almost no chance of evasion-counters) and finally spamswitching can allow you to avoid damage entirely by just slowing time down, letting the hitbox pass (since you can't take damage between switching Persona) and continue undeterred. This does however take a long time to do as you're literally cycling through frames, and is unreliable at the best of times, so treat it less of a crutch and more of a possible saving throw, now you know.
• During Minibosses/Wardens (unlike other games you may have played), focus on clearing as many trashmobs as possible. The AI for the other members will that way focus on the boss, resulting in more damage than focusing alone. Manipulating your team AI is something you can, and should do if the opportunity presents - with an easy example being that you can get everyone grouped up by Baton Passing or AoAing.
• Prioritise Enemy Gunners (the one with the laser sights), they're by far the most dangerous trashmob enemy with how much breathing room they spawn with (usually far back) and can quickly shred through healthbars if left unattended to.
• If you can, when you get an All out Attack after an SP attack (especially on the Wide range ones), don't activate it from the enemy in the middle of the group - go for the one on the edge, and you can usually get a second (or even third) one off for free if you're quick. And since AoA's are free iframes, doing this both doubles your damage from one SP move (improving your economy) / ambush, and keeps you alive longer.
• Don't forget that you aren't the only one who can damage enemies - there are very much times when you'll want to focus on just avoiding damage. If the enemy has extreme aggro on the player character and uses a lot of AoE attacks, just stay away and pull attacks away to keep the others safe. The AI teammates are more than capable of doing damage for you - in these scenarios, ideally you should play the weakest character against a given enemy at the time, so the AI has access to the character who can target the critical weakness.
• For Boss All out Attacks, you can usually delay them a bit to get more free damage in. The boss will only recover when all it's shields refill, and you can instantly cut to All out Attack as long as it's available. Don't get too greedy though, or you WILL miss it.
• If there's a 1more available, you can switch during the recovery of longer period attacks to maintain output without having to wait for them to complete. A good example would be 1more switching while Yusuke's combo-up buff attack executes - granting the buff with no downtime.

Bond Skill Priority

Bond Level Maxes at 99 however you can have all non-top row skills by ~50 which is your functional Max-Level. Some of the chains are progression-locked, it's up to you if you want to save up points for when they unlock themselves.
You can grind BOND for free by re-entering areas and repeating the 4-leaf-clovers, Sign-on-the-Beach or the Billiken Statue in each of their respective locations when you find them; though you really don't need to unless you're just doing it to get a final burst of BOND exp to push into a new level.
Finally, since I couldn't find anywhere online that listed them, I tested each of them out, and calculated / estimated roughly what each level seems to give from the numbers and related skills, given lots seem to have hidden calculations or a slight RNG element to it. YHVH knows how many fuckin >game journos and >wikia editors and not a single one of them could be bothered to run the numbers to scrape the code, lazy bastards. Aren't you glad you have your old pal Anon?

As for what you want and what each does and roughly when they unlock (ignoring timegated caps);

• Obvious must-take-when-available tier
  • Bondmaker (110% / 120% / 130% / 140% / 150% BOND exp)
  • Jokers Wild (110% / 120% / 130% / 140% / 150% / 160% / 170% / 180% / 190% / 200% Mask Droprate; aka Persona Point Income)
  • Oracle Recovery (10 HP + 2SP / 20HP + 4SP / 30 HP + 6SP per Ambush win)
  • Ambusher (20% HP / 40% HP / 60% HP recovered per Ambush initiate - Only available after passive gameplay, 1st Jail)
  • Spirit Striker (+1 SP / +2 SP / +3 SP after 1More's and AoA's - Only available after 6th boss)
• Strong picks
  • Pass Appeal (130% / 160% / 190% Showtime Gauge Buff after every Baton Pass)
  • Metaverse Medic (+30% / +60% / +90% HP healed recovered on top of every healing item - applies to Rescue Pills too, making the 50% ones functionally into 95% resurrections)
  • Safecracker (Allows for Lv1 / Lv2 / Lv3 chests to be picked)
  • Master Chef (New Recipes every level, 5 Levels - Only available after 1st boss, levels are progression-gated)
  • Avenger (Enables Dodge Counterstrikes / Applies Flinch properties to Counterstrikes / Chance to trigger Counterstrikes on Auto-Evade - Only available after 2nd boss)
  • Proper Showman (130% / 160% / 190% Showtime Damage - Only available after 5th boss)
• Situationally above the rest, but not as strong
  • Spiritual Arts (110% / 120% / 130% / 140% / 150% Magical Persona Skill Damage, applies to default chain combos and party members - Only available after 1st boss)
  • Supportive Arts (110% / 120% / 130% / 140% / 150% Party Buff / Enemy Debuff duration - Only available after 1st boss)
  • Ammo Hoarder (150% / 200% / 250% Ammo - Only available after 3rd boss)
  • Packrat (x2 / x3 / x4 Overworld Junk pickup amount & 110% / 120% / 130% post-battle chance for Junk to drop - Pays far more than Extortionist in the long run, with the related repeatable requests - Only available after 4th boss)
• Whenever you want
  • Martial Arts (110% / 120% / 130% / 140% / 150% Physical Persona Skill Damage, applies to default chain combos and party members - Only available after 1st boss)
  • Tactical Arts (110% / 120% / 130% / 140% / 150% Status Chance - Only available after 1st boss)
  • Harisen Helper (120% / 140% / 160% chance of a Free Cleanse, provided a teammate is alive)
  • Phantom Striker (x1.5 / x2 / x2.5 Environmental Attack Damage)
  • Ammo Hoarder (x1.5 / x2 / x2.5 Ammo Count)
  • Smart Shopper (Adds 2 / 4 / 6 random deals at 60% off to the Groceries / Consumables section at the hub shop)
  • Highwayman (120% / 140% / 160% Item Drop chance, post-battle)
  • Treasure Hunter (120% / 140% / 160% Treasure Demon spawn rate increase - Only available after passive gameplay, 2nd Jail)
• Leave until Last
  • HP / Strength / Magic / Endurance / Agility / Luck Boost (+1 Stat per level, 20 times each - Too low priority earlygame as you've got high-priority utility BONDs to grab; Too meaningless at endgame as your stat cannot functionally go above the stat caps - complete waste of BOND, especially if you treat them as things to spend spare BOND on. Essentially pointdumps come endgame / NG+)
  • Extortionist (115% / 130% / 145% / 160% / 175% End-of-Battle Income - Packrat outclasses it by a long shot by endgame NG, for cheaper)

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Merciless Guide (NG+ Bonus Difficulty) - No Exploits Guide

Intro

So you've made a terrible mistake and actually played this difficulty past booting up a save in Merciless to get the achievement / trophy. And you're either too stubborn to say no, or actually want a modicum of real challenge in a 3D Persona game.

Welcome to Merciless, or in Devil May Cry terms - The Phantom Thieves Must Die.
This mode demands that you not only play the game correctly, but to the absolute fucking limits. You better have done those Thieves Challenges via stealth and not just fighting every enemy when you were in your first playthrough - because they're practice for how you'll be approaching this gamemode from a navigational aspect.
Enemies oneshot.
And I'm not talking minibosses - nearly every non-trashmob enemy in the game can, and will likely fuck you up if you let them (which is easier to let happen than it sounds). You'll have likely felt some of that when you finished the intro cutscene and got oneshot by a Jack-o-Lantern (hence why you might be here). The weakest trashmobs themselves all kill you in ~4-5 attacks, the stronger ones just as deadly as their Shadow counterparts.

There is a silver lining to this however - Merciless is more than clearable without any real grind or exploiting if you know what the fuck you're doing - it's a fucking challenge and a half, but not an exercise in tedium.
If you're an EZmode shitter, feel free to spend 8 hours creating an all-99-stats perfect 6-7 passive + 1-2 attack Metatron / Lucifer for Joker (the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to smash the cube through the circular hole, because you're too stupid to pick up the cylinder), then let your team die / use them as SP slaves and miss the point of the hardest difficulty until you hit one of the many roadblocks basically designed not to let you do that, and proceed to smash your head against a wall for another few hours - all the while not having any fun. Hey, well at least it's not hard - just boring! Or, you can listen to your old pal Anon, and he'll give you the rundown on the shit you need done.
That's not to say you don't need to prep - it's that you don't need to go out of your way to prep, and if you didn't (while sub-optimal), it's not the end of the world. And it's also not to say reading this will give you an unspoken power to just blitz the game - you still need to G I T G U D.

Core Merciless Changes / Differences

In total, here's everything that's different aside from health and damage;

• All Enemies will respawn when switching between areas of a map. Dire shadows will now also respawn when leaving the map, but not between checkpoints.
• You don't get to restart from battle any more - you'll need to load your last checkpoint upon every teamwipe.
• Ambush range from perches is decreased, enemy detection range is increased (outside of the storyline Kyoto stealth 'challenge')
• Enemies will immediately pursue you if detected, rather than pausing and looking around first. Spidermechs will instantly put you into ambushed combat upon detection.
• All major bosses have new movesets and and attack patterns, along with using some previously uncommon moves more frequently
• Incense drops are the new normal drop for defeating an enemy. Skill card droprate is greatly increased.
• Party Stats, Equipment, Bond, Compendium, Items and Money all carry over.
• All income rates are up (Exp, Bond Exp, Money).

'Setup' and Basic Elements of Mercliess

Now, onto what to actually do. It's honestly not that much, but goes a long way in making your life easier.

First of all, you'll want most Personas unlocked and fused in the compendium, all requests done and most of the non-stat BOND skills maxed out on the NG save before you enter. This should be something you should be doing anyways for completionsim, but it's more as groundwork for moving up to Merciless in this scenario. The key reason for this, is that it opens up the entire item shop (giving you invaluable consumables) and also essentially setting the groundwork for your Joker's team (no grind needed!).
Aside from planning your masks in advance, that's all the setup needed.

Next, it's imperative that you switch between your playable characters more than a schizo off it's meds. This is for one thing, and one thing only - Showtimes.
These things are your fucking lifeblood in this gamemode, as they still are essentially wave wipes - but during bosses, instantly cancel whatever attack the boss is doing at a given time (the damage they do is nice, but not as major). If you get good at charging them, you can easily fire one off per encounter and 5+ on mini/bosses. While you'll still have the major enemies to deal with, wiping out the trashmobs is invaluable to staying alive - since pretty much every enemy takes chunks out of your health bar to some extent.

While you play Merciless, you'll also come to notice that those perma-stat-buff items are much more common (Incense). This presents a conundrum - you could use them evenly split between all 8 playable characters + all 12 of Joker's Persona - but the ideal usage is quite obviously limiting it to much fewer characters, and leaving the rest in the dust. Furthermore, you'll quickly twig that Magic Incense is by far the most valuable, since it's beneficial to all Persona using elemental skills.
I'll explain using them optimally later on, but the short of long is that you neither want to focus all onto one Persona, but instead stick to one general team you like to use the most (tl;dr 1-3 Masks + 3 Thieves). Also, don't max skills out at 99 - again, see later on.

Remember when I compared this difficulty to Dante must Die? That wasn't hollow - while enemies indeed do have more health; your initial stats moving into NG+, followed by the Incense drops buffing you up further means that, provided you're not retarded, you should overall be doing more damage relative to their new health than you were in NG. This works as your tradeoff - while you can in essence shred them faster, they can much easier shred you, meaning that avoiding damage becomes a much more tantamount priority, because your output requirement is less demanding compared to NG.

Bouncing off the compendium, as previously said, there is no need whatsoever to grind out a perfect Lv99 Lucifer / Metatron with 1 attack and 7 passives - play cookie clicker if you just want to do repetitive, easy shit. An Easy difficulty NG run is unironically harder at that point (given you can't just spam Spell Master'd Amp+Boosted 99 Magic Ice Age / Divine Judgment to freezelock / instakill those starter Bicorns), which renders an already optional difficulty meaningless if you just want to play through again. You're here for a self-imposed challenge, and you're an apex shitter if you want to render that challenge null and void.

For Joker's Persona, as I said before - you do not need to 'grind' anything out.
Persona-lly, get it I went with (and recommend - not mandatory though)

1. Sarasvaati
   • The only Persona I would say is mandatory - but again, no grind needed.
   • With Mediarama on her default mid chain, she's easily the best passive healer in the game and the mask Joker should be sat on for when you're playing another Thief. Spam her Mediarama default when out of battle, and you enter every fight with a fully healed team for free, with minimal effort.
     She also has Dekaja, another amazing support skill that completely nullifies any enemy buffs on her short chain - and while she does have Matarunda on her long chain, it's too unwieldy to use reflexively. If you've got a Recarm, Regen3 or a Divine Grace skill card (all three of which you can passively get by endgame), slap the things on her (I personally drop Matarunda, since she already innately has it) and you're set for Joker sticking to sustain duty.
     Finally, she's got Ice Null, for coverage. Just a great and accessable mask.
2. Alice
   • An obvious Almighty nuke for the team - though it's not the complete focus here. Alice's strength isn't as much in her nuke-level damage and good SP economy, but more that she has Concentrate on her short default combo. Getting a Concentrate off for free from her default combo boosts every other Persona you have, to the damage needed for Merciless for their elemental coverage. Not to mention that Brain Jack + Soul Thief is literal mid-fight SP recovery for larger fights in it's own right. She pretty much patches up every hole your team ever might have, allowing you to operate Joker and whatever masks you want to run with much more ease. And again, you don't need to grind her out - though if you use some of your Persona points to boost up the ingredient Persona while making her, you can roll Debilitate (Nebiros), Brain Jack (Lilith), Soul Thief (Lilith) and Dodge Phys (Bugs); with any of the elemental coverage if you don't jive with one of the ones I'd recommend, to give her additional utility on top of what she'll learn later (Survival Trick, Spell Master etc)
3. Siegfried
   • A seemingly odd choice at first (no elemental damage wtf???!? isn't Yoshitsune better????), but he is here for a single enemy - Shadow Joker. And dear fucking YHVH you're fucked without him. To make it clear, free Heat Risers on default chain + Severe Phys will do more damage than Colossal Phys over the course of the entire (very long) fight - and Yoshitsune does not get Enduring Soul for a saving throw.
     If you don't have Siegfried, you are just not going have a good time with !Joker. While Yoshitsune seems better on paper; since you won't really be using either of them for the most part (fuck >Phys), the parts where Yoshitsune does 'better' overall are nulled out by the way Siegfried differs. You won't be using him much outside of his free Heat Risers, but after you've shredded as much damage as you can with Technical Wind attacks from !Joker; you'll be glad you have him more than any other. I mean you can still take Yoshitsune on top if you want, I'm just saying you'll really want Siegfried.
4. Fortuna / Norn
   • Only Persona in the game with access to Severe Wind damage, purely for the same reason as above; !Joker (maxing out Technical damage from the Motorbikes). Both drain Wind, both resist Elec but vary otherwise;
     Fortuna comes with less weaknesses, Vacuum Wave has a much larger range, her short chain is great grouping CC and has Concentrate on combo if convenient (though it's the long combo as oppose to Alice's much more aggressive (and safer) short combo, so defer that utility to Alice for the most part instead).
     Norn gets access to Wind Amp without fusion and an additional Bless resist, but comes with a double weakness, making her twice as unsafe.
     Overall I'd say Fortuna is the better of the two as she has more use and utility outside of the !Joker fight - but it's up to you. Don't forget you can fuse Norn into Fortuna later (with a Raja Naga), and get the Wind Amp on Fortuna that way, though that would take some time / grind.
5. (- 10.) Literally any 6 other Persona, ideally for Element Drain coverage, mainly just to fill his stock.
   • Yep, the attacks ultimately don't matter.
     If Joker can absorb any individual attack an enemy throws at him while player controlled, the guy's essentially immortal (and with how much damage each attack does, even chip elemental damage is essentially a full heal). Most importantly however, Joker's showtime gauge scales with how many Persona he has at a given time (as in, if you have more masks, you'll get more Showtimes). And wiping an entire wave on spawn-in is better for your survivability than anything else.
     Once you've planned the various Persona you want (I'm not doing ALL the work for you), just fuse whatever attacks you want into making them or stick Skill cards on them. You've already got Sarasvaati as an all-in-one supersupport, and Alice with Concentrate to set up damage, how you deal that damage is up to you now. While you look into who to take, prioritise what they get on their default combos if anything - but again, it's all preference now.
     If you want to make some nice damage dealers with maximum shieldbreak coverage, go ahead - but I want to make it clear that taking Jack-o-Lantern, Jack Frost or Mothman into Merciless isn't a strictly dumb idea, just a huge fucking meme (though you'll want to buff their Endurance, Agility and Luck quite a bit for Defence, Evasion and Critical Evades respectively). Be original for a fucking change too, rub those two brain cells you must have to be able to read the text to this point, and come up with something fun and personal for yourself. Metatron and Mithras both drain two elements; so if you even want to take your favourite Persona who doesn't drain anything, just for taking them's sake (Arsene, Succ, Lamia etc) you have the option there.
     Finally, keep all your most-used Persona near to each other - if you have to register and delete them to move them around on the list, you'll be saving yourself time later if you only have to press one button as oppose to flicking through your entire list every time you want to do something new.

Congratulations - you have now (with minimal effort) got everything you need for Joker going into Merciless. Two you'll really want all-around, Two you'll need for a specific chokepoint; Six of your own choice. It really is that straightforward.
No need for hours of grinding or buffing up stats, now it's just time to G I T G U D.
Oh, and there's also a logical reason to not grinding too, that I've been delaying specifically so speedreaders miss it - those BOND skills which inflate a given stat? They're ineffective past 99 - so once you start moving onto investing into those (once everything else is maxed out on the BOND sheet), a stat at 79 is the maximum you need it to be at, with BOND doing the rest of the work for you. A Lucifer with 79 Magic will do the same damage with a maxed out BOND skill as an Lucifer with 99 Magic. It's completely fucking redundant to grind out, and honestly the cheesers deserve to have that much time of their lives wasted. When you're using Incense, keep this in mind too.

How 2 git gud / Optimal way to play

Merciless doesn't demand you to play different - it demands to to play the way the system seems to have been intended for. You can grind your perfect faggot Persona, but again, read above, optional challenge mode is supposed to be an optional challenge. You don't go into Dante Must Die and hack infinite health and max damage onto yourself - sure, you prepare by grabbing some red orbs in the easier difficulty to carry them over - I cannot hammer this in any more it seems - the same applies here.

Tell me Anon, what's the strongest ability the player has as their disposal?
It's not being able to use BITES ZA DUSTO, and revert back in time to a previous point on death.
It's not that you can heal faster than an ancient vampire with your mid-taking-damage consumables.
It's also not the ability to switch between Persona / Thief at any time to avoid groups trying to kill you.

No, the strongest ability that player has, is that at any time, the player can go ZA WARUDO - TOKI WO TOMARE!, and just pause time. Bringing your Persona out, Switching between characters or taking your Gun out shouldn't just be a mechanical delay between a neuron firing in your brain and unga unga monkey wanna look at the damage numbers, you should be pausing time semi-regularly just to have a look at what's going on and plan your approach for a fight.
The designers of the game have surprisingly well put across the ability to treat the game like a stratified RPG, with a action / input element. Musou games are fucking chaotic when things get moving, but at all times in this game you are able to see every single named and telegraphed attack that's coming your way, along with colour coded borders as to if you should pay extra attention to something. You're able to see exactly which enemies have just spawned in, by looking at their lockon indicators. You're able to dodge with instant-activation iframes, and next to no recovery. You're able to slowly let time progress, to the level of nanoseconds if you've got the time to spare.
In short, it plays exactly like a turn based RPG if you let it. Honestly, impressive game design, with how worlds-apart the two genres are.

When I say that 'taking damage is almost always your fault', that's not me being high-and-mighty on my pedestal of got gud. There are exactly 3 general situations, in the entire gameplay system, where damage in a fight completely unavoidable;
. 1. Being caught in the air, as you're trapped in recovery frames until you land.
2. Being caught in some lingering-hitbox attacks that you fail the Perfect Counter for, or remain in after a Perfect Counter ends. Especially true for Sophia as her dashes are the shortest in the game, and thus can be caught by otherwise narrow-timing large AoE's dropped directly on her head.
3. Being ambushed.

Outside of those, there really isn't that much that can fuck you up - everything else is on (You). You have so many iframe opportunities, it's almost comical when you look back - you get iframes during a perfect counter, iframes for almost all of a dodge, iframes when switching on a teammate followup - use them!
To git gud in the initial difficulties, it just takes learning your combos to muscle memory and learning the general mechanics so you don't get caught out. Throw a few combos out, don't fuck up, heal the rest after. Simple as.
To git gud on the later difficulties - you should at least have a reason behind most of your actions, in combination with a degree of knowing what the fuck is going on at all times. Simple as.
Most of your deaths won't be because 'the enemy is too hard' or 'some RNG bullshit', it's because you got greedy and committed to a chain with far too long a recovery in a situation where it was uncalled for. It's surprisingly easy to just stay alive once you get the swing of things; Perfect Counters usually have generous input windows, auto-evades are semi-common and Rakukaja / Sukukaja each double your effect health bar with how much damage they each mitigate. The issue isn't avoiding damage, the challenge of Merciless is dealing damage while keeping safe. Get used to just harassing and harrying enemies, put "I need to keep myself alive" in your thought process BEFORE "I need to deal damage". If in a situation where you're about to die, balance the cost/benefit of using SP to get instant elemental damage off or just getting it for free in combo's after some windup. If you need breathing room to do something safer - make breathing room for yourself instead of trying to start a long-recovery chain in the middle of a crowd.

It sounds easy when written out, but the transition of mindset from 'unga' to 'holy shit everything can kill me in a few hits, lemme slow things down' is what most people need for the most part, the rest is just G I T.

Merciless Jail Threats and Challenges

Shibuya

Lot's of the 'challenge' of this area is just the whiplash from the lower difficulties, as you adjust once again to a different way of playing - though instead of RPG to Musou, now it's that your gameplay failings now have consequences. Once you recover from said whiplash of a Jack-o-Lantern oneshotting you after you could facetank the Reaper; it's a pretty smooth sailing past the boss Bicorn.
Your first real challenge is Futaba's first hacking sequence in Odowari Park. Another reality check, this time you'll come to learn that Futaba is equally as frail as you are, and she'll want constant topping off if you can't stop incoming damage. The easiest way for this is mashing out your Sarsvaati Mediarama combo. It's got the benefit of doing a small AoE at the same time, which is useful for CC to keep them off her, but not as viable damage. The later hacking sections in this Jail should be easier with how enclosed they are.
Oh, and don't forget to immediately heal your team after her hack completes, the Archangel miniboss after can catch you off guard.

Alice is the major threat of this area, and a general introduction into how different and unorthodox in approach things are really going to be for the rest of the difficulty. Why? Because she's easier with less than 4 Thieves. You've got a completely empty, open arena, with no trashmobs for this fight - and almost all of Alice's attacks are very telegraphed to pause time and watch for, those that aren't being the types which punish those who hug her body and don't intend on avoiding damage.
The biggest threat you'll have this fight, is keeping both her and your teammates at bay, because of her brainwashes. The more teammates you have, the more items you'll need to use to mitigate it, and Amrita Drops/Showers are a waste of SP / Skill slot. The obvious team would seem to be usual Joker / Ann / Haru / Morgana, but in reality cutting it down to Joker / Morgana allows you to save on healing SP, save on Brainwash mitigation, lower the chance of brainwashes landing (since there's only one AI controlled teammate), and realistically doesn't lower overall damage that much (since both Joker and Morgana will be pumping out elemental weaknesses). You don't even need to consider repositioning her, just move with the flow of the fight. Hammer her with Morganacar smashes when she's sat down, and it'll be like you always had 4 people wailing on her. Of course, you could just buy 4 of the Null Brainwash accessories and take the usual crew in, but I'd say even that's going too far.
She really isn't that hard of a fight, unless you allow her to be.

Sendai

Ango
Joker / Yusuke / Sophia / Zenkichi

Essentially immune to damage while the buff is up - stop it at all costs, as it can't be Dekaja'd. Showtime to stop the buff from completing - use Showtime items if needs be. Since you've probably never used them before until this point, the 'Small' items charge 2 bars, the 'Greatly' items increases by 4.
Easy-ish to time counters on attacks

Get rid of the Ice as fast as possible, it's borderline useless and only gets in the way of repositioning via monuments. It does grant a free Freeze, so get highest-damage single-hit Phys skill in (God's Hand from Siegfried / Sword Dance from Goemon).

Sapporo

Setup-wise, I personally use the usual Ann / Haru / Morgana for this fight, though Sophia is equally viable in place of Morgana (Ann and Haru are much more important). You'll want to lure/bully Hyodo into one of the far corners if possible - it puts you close to one radiator, and she gets caught on her tables during the charge (but don't get yourself killed over it). Only use the chandeliers both when all 3 other teammates are eaten and you need them out (such as for an AoA) - you only get 5 of the things the last you the whole fight.
For Showtimes, ideally save them for the Blizzard attacks. Dump one into her the moment it begins, switch to Ann and just dash on over to the closest generator (she's the fastest in the game, and the pause after the showtime should stall long enough). The only attack you especially need to watch out for is the Waltz, as it's a lingering hitbox that permanently surrounds her, and WILL catch you out - most dangerously if you get a Perfect Counter.
Otherwise, your main objective for this fight is just to jump on Haru and pump out those Psionado's (though that should be pretty obvious). Every shield break staggers Hyodo, so make the decision whether to burn a guaranteed shield her with an SP skill, or just to keep up the chip shield damage

Okinawa

Careful of ghosties spawning under you
First Wagie Amazon warehouse room is a fucking deathtrap
Trashmob clear challenge before boss, spam Soul Thief Brain Jacks to save on SP.
Lock Warden.

Kyoto

Yatagarasu - bring gun out to dodge pulses EZPZ
And then, finally, we get to the first real roadblock of Mercliess. Yeah, it's !Joker

Pop Bikes only when you're guaranteed to land them as they're limited, need to max out damage and follow up with Vacuum Waves to maximise free damage.
From there:
Siegfried. Default Chain Heat Riser. Default Chain Megatons.

Watch Gun telegraph. Expect to spend a few hours of your life here.

Osaka

Welcome to Hell.
Osaka is pure, unrelenting pain - in part because of the introduction of the Spidermech enemies. These cunts are certified checkpoint-reseters, in part to their extremely wide aggro range doubled up with them instantly putting you into an ambush upon detection, which as we already know, is a death sentence. This is then exacerbated by containing difficult / tanky enemies which would be a chore to face at the best of times, making already bad situations nearly unwinnable. They are. Just. Cunts.

Streets region is easy enough; there's more than enough ambush points, and nothing in particular is going to be a roadblock for you, the only thing you need to keep in mind is that you're going to want to get it all done at once - since a Spidermech spawns on top of your escape once you leave it behind. Priority is getting to the Zoo checkpoint, since that'll act as your first actual safe region.
Now as you enter Zoo region, you'll be dealing with your first mandatory spidermechs. For most of them, it's easier to just fire at them from a distance, than go for an ambush (though if you can avoid them, do). The Ganesha introduced also are something that should stop you from subbing in Makoto - which is annoying, because this phase unironically contains the final boss of the game before Demiurge.
Boss enemy Sarasvaati is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, so inhale, exhale, then let me give you some pointers. She's going to spend most of the fight keeping away, as the waves that spawn in are both tanky (Ganesha) and high damage (Naga/Valks) - and all she's going to fucking do is fire off hard-to-see, huge hitboxes at range as well as cleanse buffs / debuffs on everything, heal her entire waves and then top it of with a low-windup charge attack with another deceptive hitbox. This fight is just raw sustain, and you'll be spending most of it wiping waves of enemies with Showtimes as they come in.
Even if a spidermech spawns in because you'll be leaving the area, you're going to want to get a checkpoint refresh and save after the hacking sequence, and enter with a fresh party.
For for this fight, just focus on clearing enemies and building up showtime as much as possible. If you ignore Sarasvaati for too long, she'll begin to out-heal the damage you do to her, so the general flow should boil down to Showtime, focus damage, manually clearing a wave and repeating. Over time, it'll slowly chip away. This is not an 'easy' fight, and is equatable with !Joker. The charging water-dash attack keeps her more than dangerous at short range, and the musical attack makes her equally lethal at range. The fact you can't bring Makoto to just shred her shields (the Ganesha will just overrun you; being already tanky, threatening enemies that can survive a Showtime) or Yusuke to crit away her shields (he's far, far to stationary to not be suicidal, and his counters don't work on her as she doesn't make contact) also makes her one of the few bosses in the game where you won't be getting many AoA's off. If you give up and just use Die for Me and SP recovery spam on her, I'll call you a shitter (she's still a beatable fight, just a tediously drawn out and difficult one) - but for this one boss enemy, you wouldn't be a retarded shitter.
Cargo region
Mall region
Airport region
But, to top it all off, you get a leisurely, jarringly easy boss battle. Just hop on Makoto for one of the few times in NG+ where she's busted (it's as if she was literally designed for this boss), and figuratively/literally nuke that big tech faggot! Have fun in Osaka for a change! You deserved it for getting this far! The only thing you'll need to keep in mind mech phase are the missiles, they'll fuck you up if you get too relaxed - if you see the attack, it's a case of using the ziplines or getting wiped. His chest laser can be annoying if you don't know how to deal with it, but if you get him to fire it with his back to the wall, it's free damage. Stick under his body for the feet lasers, and Dekaja for when he uses Heat Risers if you've got the downtime. Save your Showtimes and SP for ENTER phase, where he's equally as non-threatening. All his attacks can be perfectly avoided on easy reaction for Perfect Counters, and all his threatening attacks (namely the lasers, which, while easy to dodge for you, often catches your party members) can be cancelled by using what should be the 4 Showtimes you have saved up.

Abyss

This is topped off by a boss which requires you to take a different approach. Sophia is a unique in that, your teammate AI will completely avoid attacking at all her where possible - with the exception of Zenkichi. While it's a really nice detail, this results in a boss where you'll have to have 2 characters focusing on active support, and only 2 characters actually attacking her (the character you're playing, and Zenkichi, provided you're not a moron who read that and chose not to have him on); making her a deceptively tanky, drawn out boss. Morgana and Ann should be your two other members (Healer & Attack Debuff respectively); but otherwise.... well you already know her moveset.

Knowledge

Here we are, the grand finale.
First up in your list of roadblocks is the Dominion / Kali fight

• usual strategy of Haru nado

An now, the final boss. It's the wannabe Yaldy - and while I don't know how that works (False, False God?), what I can tell you is this fight is great on Merciless. It's a pretty easy fight, but one fuckup and you're being sent back XX minutes in time to the selection phase. Yay.
It's a surprisingly simple fight otherwise. Just, don't get hit, at all.

First phase is a relative cakewalk (when it's just the one team, no split up); all the attacks are highly telegraphed and you should be sticking a bit far back so none of them hit your teammates. Make sure Joker is the only main healer on the team, you don't want Sophia or Morgana wasting their SP here. Keep in mind the forward beam attack has changed slightly so the second row is closer bunched up, to catch you out there, and that the side beams now come in from both sides (though still don't reach the back), and use Showtimes to cancel out the Damage shower attack, because it's pretty much guaranteed damage on Demiurge's end. Homing Missiles and Wings are pieces of piss to deal with. Overall, this is a phase seemingly designed to bait you into wasting your SP on, so obviously don't do that - read below for the actual intricacies, since strategy and positioning are basically the same.
Initial 'true' phase is a bit of a trick, you only need to smash one shield to trigger Futaba getting ready to call attacks, and for the 'It's useless!' shit to come into play. Just drag the damage away from the AI for this micro phase, attack immediately after the Ice shockwaves come out if you want to speed things up a bit and it'll trigger automatically with minimal resources expended.

Now the 'real' final boss. As for selections, you'll definitely want to have Morgana and Sophia head Teams 1 and 2 respectfully for what should be obvious reasons. From there, I'd say the safest possible setup on Merciless is the following - first having Ann and Makoto on Team 1, Yusuke on Team 2, then Ryuji, Zenkichi and Haru on Team 3. This setup is my go-to, since the orbs phase is the least dangerous of the lot, and Yusuke's crits-based gameply allows him to ignore the intended element-shield gimmick of the orbs, freeing up Zenkichi / Haru from Phase 2 to allow for a faster final phase (ie, the dangerous phase).
First orb phase is the harder of the two soley because you get a Lock Warden dumped on your head - for reference (because I haven't seen it noted anywhere else online) the Orbs weaknesses are clockwise; Gun (Chesed), Fire (Gevurah), Wind (Binah), Nuke (Keter) and Frost (Chokmah). Killing the Lock Warden is optional - it stalling the phase out is equally as dangerous as just ignoring it to focus on the orbs. If you're going to lead it, its best to have Ann debuff the thing and pull it while the other two deal with the orbs - her gun can shred the Gun orb easiest from range (Morgana's better up close for the Gun orb if you choose to kill the Lock Warden), she's the fastest in the game, and can easily Matarunda the orbs as she pulls the Warden. Go for the Wind orb first so you've got an idea for how much SP you're working left with for Morgana's Recarms (thus how aggro you can be) - from there Gun and Fire orb die the fastest (because of range and Ann's high elemental output), and just save the Frost orb for last, since you've got nobody to deal with it quickly like the others. Take every 1more you can get, and use a Showtime if you've got it. Finally, when dealing with them, stick to the edges so you can see what the other orbs are doing without having to turn around, and so you've got an easier time leading / getting the Lock Warden caught on an orb to deal with it.
In second phase, the orbs are weak to Psi/Crits (Netzach), Bless (Malkhut), 'Nothing'/Almighty dealer (Hod), 'Nothing'/ Bless+Curse dealer (Yesod) and Elec (Tiferet). The Elec orb is the dangerous one, as Yusuke's stationary gameplay leaves him most vulnerable to it's Magarudyne tornados, and he can't counterstrike the thing - with the Nado's lingering hitbox catching you on Follow Ups and while the animation for a popped orb plays. Deal with the Bless orb first with Sophia so you don't need to pay attention to switching, and so once again you've got an idea of what you've got left for Recarms, but from there you've got a free choice as to which ones you take as Yusuke. The combo-count-up + Masukukaja into his poking combo is his best damage dealing option, since he can still deal damage if Megidolaon starts dragging him away; with Yukuse's showtimes aimed away from Psi orb if possible. Ideally, then take the Elec one out, then Almighty, then Curse; but order ultimately doesn't matter. Leave Psi until the end, because if provoked, it'll start rolling around, which becomes a nightmare if the others are alive (even if it is the weakest orb)
Finally in Demiurge phase, Ryuji is going to be our !God slayer. He has more than enough space and time to safely get his first combo charge attack in (the Lunge one), his general endurance and Poise increase is going to let him eat chip damage with (less) concern, immunity to the Lightning attack gives him both breathing room and safety from one of the more dangerous attacks of this phase, his Goombastomps can sustain damage while the arms are out sweeping, and you've got Haru and/or Zenkichi firing off Heat Risers - overall, it's Ryuji's time to shine as a perfect send off for the best character of this installment of the franchise (Chariotbros... we won...). Stick slightly to the right of Demiurge (it's a semi-blind spot for attacks), and just spam charged attacks until the health bar is shredded up. Initially use Showtimes as they come, but save them when it starts throwing out Magarudynes. Oh, and if you get caught out on the laser (sped up for Merciless so it's possbile it might catch you this time around, and you can't interrupt with a Showtime), get a Masukukaja buff (use a consumable) and mash dodge if you're up shit creek. Since it's a constant but low-tick-rate hitbox, your only hope is to fucking pray you can get counterstrikes from dodging as a damage tick hits - though I wouldn't recommend actually intending on doing this - it's a saving throw at the end of a 30 minute boss, nothing else.

And that's it - job's done.
Congrats Anon, you've just beat Merciless.
...
Ho~?
What's that?
You're into cock and ball torture too?
...Well, I guess I could set aside some space for the Challenge enemies.

Dire Shadows

• Bugs (Shibuya) - Weak to Elec/Wind/Curse - Gives Atlas Anklet (+10 Str)
• Raja Naga (Sendai) - Weak to Fire/Ice/Bless - Gives Wizard Amulet (+10 Magic)
• Lilith (Sapporo) - Drains Fire/Elec/Ice/Wind, Weak to Psy/Nuke/Bless/Curse - Gives Gaia Belt (+10 End)
• Nebiros (Okinawa) - Drains Bless/Cure, Weak to Fire/Elec/Wind - Gives Skanda Socks (+10 Agility)
• Yatagarasu (Kyoto) - Drains Elec/Wind, Weak to Fire/Ice/Nuke - Gives Tyche Charm (+ 10 Luck)
• Eligor (Osaka) - Drains Fire/Ice, Weak to Elec/Bless/Curse - Gives Roland Medal (All stats +5)
• Mithras (Jail) - Drains Psy/Nuke, Weak to Ice/Bless/Curse - Gives Star Sticker (Showtime rate up, VHigh)
• Archangel (Life) - Drains Bless/Curse, Weak to Wind/Psy/Nuke - Gives Hachiman Belt (Reduce Phys, Med)

Lavenza Bosses

• Set
• Cerberus - Headache, note: do a long guide for this one
• King Frost
• Black Frost - Piece of piss of a fight. Ryuji / Sophia / Haru shred him, and most of his projectiles get trapped on the stage obstacles. Evil Smile gives Sophia time to charge twice or Ryuji to get a fully charged Lunge combo off before it locks on, and there's nothing especially dangerous if you just facehug the guy and stick to one of his flanks.
• Siegfried - This is a tough cunt without the right setup. Morgana / Makoto / Ann is the go-to, but the key thing to have this fight is any persona with Dekaja, to nullify the Heat Risers the moment they come into play. Stick to Ann, and mash out Matarunda's, and then when you finally get a burn, pump that fat Technical boosted weakness damage into him as much as possible. Since he's resistant to Phys, conventional damage dealing just won't cut it, you'll want to use up as much SP as early as possible so your AI teammates don't waste it on healing. One you run out of SP to pump into him, keep on top of of Dekaja's (probably from Joker), Matarunda's from Ann (to make him less lethal) and just stick it to Haru / Zenkichi if you want to damage or Morgana if you want to stay more survivable each focusing on elemental combos. Otherwise, he's got pretty well telegraphed attacks - his difficulty lies in his tankiness and burst damage if you don't keep on top of it.
• Mara - Another nasty one in the strong enemy series of missions; Mara's difficulty lies partly in how tanky it is, but moreso in it's strong and annyoying attacks. You'll want Haru to hit weaknesses, Morgana because Sophia is resisted and Sophia struggles with avoiding the attacks and then either Ryuji, Yusuke or Zenkichi to max out that output (I'd say Ryuji, for access to Matarukaja, but it's up to you). To go through some dangerous attacks, Mara has access to lots of short-telegraphed attacks, from facehugging distance to short range away (Tendril Slam, Maragidyne, Dick Thrust, Charging attack). Charges are uninterruptible shorthand for 'lmfao the next attack will kill you if it hits, faggot'; and the biggest offender of this is the Aerial slam, which adds boulders that stop from you just jumping/dodging when charged - you'll need iframes to avoid them, or dodge the pulse between the boulders, careful. If you want to time it, it'll have direct tracking for the first few seconds, then rotate around you twice before Mara slams in. One Shot kill is probably the easiest to avoid, so use that attack as breathing room if possible. Haru's twister is the best for damage, but is extremely risky to use (along with any charged / channelled attack) with how mobile everyone needs to be to avoid the shitton of damage Mara just ejaculates everywhere. Otherwise, it's a tough fight with no real safe or easy openings - you'll probably want to use a few Crab Hotpots just to keep up with how much SP you'll be using for healing.
• Metatron - Ryuji Sophia (Ann/ Zenk / Yusuke) . Swords out from Sword dance indicate how many will drop, each does Physical with a Bless explosion, so you can't just drag and tank them with Sophia.
• Reaper
  Here we are. The final enemy before you can declare your autism has truly beaten Mercliess. The real final boss. And he really, really, really is not easy.
  200,000 health. A standard attack deals ~5 damage (40,000 needed to kill). Conventionally strong attacks do ~30 damage (6,666 needed to kill). Fully charged, buffed up Ryuji Lunge does about 250-300 damage (666 - 800 to kill) and a showtime does ~2,000 damage (100 to kill). No weaknesses, better AoE attacks than Yaldy, teleports around the arena and access to every element in the game and spawns in 4 Dire Shadows during the fight.
  He takes a lot, and he's an endurance fight which is just as hard at the start as it is at the end. If you struggled with Caroline + Justine / Lavenza in P5 / P5R as the secret boss, then Merciless Reaper takes a fat shit on both. Yes, it's that hard. I won't say I've played all the games in the entire franchise, but if DDS Demifiend is said to be one of the hardest secret bosses in the entire SMT franchise, then from the experience from that, P5S Reaper isn't quite that, but definitely close-ish up there. You will be spending some time in Reaper's CBT dungeon...

Just to make it explicitly clear now - the core part of this fight is getting his attack pattern down. Do that, and it's just a case of endurance. All his attacks are telegraphed well, all have consistant timings and there's no trashmob distractions that feature in shithouse fights like Sarasvaati's.Well, 'trashmobs', at least.
And by endurance, this fight is going to take over half an hour, minimum. Heads up.

As for party makeup, you can go whatever you want, because there is no weaknesses to exploit - but keep in mind this is an endurance fight which you really don't want to be any taking incoming damage for.
Reaper's highly resistant to ailments, but not immune (so Technicals are technically possible, most notably Haru landing Dizzy's to proc her Psy with). With Sophia's free Rakunda and increased damage, she's the better healer for this fight; but going on a weird limb and taking both her and Morgana for their combined healing sustain isn't a strictly bad move (though you've got literally every recovery consumable you've got saved up to spam use for this fight - you're finished with them after this point - the less you needed them all the game beforehand, the more you've got to work with now). Ann's free Matarunda / SP Leech, Haru's engine damage / CC and Zenkichi's innate Almighty damage / Life Leech are also three other solid choices for naturally longer lasting character options for this fight. I can't really recommend Ryuji or Yusuke given their reliance on CQC burst damage and static playstyle just gets them killed even more than usual here, given Reaper has some of the widest AoE's in the game (though Yusuke's fine to leave for the AI to control, as his Evasion buff passively helps his uptime a lot). Makoto without a Nuke weakness to exploit is already dead in the water so just ignore her. Personally I went for Sophia / Ann / Haru - but again, it's up to you more than ever, this composition is largely preference.
Now for the fight. Gunshots are the most dangerous attacks Reaper has, since they've got harder reads with how much he moves his arms in his default state, along with short animations and no indicator of which he'll do (each require a different way to avoid; double shot needing two dodges, spread shot needing to back off and pass through the gap) - they're pretty much instant kills unless you've got a Marakaja/Heat Riser and he's Matarunda'd (then they only shred you down for a huge chunk of your health). Oh, and he can use them immediately after teleporting (literal teleprots behin u) - you'll want to be locked onto him for this whole fight.
Going through the rest of his attacks, almost all of them will want you to back off to pull his aggro from your team, with the exception of Mabufudyne (highly telegraphed, large opening - though it's got a slightly delayed second portion) and Riot Gun (short telegraph, short opening) when you can go in to debuff/damage him yourself. If you're playing a character immune to a given element, use these attacks as your major openings (for example, Maragidyne means Ann won't take damage, etc).
Finally, this is also a luck-based fight. Futaba is unironically a make / break factor - if she blesses you with RNGsus Concentrations and Heat Risers, you're just going to get further than without it.

To go through them all (since I may as well)

• Default attack 1
  Double shot from neutral. Indicated by raising his guns above his head. No real way to reliably avoid unless you were already disengaged. Pretty rare, since he prefers the elemental ones and the fan, but his hardest overall attack to deal with due to the hard read and small window for a dash counter.
• Default attack 2
  Bullet fan outward, from his front to his sides. Indicated by crossing his guns. Just get behind him if you see it coming, though he seems to like to do this immediately after teleporting consecutively (you can read this attack if you pause time), make sure to be running while clinging to the outside of the arena when he does this, or go for the gaps between what are essentially 3 clumps. He can use from neutral however (with equally short windup), so don't discount it otherwise. Perfectly counterable on reaction, the moment his barrel flashes as he aims them at you.
• Maragidyne
  6 Fireballs. Run and Dodge each one. Facetank if Ann, combo Maragidyne into Physical conversion attack is the most damage she can do in this period, with optional Concentrated skill Maragidyne if you want to use some SP. Matarunda can be quickly applied while avoiding, you don't need to do this now.
• Mabufudyne
  Short pulse outward, with a higher damage delayed second pulse. DO NOT facetank if Yusuke (you're not immune, and you haven't got the Endurance to tank it), all characters can capitalise on the small pause after however.
• Maziodyne
  Short timing, large area tracking indicator, before releasing an arenawide pulse. Jump it or gun-slow-time-dodge it when you see the indicator, hope you're outside of the initial bolt AoE. All characters can do a short aerial combo in the opening; if Ryuji, get a fully charged Lunge combo off, though he will want healing after as he's not immune.
• Magarudyne
  Short timing, small AoE immediately next to Reaper, before throwing out 3 fast moving nado's from that origin point that take up most of the arena. Pull back, try to get inbetween them. Facetank if Morgana; cartwheel combo for as long as you can is best damage. Probably his hardest to dodge elemental attack in initial phase.

• Concentrate
  {TL: lmfao the next attack is an instant kill - have fun!}
  Can be interrupted with Showtimes, though don't save them just for this if you struggle with any other attack pattern - this is free damage anyways, since he won't attack you, use the showtime to interrupt the charged attack itself or just attack pattern you struggle with (for me, I'd regularly use a Showtime for Maziodyne, just to save my AI's health)

  [At 70% of his health, he silently begins to include the ones below]

• Mapsiodyne
  Long timing, fast tracking medium inidcator AoE which detonates after 5 seconds. Run and keep away from your team; facetank as Haru and use it use the timing to set up any combo you want. He can use another attack while this one is out; make sure you don't eat a Maeigaon or a Magarudyne while he does this.
• Freidyne
  1 large fireball with a short indicator and fast projectile, detonates into a medium AoE. Pretty easy, all in all. You shouldn't be using Makoto for this fight; however Sophia uniquely struggles to avoid this attack without a perfect counter, given her shorter dash gives her a smaller dodge window.

• Maeigaon
  Very rarely uses this in this phase, but much more after 50% of his health is gone. Extremely subtle startup animation where he begins to move his arms behind him, before he dashes towards the player, leaving puddles of AoE Curse which detonate almost immediately. No real way to avoid this on reaction, since even if you run, there's a good chance he'll catch you anyways; plus it easily damages your team. On read, jump and dash to the side - it's a small window, but possible.

  [At 50% of his health, he'll enter phase 2 and begins to include the ones below]

• Megidolaon
  Long windup as he raises his gun above his head. No indicator, will drop a a large, lingering, expanding explosion on your head when he fires. Oneshots most of the time. Relatively easy to read, just dodge when the gun moves. If you're feeling risky, the perfect counter timing is consistantly reactable if you dodge the frame the beam appears.

• Riot Gun
  8 timed shots, ended with a delayed shot with a larger hitbox and near instant transmission-speed. Each has a high chance of stun, final is an instakill. While you can get a semi-easy perfect counter by dashing into one, try not to, since it'll lock you in place and make the final one unavoidable.

  [At 45% of his health, a Dire Mithras will spawn in, attacks with Nuclear and Phys]

  For the Dire Shadow (and all others after), your focus is getting rid of it ASAP - it's got notably less health than it's overworld varient to make it somewhat more manageable but it can still equally oneshot you like the Reaper, and just trying to ignore it will result in you having to essentially deal with 5 bosses at once during your final stretch. Furthermore, it can and will pull aggro from your AI teammates, who in this case you really want to all be focusing on one target (both for damage, and so they can survive longer). If you focus on the Dire Shadows, you'll find you still get enough passive damage done on The Reaper that your progress is hindered somewhat minimally.
  Again, this is an endurance fight, don't rush yourself. Even if you are abusing something broken, it's going to take minutes to burn through the Reaper, all the while said Dire Shadows will still be there (except because you're abusing things because ou're a shitter, you're more likely to get fucked up by lacking mechanical skill / gamesense)

  [At 35% of his health, a Dire Eligor will spawn in, attacks with Fire and Phys]

  [At 35% of his health, a Dire Yatagarasu will spawn in, attacks with Wind and Elec]

  [At 15% of his health, a Dire Archangel will spawn in, attacks with Bless and Phys]

Your reward? The Omnipotent Orb. Nullifies all incoming damage bar Almighty. Brokenly strong - but deservedly so. Use it to grind the Reaper again if you want, at 75 incense a pop, you can easily hit 99 Everything+Everyone in no time if you just want to add a finishing aethetic bow to your save file.
Nice Job Anon - I'm proud of you~

Character Breakdowns

Here it is, the meat and potatos. Basically what it implies; a complete dissection on all the characters in the game because the game tells you fucking nothing about what everybody does. All will assume you've maxed out all the Master Arts (it doesn't take that long), though if a character plays completely differently with / without their Master Arts, it might be noted.
I want to make it explicitly clear right now, to pre-emptively stop bitching:

• EVERY CHARACTER IS VIABLE
• EVERY CHARACTER CAN DO DAMAGE
• IF YOU LIKE A CHARACTER, PLAY THEM

If I call a character shit, or an aspect of a character shit, that doesn't mean you can't like them or see them as better than I said. I'm usually talking about them from a point of view of somebody who's tried to make all of them work on Merciless without exploits to cover their asses; which may not be the same point of view you're working with.
You will notice I am explicitly avoiding 'ranking' them. That's because each character has a niche of some kind, and it's entirely dependent of the situation, fight and difficulty you're working with. The ones I think are strong, melt vs their weakness. The ones I think are weak can shred in their optimal environment. I'm not ranking strength, as much as I'm ranking strength, adaptability, utility and survivability.
With that said, if you still have the itching urge to whine about FACTS AND LOGIC because you know even more besterer to the xtreme about my (ultimately) data-backed opinions; suck off a shotgun.

Key & Teamwide concepts

For the chain sections (to ensure every platform understands):
(1 - ) = Standard attack button, counting up with each button press
F = Finisher button
G = Gun
A = Aerial (Doesn't matter if it's a jump or recovery from being thrown)
D = Dash
Tile = My general unit of measurement, based off the tiles in the 4th dungeon. Seems to be roughly 1m (which is why I went for them)

All characters have the same running and held dashing speed, however mashing the dash button can make some characters move notably faster, as their recovery between dashes is shorter and dashes vary in distance. Held dashing appears to be exactly 2x the speed of running.
All characters also have different dash distances - it's nothing really noticeable in gameplay outside of comparing the extreme outliers. For reference, and in rough terms:
- Joker = 4.5 forward, 4 backward
- Ryuji = 5 forward, 4 backward
- Ann = 5.25 forward, 4.25 backward
- Morgana = 4.5 + 0.5 forward, 2 + 1 backward (the extra forward bounce isn't counted if there's any other input, the extra backward bounce takes priority over movement inputs but not attack inputs)
- Yusuke = 5 forward, 4 backward
- Haru = 4.75 forward, 3.75 backward
- Sophia = 3.75 forward, 4 backward (there are AoE attacks Sophia cannot mechanically dodge on reaction)
- Wolf = 5 forward, 4 backward

Weakness does 150% damage, while Resistance reduces that damage type to 50% of the default. Crits and Technicals both deal 150% damage, and will always apply their damage to elemental shields (as if they were targetting a Weakness - regardless of Element). Physical (or Gun) Persona Skills by default cannot Crit unless either stated to have an increased critical rate (with unnamed Persona chain skills also being classed as unable to Crit) or unless either target is affected Sukukaja (Green Buff) / Sukunda (Green Debuff) is in effect.
Unlike in RPG P5; Merciless does not further increase Crit, Weakness or Resistance scaling for either enemies or the Thieves, and thus will always remain at the same initial multiplier.

All All out Attacks are classified as Almighty damage. Break all the shields an enemy has, and you can perform one as long as they are recovering their shields. The total damage of an AoA will proportionally decrease if members of your party are KO'd (75% / 50% / 25%).
Trashmobs cannot be directly AoA'd, as they lack shields entirely (even the major ones such as Spidermechs and Helicopters).
Minor Shadows result in about 2s of iframes, and an associated AoE of 10 minor attacks along with a vortex that pulls other minor enemies towards the target, with no falloff. Afterwards, no matter what the team was doing beforehand, all will be dropped in the same place (essentially grouping the team up again).
Major Shadows result in a unique cutscene that deals far more damage, but otherwise has no associated AoE, and no additional effects

Showtimes on the other hand seem to be fucky, and gave me a complete shotgun in terms of testing.
For what's certain; Showtimes cannot crit, will interrupt / silence all enemies on the screen (regardless of if they're hit or not) and if locked onto an enemy, will always focus their damage on it. There's no falloff damage, however there is a range to it - for the most part it will hit every visible enemy on the screen when initiated; but enemies to your sides and behind you can be missed - hence it's often worth it to just line it up your lockon to maximise benefit, instead of aiming it into a wall and only hitting your target. If not locked on, it will just take place a short distance away from your character.
In terms of charging a Showtime, you've got to fill up the 12 bar at the bottom right, next to the Persona. After switching characters, this bar will flash for a while, indicating that the Showtime increase buff is active. I can't give a direct number as it's vague enough, but it seems to be a x2 increase. All damage (Default, Gun, Chain Finisher, Persona Chain Finisher, Environmental damage and AoA) will charge Showtime - with the sole exception of Summoned-Persona skills (both Physical type and SP type) which offer no charge whatsoever. If you sub-out a Thief or leave the area, you will lose all accumulated Showtime charge, however moving between checkpoints is fine. Finally, even if you switch back-and-forth between two Thieves, you will still get the Showtime buff, so there's no excuse not to have it applied at all times.
As for what I'm not sure on, and where it gets fucky, they will definitely deal more damage if targetting a Weakness - however if targetting a Resist or even a Drain, they will still somehow deal damage. Furthermore, Showtimes do not affect the enemy's shields in any way, indicating they're are indeed a damage calculation / type of their own. As for the damage itself, it appears to scale with something... but I can't tell what. I believe it might be the highest stat they currently have; as Ryuji and Ann have significantly stronger Showtimes (~x2) than Makoto, Haru and Sophia, with Morgana and Yusuke hitting the rough middle. That, and despite being at the same level when testing with Joker's and Ann's Personas, both hitting the same target, with the same attack buff level for the same element (Random Number Generation aside), Ann did almost 2.5 the damage. It's the only logical thing I can think of, unless Joker has a deliberate weaker Showtimes, as he's present in the party at all times and theoretically has perfect coverage.

>best roster tl;dr?

Fuck you, have you thought of the time I've put into this for you? If you've clicked on this link and got to this point, you're autistic or nolife enough to read the entire thing. Grab a drink or a snack, put on some music, take a shit beforehand for all I care.
Fuckin scum.

>inb4 yeah but I can't be bothered reading all that
Everyone is viable on NG difficulties, but you should have either Morgana or Sophia on your roster at all times once they get Recarm. Switch out party members to target weaknesses you see pop up often - I'm not spoonfeeding every area. Max out their Master skills by buttonmashing/bare minimum effort and get somewhat of a feel, then take a bit of time in an area with no enemies to just play around, see what each chain finisher does yourself and get a more solid feel for each moveset and playstyle. It's worth it in the long run.
On Merciless, the optimal team is Joker / Ann / Haru / Morgana; with situational damage substitutions usually in Haru's place and Morgana easily substituted for Sophia if the situation calls. Ann is the only one with a particulalry fixed place in the team unless you're going into large amounts of Fire absorption.
Note that, unsurprisingly, Merciless is not representative of NG, and this isn't something you should be taking as gospel if you haven't even played the game yet and are just here because you want some spoiler-tips before playing it. Merciless is a completely different world from NG, don't go thinking there's any crossover - everyone is viable on NG (and to a lesser extent, Merciless, albeit not optimal).
Now, as punishment for your Sloth, I'm going to tell you right now - The Game - you just lost it.

Joker

Strong before Master Skills
Stronger / Same style after Master Skills
Useable on Merciless
Short / Mid range
Doesn't need breathing room
Standard general gameplay

Best Equipment

• Paradise Lost S (NG - Reaper) - 300dmg + Curse Res (High)
• Cocytus (NG+ / Merciless - Demiurge+) - 338 dmg + Bless/Curse Res (High)
  Recommended Accessory - Futaba's Charm / Star Sticker

Strengths

• Very accessable. Huge raw range, good for buttonmashers.
• Returns once again as the guy with every move in the game. Save his SP for last if possible, because he's the backup guy for if any of your team falls short
• Only Thief with access to Curse Element - make sure to keep something like Arsene or Mitra in his stock
• Even if you have a Recarm user, you can use Joker as backup to Recarm the Recarmer (Morgana / Sophia) in the case they're the first to be KO'd.
• Master Skills are supplementary flavour, not gamestyle shifting
• Out of battle and unsure if you can land an Ambush to restore HP? Any minicombo with a healer mask (Eg Pixie) casts a free healing. Takes a while, but you can spam it to full health at no SP cost. Later on, you'll definitely want Principality and then Sarasvaati, for the party-wide variants in combo. Likewise, access to the Buff type masks (Mokoi etc) are all completely free buffs on demand, which if you have some space to breathe during bosses is a good option for if you want to save on / can't use SP.
• Whatever mask type you leave him on, the AI will pump out combos of that element constantly when playing other Thieves.

Weaknesses

• Worst SP economy in the game with how dependent he is for utility, even if he is focusing in using spells via combo - definitely needs to be saved up and kept an eye on. This can however by mitigated with the right Persona (Soul Thief + High Chance Ailment + Large Crowd = SP Recovery)
• Neutral combos are on the weaker side of the cast, is reliant on his Persona for whatever he can string them in his combo with
• Arsene goes through a dry period until Lv30 until he starts getting new solid skills again, for Arsene only runs
• His Persona will likely be underlevelled, since his Exp income is split between so many of them. While the Velvet Room, Persona Points and the Mask droprate Bond skill offsets this slightly, but it's still a problem.
• Outside of his Down Shots, has a dogshit gun - low damage, low ammo and nothing special

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6}
Three decently fast horizontal slashes that cover a huge area to his sides (Left - Right - Left, semi-circle of 4 tile radius), a vertical down slash (Right, 4 tiles), a high-flinch doubleslash (Left - Right, 4 tile - 3.5 tile) finally with an aerial high-flinch vertical spin (strikes x3, 3 tile radius) that slashes into the ground (high-flinch, 4 tile radius). Joker has one of the overall longest duration, largest-ranged and fastest default chains in the game, and excels at cutting through trashmobs while still being able to keep somewhat safely away from larger mobs, making him both safe and easy without even needing to dabble into finishers. The up and downside is it's length - to reach the end finishers, you'll be attacking for quite a while, which can lead to greed. All attacks bar the aerial spin however have nearly no recovery, and thus his basic chain is also extremely safe to boot (the only risk again, being how greedy you get). The full chain will move Joker forward by 14 tiles, which acts as another downside, as he basically struggles to stay still.
{F}
Free homing gunshot (21 tile range, bending) with split Almighty scaling and flinch properties. Does what it says on the can with no Ammo expended, mostly worthless though since it only targets a single enemy for relatively low damage compared to a normal chain and has extreme recovery. Other Thieves do ranged damage better, the fact it's split Phys-Almighty just seems to be a minor QoL buff for resistances to be less effective, over nuke-level damage usually associated with Almighty attacks and seen with the the premium ranged attacker of the Thieves.
{1 - F (- A...)}
Aerial transition with a high flinch explosion in it's sweetspot. Does good damage for investment and pushes immediately close enemies back, but has an extreme amount of recovery (~0.5s) and aerial chains are just dangerous to use. Joker can uniquely get more benefit from the aerial chain though, as the finisher for it uses his 2nd default Persona skill - though you're just better off using the {1 - 2 - 3 - F} on the floor and not dying. Not Joker's best tool, but situationally useful at times if you really need to bully some enemies back.
{1 - 2 - F}
Jokers best damage chain (ignoring Persona Skills) - a huge range heavy poke (12 tiles) with high crit properties. Not much to talk about here - has a slight delay and you can't rotate much from where you aimed the 2, but almost no recovery. When combined with the distance you can do it from to mitigate the delay; extremely safe for great damage.
{1 - 2 - F - F}
Persona Attack 1 or the Short Chain Persona Attack (as it's the fastest); varies with what you have equipped. Usually the least 'relevant' attack to a given mask, often a different element from what the mask actually is. Completely dependent on what mask you equip before doing the combo. Since many of these attacks are Ailment types or elements you have better coverage with another mask, this chain often goes underused; but should not be ignored - one good such example is the earlygame Pixie, which offers Dia, the first healing Persona Combo skill for a while - or the endgame Alice - who gives a free Concentrate, which can be carried across outside of fights and onto other masks. If you're working with new masks, at least try this combo out to make sure you aren't wasting a good skill by ignoring it. That, and it chains off of {1 - 2 - F}, which means it will always do solid damage at minimum.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F} or {A - 1 ... - F} or {1 - F - A - 1 ... - F}
Jokers usual BnB, Persona Attack 2 or the Mid Chain Persona Attack. Again, varies by mask, but usually the attack you'd 'expect' from a given mask, and the elemental type the mask is itself. Completely dependant on the mask you're running, but you'll usually be spamming it because it's free real estate SP attacks from all your masks - as a side note does nothing if under the effects of Forget. Extremely good chain, and you probably already were spamming it.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F}
Fast and heavy side slash to the right (6 tiles in a radius to the left, blindspot on the right side, propels you 1.5 tiles right), with a sweet spot a further 1.5 tiles right (3 tiles right of your original position) for a near guaranteed flinch (a definite increase in flinch chance compared to standard red/flinch attacks). It feels smaller than it is, but that's because you're travelling with the slash - it's actually quite large, just mostly off screen for you once you dart right. Basically a longer version of his {1 - 2 - F}, exchanging speed, critical chance and ability to go into the short persona chain for a guaranteed flinch and slightly higher damage (assuming the {1 - 2 - F} doesn't crit) - has it's uses, but is starting to get into the length of Joker's default chain where it becomes higher investment for questionable payoff.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - F}
High flinch horizontal slash (3 tiles), followed shortly after by a large aerial multihit spin (8 tiles, high crit, hits three times and launches any enemies to the side). Great damage for crowds.... but everything Joker does works well for large groups. A symptom of a bloated kit and lacks practical function; outdamaged by the previous {1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F}; don't explicitly go for this and treat it as a bonus to your chaining into your Long chain Persona Attack.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - F - F}
Persona Attack 3, or the Long chain Persona Attack. Often the 'heavy' attack for a given Persona, though not always the coverage you expect - again test to see. Takes ages to get here and is very high-investment mid-combat, so is rarely worthwhile, even if it's an otherwise strong attack. Highly dependant on if you think the Persona attack is worth it; at the very least has the multihit before it if you're afflicted by Forget. If you want to get it consistantly, press F twice the first time you see a Red attack.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - F} or {1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F - F} or {F - F} or {A - F - F}
Aerial gun attack which fires 3 high-flinch, split-Almighty homing shots. Long startup, long recovery, minimal damage; but as a tiny bit extra damage to any given combo and from high range, it's ok if you've not got anything else better to do.
{G}
Low damage, Low ammo, no special effects and his (F) combo does the same Gun damage without taking ammo. Don't use this because charging Dead Shots is just objectively better.
{G} (Hold)
Three charge tiers that lead into a good damage, single target, high crit ranged Dead Shot, resulting in a variable Phys-Almighty split element explosion; either curving upwards on hit vs larger / poised enemies or dragging back smaller enemies. Charge level 1 costs 1-2 Ammo, and travels for 30 tiles, ending with a 3 tile diameter explosion; Charge Lv2 costs 3-5 Ammo, produces a 2 tile wide but shorter range 15 tile version, with a 4.5 tile diameter explosion; Charge Lv3 costs 6 Ammo and creates a 2 tile wide projectile that travels 30 tiles and ends with a 6 tile explosion. You very rarely need to charge it to Lv3, the high range only really matters for sniping, which Joker isn't really made for anyways (having a very CQC kit). For a 30% overall burst damage loss, you can extend your effective Ammo count (and total damage) by 200% if you just stick to using Lv2 charges vs mid-ranged enemies.
In short, don't go to Lv3, just charge the Lv2.
{A - F}
Fires his gun mid-air for free, with a chance of Flinch. Long startup, long recovery, minimal damage. Don't use this.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
Pounce-y, high forward mobility and low recovery, if a little hard to control and low damage. Overall, one of the better dashattackers in the game, but outdone by others.

tl;dr

It's not like you have a choice to put him on your team or not

Ryuji

Ok before Master Skills
Ok after Master Skills
Hard to use on Merciless
In their face
Doesn't need breathing room
Standard general gameplay

Best Equipment

• Mjolnir S (NG - Akira+) - 302dmg + Elec dmg Up
• Ukonvasara (NG+ / Merciless - Seth) - 334dmg + 5 Str + Elec dmg Up
  Recommended Accessory - (Any)

Strengths

• Tank of the team, easily the bulkiest lasting character
• Poise on demand makes him extremely reliable, and it's not to scoff at.
• Only toon at Merciless that can be relied on to tank any given hit. Not ideal, but the option alone makes him a much more aggressive character than others if you're willing to take the risk; though if you crutch too much on his tankiness, you will be just as easily killed. Treat him like any other character on Merciless, but with the addendum that he's able to take a hit if a charge attack is worth it.
• In raw physical damage, strongest neutral output in the game once he gets Auto-Tarukuja, which makes him effective to just let the AI teammate control (Haru is stronger without Tarukaja in neutral terms, but doesn't get access to Attack Master, and has better accessory options for damage than the Auto-Tarukaja ones). General grug unga bunga gameplay is very viable on lower difficulties, if faggot shit like 'Targetting Weaknesses' isn't to your taste (though you should remember to buy him new weapons in each Jail if this is your schtick to maintain his DPS)
• Dash and Slash moves him very, very fast and has good range, making him even more survivable/stallable on top of the Poise+Def.
• Goombastomping (as I call ceremoniously it, where you just mash his aerial buff activation Master attack and bounce on top of an enemy) is fun as fuck, and probably the highest skill-ceiling concept in the game (ironic, given it's on the generally lowest skill floor Thief)
• Best boss All out Attack / Chest opening animation in the game

Weaknesses

• Lightning isn't a rare weakness, but it's not common either
• Even with the final Master skill, it's still safe to say he's going to take damage due to his close range and slow, charged style, and thus will need semi-constant healing. Less effort on his end means more effort on the team healer's end.
• His only poke skill is his fully charged Master skill which launches Kidd, and he's generally close-range; in a range he's going to get hit more.
• Overall both a slugger and sluggish - if you don't like the playstyle, you won't like actually playing him
• Captain Kidd's vast amount of Physical attacks are useless to him, offer no real secondary usage, thus he offers little in terms of support bar Tarukaja; even moreso in Merciless.
• Charge-based gameplay, while usually worth it, can easily fall into obsessively fully charging every hit. In turn results in a bad habit which takes lots of needless damage, when partial charges are often more than enough for small enemies or the window you've got. One easy example is his innate combo lighting strike - if you just want to summon a lightning bolt to catch a weakness, an uncharged one will get the job done and drop you a bolt.
• Lacks an immunity to any element, only strong vs Elec. While he does have the Endurance and Def buff to take the hits, it still means he can't just ignore a given Element safely.
• Only member of the roster that doesn't get access to his Elemental Amp (only the Elec Boost). While he can make up for this with charged attacks and weapons/accessories with Elec Up, it's still a note.

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4}
Two diagonal attacks (Right, 3 tiles; Left 3, tiles), a tiny range kick (I think it might be the lowest range attack in the game after Ann's Whip activation 'Attack', it's something like 0.25 tiles) and a slightly larger range heavy diagonal that launches (Right, 4 tiles); while propelling Ryuji 7 tiles forward. No flinch properties on any of them (yep, the kick doesn't flinch), first 3 attacks are pretty slow but have no recovery; last attack has huge windup and huge recovery. Shit all around and only made up for by Ryuji's innately high Str making it somewhat high damage, but not the focus of his kit.
{F}
Poise Buff Activation. Like other buffs, has a small 2 tile diameter explosion. Buff lasts exactly 30s, however you can't do shit while the 1.5s animation plays, making it functionally less. Jumping reduces the recovery to 1s. Apparently has an RNG Def buff associated with it, but I can't tell what it does from testing; I'd assume it's something like 50% chance to reduce any incoming damage tick by 50%. Dangerous to blindly use in the middle of a crowd, because while they can't interrupt you they can still very much chip away at your health, straightforward otherwise.
{1 - F} (Hold)
Ryuji's BnB, downward ultra-heavy vertical strike which high flinch, with an additional flinching shockwave. Charge increases damage + range as well as having CKidd perform a Lunge to cover for Ryuji as he goes through his animation.
- No charge results in no Lunge and a 3 tile dimeter shockwave
- Lv1 gives a 2.5 tile diamater Lunge, a 5 tile diameter shockwave and increases the damage by x2
- Lv2 gives a 4 tile diameter Lunge, an 8 tile diameter shockwave and increases the damage by x3
and finally for Ryuji's star atraction;
- Lv3 gives a 6 tile Lunge, a 12 tile diameter shockwave, x5 damage, high crit and will always flinch on contact with non-boss mobs (and have a high chance non-story-boss mobs)
CKidd will always a perform a Lunge regardless of attacks equipped, while the damage of he Lunge does not increase (compared to the strike), it's spherical AoE does increase in size.
Ryuji can slowly move around while charging, albeit at 33% usual speed, and with a heavily diminished turning radius - best just to roll around to reposition, though it's better than being locked down. You'll want to charge a ways away, roll in then just fucking obliterate whatever you come in contact with.
{1 - 2 - F} (Hold)
Horizontal strike (1 tile) which flinches and has good CC / pushback, and charging always projects CKidd forward by a fixed 13 tiles (regardless of level) - charging insted affects the width of the attack;
- No charge (or allficted with Forget) results in no CKidd projection and is just a weak high-flinch horizontal strike. Never do this.
- Lv1 gives a 3 tile wide projection
- Lv2 gives a 6 tile wide projection, and multiplies damage x3
- Lv3 gives a 9 tile wide projection, and multiplies damage x5
You caannot walk at all while this is charging, only roll around. Probably the weakest of Ryuji's held finishers attacks, but situationally useful for clearing hallways safely.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F} (Hold)
No physical attack at all, but CKidd comes out to fire an attack in the Zio series.
- No charge gives Zio / Zionga / Ziodyne in a 3 tile diameter
- Lv1 gives Zio / Zionga / Ziodyne in a 7 tile diameter, dealing x2 damage
- Lv2 gives Mazio / Mazionga / Maziodyne in a tile cone, dealing x2 damage
- Lv3 gives Mazio / Mazionga / Maziodyne in a tile cone, dealing x3 damage
You can walk around and roll like {1 - F} while charging. If inflicted with Forget, this attack does literally nothing. This is Ryuji's elemental coverage, very straightforward.
{G}
Shotgun, high damage, what did you expect. The UI is inaccurate, the pellets will always go to the left of the centre of the reticle.
{G} (Hold)
Charge level 1 primes the pellets to explode at 20 tiles, or on contact and applies launching properties to all explosions.
Charge level 2 takes an extra shell, then sweeps the area with 5 exploding shots with flinching properties.
Charge level 3 multplies the damage of the sweep by x2.
{A - F}
The Goombastomp, Ryuji's hidden and vastly underrated, high skill ceiling BnB. A Red / Flinch attack that rockets Ryuji down at a 45' angle - if it hits the floor, it applies his Poise buff along with a huge 12 tile diamter shockwave with a flinch properties an the same 1.5 recovery as if done on the floor; jumping immediately after however reduces recovery to 0.5s instead (with a unique property of his 'jump' being a hop that has height and thus less recovery; depending on timing). If it connects to an enemy, it bounces him upward, higher than he originally was. At roughly x5 the basic damage per hit, and repeatable up to 5 times before its internal cooldown forceably grounds you (without getting into the thinking part which can net him more damage), this fucking meme of a move can easily rack up up to around x10 the damage of his normal, uncharged chains output (given you get more attacks in the same period), making it his highest sustined damage (ignoring his charged burst). With one catch. It's single target only, dealing damage only to the enemy you bounce on.
The deceptive skill ceiling of this move is that, if you are to just mash it, you'll only get a few off before it drops you and you're grounded. However, there's a hidden Sophia-perfect-catch tier window in which you can delay the next Goombastomp, as Ryuji falls to the original height he started at. If he falls below this, he'll enter recovery frames all the way until he drops back on the floor, and you'll be vulnerable until you land as punishment. If he times it perfectly, he'll be able to continue undeterred. You can also dash out of this beforehand if you don't want to risk it, to get some extra distance if a ranged attack is coming your way. All this, and he still needs to keep in mind both how long he's got left on his Poise/Def buff (since it doesn't apply on bounce), and control the direction of the forced-forward-movement of his stomps, so he'll always be on top of an enemy (easier with larger targets). One thing you don't really need to keep in mind is what the enemy in question is actually doing in terms of attacks - while Red attacks are only a given chance at flinching, if Ryuji focuses one enemy, he'll be hitting them with so many Red attacks that by random distribution alone combined with most enemy attacks having windup, they'll essentially be stunlocked in place.
This move along with his Charged Lunge elevates Ryuji to the highest reliable (ie, non crit based) single target sustained DPS in the game (next to Haru's higher AoE / group sustained DPS), and opening his niche on the roster in Merciless past simple Lightning elemental coverage. By focusing on one trouble target, he can very safely lock a single enemy down entirely (keeping his other teammates safer), while his AI-controlled teammates get some breathing room to clear the less troublesome trashmobs and weaker enemies that surround it. While he excels at cleaning trashmobs up with his charged attacks himself provided he has some breathing room to charge attacks before they spawn in; Goombastomping covers his weakness of actually needing to have his buff active in advance once the fight gets going, on the perchance he's not in a good spot to charge up attacks or being unable to one-shot or do reliable, safe damage to more erratic boss enemies like he can with stationary bosses, weaker enemies and trashmobs. And even if he's in the air, he's about as safer and mobile as being on the ground caught in charging frames - it's a win/win for him.
Goombastomping is Ryuji's sustained damage, in Yin/Yang harmony with his high burst damage - and you should always be thinking which would be more beneficial at a given time. High skill floor, high skill ceiling.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
One of the best dash-attack spammers in the game, his Poise naturally means he can ignore any mistakes (aside from damage); and he has good movement / range on his diagonal to boot.

tl;dr

Very straightforward. Get in, hit (very) hard, get out

Morgana

Weak before Master Skills
Ok after Master Skills
Useable on Merciless
In their face / Short range
Likes some breathing room, makes more for everyone else
Abnormal general gameplay (See below)

Best Equipment

• Cosmic Sword S (NG - Black Frost) - 296dmg + 30SP
• Eckesachs (NG+ / Merciless - Dire Bugs) - 330dmg + 5 Ag + 30SP
  Recommended Accessory - Futaba's Charm / Star Sticker

Gameplay Note

Doesn't play like the rest of the cast at all, he takes some learning to really abuse and get the most of. An aggressive support character through and through, that lacks damage entirely.
Morgana serves as the bully of the group, ideally repositioning enemies to line them up in attack ranges. His normal combos ARE NOT for damage, they are mostly various directions of repositioning. Once you have a bunch of enemies grouped up, switch to another character, fuck em all up, then switch back to Morgana if they need grouping up again.
While combos are for short range repositioning, the Morganacar is for if they're further apart. In this form, you're the most mobile attacker in the game, and should prioritise avoiding damage while pushing enemies closer.
Finally, Morgana's some of combo's put him in the air and he has multiple finishers in the air, making him the only character in the game who can be expected to be taking verticality into account. Get used to your aerial options, because you'll want to be able to choose between grounding yourself (to switch to another character asap), more bullying/repositioning before dropping with gravity (leaving yourself open, but possibly getting more done) or wind elemental damage (free with Morganacar slams) on the fly as second nature.
Overall, your aim is to identify what needs grouping up and in which direction before switching. Switch onto Morgana and quickly combo, then switch off to a stronger character that can utilise the now denser grouping to clear waves extremely quickly. Innate Master Miracle Punch spam is viable if you've got lots of room to poke with, but otherwise keep him in a supportive mindset. He's too squishy to just stay in, too weak to attack effectively with and unless you have no other weakness but Wind to crack shields with, you should be sticking to saving your SP for recarms/healing

Strengths

• Morgana is the better Recarm user / Healer on Merciless than Sophia; since the bullying aspect of his gameplay can help end fights much faster than her increased damage
• Morganacar Master Skill just fucking shits out Wind damage without needing to use SP, provided he has breathing room while the team keeps an enemy occupied. This combined with his focus on innate combos, and Wind being cheaper than other elements on SP if he has to use it, gives him an otherwise good SP economy to save for healing with. The healing dependancy however means he'll usually be low regardless.
• Miracle punches are great, pretty quick pokes, and get a free Follow Up on top some of the time. This feeds into the related recovery Bond skill; allowing Morgana to match Sophia's increased healing value by being able to reliably score mid-fight SP recovery for the team without using items.
• If he has a corner to push enemies into, his Morganacar bullying is even stronger and just shits out Wind Element
• Probably the best in the cast at dealing with the gunner enemies long term (as Haru exhausts her ammo), with how easy he can get in and out of the backlines and the AoE's/Pokes he's got available to - which is far more valuable than it sounds
• Access to Auto-Tarukaja on a latergame collar / armour slot just for himself, which compounds with whatever he has in his accessory slot
• His Baton-Pass centred playstyle means he, and the rest of the team are passively going to be firing off far more Showtimes than without him; resulting in a much higher overall damage output, especially with the relevant Bond skills.
• Great gun, solid damage range and ammo count
• Slapstick SFX was a stroke of genius on the end of the sound designers
• Guaranteed smile when you realise he copies Anne's lounging-sexy pose when hiding behind a wall
• Best All out Attack voiceline of the cast (>dubniggers get out)
• Zi ENDOH da... (Explosion)

Weaknesses

• Exists on lower difficulties, but his gimmick is nowhere near as important/useful. Grouping doesn't much matter when most non-boss enemies die in a few hits and he still hits like wet toilet paper.
• Squishiest member of the cast, and it's noticable. On Merciless however, since everything oneshots everyone anyways, this is less of an issue.
• Even if he does pump out more damage with more Showtimes, his neutral output is still very much undertuned compared to the rest of the cast and is entirely reliant on getting many crits / luck / RNG to keep up pace (compared to Yusuke, who gets crits on top of his solid damage).
• Some platforming is actually impossible with him, he's too small to reach a few of the double jumps. Less of a weakness and more of a meme, but it's still a thing to keep in mind. Furthermore, some Ambushes are impossible, because his camera is too low down. In short, even in the overworld, he's designed to be somebody you switch to and off of in battle.

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5}
Two short range horizontal attacks (Right, 2 tiles; Left, 2 tiles), a short range diagonal (Right, 2 tiles) that launches upward but doesn't chain to the air (though you can chain into a greatly increased jump that chains into nothing, but avoids loads of attacks if), followed by a downward slam with no shockwave (Down, 2 tiles) before finishing with an extremely long windup multihit spin-attack (7 hits, first 6 are 0.5 tiles, last is 2 tiles) that leaves Morgana in the air to chain from there. Outside of the final spin attack, Morgana seems to have the lease recovery in the entire game, able to dodge before an attack even completes; however is fully locked into the final attack at the end of his spin. Entire chain pushes him forwards 12 tiles - which is farther than his overall attack range throughout (meaning he's pushing himself into more than he's pushing enemies away from him - bad, if it didn't set up his bullying)
{F}
Morganacar Shift. Makes Morgana into one giant hitbox that pushes most enemies around, moving at x2.5 his normal walking speed (though he's unable to sprint at x2 or dash over fixed distances, only making it marginally faster). Still vulnerable to damage, and isn't the best way to forceably reposition enemies; but has situational uses. Careful using it; but is a core part of his bullying for more spread out enemies, essentially ushering them into groups / walls (albeit a bit slower than his superb 1 - F). Honestly could do with being faster, but still very useful once you know how to appropriately use it.
{1 - F}
An extremely quick chain that creates a small high-crit low-damage Morgana-nado that vortexes in every enemy around him in in a 4 tile diameter in all directions (even behind him), leaving Morgana in the air, but not in immediate recovery frames.
This is Morgana's usual bullying BnB - what you'll be switching on and off of him for - and even if you just dash the opposite direction from where you just threw all those enemies, you'll still land before they do, allowing you to quickly switch back / to whoever and either use a chain / a SP attack from a much safer, aggressive position (all the enemies now firmly in your range), complete with the Showtime buff and just as you're about to kill a few enemies. Can be cancelled before it completes to still deal the same amount of damage and vortex, with absolutely no recovery.
From there, you'll have a few options to consider. His default aerial combo, with an immediate aerial Garu from Zorro will vortex even more enemies into a small range, deal a bit of damage but leaves him most vulnerable for the most setup. Dashing away before being placed in the air, as previously mentioned is the safest option, but offers no extra benefit. Finally, he can crash into them as Morganacar (whose shockwave will hit them), and the shorter overall diagonal movement will mean they're all still in front of him for if you want to poof back and switch then - for if you want a balance of dealing some extra damage for not much of a recovery investment - which can also branch into Morganacar bullying if the situation presents.
An extremely quick, safe and flexible BnB that helps your entire team focus damage. Use this in situations where you just get surrounded (even if you're paying attention and not playing aggressively, it happens, like if a wave spawns on top of you - don't worry about it) to almost immediately give yourself some breathing room. In Merciless, the value of this skill is having the positional awareness to actively create scenarios where you can use this move at minimal risk to yourself - greatly increasing your teams' survivability, damage and Showtime rate. Don't forget, Morgana isn't the one who's going to be doing the damage - he just sets it up. One of the better chains in the game.
{1 - 2 - F}
Miracle Punch, a 9 tile long, 6 tile wide poke which has a high chance of a Critical strikes. If RNGsus smiles upon you, has a 10% chance of evolving into higher damage, higher crit projectile that travels 22 tiles (second highest ranged attack in the game). Isn't much to write home about, but is probably the most reliable and safest poke in the game and basically ignores element because of it's extremely high crit chance.
Has a tiny secondary inner hitbox where Morgana swings his sword, but that bit's functionally useless unless afflicted with Forget.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F}
Garu/Garula/Garudyne - Another great CC move, a slightly lingering Wind AoE depending on what he has equipped, that vortexes in enemies in a deceptive 8 tile diamater to set up bigger attacks for other Thieves (just like his BnB minichain). Like the rest of his kit, relatively little recovery compared to the rest of the cast and very quick to pull off. Basically double the time to execute, for double the size of vortex, a bit of lingering and additional wind element damage - use interchangably with {1 - F} whenever you've got the breathing room.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F}
Controllable high-crit cartwheel where Morgana becomes a thin 1 tile wide damaging hitbox (not unlike his Morganacar form, but much higher damage), that propels 15 tiles and projects 8 tiles forward once done and pops with a high-flinch 4 tile diameter explosion. Morgana's best damaging chain, and good for bullying enemies forward - seemingly having a higher priority in terms of CC, and able to push 'larger' enemies back with it's multihit. Multihit procs a good amount of wind damage and crits; however Morgana is locked into this one for longer, and can only choose to complete it or jump out to chain into an aerial recovery frames; making it extremely risky. You just won't find yourself using this much outside of single-target-downed-focus to crack shields. If jumped out of, does not chain into aerials
{G}
Fire 8 auto-lockon pellets. Each pellet is low damage and high crit, however when all combined on one target, it's the second highest gun dps in the game (of the default guns) after Haru.
{A - F} or {F - F}
Morganacar slam, a huge 25 tile radius slam that propels Morgana 9 tiles forward with decent damage. Does not flinch but comes with a huge about of knockback for forceably breaking up a crowd. Middling damage makes it pretty bad to just spam, however he does get to use in default Morganacar, which supplements his bullying, as he can not only force enemies apart but push them together quickly. Great aerial chain finisher (as lots of his chains put him there; {1 - F}, {1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F}, {1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5}) if you just want bonus wind damage; but definitely better for CC. Almost required to quickly clear room to reach gunners in more chaotic Merciless fights. High learning floor to use effectively, rewarding once you understand it (just like Morgana in general).
{D - 1 (- D...)}
Pretty bad, owing to him having a slight delay on his first attack, short range and short dashes. If you're in a pinch, {1 - F} is far better to control a room with over just running around.

tl;dr

Low damage, high setup for even higher damage

Ann

Strong before Master Skills
Strong after Master Skills
Usable on Merciless
Mid range
Likes breathing room

Best Equipment

• Naraku Whip S (NG - Alice+) - 290dmg + 30SP
• Sea of Stars Whip (NG+ / Merciless - Dire Lilith) - 326dmg + 5 Mag + 30SP
  Recommended Accessory - Red Band

Strengths

• Basically the best character in the game, but not the highest damage.
• The Ma/Tarunda minicombo is the best chain in the game, and by quite a bit. Can be performed during Dash and Slash spam, it comes out that fast. Greatly increases team survivability, for fucking free, and comes with good damage, high flinch and no recovery. There's no downsides to it.
• Innate fire is great, because it's one of the most 'weak to' damage types in the game, and her high Magic stat supplements it
• Burns do solid extra damage
• With the Master skill giving her innate burns, she has the ability to recover her own SP near the end of NG passively via Soul Thief. This gives her already strong magic damage output a good amount of long term sustain. Marin Karin / Brain Jack also essentially becomes a SP recovery move if used in a large group of trashmobs, though it does compete with Diarama and / or her alternate range Fire attack in an already tight set of skill slots.
• Her Magic stat is warhead level, along with her raw fire damage output alone
• Has access to Diarama, letting her use some of her beefy SP pool to help keep others topped up if a battle starts dragging out
• Fastest on-demand movement in the game when mashing run, allowing her to easily reposition or get some breathing room
• Innate combos are all amazing at overall crowd control
• Best non-Haru gun in the game. Shitton of ammo vs Gun weak results in multiple AoA's before her ammo even begins to run scarce. In fact, for many trashmobs / small fights, Ann has the choice of Physical or Gun Damage to complete the encounter with, roughly equal to her neutral physical output. You do not need to keep an eye on her Ammo at all for the most part.
• Baibai! (Explosion)

Weaknesses

• Lower than average raw neutral damage (though her sheer utility and combo enders more than makes up for it) (and she has the highest damage SP skill damage in the game) (and she still has Fire conversion + bonus burns that she'll be using almost 100% of the time, that buffs her up her neutral damage to above everyone else's levels anyways)
• She's weak to Ice, which (as a Fire user) is the type you'll be playing most aggressively into. While it's not as much a problem as Yusuke's Fire weakness, it's still present.
• Increased recovery when hit by a weakness, ambush or status, as her animation is the longest of the Thieves
• Slut presents herself when hiding behind corners or walls and when hit by weakness, possible distraction to guys with semen on the brain

• Lovers Arcana

• Lovers Arcana

• Rarely, an enemy is absorbent to fire; which even then, her default damage output and utility is enough. Plus, she can turn her innate off whenever with her activation attack.
• Basically no real weaknesses

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5}
Two horizonal strikes with low burn properties, with long reach to her sides (Right, 3.5 tiles forward, 4 tiles to the left; Left, 3.5 tiles forward, 4 tiles to the right), a small hitbox, direct strike forward with a small flinch chance and a burn chance (4 tiles forward), a normal diagonal (Left, 3 tiles) ending with two high flinch + burn property strikes aimed in a small projected AoE (1 tile forward, 3 tile diameter). Can cancel in the initial windup, but once the whip's projected, it needs to return until you can dash again - but it's fast enough that it won't be too much of a problem. Otherwise, low windup / recovery on all her attacks. Full chain propels her 5.5 tiles forward, tied lowest and safest in the game. Unquestionably the best default chain in the game - not the highest damage, but shits out so many flinch chances and from such a safe distance that you're likely to at least get 1-2 interruptions every time; plus the burn chance covers the damage loss, and can regen her SP passively once she has Soul Thief. And that's not even mentioning what she can chain it into.
{F}
Applies Fire to the whip, with a tiny hitbox barely equivalent to a normal attack (0.5 tiles; which honestly, you'll notice more when fucking up ambushes than actually in fights). Buff lasts either until de-converted or 11 seconds; which means 10 seconds when taking into account the animation, so you'll need to constantly be reapplying this one (since a full {1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5} chain lasts 3.5s in its own right). This is a conversion, not an addition - all your damage will become Fire element & crits will also deal Fire damage - however it still scales off of her low overall Strength stat which means that at best, she'll only be passively adding some elemental crack damage to a weak enemy's shields (though it is noticable in longer fights), compared to her extremely high damage SPells (owing to her much higher Magic stat). While this at first sounds like you'll just be doing the same damage with a different flavour - don't forget that Ann can apply burns in this state, which not only adds damage to her output, but with Soul Master on Carmen, drain some SP for her use with her high-damage magic. While it's not something you should actively pursue, Morgana and Makoto's elemental output will gain a Technical bonus to enemies burnt by Ann. To no surpise, you should want your whip converted to Fire element as much as possible. As an aside however, Carmen's passives (Burn Boost / Fire Amp etc) do not apply to this conversion (which, isn't to say you shouldn't run them, since her Magic stat still gives her the best per-attack elemental damage in the game)
Attacking again instantly coverts back into Physical, for 3 horizontal red/flinching strikes before projecting a long range, 3 tile diameter plume which juggles a few enemies up. This can be performed at the end of any ground combo as an extra finisher. Since the plume is a multihit, it's her best attack for innately applying burn within her moveset, so you'll want to be getting as many plumes out as possible, if possible - don't get too greedy though, even if the strikes have the ability to flinch, it still takes a while for said strikes to complete leaving Ann vulnerable from behind ;) and to ranged attacks. This conversion out is extremely safe, able to be cancelled as soon as the first strike completes, and with almost no recovery at all.
{1 - F}
The best move in her kit (and a good case for best in the game), a high flinch, horizontal strike that covers both in front and behind her (huge 9 tile diamater), coupled with a 1 tile projected 5x9 Ma/Tarunda (changes depending on what's equipped). Almost no recovery frames, acts as a wide catching juggle and damage is above average for Ann's general output (while still being a flinch), but her overall lower damage doesn't make it something you'll be using to kill things as much as making your life exponentially easier. The juggle itself is situational, as it scatters enemies outward (making them harder to contain, like how Morgana generally CC's them inward), however she can still catch all that she hits with any of the wide range Maragi series of moves, and it is a very useful tool for Futaba battles to force enemies away, quickly. On top, is the obvious Attack Down application to enemies, which can be reapplied with ease, and essentially bolsters your entire team with an effective 200% health. Great to throw out in all situations, but especially at a spawning wave to greatly reduce their immediate threat. Spam this to the high heavens.
{1 - 2 - F}
Explosion / Shockwave. A huge rage (10 tile diameter) high juggle attack with low flinch. While extremely safe, and her longest ranged move in the game - low damage on an already lower damage character and a safe move on an already safe character, means the attack barely any practical useage. Best theoretical use is abusing it's huge hitbox combined with a converted whip to try to apply lots of burns into a crowd for free, as a form of SP recover once you've got Soul Thief, but Ann has far better, more useful ways of doing this (just Marin Karin is instant, and recovers its own cost), and it's generally not something she needs to concern herself with focusing on. Do not use this attack if possible.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F}
Agi / Agilao / Agidyne (depending on what's equipped). Projects the given attack 2 tiles away from Ann with a 3 tile diameter, scaling off of her Magic stat. Ann's BnB nukes, now free! - use this attack as much as you damn well want, as it's her best overall output. Is able to dodge out of it before the magic's even fully completed, and have another set up for use almost immediately once it's over making it once again very safe - however the notably short range to it means that Ann either needs to find a good opening to get it off, or have somebody set up a high-density crowd for her. Pairs well with her Fire de-conversion attack, allowing her to throw 2 fire plumes at either a dense crowd or an unmoving boss, for her maximum damage output; though it does make for a long (and pretty vulnerable) proto-chain of {1 - 2 - 3 - F (- D) - F}
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F}
Five very high damage colums, projected in front of her in a leftward direction; while also acting as a way to convert to fire for free. Not quite the nuke level damage of her {1 - 2 - 3 - F}, but not a waste of time either because of the free re-application. Unlike her other moves, requires a spin animation (gets you your conversion at the least) and doesn't apply the attack if cancelled; overall a bit of lacklustre slot (especially for the time needed to get there) that's out-done by just finishing her default chain, but is situational nonetheless.
{G}
Option to chose between sweeper or SMG. Sweeper does extreme damage with small juggling explosions on contact, for 7 shots a pop and no dodge, SMG does continual damage for 5 shots a pop and comes with a dodge. Sadly the locked-down version is the default-mode, and requires you to go from paused time to slowed time while switching (both sharing an ammo count), but in terms of damage; the sweeper is the best gun in the game anyways, so you don't really need to swtich unless you're about to take damage. Can safely use as an alternate damage source to her normal Phys / Fire attacks, and has enough ammo that she'd be hard pressed to run out against a miniboss. Utter demon against gun-weak enemies; easily tied for best in the game (Ann = Better single target, Haru = Better AoE)
{A - F}
Air activation, a vertical foward flip with high flinch that converts to Fire, but cannot convert back to Physical. With how often you'll want to be throwing plumes out as finishers while wanting to keep the Fire applied, Ann is really the only character in the game where it's not a big deal if you convert / buff on the ground as oppose to via her aerial conversion (since she still has damage tied to both aerial and ground conversion). Both have their places - the aerial conversion is better if you want to get some movement and to initiate a group, while the ground conversion is better if you're in a large crowd or have aggro and wish to stay ready to avoid damage.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
Abysmal. While she is the fastest in the game in terms of dash distance and lack of startup / recovery; her dashspam attack is a tiny ~1 tile attack that only hits things to her close right (as the whip comes out). Never do this as Ann, it'll get you killed.

tl;dr

Does everything you want from a Thief, and with solid damage too. Borderline broken when abused, that is if the game didn't want you dead in Merciless.

Yusuke

Ok before Master Skills
Strong after Master Skills
Unusable on Merciless (Going for counters gets you killed)
Short range
Likes breathing room
Standard general gameplay, though counters are a playstyle on top, as oppose to a different playstyle entirely. If you like mashing buttons, he's your guy.

Best Equipment

• Usumidori S (NG - Ango+) - 304dmg + Fear (med)
• Ame-no-Habakiri (NG+ / Merciless - Dire Nebiros) - 344 dmg + 5 Str + Fear (med)
  Recommended Accessory - Glinting Monocle

Strengths

• Ice is the second most common weakness in the game, and getting a Freeze sets up a guaranteed technical on the next Phys hit.
• Extremely good at general poking
• Auto-Sukukaja means that he's a very versatile and character for trash mob and dungeon clearing; since Crits simply ignore weakness shields
• Decent SP economy, nothing to write home about; though he'll want to some spare to reapply Sukukaja during longer fights
• Good at protecting Futaba owing to his focus on stationary engines.
• Huge amount of crits and auto-evades makes him practical vs most enemy types
• Overall all-arounder with consistant + good damage balanced across all his attacks.
• Cool looking Showtime
• Voiced by Sugita

Weaknesses

• Fire is one of the most common attack types in the game, and the fact he's both reliant on chicken-ing hits for his gimmick to work, and not tanking but rather avoiding, he'll very commonly get hit by a weakness, making him deceptively frail in certain encounters. Furthermore, while Fire is usually weak to Ice, Yusuke has a hard time actually getting Ice on the field, given his Physical leaning.
• Like Ryuji, if his gimmick doesn't click with you, you'll have a harder time actually enjoying him
• While he does do good damage, his reliance in getting a the Combo Up buff before really fucking shit up makes him deceptively weak before then. Haru just mogs him in this regard, related to her already higher damage output, and ability to start her engine without a buff.
• Auto-Sukukaja, while good for wiping trashmobs easily, runs out quickly on bosses; leaving him to struggle if he can't / doesn't re-apply it. For an ice character, ironically, he burns fast and bright.
• Him having to end a mashing session before Goemon comes out severely gimps his ability to use his Combos for anything more than damage over Elemental coverage (given you don't really want to drop a combo if you can). As the guy for ice coverage on the team, he has a hard time pumping out ice damage outside of his SP moves.
• Essentially a death sentence on Merciless. Going for counters can and will get him killed, and lots of his Master Skills rely on locking him in place, which will get him killed.
• Lacks an immunity to Ice; only strong to it. Add this to his lack of Endurance (and focus on Evasion), and he's functionally without any 'good' matchup to go into.

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5}
Diagonal (Left), diagonal (Right), horizontal (Left), diagonal (Right), horizontal (Left) all 3.5 tiles. No special properties, aside from the 4th attack being aimed to your left (compensate by flicking movement to the forward right and he'll travel in a straight line as you want). Propels him 10 tiles forward, 12 with compensation. As much as you want it to, the little style-thing where he gleans his sword back in his sheath doesn't do anything.
{F}
Instant counter frames, and the gimmick to Yusuke's kit - however it only lasts as long as Yusuke is flashing white (0.5s) - he's just standing still vulnerably after as punishment for the 1.5s after (however can be completely cancelled by dashing). If an enemy lands any Physical attack on you while in counterframes; you'll take no damage, instantly apply your Combo-Buff, get iframes for the duration of an instant heavy attack and stagger the enemy backwards into a followup attack (below), then leaving them open for a few attacks (and usually a 1more afterwards). While not guaranteed, the heavy can crit too. All counter frames deactivate the chance of a natural (RNG) evasion, and cleanse his own combo-Suku buff (but not his SP-cost one). Downside is that it does hardlock you into these counterframes, and you are still damaged just normally by the far more common ranged elemental attacks / afflicted by status. While some ranged attacks count as contact for one reason or another, for the most part it's just not best to tempt fate. Best used reactively if anything, over predictively; you've got near-instant startup so reading any telegraph for a known contact attack - counter frames CAN be used to tank Almighty-type attacks, but again they must make contact with you. The worst part of this move is that fact you can accidentally use it after mashing for a Freeze, essentially forcing vuln frames.
For the attack afterwards, 7 projected high-crit AoE attacks in quick succession; projected 3 tiles in front of you, with a decent sized 5 tile diameter. Mash, and there's a chance you'll score a Freeze for Technical damage. Pretty bad aside from the Freeze chance, but the damage lies in the heavy attack from getting a counter.
Yes, it does slow also the in-game time. Very cool.
{1 - F} (Mash F)
Upward slash transitioning to the air, but can't chain into aerial chains. Mashing from there is aerial, covers an utterly ridiculus range, with lots of light attacks (12 tile radius semi-circle in front of you, no projection). Short mash = Suku buff after, Long Mash = Masuku buff after - both are a uniquely short 5s buff that will probably only last you until the end of the next chain if that. As it places you in the air it's the safest of his mash-combos, as you run minimal risk of accidentally activating your counterframes, and has a huge range that's great for trashmobs, but is the least damaging of his 3 choices. Mashing harder doesn't increase your damage, you can actually get away with a pretty low tempo; you cannot rotate however. Because it's a channel that places you in the air, huge recovery.
{1 - 2 - F} (Mash F)
Yusuke's BnB, his poke rush engine; 10x3 tiles for the pokes, 13x5 tiles for the final strike (pushing you forward 3 tiles, to make it feel farther). Long range, high crit, very safe, great damage. Mashing for longer increases the duration of the rush and the damage of the final strike (x5 when fully-rushed, combo-extension does not overcap multiplier), but doesn't affect the hitbox of the final blow. You can rotate while doing this attack, albeit slowly. Notable recovery, especially if going for the final strike; but overall the least punishing of his channels.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F} (Mash F)
High-crit, heavy strikes channelled for a 7x12 tile rectagle rectangle in front of you; followed by Bufu / Bufula / Bufudyne (depending on what's the highest equipped). Very simple, his highest damage attack; however far less safe than his pokes because of the noticeably reduced ranged - if you have a window and your combo buff up; this is the one you want to spam. No recovery whatsoever, if you land a Freeze from it, free Technical with your next Phys attack.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F}
Small amount of counter frames (0.3s), before a heavy, high crit, high flinch horizontal slash (8 tiles, put pushes you 5 tiles forward, so it feels less). Is the only way to apply his combo buff (15s long, regardless of application) without countering; said combo buff allows you to use any of the 3 mash-chains he's got endlessly until it runs out. Flat damage up, great when you've got space to abuse it but don't get too greedy because you will get fucking shot up by ranged trashmobs. Does not spin you backwards, it's just the animation. While in ideal terms you shouldn't need to use this; with how risky / janky his counterframes can be, it's a very core long hain that you'll need to learn when you can pull the entire thing off.
{G}
Slow, high flinch and high crit bullets, ability to change between firing states. First has aim but no dodge, second is autoaim and lets you jump around. Fine, but lacks ammo and fire rate; only really good for locking down one enemy for a few seconds.
{A - F}
Heavy downward strike (8 tile diameter) with high flinch, and counter frames that act like a no-recovery version of his default {F}. Sounds great; never use it for the counterframes. It's way harder than it sounds to reliably pull off (because it's on such a delay), requires you to be aerial an anticipating a hit (vulnerable) and even if you do take a contact attack, it doesn't automatically push the enemy into the range of the followup multislash like the {F} (though it does guarantee the heavy slash and the Combo-buff). On the other hand, the downward strike itself is a great initiation tool and has comparatively little recovery compared to most of Yusuke's kit. Situational.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
Probably the best one in the game considering its balance between damage, mobility and low recovery. Somewhat good range; but misses his entire right-hand side, and has somewhat increased startup so is less safe.

tl; dr

Critz over counterz. Treat your counterframes as a bonus, and not a focus.

Makoto

Weak before Master Skills
Situational after Master Skills (Boss enemies)
Situational on Merciless (Boss enemies)
Short range/In their face
Likes breathing room
Standard general gameplay

Best Equipment

• Vajra S (NG - Metatron) - 300dmg + Dizzy (med)
• Royal Touch (NG+ / Merciless - Dire Yatagarasu) - 336dmg + 5 En + Dizzy (med)
  Recommended Accessory - New Driver Sticker

Strengths

• If it's weak to Nuclear, it's a free All out Attack
• If it's weak to Nuclear, it's already dead
• IF it's weak to Nuclear, it's literally figuratively getting nuked off the fucking map. Bosses included. Take the hint. Read the previous sentence again. She's almost brokenly good against anything with a Nuclear weakness, and easily outdoes Haru and Ryuji's neutral damage output on that one condition.
• Her physical, non-Nuke output is actually pretty good, even if not top-tier
• Probably the best character to just let the AI control, provided there's no enemies that absorb Nuclear.
• Highest Agility of the cast means she gets quite a few auto-evades (which work well with Avenger) and crits. Stick a New Driver Sticker or any Accessory that gives an auto-Sukukaja, and she can work as a bootleg Yusuke, going for crits over Elemental damage (which unlike Yusuke, she gets lots of on top, passively). If she's having a good day, she's deceptively tanky; though it's not immediate to appreciate how much damage she actually avoids in a fight until you realise she's the last member of your AI-controlled team alive.
• Good dash'n'slash compounds her best-of-Thieves Evasion, making her deceptively survivable (even if it's RNG-based)
• The fact she gets explosions on hit means that for extremely grouped up enemies, she's one of the fastest trashmob clearers in the game
• Defence Master is nice to work with, as it allows her to get a few combos off safely to begin with, though it will run out at some point
• Useful to switch in to heal with, and switch out to an actual member; because the fact you'll pretty much never use her aside, her SP economy is amazing, with how much innate Nuke damage she does
• Riding around on Johanna is pretty damn fun
• Suit design from behind leaves the least to the imagination

Weaknesses

• Her key and crippling weakness is that Nuke is the rarest elemental weakness in the game, and has multiple absorbs and resists; giving her almost no actual window to shine in for the entire game (because there are times when you'll find Nuke-weak enemies paired with Nuke-absorbant enemies; so putting Makoto on your team will harm you, as she heals the enemy more than she damages while controlled by the AI)
• Generally an anaemic moveset - both in neutral and for what Johanna can learn
• Cannot de-activate off her Nuke conversion like Ann / Wolf, and even is forced to turn it on with some of her chains, arguably making her more versatile before she maxes out her Master Skills
• While she benefits a lot from building for Nuke damage (Amp, Boost, Nuke Band), it's lategame and still limited to a rare element. Plus, as previously mentioned, the accessory slot is still competing for an equally viable Auto-Sukukaja to cap out her initial evasion.
• Her Bike might seem similar to Morganacar for bullying enemies, however it has a time limit and a smaller hitbox, ultimately relegating it to damage usage only (which she already has enough nuke damage for)
• Her BnB (the multipunch, which rolls her high Agility into a few crits and pumps out her best DPS) is only available at the end of a 6-long attack string (way too risky in many cases, especially with her in the front and no way to reliably mitigate damage outside of lucky auto-evades) or in the air (which locks her in and leaves her vulnerable)
• Applying her buff from neutral locks her in place, and unlike Ryuji, she's not beefy enough to take the hits. Unlike Ryuji however, it's much easier to accidentally use it, given she has to tap the button during her combo's as oppose to holding them.

• Makotofags

• Makotofags

• makotofags.... what are you doing...

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 (- 1 - 2 ...)}
Has the only truly endless chain in the game; 3 horizontal attacks (Right, Left, Left), Punch (that has launch properties) then Downward slash, followed by a flinching horizontal (Left) - all are 3 tiles in range, the final attack additionally is slightly longer to the sides while attack 4 & 5 have no side reach. It's pretty good Phys damge, but it just lacks range and pressure to keep up (if it were an online game, she deparately needs an attack speed buff)
{F} {KORE DE OWARI!}
Nuclear buff (not a conversion), with an associated small 1.5 tile Nuclear explosion originating from Makoto. All her attacks (basic chains and finishers) now create 2 tile diameter Nuclear-type explosions on contact, that at it's core increases her base damage by an additional 50% (split Phys / Nuclear element). Unlikely to hit other enemies unless they're grouped extremely close together. If on the offchance enemies are grouped extremely closely (such as trashmobs or Morgana setup) explosions do deal damage nearby enemies, (which given how big the explosions are and the collision boxes in this game are); has a potential to raise her damage of her base combo by up to ~x3.5 damage against trashmobs and ~x2.5 to larger mobs. Buff lasts 10s, but with 0.5s of forced recovery. Small hitbox means you really ought not to do it mid-fight if you can; use the aerial application when you can.
{TL: This is the End!}
{1 - F}
Uppercut (1 tile wide, 3 tiles forward) with mediocre damage and huge recovery (because it places her in the air), with the only 'positive' being that it has high CC and can launch if you're somehow overwhelmed (and even then, the sheer recovery will kill you). While it does chain into her aerial, it requires you to actually land it. Never use this attack, if you want an aerial,
{1 - 2 - F}
Nuclear Affinity dash (controllable) for 4 tiles, ending in a Nuclear element explosion (5 tile diamter). If her Nuclear buff is active, the explosion is doubled in size to ~10 tiles in diameter, however the initial dash / ride is unaffected. While it does displace enemies, not really good for CC. Can be cancelled with a dash, and if the bike's travelled enough (~1-2 tiles), will still result in an explosion. Basically just another way to shit out Nuclear element.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F}
Frei / Freila / Freidyne; 8 tile diameter radius. High recovery, locked in for the full duration. If her Nuclear buff is active, is augmented into Mafrei / Mafreila / Mafreidyne in a huge 45% cone in front of her. Basically just a higher risk / reward version of the above, to shit out more Nuclear element.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F} (Hold)
An extremely fun attack, where you get to ride around on the motorbike for a while (~55 tiles) at x4 default speed; displacing and damaging enemies with light Nuclear element, before a short dash forward (dealing more damage than usual contact) and a wide and heavy Nuclear element horizontal slash with high crit chance; projected 4 tiles away, 3 tiles wide from the Left. If you have her Nuclear buff active, extends the distance of the bike ride to ~80 tiles (~150% duration). Can be activated again during the ride to initiate the dash + heavy attack early; if you want to land it consistantly, it's aways the one after the forward punch. Absolutely no recovery to it, extremely safe move to use; both aggressively and to reposition yourself with however the ride itself is almost tickle-level damage. Honestly should have just been an infinite length, so she can at least function like Morganacar as an Aggro Bully (complementing Morgana as a Suport Bully), but at is, just a fun but disappointing ability. Shits out Nuclear element, but she's kinda got enough of that. You can use it in the overworld if you want to pretend you're a biker.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - F} (Mash)
Makoto's BnB, a channelled Nuclear Element punch rush (8 tiles long, 5 tiles wide) with high crit that lasts for 1s, ending with a 7 tile Nuclear element pulse. No recovery frames throughout. If her Nuclear buff is active, increases the potential duration of the channel to 3s, and increases the size of the shockwave to 10 tiles.
{G}
High flinch, high damage and high fire rate gun with autoaim. Good overall damage, but brought down heavily by lack of ammo, meaning you only really get one burst of it. Converts to Nuclear when buffed.
{A - 1 (Mash) - 2 (Mash) - 3 (Mash)}
Has a unique aerial chain, where each attack is one of her punch-rally high-crit channelled punch rushes; while you can rotate during the rushes, you can completely change the direction between rushes. Her highest damage move and absolute shits out Nuclear damage / crits; but extremely risky as you're locked into a long-length attack with heavy recovery.
{A - F}
Huge 10 tile diamater ground pound with the bike, that applies her Nuclear buff and minimal recovery frames. You will always want to use this to apply the buff; the ground version is shit in comparion.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
Pretty good all in all, as good, if not better than Yusuke's - fast, moderately wide, tiny recovery and with her buff, creates mini-explosions on contact. Shame it's coupled with the rest of her kit.

tl;dr

Fun kit that ends up doing nothing special.
She has about 5 ways to activate the Nuclear stuff, but barely anything past Nuclear damage she's got it. Amazing vs Nuke weakness, and high innate Evasion makes her amazing to have the AI control; but lacks utility the other Thieves offer.

Haru

Strong before Master Skills
Strong after Master Skills
Hard to use on Merciless (requires standing still)
Mid range/Backline
Needs breathing room
Abnormal general gameplay, requires much more positional awareness, because the innate Psio is borderline fucking broken with the damage it shits out

Best Equipment

• Fleurs du Mal S (NG - Hyodo+) - 308dmg + 5 Ma
• Parashu (NG+ / Merciless - Dire Eligor) - 348dmg + 5 Ma + Fear (med)
  Recommended Accessory - Mind Band

Strengths

• Highest possible damage output in the game, and by quite a degree
• Highest neutral output in the game before Ryuji gets Auto-Tarukaja
• Not even counting damage, Combo Psionado completely shreds though Psy weakness, allowing for multiple All Out Attacks vs both bosses and minibosses. On it's own, roughly outputs 30-40x more damage than any other character can do with default button mashing; each tick of damage roughly 5x that of a neutral attack. And it's also an AoE that juggles and can be controlled. If the enemy is weak to it, it outdamages an All out Attack (though an AoA give iframes, making it not strictly 'worse'). Easily the best attack in the game.
• Axe slams are good coverage for if enemies get too close to her, and is the only Thief bar Ann who can innately afflict status outside of her Persona chain.
• Nade Launcher is great for clearing out groups of far away gunners, as the attack doesn't care about collision inbetween her and her target; though has a severe lack of Ammo.
• Despite preferring to be static, has more than enough choices for mobility and self-peel.
• Psi damage is the most reliable element for Technical bonus (affecting all Mental ailments), to the point that Haru is the only character in the game that can reliably benefit from ailments applied on enemies.
• Good at protecting Futaba (but not as good as Yusuke)
• Is the least autistic / grating (playable) f*m**d in the game, fun characterization and best designed outfit
• Good AoA animation, nearly Ryuji-tier

Weaknesses

• Both Psi and Gun are pretty rare elements to be weak to - while she does make up in raw damage, there's very often times when you'll want to sub in a specialist over her.
• Very easy to get greedy with, and has very little bulk to play with unlike Ryuji
• Generally needs another Thief to setup for her, as her overall CC is minimal, and it takes a bit of time for her to actually get her Psionado going.
• Extremely vulnerable to gunners while chanelling or if another wave spawns on top of her.
• Milady has pretty shit SP skills, all things considered
• Has a 5head big enough to play noughts and crosses on

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4}
Upwards Diagonal (Left, 4 tiles, launches), Horizontal (Right, 4 tiles), Heavy Upwards Diagonal (Right, 4 tiles, launches), Downwards (2 tiles, but with a 6 tile diamater slam after). Slow, but the highest damage default chain in the game, passively bullies quite a bit of space for herself. Propels her 5.5 tiles forward, tied lowest in the game, and the passive CC helps her set up her engines more safely. Some recovery on all her attacks, noticeable on the final one.
{F} (Hold)
Barrage of 6 shots at a fixed range (does not increase if you buy Ammo Horder); projected 10 tiles away, 3 tile diamater, with a final 7th shot that's in the same spot but with double the diamater (6 tiles wide). Functionally identical to her Gun, aside from losing the ability to aim; but in exchange it requires no ammo, MLady doubles the total Gun damage and there's the bonus 7th shot. Great attack for both damage and displacement if you've not got the space to start an engine; though it does force enemies back and apart (which you don't really want for your engines, prefering them clumped up a short way in front of you). If afflicted with Forget, MLady won't appear, and thus deals half damage.
{1 - F} (Hold)
Barrage of 6 downward strikes (2.5 tile diameter), all with chance to Flinch and a chance to apply Dizzy (scales with Luck) ending in a final 7th slam, which is heavier damage, twice the radius (5 tiles) and twice the chance for a Flinch / Dizzy. If you let go early, will still let off the buffed up slam with only a damage reduction. No difference in starting this from the ground or air, Haru's fastest engine. Applying Dizzy via this method also sets up Technical damage with her Psionado.
{1 - 2 - F} (Hold)
The Psionado - I'll cut to the chase and say this move is borderline busted. The highest damage engine in the game bar none, absolutely shreds through healthbars, even if they're resistant to Psy; with the 'downside' being it's relative close range and high risk (though well worth the reward). The Psionado is projected 1.5 tiles away, with a diameter of 4 tiles; ending in a Psi / Psio / Psiodyne in the same area as the Nado (depending on the highest level equipped). The Nado can be aimed, knocks up trashmobs, catches aerials, procs with any mental ailment for a Technical and has a ridiculous tickrate, unironically resulting in (at minimum) x10 the damage output any other member of the Thieves can put out. This move outdamages all of Ryuji's charged attacks (even if he delivers his damage in a chunk of burst), basically all of Joker's persona and is still higher than a full Wolf Rage chain (even if he has less investment). The key thing that balances this move out is that Haru cannot move at all throughout this attack, and it's somewhat hard to pull off safely owing to the notable startup time it has - however once the engine's started, it has no recovery frames whatsoever to cancel. This move alone allows Haru to chew up and spit out bosses if you can ever down them - however they can quite easily out-mobility her and any form of Poise makes her a standing duck (that still deals ridiculous damage).
In short, it's worth setting up for this move.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F} (Hold)
Haru becomes a controllable circular hitbox, 6 tiles wide. Tickrate increases with time to deal increased damage, and provides Haru with mid-fight mobility if she can't find an opportunity to chain into her Psionado. While you don't need to move, if you do, you'll fluctuate between x1 and x2 speed as she spins (no way to compensate to theoretically get a full x2 spin). Ends with a high crit explosion just to the right of centre, roughly 1 tile in diamater, that acts as a sweet spot of burst damage for her. Bullies trashmobs and sticks to Poise-y boss mobs, with no recovery to boot, another great and useful engine for Haru.
{G}
A unique gun befitting her dual speciality, acts as an aimed mortar with a targetter that can hit multiple mobs at once for high damage. You'll want to use her {F} for Gun damage, and keep this in reserve to snipe or CC enemies far or close. Wipes backline gunners with ease, great if they build up without you able to respond. Also, easily the best self peel in the game - unless the enemy has poise, firing all the shots at your feet will instantly force them all away from you as the hitbox also extends slightly behind you, best answer possible if you get overwhelmed. Downside is that you've got a severely kneecapped Ammocount.
{A - F}
A large dizzy cartwheel 2.5 tiles wide and 8 tiles long, that pulls her downwards and chains directly into her {1 - F}. Good for catching aerial enemies, and isn't particularly more risky, as you cover yourself in a hurtbox to peel enemies away.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
High damage, a bit slow. If you want damage, use any of her other moves, if you want survivability choose a different Thief or use one of her moving chains. Not bad per se, just doesn't really have a usecase scenario, when you're choosing her for low-mobility / high-damage.

tl;dr

Hits like a fucking truck, and doesn't apologise for sending everything on an isekai adventure.

Sophia

Ok before Master Skills
Strong after Master Skills
Hard to use on Merciless
Short / Mid / Long range
Needs breathing room if you can't time her YoYos, Doesn't if you can
Standard general gameplay, though timing the already tight window YoYo's is something like Yusuke that should be a gimmick on top and not her whole playstyle. If you can't, just take the fucking L, back off, charge twice and go back in to play normally

Best Equipment

• Forbidden Fruit (NG - Demiurge+) - 292dmg + Bless dmg Up
• Elpis (NG+ / Merciless - Dire Mithras) - 328dmg + 5 Ma + Bless dmg Up
  Recommended Accessory - White Band

Strengths

• Very high damage output for very low investment once she gets going
• Easily the highest skill cap in terms of things to learn (though Ryuji out-does her in actual gameplay). If you want a tip for the Perfect Catches, react to the flashes, don't predict them. Once you get the muscle memory down and don't need to look at the flash, then you can predict them. If you try to predict the flash, you'll fall early on the timing, it's designed that way.
• Access to Ma/Rakunda is always useful if she doesn't want to serve as much of a healing role; and she naturally has it as an innate part of her combo strings too
• Access to Recarm makes her an invaluable pick who competes with Morgana for the dedicated Recarm slot
• Divine Grace puts her as the best healer that the group has access to after Joker in raw numbers
• Her 5 attack into special sets off an absolute fucking nuke of Bless damage, essentially a Makougaon from the getgo for free and so great for earlygame NG
• While she does have attacks that lock her in place (her short combos when held), they have next to no recovery frames, rotate quickly and juggle all enemies caught; making them extremely safe to use
• YoYo combos are extremely versatile for simple reach and hitbox variety, giving her range options for wherever she ends up in a given fight
• Great to (ironically) let the AI control as a teammate for when you switch off her, since it does not have the issue of timing attacks
• Wears spats, nice animations
• Sounds adorable (>dubniggers get out)

Weaknesses

• Low damage before she gets her Spin buffs / Def debuffs off
• While Morgana demands a solid amount of gamesense to get the most out of him with an otherwise easy kit; Sophia demands the most actual overall skill of any character, but in turn flaunts any need for gamesense given her adaptability to any situation and lack of needing setup
• She has a huge amount of things that she needs to keep a track of to play optimally, which quickly stack up. Saving SP for Recarms, delaying healing to make use of her Divine Grace, the given role of doing Bless Elemental damage, her gun's charge attack, applying Rakunda, checking her YoYo charge, getting the YoYo's to go where she wants and then timing the already tight window on her YoYo's for perfect charges. All this in a game where you need to keep an eye on lots of enemies/ attacks at once.
• Her Dash and Slash is a very thin, though pretty long, forward pointing hitbox; definitely one of the worst in the cast
• Near Joker for one of the worst SP economies in the game.
• Generally thin, tight hitboxes. They might vary wildly with range and shape, but they won't do you any favours if you miss.
• She's locked in place if you want to reach the end of her longer combos to get the big payoffs - this is where she can take easy damage and is a death sentence on Merciless

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6}
Uppercut (3.5 tiles forward), double uppercut (x2 3.5 tiles forward) and another double uppercut (x2 3.5 tiles forward), cross-slash uppercut (3.5 tiles from the right), double spin then (x2 2 tiles from the left) finally a projected cone (7 tiles in radius, 5 ticks). At the end of this chain, you will always increase your spin level by 1, or refresh the maximum spin level (mo matter if you catch or not). Full combo propels her 7 tiles forward. Good damage, but horrendous range outside of the finale-cone; as everything is only projected directly in front of her. Outside of the damage numbers, completely unaffected by her buff. Has a noticeable amount of recovery throughout, as she can't dashcancel while her YoYo's are at their farthest - combined with her innately low dash distance, makes her very risky just to spam attacks with.
As for her unique gimmick; at the end of every attack, Sophia will flash for 0.1s, as which point either another quick attack OR any finisher will automatically raise / refresh her spin buff. Makes her sound like a high-skill-ceiling for this alone, but honestly if you just complete her quick attack chains, you can easily maintain her buff, and will probably accidentally get a few Perfect Catches in the meantime - don't kill yourself trying to focus too much on catching every attack. Her ceiling comes from using her combo ranges right, not her timing. Great for single-target, shit for crowds outside of the final hit.
{F}
Sophia's manual Spin-buff, creates a small Phys-type explosion (3 tile diameter) around Sophia then applies her damage and range buff. Has two unique levels, buffing or recieving the buff lasts for 10s, and raises you to her next level or refreshes the buff if at Lv 2 already. Honestly, not really all that useful as (timing aside) she can get it quite easily passively, but exists nonetheless. Contrary to what the game imlpies YOU DO NOT GAIN ANY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS FROM PERFECT CATCHES ASIDE FROM AMMO REGEN, OVER ALTERNATE WAYS TO GET THE BUFF - THE BUFF IS THE BUFF, NO ADDITIONAL ASPECTS.
Try not to use it, unless you NEED a buffed version of her {1 - F}.
{1 - F} (Mash F)
The high flinch Spin2win; a diagonal channelled spin with launch properties that functionally covers 3 tiles in front and behind her and 2 tiles to her left and right; however has a blindspot to her left. Also has an invisible hitbox above the spin, that goes about 5 tiles up. When buffed at Lv1, this range is extended to 3.5 tiles in front and behind her, and reaches higher up, however gains no additional benefit at Lv2 aside from damage. If buffed, can be channelled as long as she has a buff active; and can rotate herself slowly throughout.
Amazing for taking out aerial trashmobs; Sophia alone is probably the best in the game at dealing with them owing to this one move. Also her best overall engine for dealing with downed enemies; owing to how fast it comes out and it's high-flinch + high tickrate likely netting you even more time to deal damage.
{1 - 2 - F} (Mash)
Rakunda (projected 4 tiles in front of her, 3 tiles in diamater) followed by a perfectly vertical spin (2.5 tiles by default, 3 tiles at Lv1, 3.5 tiles at Lv2), and ending in a high-flinch cross slash (4.5 radius from Sophia, unaffected by her Spin Buff). While buffed, you can channel this attack as long as the buff remains active, and you can rotate extremely quickly. You can fire the Rakunda off for no recovery / without committing to the spin, and the spin itself has low recovery.. No matter what, this cannot be turned into a Marakunda (not by equipping it to her Persona or with her personal buff)
{1 - 2 - 3 - F}
Very basic attack, just fires off a Kougaon regardless of what's equipped; 1 tile projected, 3 tiles diameter. No recovery, just a safe and good damage attack for coverage; that hits hard in the earlygame.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F (- F)}
An aerial spin (6 tiles in diameter), which pulls trashmobs upwards in a minor vortex, along with high flinch and high crit. With an extra F press, followed with two high-flinch strikes forward (3 tiles forward), and a high-flinch heavy cross slash (4 tiles forward, 4 tiles wide) that launches. Probably the attack most affected by her range buff, the final two attacks are unaffected aside from damage increases, but the spin / vortex increases to 8 tiles at Lv1, and 10 tiles at Lv2 buff. No recovery at any point, making it very safe, and Sophia's overall best damage combo for crowds - you'll want to get this one down consistantly.
{1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - F}
Two high-crit heavy strikes forward, a high-crit shockwave (6 tiles diameter), then FIRING MAH heavy Bless Element Kougaon LAZOR (8 tiles diameter, offset by 1 tile to the left and 2 tiles forward of the shockwave); no recovery frames throughout any of it (though cancelling early will cancel the Beam). Only aspect affected by the Spin Buff (aside from damage) is the shockwave, increasing to 7 tiles diameter at Lv1 and 8 tiles diameter at Lv 2.
Sophia's highest damaging single-target move, use for when you've got a downed enemy to deal with - you can do it consistantly as it's always after the spin in her default combo; however does less overall Bless damage than chaining out her {1 - 2 - 3 - F} Kougaons come lategame if you're targetting weaknesses (both do the same, but you can pull off two of the shorter combos in the time it takes to do one larger one). Fun little detail, the mask comes off for this one; you can see her face when she turns around.
{G}
Low damage, slow moving piercing shots. Every time you get a perfect catch, you uniquely regen 1 bullet, which you'll honestly just want to save for below...
{G} (Hold)
A low damage, low tickrate projected gravity well that costs 3 bullets and covers a 5 tile diamater sphere, 8 tiles in front of your (or at the first point of collision hit). Will always fire the same sized vortex, no matter how long you charge it - the instant it flashes, you're ready (despite the misleading effects). Slow to charge, and has noticeable recovery frames, making it risky to use. In terms of her unique regen; you can theoretically recover 2 charged shots per chain (and is the only reason you'd want to focus on Perfect Catches) - use liberally if you've got the space, ammo really isn't a factor for Sophia once you git gud on her timings.
Sophia's only form of CC to contend with Morgana when in the 'resurrection teammate' role - honestly, it's not bad (fire it at the ground close to you for optimal personal setup) - it's just heavily outclassed by basically all of Morgana's kit in terms of CC, performing an ammo-limted, slower version of Morgana's {1 - F} chain. Use if you've only got Sophia at hand for setup; but otherwise just stick to what she does best over Morgana - damage.
{A - F}
High flinch cross strike, identical to the one found as a bonus end to her {1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - F} spinning attack. On its own, not really that good - still good for flinching, but lacks damage + range and the vulnerability isn't worth it.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
Shit. While it's nonexistant recovery makes up for her shorter dashes, it only attacks directly in front of her, forcing you to directly charge into enemies. Don't dash'n'slash as Sophia.

tl;dr

Morgana, but trades most of CC for a a shitton of default non-engine damage.

Wolf

(Called him by his fake name so retards above don't get spoiled just by looking at the Contents)
Weak before Master Skills
Strong after Master Skills
Useable on Merciless
Backline
Needs breathing room
Abnormal general gameplay (see below)

Best Equipment

• Gram (NG - Mara) - 306dmg + 5 En
• Curtana (NG+ / Merciless - Dire Archangel) - 344 dmg + 5 Str + 5 En
  Recommended Accessory - Rakshasa Belt / Chazukemare Charm (give Futaba the Coral Necklace in this case)

Gameplay Note

Doesn't play like the rest at all.
Focus on staying far, far back, he's firmly a ranged character, who can engage at long distance and effectively peel for himself in a pinch if he gets surrounded. His beams and shockwaves do not have damage falloff and travel far - this is for a reason.
Rage mode should be to set up a combo you know is going to do lots of damage; not for constant use. Ideally, you'll switch on an off it before the innate damage even kicks in. Before Master skills, don't even bother with Rage; it's too expensive for too little benefit. If you play him like a Berzerker, you WILL die, quickly.
By the time you get him, you should have Oracle Recovery and Ambusher maxed out - this is your main source of healing, not his lifesteal. The lifesteal is less of a heal, and more of a sustain, allowing him to deal with mob enemy chip damage as he avoids the actual shadows, and maybe giving him an extra tick of Rage to work with.

Strengths

• When the conditions are in his favour, he's got an extremely high damage output
• If forced at a close range, his greatsword has good CC and juggle to deal with trashmobs, and OK damage for normal enemies (even if it is suboptimal)
• Due to how far away he can stay away and do damage combined with his his Endurance and minor lifesteal, he's an extremely safe character; in terms of damage engine, he's close enough to Ryuji and Haru in damage but exponentially more survivable
• Almighty Persona skills are good for if you just want to reliably burst a fuckton of damage in one fight by burning your SP bar
• Can bounce off of mental ailments to score technical damage in the place of Weakness damage
• High amount of liferip supplements his innate bulkiness
• No negative elemental matchups, because Almighty
• Is not Akechi Groo Goro; is instead, 'well written'
• has a daughter

Weaknesses

• Takes a while to actually become useful / usable
• Playing with your health on the line is a double edged sword (pun intended), but mostly applies only to the earlygame.
• His buff Persona skills are better done by Joker / others on default chains, and is only acquired later in the narrative, leaving Valjean with a hollow Persona skillset outside of his Almighty attacks
• Gun damage (and it's liferip) quickly falls off and becomes basically useless
• Can be very annoying to try to aim his ranged attacks
• No positive elemental matchups, because Almighty - thus no situational reason you'd want him

Chains

{1 - 2 - 3 - 4}
Heavy diagonal (from the Right, 5 tiles), horizontal (from the Left, 4 tiles), diagonal (from the Left 4 tiles), high-flinch, launch-property heavy diagonal (from the Left in the same direction as before, 5 tiles). Quite a few of recovery frames on the first attack, with loads of recovery frames for the other 3 after, and clumsily small dash windows that do not cancel any of it out - once you're swinging, you're locked in for the full swing.
Shortest default chain in the game with the longest reach and highest damage. Sounds great. Don't use it. Don't get me wrong, it's not 'bad', but it just doesn't play to Zenkichi's strengths; namely his range. That, and the huge amounts of recovery just hurts to try to use in CQC when you've got more attacks to be worrying about.
To touch on Zenkichi's unique passive here, he gains 10-15% lifesteal while outside of Rage and using any Finisher.
{F}
Activates Rage mode, along with an associated projected cone of minor damage and CC for about 1 tile in front of you. While under Rage, you trade a fixed amount of between 11-13 health every 2s in exchange, Almighty conversion to all attacks, high-flinch on all attacks, high-crit on all attacks, mechanically bolstered finishers and additional shockwaves on every basic attack. Startup has notable recovery, turnoff has some recovery; however is best deactivated by instead aiming his Guns (which is slightly delayed, but in exchange has no recovery). Does not strictly increase base damage; only the bonus shockwaves deal bonus damage; 50% damage on top, functionally increasing damage by 150%.
This is an amazing ability, and one that ironically suffers newer players the most, to the point it usually turns them off Zenkichi for good; despite him very easily becoming an absolute fucking monster if you can play / build around it. In short - the self-damage is fixed. When you get Zenkichi at ~Lv40, not only do you not have his Mastery that lowers the health cost of Rage (from 22-26), or any of the bonus things that make Rage amazing, but you are at a lower health (starting at 338hp in his first fight) - which means that you're led to believe that at best you'll be getting about 10 ticks before you die. But again - the damage is fixed. Once you begin to approach Lv100, and start getting Incense rolling in because Merciless; Zenkichi's healthbar just does not give a fuck any longer - it's no longer 10% of your health per tick, it's almost 0.1%. Combined with Zenkichi's already amazing damage, solid liferip by default and so on, and there's no reason not to use it liberally whenever you get an opening for a higher damage chain. Not all the time - just a lot of the time. Yes, in NG, Zenkichi functionally has to exist without it, but once you reach ~600 HP and get his Mastery Skills, he's unironically almost Haru-tier in terms of damage, exchanging slightly less damage and no potential Psi weakness for not needing setup and nothing resisting him.
Finally, Rage cannot kill Zenkichi - but it will bring him down to exactly 1 hp and he will be unable to use it again until he heals.
{1 - F (- 1 ...)}
Zenkichi's absolutely brutal BnB, the Death Laser, with three variable charge levels - yes, when I tested it, Uncharged and Lv1 charge seem to be mechanically identical (thus the 'delay' between Lv2 and Lv3 doesn't really exist - it's just that Lv1 doesn't exist to begin with). Uncharged / Lv1 gives an immediate 2 tile diameter Physical laser, that travels for 15 tiles. Lv2 increases the width to 3 tiles but doesn't change the distance, and deals x5 the damage of that of an uncharged one. Finally at the maximum Lv3 charge you get Zenkichi's signature 4 tile diameter, 30 tile distance, Phys-Almighty split damage Death Laser that deals x8 the damage of an uncharged one. While you're locked to your position, you can dodge around and retain charge (back-dodging having greatly less recovery frames than forward-dodging). This supplemented with it's ridiculous range makes it an extraordinarily safe, extraordinarily high damage attack, and definitely worth spamming. This attack also allows you to loop immediately back into his default chain with no recovery, by pressing the quick attack button after, which performs a dash attack - making it a proto-infinite chain (ie, allowing you to chain into charging the next Death Beam even faster)
And then there's the Rage - which, as stated before adds critical + flinch properties and converts all the Phys damage into Almighty. Will add 1 tile of diameter to any charge level, but doesn't come with an associated shockwave however, so deals the same amount of damage without it on (aside from what Almighty damage ignores in terms of Phys resistance)
{1 - 2 - F} (Hold)
When held, performs 6 heavy Phys vertical strikes (propels 1 tile forward, deals damage 4 tiles ahead),then either when released or at the end of those 6, performs a final (7th) split Phys-Almighty strike (5 tiles) after a slight delay with a 7 tile diameter Phys-Almighty shockwave. You have complete control over yout movement for this chain, making it alright at making space, due to it's decent knockback. Furthermore, there's no recovery frames at any point in this attack, making it very safe to use (even considering that there's no hitbox to your left or right)
The star of the show this time around is when Rage is active - increasing the speed of every strike, allowing you to perform 8 normal strikes before the final (9th) strike and increasing the size of the shockwave to 9 tiles in diameter; on top of the associated flinch+crit+shockwave+complete Almighty conversion. The Rage shockwaves from this attack travel 10 tiles in front of you, however as you'll be propelled forward by default anyways (21 tiles), it feels much less.
Probably Zenkichi's most situational chain - lacks the damage of his beam or the range of his whirl. Only really usable for if you're getting overwhelmed and need to make some space while keeping up the damage.
{1 - 2 - 3 - F} (Mash)
His spin2win, performing 8 horizontal strikes (6 diameter, around his character model) when mashed (all of which have increased flinch and split Phys-Almighty elemental typing), ending with a 4 tile diameter Megido/Megidola projected 1 tile in front of him (changes with skill set). Propels Zenkichi 13.5 tiles forwards, no recovery. Zenkichi's highest damage engine, but the risk required to get here (vai his default chain) means it's only really suitable if you've got an opening. Death Beam is safer and almost equivalent damage.
With Rage active, again increases attack speed, performs up to 10 horizontal strikes and projects shockwaves 15 tiles in front of him (+ inreased flinch / crit and full Almighty Conversion); and while it doesn't extend the range of his spin, it does increase the size of the Megido/Megidola to 7 tiles in diameter.
{G}
Takes 2 bullets per shot (so in reality, he's only got 15 shots by default). Heals 4 HP per double shot (8HP on crit); however just better used as a way to instantly deactivate Rage with no recovery frames, after a short delay.
{G} (Hold)
Gun spiral, takes 20 ammo, firing mostly to the left and right hand side and activating Rage. If you jump in the middle of a trashmob crowd and somehow land all your shots, acts as a 40 HP heal.... which is just shit, even past the unlikely nature of it. Never use this.
{A - F}
Aerial gun burst, dropping into Rageactivation. Takes 16 Ammo; half of that goes above and behind you, does nothing if you have no Ammo. Probably the worst attack in the game.
{D - 1 (- D...)}
Highest damage dash slash, but comes with high startup frames, and is slow. Average, use it if you must as Zenkichi lacks in the mobility department outside of this.

tl;dr

Plays the exact opposite of what you would think and needs to be levelled a bit; which is why you're not clicking with him

Glossary

• Aggro - Whoever has the enemy's attention / lockon. The way the game works, it will almost always be the player character pulling most aggro from major enemies.
• BnB - Bread 'n Butter; a fighting game term referring to the most common combo/s you'll use for a given character that you should / will naturally bind to muscle memory. Not necessarily the highest overall damage - if the best damage output is a long, risky combo, then BnB/'s may be a shorter, safer, and only slightly lower damage chain.
• Breathing Room - A state in which you're not actively being attacked. Be it before a fight, during a fight while the enemy is focusing on the rest of the team, or during a fight when you disengage far enough from danger that you won't be bothered. Usually in reference to how much time characters need to setup for a given damage strategy, or how long it takes to get a given buff off.
• CC - Crowd Control, or 'things that force enemies to move as you want them to'
• Dubnigger - Subhumans that watch dubs over subs. Also known as Hylic in Gnostic teachings.
• Faggot - (You)
• Flinch - An unmentioned attack property. It's the players version of hitstun, with all trashmobs flinching on hit, but shadow enemies usually only able to flinch via a shield breaking via Elemental Weakness or Crit (guaranteed flinch) or an attack with a Red visual (Not guaranteed, only a chance of flinch, which seems dependant on luck). You'll want to use flinches to cancel out attacks. You won't fucking believe how fucking long it took me to figure this out manually, it's mentioned nowhere.
• Gamesense - Understanding the game to a point you can generally predict what will happen a few seconds ahead with no visual indicator; to either avoid or set up damage via repositioning or predictive attacks (such as setting up a combo while nothing is going on, so you can land the final hits just as a wave of enemies spawn in to quickly wipe them)
• Grug / Grugging - Unga bunga, me no want to think, me want to GRUG. A devolved version of buttonmashing, where you're paying even less attention as to what's going on, because your undeveloped brain is caught up in the flashing lights and the dying enemies. Fun to revert to, every now and again.
• HA - Hyper Armour, the attack-only version of Poise. Unlike Poise, does not have a limiting number of hits in a short period of time that can interrupt it; but instead is only active during attacks and not passively.
• iFrames - Immortality frames. Periods of attack where you become completely invulnerable and unstaggerable.
• Juggle - When an attack throws an enemy up into the air, rendering them harmless as they're caught in a falling animation. Most larger enemies and shadows in general can't be juggled, however it makes dealing with large amounts of trashmobs far, far safer, as they're unable to move (of their own accord) or attack.
• Launch - Fires enemies away. Usually a factor for trashmobs and small enemies, over larger ones.
• Mogs (Verb) - To be bigger than; in a generally extreme or jealousy-inducing way (EG "Mr. A thought he was the top shit, at 6'0'' and able to deadlift 200kg. Then Mr. B came along one day out of nowhere and fucking mogged him - 7'0'' and a deadlift of 300kg")
• Musou - A genre of videogame characterised by large maps, large enemy density and characters with defaultly high-range combos with knockback / stunlock vs the mentioned large groups of enemies. In literal terms, translates to 'Unmatched' (commenting on how a single enemy vs the player is completely unmatched); in general use refers to Dynasty Warriors lookalike games.
• Neutral / Neutral State - A fighting game term; in essence what you can do from a starting position of doing nothing, without expending anything. Excludes Combos, Skills and Follow-Ups.
• Peel - The ability to keep enemies away from yourself; usually by personal CC over mobility
• Phantom Dash - Type of environmental damage, those physical attacks that you do from perches (spins, platform drops etc). Blowing shit up for elemental damage doesn't count.
• Poke / Poking - Refers to attacks which are quick to perform, have low recovery, long range and doesn't travel the character much; used mostly to keep safe while waiting for a better opening
• Poise - Commonly used term from Dark souls, essentially equating to Unstaggerable. Attacks will not be interrupted and no hitstun while running around. You do however take damage, and enough individual hits or extremely heavy attacks will de-activate it.
• Proc / Proccing - To achieve an effect, usually via buildup or rolling. Proccing crits is throwing out lots of high-critical skills, proccing AoA is smashing away all the shields.
• Recovery - A state in which a character is unable to do anything after the attack / chain has ended. Usually in reference to how fast a character is able to use a dash after the attack has ended to avoid possible incoming damage. Directly tied to how safe / survivable a character is.
• Trashmobs - A stable in the Musou genre, enemies that fill the role of filling up the screen, over posing any real individual threat. If they swarm you, they can quickly burn down health if you're not paying attention over looking at a major enemy; and some have more damaging properties such as ranged attacks or self-destruction for increased damage.
• Waifu - A denigrated term, which at it's core, refers to the concept of the digital wife. Dedication. Loyalty. Love. Three things that the current flavour of the month newfaggot usage lacks from the initial meaning, with most mouthbreathers nowadays just using it to refer to whichever multiple character they like masturbating to.
• Xtreme - The cooler version of Extreme.
• Your waifu - Shit
• Z - I just wanted to have one for every letter of the alphabet. Never got around to doing it though, might do it if I ever get around to this doc-thing again to finish up the Merciless guide in detail.