Persona 5: The Royal is not a difficult game. Not compared to mainline Shin Megami Tensei or even compared to other Persona games, just in general. You’ll have no problem beating the game on hard or challenge if you had the cognitive capacity to open this post, so just a foreword: this level of optimisation is not required.
That being said, P5R gives you a lot of tools to completely customise your personas. The simple act of playing around with fusions and achieving “perfect” builds is a big part of what I find enjoyable about Megaten, so here we go. This should also be a useful reference for pushing high scores on those challenge battles.
Table of Contents
Note:
- Use the recipe generator if you want to fuse any of these yourself
- Also see the skill list and persona list if you need a reference
Base Game Personas
On your first playthrough, ignore the DLC personas (and network fusion) if you want to have any semblance of engagement with the game’s mechanics in an admittedly pretty poorly balanced game. The builds in this section will become available for late-game palaces, and can also be used to breeze through NG+ or rush challenge bosses.
General Purpose
Alice
| Trait: Omen | |
|---|---|
| Die For Me! | Victory Cry |
| Mahamaon | Ali Dance |
| Mudo Boost | Insta-Heal |
| Hama Boost | Repel Bless |
This build maxes out the success rate on insta-kills to quickly clean up trash mobs in palaces and Mementos without needing to worry about hitting weaknesses, buffs and debuffs, baton passing, and all the other tedium you won’t want to deal with in NG+. Daisoujou with Samsara and Mamudoon also works here (and is available much earlier, though not with Omen), but just look at him—do you really want him on your team over Alice?
Along with Die for Me!, we also bring Mahamaon to hit enemies that resist curse. Victory Cry tops us up after every fight, and also means we can replace Alice’s Just Die trait with Sandalphon’s for extra success rate on insta-kills, bringing Die for Me! to over 90% success rate and Mahamaon just shy of that. The rest is standard defensive utility.
Yoshitsune
| Trait: Undying Fury | |
|---|---|
| Hassou Tobi | Drain Wind |
| Arms Master | Drain Psy |
| Drain Fire | Drain Nuke |
| Drain Ice | Drain Curse |
Alice’s insta-kill doesn’t work on most bosses or red enemies, and won’t work against curse or bless immunities either. This is where Yoshitsune comes in to provide physical damage with one of the highest damaging skills in the game, which is especially effective for boss encounters.
You could run a bunch of utility skills like Apt Pupil and Ali Dance, but there are a lot of slots to fill since Phys Boost / Amp don’t exist in this game. As the only physical buff comes from Zaou-Gongen’s trait, we may as well stack resistances and make Yoshitsune immune to all but gun and almighty (notably the rarest elements in the game) so that we can brain off and press Hassou Tobi while the enemy heals us, just like God Yaldabaoth intended.
Lucifer
| Trait: Mighty Gaze | |
|---|---|
| Morning Star | Spell Master |
| Magic Ability | Firm Stance |
| Almighty Boost | Insta-Heal |
| Almighty Amp | Drain Bless |
If you ever run into enemies that resist physical and insta-kill (which is surprisingly not that uncommon in P5R) then Lucifer can sub in. Nothing resists almighty, and the auto-concentrate accessory from the Casino Palace allows you to one-shot pretty much all trash mobs without any additional setup.
We bring Firm Stance instead of Ali Dance since Lucifer already has great inherent resistances, and Spell Master to make his usage more sustainable for drawn-out boss fights. No Victory Cry however means you’ll need to swap in Alice every now and then to refill SP if you’re abusing Morning Star around palaces a bit too haphazardly.
Elemental Damage
Satanael
| Trait: Pagan Allure | |
|---|---|
| Blazing Hell | Tyrant’s Mind |
| Ice Age | Magic Ability |
| Wild Thunder | Spell Master |
| Vacuum Wave | Firm Stance |
Normally passive boosts in P5R cap the total damage multiplier at 2.0x, and traits stack on top of this. However Satanael’s uniques work in reverse, where Pagan Allure (trait) caps at 2.0x and Tyrant’s Mind (passive) does not. The multiplier from from Pagan Allure, Magic Ability, and Tyrant’s Mind respectively is 1.5 * 1.25 * 1.25 = 2.34. So we can get a relatively high damage multiplier without sacrificing 2 slots per element for boost & amp, and can use those slots to cover additional elements instead.
Making the most of this, we can run the four severe elemental multi-target spells to capitalize on common enemy weaknesses. Notably Vacuum Wave has slightly higher base power than the other three (presumably because it doesn’t burn, freeze, or shock), but if you’re just throwing out moves without targeting weaknesses then you should probably switch personas. Satanael also has the resistances to make good use of Firm Stance, which we’ll round off with.
Trumpeter
| Trait: Mighty Gaze | |
|---|---|
| Cosmic Flare | Nuke Boost |
| Psycho Blast | Nuke Amp |
| Magic Ability | Psy Boost |
| Spell Master | Psy Amp |
As Satanael only covers the four main elements, we also want a spell user that can cast nuke and psy attacks. This could be any demon since we’re not using any unique skills or traits, but I’m opting for Trumpeter as he has excellent resists and no weaknesses. It probably would have been more appropriate to make him a bless / curse user, but I find nuke / psy attacks much more useful on average.
Amp + Boost + Magic Ability gives us 1.5 * 1.25 * 1.25 = 2.34 which caps at 2.0, and Mighty Gaze stacks on this for a 2.0 * 1.2 = 2.4x multiplier on Cosmic Flare and Psycho Blast. This gives us one free slot which we can use for Spell Master, since Trumpeter doesn’t have any weaknesses we need to cover.
Alilat
| Trait: Pagan Allure | |
|---|---|
| Makougaon | Absorb Fire |
| Maeigaon | Absorb Nuke |
| Magic Ability | Absorb Bless |
| Spell Master | Absorb Curse |
Similar to the above, this could be any demon. However Alilat also has good resistances, so I’m opting for him to cover bless and curse damage. Unfortunately the highest-tier bless and curse spells are DLC-locked (and rightly so), but bless and curse spells do have higher base damage than the other elemental spells of the same tier.
Unlike Trumpeter, Alilat has a couple of weaknesses that need to be addressed so we won’t have enough skill slots load up on boosts and amps. Instead we can bring Pagan Allure and lean into his existing resists to make him close to all-immune, while still getting a respectable 1.5 * 1.25 = 1.875x damage multiplier. Unfortunately Tyrant’s Mind is unique, so we do lose out on a bit of damage compared to Satanael using his own trait, but it’s still very workable.
Setups / Technicals
Nebiros
| Trait: Gloomy Child | |
|---|---|
| Wage War | Ailment Boost |
| Lullaby | Ambient Aid |
| Nocturnal Flash | Ali Dance |
| Makajamaon | Repel Bless |
Nebiros inflicts multi-target ailments with a 100% success rate due to the combination of Ailment Boost and Ambient Aid, the latter being enabled by Gloomy Child. Again we have no uniques here, so use whatever demon you like, but I feel like Nebiros fills this role quite well thematically if you’ve ever seen him in any other game.
Wage War inflicts rage which notably halves defense (this stacks with Rakunda), making it the best ailment for hitting big numbers. However you can only tech off rage with psy and fire, so for enemies that resist those (or the rage ailment itself), we also bring Lullaby and Nocturnal Flash for sleep and dizzy, which can be teched with any attack. Interestingly a lot of enemies, including bosses, lack forget immunity, so we also have Makajamaon as a backup (though you can only tech off this with psy or elec).
Belial
| Trait: Universal Law | |
|---|---|
| Psycho Force | Psy Boost |
| Inferno | Psy Amp |
| Magic Ability | Fire Boost |
| Repel Bless | Fire Amp |
To pair with the above, we want something that can hit big techs off rage-debuffed enemies. We’re not using any unique skills here but this is a demon that will pair with Nebiros, and we already have Alice in the party, so there’s only one right answer. I also strongly associate Belial with fire from Devil Survivor, so there really is no other choice.
This basically the Trumpeter build from before, only with psy and fire instead of psy and nuke. The main difference is the trait, Universal Law, which gives a 1.5x multiplier on technicals vs Mighty Gaze’s 1.2x on multi-target spells. This gives us 3.0x damage on techs, which already have a 1.8x default multiplier, and this gets tripled on challenge difficulty. Also don’t forget enemy defense is halved by rage. Go get those high scores.
Abaddon
| Trait: Will of the Sword | |
|---|---|
| One-Shot Kill | Apt Pupil |
| Riot Gun | Arms Master |
| Gun Boost | Ali Dance |
| Gun Amp | Insta-Heal |
This build is relatively underwhelming as gun doesn’t get much love in P5R, but gun resistances are also quite uncommon and it allows us to crit easily for extra turns even against enemies with no weaknesses, without the need to set up ailments. Any demon can be used here but there are no gun immunity passives in P5R, so something like Abaddon with inherent gun immunity is ideal in case a group of enemies contains a gun reflect.
Unfortunately there’s no trait that directly boosts gun damage, but Will of the Sword does buff charged gun attacks. This also avoids limiting us to multi-target attacks like Mighty Gaze would, which allows us to run both One-Shot Kill and Riot Gun without compromise. Apt Pupil gives One-Shot Kill near-cap crit rate, but Trigger Happy doesn’t give a statistically significant increase on top of this so the rest of the slots are used for utility.
Support
Maria
| Trait: Positive Thoughts | |
|---|---|
| Salvation | Auto-Mataru |
| Holy Benevolence | Auto-Maraku |
| Holy Embrace | Auto-Masuku |
| Holy Whisper | Drain Fire |
Auto-buffer. You should always lead with this demon to start battles with a free, 5-turn, party-wide Heat Riser that doesn’t consume a turn. Buffs persist when you switch personas, so it’s ideal to utilise a demon dedicated to buffing to save skill slots on our attackers. Don’t forget to turn off Persona memory in settings to save yourself the trouble of switching back after each encounter.
As far as skill selection is concerned, Wealth of Lotus is a similar trait that works the same 99% of the time. Positive Thoughts is marginally better in extremely fringe cases¹, but use whichever you have easier access to. Otherwise we keep Maria’s uniques to give us easy access to heals and Recarms on a self-recovering body.
¹ Wealth of Lotus vs Positive Thoughts ▶
Trait Differences:
- Wealth of Lotus: extends buffs cast by Joker
- Positive Thoughts: extends buffs cast on Joker
1. Auto-Ma* (cast by Joker):
- Wealth of Lotus: Joker: +2, Teammates: +2
- Positive Thoughts: Joker: +2, Teammates: +2
2. Thermopylae / Neo Cadenza (cast by Joker):
- Wealth of Lotus: Joker: +2, Teammates: +2
- Positive Thoughts: Joker: +2, Teammates: +0
3. Hyakka Ryouran / Brave Step (cast by Teammate):
- Wealth of Lotus: Joker: +0, Teammates: +0
- Positive Thoughts: Joker: +2, Teammates: +0
What do we gather from this?
- Both traits function exactly the same for auto-buffs.
- Wealth of Lotus guarantees buffs cast by Joker always last 5 turns on everyone. However the trade-off is that buffs cast by teammates will only last 3 turns on everyone.
- Positive Thoughts guarantees buffs cast by anyone always last for 5 turns on Joker. However the trade-off is that all buffs cast on teammates except for auto-buffs will only last for 3 turns.
On the one hand, it's much more valuable to have buffs last longer on Joker as he contributes much more damage than the rest of the team combined. I'd also much rather spend Yusuke's turn casting Hyakka Ryouran than Joker's casting Thermopylae. This will depend heavily on your team composition and rotations though; if you're not using Yusuke or Kasumi (or their buffs) then you won't benefit from Positive Thoughts and would be better off using Wealth of Lotus when manually buffing yourself.
However Joker will only benefit from Positive Thoughts under extremely rare conditions. First, disregarding Brave Step, the battle must last longer than 8 turns as the initial auto-buffs will last 5 turns, and the proceeding manual buff from any source will last at least 3 on everyone. Second, and more importantly, Joker needs to have his Positive Thoughts persona active to benefit from the buff, so you must have switched to it and not cast a buff to make the trait useful.
Realistically, this will never happen. Why would you switch to your buffing persona and not cast a buff? Maybe to use a soma? So it seems that feasibly, you will never benefit from Positive Thoughts, and Wealth of Lotus would be better to run for the situations where you do choose to cast a buff with Joker, even if you primarily cast buffs with other characters.
But look again at this Maria build. Her active skills are not buffs; she is a healer. She only uses auto-buffs, so either trait will give you a 5-turn party buff and she would never be able to utilise Wealth of Lotus for additional buff duration anyway. However if you're switching into her to heal, then there is an off-chance you may benefit from Positive Thoughts when you would not with Wealth of Lotus.
Also if you're using Thermopylae then you need Vitality of the Tree anyway, so you can't use either of these traits. All in all this is a lot of words to say it really makes no difference here but you might get an extra 2 turns of Hyakka Ryouran on Joker if the stars align. The comparison does become more relevant if we're talking about Neo Cadenza though, since you would never switch onto Orpheus F and not cast it. Therefore in that situation would rather take the 5-turn buff for everyone.
I could go into more detail with the individual stat buffs, the crit buffs, the single-targets like Heat Riser, etc. but I won't because you wouldn't be using those if you cared enough to read until this point anyway. If you want to know about these edge cases then read the JP wiki.
Fafnir
| Trait: Vitality of the Tree | |
|---|---|
| Charge | Insta-Heal |
| Concentrate | Spell Master |
| Thermopylae | Drain Bless |
| Debilitate | Drain Curse |
The manual buffing counterpart to our previous auto-buffer. Similar to status buffs, Charge and Concentrate apply to Joker himself, not to the persona that casts it, hence why we want a dedicated unit. As he’ll be sitting around for a turn after buffing, we’re using Fafnir due to his resistances but you can use whoever you like.
Thermopylae is a pretentious name for “Luster Candy at home”, which we use when our auto-buffs run out. Its activation condition is met with Attis’ Vitality of the Tree trait. We also bring Debilitate for enemy debuffing, and round out with defensive utility. I’ve opted for Drain Bless / Curse instead of Ali Dance as Fafnir already blocks a bunch of elements, and this gives us insta-kill immunity as an added bonus. You could also drop Insta-Heal and Spell Master for more drains/repels, but you’d be missing 1.5 elements and in that case I’d rather just take the utility.
Cheater Personas
Presumably anyone who’s reading this now is playing the Steam release of P5R, which means you get the DLC personas by default and you don’t get a say in the matter. They’re completely cracked and will entirely ruin the main game, but if you’d rather story battles be more like cutscenes or just want to power trip in NG+, then this is the culmination of my autism.
General Purpose
Izanagi-no-Okami
| Trait: Country Maker | |
|---|---|
| Myriad Truths | Firm Stance |
| Magic Ability | Insta-Heal |
| Almighty Boost | Repel Bless |
| Almighty Amp | Repel Curse |
Country Maker is indisputably the most busted trait in the game by a large margin. You could build Izanagi-no-Okami for any kind of damage and as long as you keep his trait, he would be best in slot. This might subject us to choice paralysis if it weren’t for his unique skill Myriad Truths, which also happens to be the highest damaging skill in the game. There’s a lot of room for experimentation with Country Maker, but let’s use him as he was designed.
As usual, boost, amp, and Magic Ability give us 2.0x and Country Maker doubles this to 4.0x, easily overwhelming the rest of the competition who all tap out below 2.5x. InO already resists everything, so we’ll use Firm Stance over Ali Dance to bring our damage taken from 1/2 to 1/4. Did I forget to mention Country Maker? Make that 1/8 damage taken. Then we seal the deal with bless, curse and ailment resistances to complete a persona that can unironically solo the entire game with one button.
Thanatos
| Trait: Omen | |
|---|---|
| Door of Hades | Victory Cry |
| Magic Ability | Mudo Boost |
| Almighty Boost | Ali Dance |
| Almighty Amp | Repel Bless |
Anything beyond Izanagi-no-Okami is pretty unnecessary, but there’s not much fun in that and I’d feel bad for Makoto (♂) if we took Yu’s persona but left his in the dust. Thanatos is actually pretty convenient as Door of Hades has a curse-based insta-kill effect on top of its almighty damage, so he can take over for both Alice and Lucifer when it comes to clearing trash mobs. Victory Cry is also included for this reason, which is the primary benefit over InO.
Door of Hades is lower base damage than Morning Star and Megidolaon, but rather than trying to compensate we can instead utilise its insta-kill component with Omen and Mudo Boost. So on the off-chance the damage isn’t enough to one-shot with our 2.0x passive boost, the insta-kill effect will hopefully take care of things for you. For tougher enemies though you’ll probably want to just fall back on Izanagi-no-Okami or one of the following persona instead.
Elemental Damage
Izanagi-no-Okami
| Trait: Country Maker | |
|---|---|
| Blazing Hell | Magic Ability |
| Ice Age | Spell Master |
| Wild Thunder | Repel Bless |
| Vacuum Wave | Repel Curse |
Thanks to Atlus giving us Picaro DLCs, we’re able to wield two InOs at once as they fill separate compendium slots. This is quite welcome as there are so many ways to play around with this demon, however I settled with an elemental attacker for this second version, much like the previous Satanael entry.
There isn’t much to explain that I haven’t already, but I’ll briefly touch on variations. Repel Bless and Curse are not strictly mandatory as you can cover these with the St. Hermelin Badge, so you could bring Cosmic Flare and Psycho Blast to have all six severe spells buffed by Country Maker. This is absolutely the play if you want to maximise damage and versatility, but I have another idea for these spells so I’ve opted to go the route that gives accessory freedom.
Kaguya
| Trait: Mighty Gaze | |
|---|---|
| Shining Arrows | Bless Boost |
| Cosmic Flare | Bless Amp |
| Magic Ability | Nuke Boost |
| Drain Fire | Nuke Amp |
On the one hand, Shining Arrows is a top 3 damaging skill. On the other hand, Kaguya doesn’t really bring much else to the table. The conclusion I arrived at was to make her a hybrid with a nuke spell as well, since you can do so without losing out on any damage on Shining Arrows. This is more or less the same as the previous Trumpeter build, just with the elements shuffled around.
Going this build also helps you stray away from the tired Ali Dance + Insta-Heal setup you’ve probably seen a thousand times already. Though if you put nuke and psy on InO, then you should definitely do that instead. However I feel like our team already has enough one-trick ponies and this build is somewhat more… aesthetic.
Tsukiyomi
| Trait: Mighty Gaze | |
|---|---|
| Abyssal Wings | Curse Boost |
| Psycho Blast | Curse Amp |
| Magic Ability | Psy Boost |
| Drain Nuke | Psy Amp |
Abyssal Wings pales in comparison to Shining Arrows, but it would be uncouth to use Kaguya and not bring Tsukiyomi to round out our elemental coverage. While it may be lackluster when put next to the likes of Myriad Truths, Shining Arrows, and Hassou Tobi, Abyssal Wings is still the highest-damaging curse spell in the game.
This is just the complement to the above, with curse and psy instead of bless and nuke. As before, simply throw on defensive utility passives if you already have psy covered by InO. Alternatively you could spin something up with Magatsu-Izanagi for curse damage if you want to play with Magatsu Mandala. It has lower (but still respectable) damage and you can have fun with ailments, but I’ve cooked up something better for him.
Setups / Technicals
Magatsu-Izanagi
| Trait: Gloomy Child | |
|---|---|
| Magatsu Mandala | Ailment Boost |
| Nocturnal Flash | Ambient Aid |
| Wage War | Ali Dance |
| Makajamaon | Drain Nuke |
Magatsu-Izanagi is our ailment applicator, though his base luck is quite low so consider investing if you miss often. This build is the result of an attempt to create a Flash Bomb user before acquiescing that lesser ailments are ailments nonetheless. Magatsu Mandala is a chip damage skill that can inflict confuse, fear, or despair. These are inferior to sleep, dizzy, rage, and forget as they have limited technical triggers, don’t debuff defense, and are often resisted. However they do share the common psy technical trigger, which is good enough for most situations.
For when “good enough” isn’t actually good enough, we’ve also brought along the regular ailment spells for dizzy, rage, and forget. The classic Ailment Boost + Ambient Aid / Gloomy Child trinity gives all four actives 100% infliction rate, which rounds out Magatsu-Izanagi as our main ailment applicator in both generic and specific use-cases. This does mean we can’t bring Hollow Jester which is admittedly higher damage, but it’s also highly impractical and this isn’t a damage build anyway. You might notice that a sleep ailment is also missing, but if you paid attention to the table of contents then you might be able to guess where I’m going.
Asterius
| Trait: Universal Law | |
|---|---|
| Titanomachia | Fire Boost |
| Psycho Force | Fire Amp |
| Magic Ability | Psy Boost |
| Drain Ice | Psy Amp |
Interestingly Titanomachia is a fire spell in this game. While it’s unique to Asterius, it has higher base power than the single-target severe Inferno despite being multi-target, and has a lower SP cost to boot. This makes it the perfect spell to hit technicals with on raged enemies, and means we don’t need to decide which spell to use when the enemy defends neutrally against both; we can just use Titanomachia.
Otherwise, this is the exact same build as Belial from before. We bring Drain Ice as Asterius has that weakness to cover whereas Belial’s is bless, but that’s the only difference. Also, Psycho Blast instead of Psyco Force is a valid consideration. The single-target does higher damage which is better for most bosses (where I find this build most useful), but comes with the obvious “limitation” of being single-target. I’ll leave this decision as an exercise for the reader as it’ll depend on the content you like to engage with.
Satanael
| Trait: Will of the Sword | |
|---|---|
| One-shot Kill | Tyrant’s Mind |
| Riot Gun | Apt Pupil |
| Gun Boost | Firm Stance |
| Gun Amp | Insta-Heal |
Not technically a DLC persona (in fact, not a DLC persona at all), but he is NG+ locked which is kind of close? Since we’re now using Izanagi-no-Okami to cover the four elements, Satanael has been freed up to move on to bigger and better things. I opted for a gun build as it’s pretty lore-accurate and he has the 2nd highest gun damage in the game (behind you-know-who) thanks to Tyrant’s Mind.
This is essentially the same as the previous Abaddon gun build, just with a higher damage multiplier and a less disgusting body. Keep in mind that we do drop Pagan Allure for Will of the Sword, as the former doesn’t affect gun skills. Also note that Satanael isn’t immune to gun damage, so be careful against gun-repel demons… All seven of them.
Support
Raoul
| Trait: Positive Thoughts | |
|---|---|
| Phantom Show | Ailment Boost |
| Auto-Mataru | Ali Dance |
| Auto-Maraku | Insta-Heal |
| Auto-Masuku | Repel Bless |
This is our new auto-buffer who comes with the sleep infliction that Magatsu-Izanagi was missing. Phantom Show is Raoul’s unique skill, which has a 90% base success rate, the highest of any ailment skill. This means we only need one ailment-boosting passive to make it 100% accurate, but it also means you’ll need more boosts if you want to bring additional ailments, which would make its one benefit redundant. The solution is to simply use him as a support demon and have other ailments on somebody else.
The skill build should be fairly self-explanatory at this point, and I’ll spare you the Positive Thoughts debate again. Raoul is nice since he brings the minor convenience of being presented with Phantom Show as an option at the start of each fight to reduce cognitive load and button presses. He’s also Joker’s ultimate persona, so if your interest in “JRPG” extends beyond the “J” component and into the “RP” then you’ll probably find some affinity in starting battles with him.
Orpheus F
| Trait: Wealth of Lotus | |
|---|---|
| Neo Cadenza | Spell Master |
| Drain Elec | Enduring Soul |
| Repel Bless | Ali Dance |
| Repel Curse | Insta-Heal |
If Thermopylae is “Luster Candy at home” then Neo Cadenza is “Luster Candy on crack”. It has no activation requirement, comes with a built-in half-Mediarahan, and costs less, making it the best buff in the game. This means we can ditch Vitality of the Tree for Wealth of Lotus and have our buffs last for 5 turns on all party members to give us more DPS uptime.
One downside is that Orpheus F is quite frail resistance-wise compared to Fafnir. You could bench Raoul and put auto-buffs on her too, but then you wouldn’t be able to cover weaknesses or bring Enduring Soul in case you get unlucky with neutral hits. She’s also not really a healer like Maria, though I don’t think a dedicated healer is mission critical as it’s easy (and often more effective) to give your teammates Mediarahan or Salvation via accessories.
Ariadne
| Trait: Tag Team | |
|---|---|
| Charge | Spell Master |
| Concentrate | Ali Dance |
| Debilitate | Insta-Heal |
| Beast Weaver | Drain Psy |
Ariadne’s unique trait Tag Team lets you use items without consuming them after receiving a baton pass. This means you get unlimited somas, but the condition is for Joker to make an action with Ariadne the turn before as she must be active when he receives the baton pass. Having no trait makes her less viable as a damage dealer, so I decided to make her the buff user so that she’ll almost always have something useful to do when you bring her out for a prospective baton pass.
Soul Chain was a candidate for inclusion here because at a glance it seemed to synergize well with Tag Team, and I kind of like the idea of using all the Network Fusion skills. I thought about it for a bit² but ultimately decided in favour of Spell Master. Otherwise there aren’t really any noteworthy skills. Keep in mind that Beast Weaver’s debuff cannot be removed by switching personas or applying other buffs, so it’s only there for a fancy last hit or last ditch (i.e. for decoration).
² Soul Chain vs Spell Master ▶
Soul Chain is generally considered a pretty bad skill as Invigorate 3 is simply better by almost all metrics. In order for Soul Chain to come out on top, you'll need to baton pass into that persona more than once every 3 turns. This is definitely doable but not very practical, whereas Invigorate 3 will restore SP for simply existing.
However given the nature of this build and its minor focus on Tag Team, you're likely not going to be sitting around on Ariadne for more than one turn; but you are quite likely (relatively) to be the recipient of a baton pass. Therefore it's quite possible that Soul Chain will be more beneficial, and a 20SP recover is pretty non-trivial.
That said, there aren't many consumable items in the game that are even worth using, let alone conserving. So if you're intending to use Tag Team then you're going to use a soma. And somas will full heal your SP anyway, so there is little point in using a skill slot to restore SP immediately prior to this.
Although what about the case where you're not intending to use Tag Team? Charge / Concentrate into a three-way baton pass back into Joker to attack is not an uncommon scenario (if you're playing well), and in this case the SP restore would not be redundant. However this brings us back to the original argument of why not just use Invigorate 3 then?
This raises another question: how much value does Invigorate 3 give us? It'll be 7SP on the turn that Joker buffs, but won't activate on the 2nd turn as you'll be attacking with another persona. Contrast this to Spell Master, which will save you 8SP when casting Charge / Concentrate and twice that when using Debilitate. Aside from contrived counter-examples at super low SP levels, Spell Master is simply a straight upgrade.