It's been two week nearly and Persona 4: Golden has pretty much taken over my life. I love the game to death, but kind of want to see the end and get back to the world of the living (lol). Anyway, I am currently on Nanako's dungeon boss and wasn't having a really hard time, until he let out an attack that wiped out my leader and pretty much put a lid on my session for the night. It got me thinking though, when it comes to my parties gear, I have pretty much the best I can get up to this point, with going back and doing all my old dungeons and getting the best weapons and armor and so on, but I haven't really fused a lot of personas or done anything with the personas other than constantly leveling up my parties and my own (Ares). I'm currently at about 50% of the overall compendium and I've got several social links in the game maxed out. So, going further and also to finish off this boss, what is a good route or goal for me to shoot for in fusing personas that can help me finish this game?

Hmm.

Firstly, and this is pretty important - what level are you?

A good rule of thumb in this case is to check what level Naoto is (I believe you get her just before Nanako's dungeon, right?) - to make the game difficulty-free, you should be 10 levels higher than the previous dungeon's character by your current dungeon's end boss. If I remember correctly, Naoto comes in at lvl55, so to easily beat Nanako's boss you should be lvl65.

The reason I say this is because level is actually part of the damage formula in P4, and it is generally a good rule of thumb to have persona your level at least, preferably quite a bit higher - if you have several maxed s-links that means at lvl65, you should be walking around with some lvl70 persona from fusing bonuses alone.

Another thing is that boss in particular can do some massive damage since he buffs specific elements before using spells - from memory he usually starts with buffing wind attacks (rise will say "wind attacks are stronger!" or something similar), and at that stage, he'll definitely be able to wipe your party if you aren't careful about keeping everyone's health up - assuming you aren't doing the veteran's standard of keeping the entire party fully buffed at all times.

In summary:

• I'd say you should be lvl 60-65 to beat Nanako's boss without problems, and your persona should generally be about 5 levels higher than you are. At that level I was using Belphegor from memory (absorbs wind and has decent stats) lvl61 base Devil arcana, and I think maybe Lakshmi? I usually look for Persona with a really really high Magic stat and preferably a decent if not high Ag stat too.
• Ditch old personas asap unless you're willing to keep their stats competitive with your party's by grinding out arcana cards from shuffle times and doing extra grinding to keep their levels in line too.
• If you're having problems playing normally, try getting into the habit of buffing your party's stats and/or debuffing your enemy's stats. Stat buffs are very important in persona - in this case, if you have Teddie he should have Matarukaja (buffs your party's attack) and Marakukaja (buffs your party's defense) along with Masukukaja on Yosuke. These spells run out after 3 turns, so the habit is generally buff-buff-heal-heal-buff-buff-etc for Teddie and buff,attack, attack, attack, buff for Yosuke.

ED: Oh, and as for good personas - as long as you stick to fusing stuff with high stats and a decent amount above your level (just compare between what is available to you in terms of what high stats would be in your case) and you're good. Aside from that try to keep Mind Charge / Power Charge in circulation through your compendium, along with maybe Invigorate 3 / Cool Breeze and definitely the -amps (fire amp, wind amp, etc) and you should be putting out some decent damage. If you have the Blade of Fury skill card or Okuninushi (who gives you it), use that as your main physical attack skill for everything, until you get God Hand and/or Primal Force for single-target killin'.

It kind of depends on what attack actually killed you. If it was any of the -dyne attacks that he does then the easy answer is to just make sure that the persona you have in doesn't have any weaknesses and at least some absorbs to it, but i'm sure you know that already. If it was Unerring Justice that killed you then that's a little tougher to deal with as it's almighty damage and you can't have a strength to it beyond hoping to dodge it or guarding before it happens. as @selfconfessedcynic mentioned having a persona with Marakukaja will help and also having Masukukaja would be helpful as well since it raises evasion.

Also, getting a persona with high endurance may help out as well as it will help your defense beyond your armor. And if you have a lot of persona that are below lvl 65, fuse them unless they have some good absorbs or high stat to them otherwise they're most likely useless at this point for you.

I was level 90+ before I went in to Nanko's dungeon and even then I got wiped a few times before managing to beat him on my third attempt. My winning tactic was to use Thor since he killed me using electric damage and Thor has Null Elec also Null Physical. I also had Thor learn Blue Wall so I could protect Teddie and Yosuke. Then it was just a case of chipping his HP off.

I don't think you need to be overly worried about fusing. As long as your S. Links are healthy, by the time you reach level 60 or so, everything you make is pretty good. Keeping Power/Mind Charge, buffs, null/repel/absorb skills around on everything you make is a good idea though. Sounds more like you need a good strategy than more Personas. For that particular boss, as soon as he does the attack that 'changes atmosphere' you need to use spells and see which one does any damage. Then switch to a Persona which reflects that, there should be enough at that point in the game that do that. Also have the party member weak to that element guard otherwise he'll keep getting turns. If you overlevel Naoto a touch you can get Makarakarn which might be handy too. If you have enough reflecting going on in this battle, you can bypass the phase where he amps spells pretty quickly. At some point in the battle it'll do you good to have a Persona which is immune to physical attacks too. The boss'll mind control your party members and more often than not, they use physicals. Just guard when this happens. After that he just spams an Almighty spell which is pretty powerful but nothing that Yukiko can't heal up.

I dunno, 50% of the Compendium and a few maxed S. Links in the Heaven dungeon doesn't sound too bad to me. I can't remember good Personas for that level off the top of my head (I remember using Ganesha when he amps Wind though). Just keep yourself buffed, the boss debuffed and you should be fine. If he keeps using Dekaja/Dekunda then stop buffing/debuffing it stops becoming worthwhile at a point.

Keep in mind, guys, that he is using Ares - a lvl25 persona, levelled however much it can be to where he is in the game. Considering that Ares is weak to wind, not particularly spectacular in terms of stats (aside from what you've been able to get for him from shuffle time) and has pretty bad skills by default at that part of the game (again, assuming you haven't been keeping him current using skill cards), I think fusing is definitely one of the OPs problems thus far.

If you don't have any personal inclination towards using Ares (he does have a cool pic), I would very much replace him.

But yes, as the others have said, tactics does come into play for that battle. Having Yukiko or Teddie with Mediarahan, however, does allow you to play pretty fast and loose by that point.

My party that I use currently reside around 65 or higher. My lead character is 63. My persona is 53. Might need to fuse some new personas, but kind of don't know where to start.

I roll with Chie, Yukiko, and Kanji. I've maxed out the S.Link for all except Kanji, who's at 8 right now.

@MrPilkington said:

But kind of don't know where to start.

Okay, so for your current personas, do you have anyone with level appropriate skills?

Maziodyne / any other dynes, Matarukaja, Masukukaja, Marakukaja, Repel Physical, Mind / Power Charge, Invigorate 3 / Cool Breeze, Blade of Fury, God Hand / Primal Force

any of those? What are you rolling with? Feel free to post screen shots.

But yes, in general you can fuse pretty much anything around your level and have a workable team. For example, just looking through the compendium, Melchizedek (lvl 66 Justice) comes with Mediarahan and Akasha Arts (which is a decent physical attack) - even though from memory his stats aren't great. Kartikeya (lvl 67 Star) is someone a lot of people like - she comes with Auto-Matarukaja and Maziodyne and from memory has decent stats. Mara is fantastic (lvl 62 Tower) since he's one of the few that learns Absorb Physical.

Yeah buffs really make the difference in this game

@MrPilkington said:

I roll with Chie, Yukiko, and Kanji. I've maxed out the S.Link for all except Kanji, who's at 8 right now.

OH, I should say - just to save you some serious headache - that squad is fantastic for physical attacks and used to be the number 1 squad in P4, BUT if you're planning to do the optional dungeon in January (gained by getting Marie's S-Link to max and having a discussion with Margaret on the day you're told to say hello to everyone in Jan), it is a comparatively bad squad to main.

Two of the bosses in that dungeon are completely immune to physical attacks (in fact, from memory they reflect them) and will make beating them with that party pretty difficult. Of course, you CAN give Chie and Kanji the ability to use their -Dyne spells (I usually overwrite them for Chie since she doesn't get -amp naturally unlike Kanji) - but that's pretty suboptimal when compared to more well rounded teams (which means any team with only one of chie and kanji or neither).

If you need to choose between Chie and Kanji, I would choose Kanji since he gets Primal Force (which is slightly better than God Hand) and has a much higher physical attack stat. Of course, it doesn't really matter as both are good characters in the end (especially if you have a Chie using Dragon Hustle with a Chakra Ring on) .

I try to fuse Personas whenever possible, it's easier to get higher level personas from fusing than from grinding. Seeing as you have several social links maxed out, you will get some really good xp boosts.

Also, use buffs!

Yeah, I'm good. I'm actually about to finish this game this weekend. I must to get back to humanity. ((((((GOOD GOD IT'S GOOD))))))

@probablytuna said:

I was level 90+ before I went in to Nanko's dungeon and even then I got wiped a few times before managing to beat him on my third attempt. My winning tactic was to use Thor since he killed me using electric damage and Thor has Null Elec also Null Physical. I also had Thor learn Blue Wall so I could protect Teddie and Yosuke. Then it was just a case of chipping his HP off.

How did you get 90+ by Nanko's dungeon, after I beat the optional dungeon and the true ending I was only in my low 80's.

@TechHits said:

@probablytuna said:

I was level 90+ before I went in to Nanko's dungeon and even then I got wiped a few times before managing to beat him on my third attempt. My winning tactic was to use Thor since he killed me using electric damage and Thor has Null Elec also Null Physical. I also had Thor learn Blue Wall so I could protect Teddie and Yosuke. Then it was just a case of chipping his HP off.

How did you get 90+ by Nanko's dungeon, after I beat the optional dungeon and the true ending I was only in my low 80's.

I was grinding Personas since Yukiko's dungeon. I think I was about level 40 before I started Kanji's.