Every playable character in Persona 5 Tactica is useful in their own way, but some are more useful than others. We analyzed and ranked them all to help you decide who to bring on your next mission!
The Phantom Thieves are back in full force in Persona 5 Tactica , with each of them having gotten a mechanical makeover to accommodate the new tactics gameplay. But some of them are better off after the transition than others, and you'll want to make the most of the 3 team slots available for each mission. So in case you need help deciding who to use and who to bench we've ranked every playable character in Persona 5 Tactica from most to least useful!
Now, just to be clear: Every unit in the game is viable and you can clear any mission in the game with any team composition. Plus, with the right Sub-Persona even less inherently useful characters can hold their own in any situation. So you should view this as more of a list of recommendations. Also, this list does not include the DLC characters since they're exclusive to New Game +.
Now, with that out of the way, let's get right to it!
S-Tier
Ann
Ann reprises her role as a potent mage and support unit. Her fire magic hits hard, has excellent range and can displace enemies, letting her incinerate foes even in distant corners of the map or enable One More opportunities that would usually be out of reach. She also once again gets access to Tarukaja skills in case you ever need a bit of extra damage output.
Ann also gets one of the more useful Voltage skills, Femme Fatale, letting her summon a bomb-carrying minion that will move towards an enemy and explode once it reaches them. The minion can serve as a decoy to draw enemy fire or a cleanup tool to take care of enemies you didn't get around to finishing off. But this Skill also has a hidden nuance: after Ann casts it she effectively gets another turn, with her new starting point being wherever she cast Femme Fatale.
Ann's ranged damage output may be nothing to write home about and her party-wide passive may be less useful, only granting her team bonus SP. But that doesn't keep her from being an extremely solid unit that you can almost never go wrong with.
Yusuke
Turns out that high agility and early access to party-wide speed boosts can get you pretty far in a tactics game! Yusuke's Speed Master passive gives him (and the rest of his team, once you upgrade it) a solid head start at the beginning of each battle. And higher movement range enables larger Triple Threat triangles, letting you obliterate vast swathes of the enemy force within the first 3 turns of any mission!
His long-range rifle and melee knockback boost also let him take advantage of any One More opportunities on the way with ease, and if all that somehow still isn't enough to get him to where you want him to be you can use his Voltage skill, Like a Phantom, to get a bonus turn for free! With some complimentary decoys included!
Once the Speed boost wears off Yusuke becomes a competent mixed attacker with a few tricks up his sleeve. His ranged damage is fairly average, but his ice magic makes up for it and can also freeze enemies for one turn. So even when his initial push behind enemy lines leaves him in a tough spot he can buy himself some time! Just be careful with Revenger types: If you freeze them before they use their counter you can say goodbye to that One More opportunity.
To round it all off his party-wide passive increases his team's ranged damage output, which is arguably the most useful of these passives. All in all, Yusuke's kit has the most utility in the entire roster, so you'll probably find a use for him even in the few missions where his Speed isn't needed.
A-Tier
Haru
Haru is your go-to gal when you need a lot of raw damage. Her signature grenade launcher hits like a truck (or a grenade launcher, really) in an AoE around the target and has decent range, while her high base melee damage and party-wide melee damage boost passive let her defend herself when enemies get too close for comfort and give any Triple Threats she's involved in a significant damage boost.
However, she has an almost crippling weakness: A pitiably low movement range that has her lagging behind the rest of the team unless you help her out with a speed boost. She does get a small boost on her own after she catches her breath with a Charge, but either way it'll take her a bit longer to get to the action.
That is, unless she brings the action to her by casting one of her Psi skills or even her Voltage skill Noble Lady's Invitation, which move every enemy they hit towards the caster. This also lets her set up One More opportunities for her teammates, who can then leave her behind to set up a Triple Threat in turn!
Haru also gets inherent access to Diamrita, letting her heal and remove ailments from a teammate. Neither are needed very often unless you have a habit of blindly walking into enemy fire, but if nothing else this skill is nice to have in an emergency.
Haru's mobility issues can make her a tricky character to make use of, but her damage output is nothing to sneeze at, and her magic skills have great utility, so she is definitely worth the effort.
Joker
And to be fair, he is still very good on his own merits! His Despair magic lets him steal enemies' movement range and add it to his own during his next movement, making him a solid candidate for marathon sprints across the map. And if he runs out of stamina before the finish line he can potentially down an enemy in range immediately with his Voltage skill Phantom Judge, get a One More and set up a Triple Threat to make use of all that distance covered.
So why isn't he in S-Tier then? Well, his main issue is that Yusuke exists and fills a similar role (they even have the same party-wide ranged damage buff), but where Yusuke can impress with his speed-boosting passive Joker is stuck with Rakukaja, which is fairly useless in this game.
That said, the pair work extremely well together, so don't let that stop you from giving Joker a shot!
B-Tier
Erina
Erina is a prime example of storytelling getting in the way of gameplay. Her not being able to have a Persona at all severely limits her utility in combat and means that she can't earn experience for Sub-Personas in battle, arguably making her a long-term liability. These are some tough inherent shortcomings to make up for.
Not for lack of trying, though! She has exceedingly high base stats to compete with the Persona-boosted stats of the other units, and her gun even outperforms everyone else's arsenal a lot of the time! Her Partisan skills are the only way to inflict Forget in the game, an ailment which prevents enemies from using attacks or skills. The utility of this is... debatable, but it can come in handy in a pinch.
Erina also gets an additional Skill in her skill tree: Ambush, which lets her give herself or any of her teammates the ability to use ranged attacks on enemies that get too close to them during their turn. Not only is this a powerful defensive tool, it can also lead to One More setups if it catches an enemy before they can move to cover.
Her first Charge skill is nothing to sneeze at either: Whenever Erina is Charged she is able to down enemies even when they're behind cover! Other characters can obtain this Skill through Sub-Personas, but until then this powerful ability is an Erina exclusive. It does require her to do nothing for a turn to activate though, which can be a tough sell when you just want to keep your momentum in a fight going.
On top of all that her Voltage skill, Flag of Freedom, lets her put an AoE on the map that persists for a few turns and removes Resistance from any enemies inside it, making them easy One More targets. It's hard to make effective use of this since a regular magic skill usually does the same job with less opportunity cost, but on maps with choke points or annoying faraway clusters of enemies it can come in handy.
Overall, if you're fine with missing out on some versatility and Persona experience, Erina can be a solid pick for many maps.
Ryuji
Poor Ryuji is in the awkward position of being a former physical attacker and tank in a game that got rid of physical Skills and has no significant damage to tank, and Tactica does little to compensate for eliminating his niche.
That said, they did turn his Lightning magic into the strongest single-target magic in the game, with a debuff that roots enemies in place! He doesn't get to cast it often because of his short Skill range, but if you just need to get rid of a nearby enemy immediately Ryuji is the man for the job. He also gets to start with a 3-turn damage boost (that later extends to the entire party), and his Voltage skill, Brigantine Blitzkrieg, sidesteps his range issues by hitting all enemies in a straight line for massive damage!
Unfortunately this is where his positives end. His movement range is fairly average, his shotgun has a miniscule range and can become a friendly fire hazard on higher difficulties and his party-wide passive's HP boost is rarely useful.
If you need a melee specialist with significant magic damage output Ryuji is the man for the job, but for most situations any of the above characters are better choices.
C-Tier
Makoto
In Persona 5 Makoto was a sort of jack-of-all-trades, being able to deal respectable AoE Physical and Nuke damage and support her party with buffs and healing as needed. She tries to fill the same role in Tactica, but unfortunately that role isn't nearly as useful.
Her base stats won't turn many heads, her party-wide healing is only rarely needed and her Nuke skills, which draw nearby units towards the target, are situationally useful at best and hazardous at worst, if you're playing on a higher difficulty and one of your units is caught in it.
She does get a fairly useful Voltage skill, Full Throttle, letting her deal damage to all enemies in a narrow line and knock them out of cover, and her party-wide melee damage buff is nice to have. But in the end she is simply too outclassed by most of her friends in the vast majority of situations.
Morgana
Unlike Ryuji and Makoto, whose roles were gutted in the tactics transition, Morgana is still the same speedy healing-focused support he was in P5, and as a result you will likely still bench him as soon as you get access to other options.
All that's really changed is that you will bench him sooner than usual, since even in the early stages of the game healing is rarely needed, and the rest of his kit is fairly unimpressive. His Wind magic does mediocre damage, and while its knockback can potentially be used to move enemies to a more advantageous position for a Triple Threat it can also easily be an inconvenience.
His high inherent movement range does make him useful for Triple Threat setups in general, but not as useful as Yusuke or Joker, who can bring more to the table than him in other ways as well. He does have a more interesting Voltage skill, Winds of Time, but it's a bit of a double-edged sword: It hits enemies in a large AoE, making them vulnerable to One More, but it also knocks them away from each other, potentially making it harder to set up Triple Threats.
Ultimately Morgana is underpowered and outclassed compared to his teammates, and it's hard to recommend him for many fights in the game.
And that's every (non-DLC) character in Persona 5 Tactica ranked! This kind of list is always a matter of opinion of course, but hopefully this one will at least help you in your mission preparations.