Persona Scaling Chain

Exactly what it says on the tin.

The most recent revision of the chain is as seen on my blog post.

Calling all Paleo-Persona Knowledgeables! I need input for how to structure the Persona 1 and 2 chains. I'll also be happy to address anyone's questions regarding the current placements of the Persona 3 and later characters here.

Edit: The most most recent revision is as seen on my newest blog post. Thoughts?

Where's Margret? Wasn't she started to be far above Elizabeth?

I think I can help with P1 because it's the latest in my memory, the game has two routes, so maybe I mention the characters not mentioned previously and that don't exist on the wiki like Night Queen (Nyx) and the Greek gods.

but only in about 10 hours, because I will sleep (it's night here)

Milly Rocking Bandit said:

Where's Margret? Wasn't she started to be far above Elizabeth?

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Margaret was only notably stronger than P3 Elizabeth. By the time Elizabeth came back in Arena, she's much stronger due to being able to effortlessly defeat people that managed to beat her before.

Alright.

• Super Fans before they look at the upgrade thread: DBS got the highest Tier Low 2C tier for being only 2x away from 2-C... Persona gets stomped !

• Super Fans post looking at the upgrade: [Rage]

Obvious jokes aside I agree with the scaling so far in the blog.

The Q games kinda mess with the scaling a bit....a lot, at least for the Protags and their Ultimate Personas

Q1 has Izanagi no Okami and Messiah as Comparable against Clockwork God and Zeus. CG could get a pass due to only being half of Chronos but Zeus not only possesses Elizabeth, but actively uses more powerful forms during the fight and them managing to beat him.

While Q2 has Enlil borderline steamroll the combined Persona forces, including the MCs with their Ultimate Personas. In fact the MCs soley win because she was distracted by Hikari and they got a pep talk.

I personally think this shows that while all Admins are otherwise in the same realm of strength, they aren't equal to one another, seeing as how Enlil could overpower all of them combined before Hikari's speech while Yaldabaoth got one shoted by Ren alone.

Hst master said:

seeing as how Enlil could overpower all of them combined before Hikari's speech while Yaldabaoth got one shoted by Ren alone.

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Yaldy got beaten by a Persona that was >> anything that fought Enlil so idk if that's a fair comparison to make

Ren had Satanel against Enlil. All the MCs had their Ultimate Personas.

didn't yaldy took over the velvet room while not even as strong he was in the final fight ?

Hst master said:

Ren had Satanel against Enlil. All the MCs had their Ultimate Personas.

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Having the ultimate persona does not equate to the endgame key. Heavy amounts of empowerment is involved, the best example is Makoto recieving the universe arcana. It just so happens the protagonist often gets the ultimates during these events.

Problem is Ren with Satanael is considered >>>> his End-Game Self. Alongside that, his Arcana doesn't change, simply Arsene is unchained to become Satanael.

EDIT: At best you could say Ren was empowered via Sinful Shell, but not Satanael himself.

No arcana is stronger than another, proven by P1 and P2. Its all symbolic. Its the same problem as when people pull the universe arcana as to why Makoto is obviously the strongest with no basis. Universe is not > to the world for example. We could change the name of the key to Ren (Unchained) or something. What your basing this on is the formatting of the wiki and not actual lore.

IDK why a single endgame SEES is ranked higher than Elizabeth; they would have no chance in hell against her alone. Makoto is also far stronger than his teammates. It would lower the massive upgrade needed for Elizabeth in P4A as well.

Should be End Game Makoto > All Endgame SEES teammates > Elizabeth >> Solo Endgame SEES Teammate. Similar for P4.

Also where did the 2-B come from? I thought that thread was dead.

Edited

I never said he was weaker than the others, Orpheus Telos and Messiah are Judgement and Fool respectively after all, only that the others are clear cases of Empowerment(The Makotos go from barely being able to stand to casually flying up to Nyx unfazed, Yu goes from getting toyed with by Izanami No Okami to one shotting her with Myriad Truths). As I've edited in, it could be more of a case that instead of being empowered by Satanael, it was a case of being empowered by Sinful Shell itself. While Satanael himself would be equal to or stronger than Yaldy, since Enlil is still a thing.

He was empowered by the will of the people. It was demonstrated in game though the cutscenes. Joker not getting toyed with one reason why he is being rated higher than the other protagonists.

And the will of the people resulted in Sinful Shell, the Ironic Power against Yaldy. And there's still the Problem of the Q games, in which Makoto and Yu weren't toyed with by Zeus, who's supposed to be equal to Yaldy as well, and got even stronger.

I'm devastated. I had a very long comment explaining how the P1 and P2 gang stack up with each other scaling-wise, but when I pressed reply, it suddenly disappeared. I'll have to get the links and type them out all over again...

Hst master said:

And the will of the people resulted in Sinful Shell, the Ironic Power against Yaldy. And there's still the Problem of the Q games, in which Makoto and Yu weren't toyed with by Zeus, who's supposed to be equal to Yaldy as well, and got even stronger.

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It is notable that in PQ protagonists are no more special than any other character, at least not to the extent as in the main games. No wild card. None of the protagonists have their empowerment either (no world, universe whatever). Therefore there is no reason to scale them in this way.

The Wild Card is the ability to use multiple Personas of other Arcanas than their own and boost those others via Social Links, in PQ they still have this ability, but due to their being more than one Wild Card user (2 in Q and 4, technically 5 counting Akechi in Q2) it's spread to others without it being able to use Sub-Personas. It would have no effect on how strong their own Personal Personas are, also Izanagi no Okami is a World Arcana Persona, Yu would automatically have access to the World Arcana using it and Messiah was never tied to the Universe Arcana, it's Arcana is Judgement.

So I'll try to make it short: In Tatsuya's Scenario in the Eternal Punishment PSP remake, there's a way to determine this scaling chain, and it's via the Kadath Mandala.

To keep it brief, here's what the translation said about it:

"There may still be a way though: the fragments of Shiori's self are scattered throughout the domain of collective unconscious known as Kadath Mandala, the place where Personae and demons sleep and the uppermost domain of the abyss Philemon and the Crawling Chaos inhabit. Tatsuya's other self, his Persona, also comes from Kadath or, in other words, the place where the image of the gods from legends is born. Persona users of old who understood the power of their dreams and could visit the world of the collective unconscious also called it the domain of visions."

The Kadath Mandala is basically the furthest region of the Collective Unconsciousness, where Philemon and Nyarlathotep truly lie in. Compared to the normal CU, this place is much more dangerous. Igor says that this place was filled with Shadows and Demons thanks to the Faceless God, also known as Nyarly. Why do I assume that the Kadath Mandala is a separate realm that require more power than entering the regular CU? Well remember that way back Innocent Sin, Tatsuya already entered the CU. So this means Kadath is an even further realm.

So what's so important about this place? Well first of all, you cannot just enter this realm, unlike the normal Collective Unconsciousness or the Sea of Souls. Igor explains that while Tatsuya has immense talent as a Persona user, he cannot open a portal to enter Kadath Mandala. Remember, this is already after Innocent Sin, so we know Tatsuya can enter the regular Collective Unconsciousness. But not the Kadath Mandala. So to aid this, Igor calls upon Chandraputra, who is actually the legendary Persona User known as Randolph Carter. He ended up like this after the Faceless God ripped out his mind and soul and placed it on an alien body. Chandraputra is a legendary Persona User who holds the Silver Key that allows passage through the Ultimate Gate to the world of subconscious, Kadath Mandala, and that Silver Key is what helps the P2EP gang to enter Kadath Mandala.

Now, what's interesting here is what Igor said. He said that Tatsuya Suou, being already a massively talented and experienced Persona user since Innocent Sin, couldn't hold a candle to Maki Sonomura. Why? Well with her strong will alone, Igor said that Maki can enter Kadath without using the Silver Key. The only Persona users powerful enough to enter Kadath are Maki and Randolph. Now wait, why are we assuming Maki is stronger than Tatsuya anyways? It's just her mind that allows her to enter Kadath. Well, no not really. You see, Personas are from one's ego and mind, and seeing as how Maki can enter Kadath just by willing it, then this means her will is much stronger than Tatsuya's. And the stronger the will, the stronger the Persona. Here's the line in the translation:

"Nevertheless, how can Tatsuya gain the same power as the Persona users who travelled to the world of the collective unconscious? He already has great talent as a Persona user. If one has enough practise, then through their dreams they'll be able to open the door to the depths of their heart; Sonomura Maki was one of these people."

Maki is the only one in P1-P2 who can do this. And the interesting thing about the Kadath Mandala? It is home to demons and Shadows far more dangerous and powerful than anywhere else. In fact, according to the pastebin translation, "Persona users of old who understood the power of their dreams and could visit the world of the collective unconscious also called it the domain of visions". This is actually the reason why Randolph was mind and soul ripped by Nyarly. "Chandraputra reveals to the party that he is in fact Randolph Carter, who had his emotions stolen by Nyarlathotep in the past because of the work Randolph did in mankind's collective unconsciousness and the Kadath Mandala. Through sheer force of will he has been able to take human form and with the return of his emotions he can become a complete human again." This was taken from the wikia page.

Another reason why the Kadath is so dangerous: Igor warns the Tatsuya that the mental energy of humans is now flowing in the form of shadows and Philemon's power is severely weakened. This was caused by Nyarly himself, to make sure his equal Philemon won't butt in.

So now, we know that the Collective Unconsciousness exists, but no one has ever entered the highest realm where everything is stronger and more dangerous. In fact, the Persona 2 EP team fights gods like Izanami, Angra Mainyu, and eventually The Faceless God in Kadath.

We also know that Philemon, as the creator of Personas, can grant and take away Persona abilities; he did this with Yukino from Persona 1. He is also equal to Nyarlathotep, who can defeat the ancient, more powerful Persona users like Randolph. Therefore, Philemon and Nyar should be stronger than all Persona users. When you defeat Nyarly in the Tatsuya Scenario, he doesn't really die after all. So we can assume that even though Tatsuya fought against those two, he doesn't fully scale to Nyarly and Philemon.

So! With that in mind, we can set a scaling chain for P1 and P2.

Nyarlathotep = Philemon > Maki Sonomura = Ancient Persona users > Gods and Demons inside Kadath > P2 EP team >> Other Persona users (P1, IS, etc.) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Baseline 2-B

And that's it. To my fellow P1 and P2 experts, I'd like to confirm with you all if there's any errors here.

Links to translations here.

>"I'll try to keep it short"

jesus what was the original comment.

Yeah sorry about that. But I had to explain what the heck is the Kadath Mandala after all, and some justifications too.

Well that was Meaty. Anyway I'm gonna head to bed fn as it's late for me.

Hst master said:

The Wild Card is the ability to use multiple Personas of other Arcanas than their own and boost those others via Social Links, in PQ they still have this ability, but due to their being more than one Wild Card user (2 in Q and 4, technically 5 counting Akechi in Q2) it's spread to others without it being able to use Sub-Personas. It would have no effect on how strong their own Personal Personas are, also Izanagi no Okami is a World Arcana Persona, Yu would automatically have access to the World Arcana using it and Messiah was never tied to the Universe Arcana, it's Arcana is Judgement.

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It is not equatable. I'm not saying the characters are weak or anything in Q1 and 2. I'm not making any statement about tiering. What I'm saying is that scaling cannot be done from the main game ultimates to Q ultimates becuase the circumstances are so different.

As you've stated sub-personas are completly different, and all characters can use them. They also don't nessasaraly internalize the social link power but pass it to others (making all characters more equal in power). If all these other aspects are different, why whould the one you are vouching for stay the same?

And once again, arcana don't matter in terms of power. Having access to one don't change anything. P1 and 2 charcters had like 4 each. Finally, ultimates don't represent tier jumps. Your teamates ultimates are not due to or cause a massive power boost but a personal revelation. Maxing Ryuji at palace 3 does not bump him to 2-C. The protagonist is no different.

I agree with Mattador here in regards to the Wild Card. The circumstances are just too different to really equate the Ultimate Personas in the Q series with the ones in the Main Titles. The development also takes an entirely different form, and the power is split up among every Persona-user present, instead of just the respective Wild Card. Let's also not forget that the method for achieving these Ultimates are separate from Social Links/Confidants, which are the absolute bread and butter to a Wild Card's power. The relevant Empowerment is bound to be on a different scale. The Arcana really don't matter in regards to power, because Joker didn't even have the World when he one-shot Yaldabaoth. All he did was break the chains. His true resolution that led to the World came after his arrest.

Personally, I believe we should treat the PQ stories as individual cases instead of trying to fit them into the overall scaling chain, while to make things more clear on the main profiles, we can rename certain keys. For example, Ren's keys could be something like this:

Early-Game | Mid-Game | Late-Game | Persona Q2 | Post-Qlipoth World | End-Game Persona 5

With his current End-Game abilities being re-assigned to his Post-Qlipoth key, and his Satanael abilities being re-assigned to his End-Game key. Another example, Yu Narukami:

Persona 4 | Persona Q | Persona Q2 | End-Game Persona 4 and Persona 4 Arena

Except we otherwise accept the Q series as canon, I don't think we should ignore it's own scaling or else it'll lead to inconsistencies like Enlil > The Combined Persona Forces, Makoto and Yu > Zeus, and Ren > Yaldabaoth, but Zeus and Yaldabaoth are supposed to be equal to Enlil. It's contradictory to the scaling chain that has all of them as Equal but 2 of them are getting thrashed by only a small portion of what the 3rd overpowered.

And again, the power of the Wild Card is not just a booster. It's the ability to use multiple Personae and strengthen those other Personae via bonds with others. This has no effect on their Ultimate Persona and are completely unrelated to one another.

And again, I never said they were. I said that Ren didn't have any other indication of Empowerment other than the Will of The People that resulted in Sinful Shell. Satanael himself wasn't the cause.

My whole point in this is that the Admins shouldn't all be assumed equal to one another for being Admins, as there are events that go against that.

The Wild Cards' bonds are their strength, but said strength would obviously be gimped if over half of each Wild Card's bonds were completely inaccessible during the PQ games. This is especially the case regarding their Ultimate Personas, even more so Joker's, since that was awakened with the cognition of the entire world supporting him. The will of the people didn't create Sinful Shell. They empowered Ren himself.

Enlil being far above the combined forces of SEES, the IT and the PTs can be easily explained away by the fact that they're weaker than they would normally be in their End-Game keys. The methods for their development and the sources of their power are drastically different in the PQ games, so it's reasonable to assume that it might have inferior results. This is compounded by the fact that even the Velvet Room attendants have no idea what's going on, and couldn't have planned an optimal development route for their respective Wild Cards over the course of said games.

I didn't say that the Q games are non-canon. What I meant to say was that each of these games should be taken independently from the mainline games. That is, from the point where each cast is taken from the middle of their Journeys, we follow the events of the story from then on without taking the rest of their source games as reference for where they should stand. PQ2 Satanael shouldn't be taken as equal to P5 Satanael, for example. After all, you don't see Satanael or Messiah negating Almighty attacks in PQ despite being able to do so in their respective source games, do you?

Who sealed Yukino's persona was Yuriko, no Philemon, Yuriko ruled the Thanatos Tower and had the persona thanatos who had his own realm, the tartarus, the tartarus unlike P3 is literally what means, the world of the dead and a prison (both human and personas), whenever a character was defeated in thanatos tower all his personas were sealed deep in the tartarus, the tartarus was a powerful enough prison to make it impossible for any persona to escape on his own, and was necessary the characters physically access this underworld and rescue the personas, so the tartarus must be large enough to serve as the underworld for people and personas and a strong enough prison to prevent any persona from escaping without outside help.

Another tower in the snow queen quest was the hypnos tower, this tower had its own dream world inside, everyone who entered there slept and their consciousness formed their own "reality", requiring the characters to physically enter the dream world and interact with dreams just to free people, but the interesting thing happened later, even after you woke people up the "reality" they created didn't disappear, it's like in that tower the dreams took physical form and no longer depended on their dreamers, not as long as Hypnos lived on.

And after all I said, both hypnos and Thanatos (and Nemesis I didn't mention) were just Snow Queen servants who in turn were weaker than Night Queen who was the true villain of this route, and despite what II said, all of Snow Queen Quest takes place chronologically before the main route (SEBEC) where we face Kandori (who was acting under the influence of Nyarlalothep) and Pandora (a fragment of Maki), so I think Snow Queen Quest events can scale half and end of the game (from Yog-Sothoth who is one of the first post school boss)

Messiah and Satanael do still have all of their own Resistances in the Q games. The only thing that's different is how they're gained from fighting the Velvet Siblings and praising the power they nurtured and their innate skills. We even see that the sole thing is they lose their memories of events.

Problem is, even if we do just go with them being weaker because it's Mid Game-Late Game for each group, Zeus is still there, who Makoto and Yu had beaten in Q. Not to mention Philemon and Nyrarlyathotep are seemingly more powerful as well by what Shiny provided.

And they all could use Sub Personas of any arcana, still representative of their WC abilities, given that like I said, it's not gone but spread to the others.

@Zer00

No no, I know that Yukino or the protag got their Persona taken away in P1. I meant in P2. Yukino asks Philemon to take away her powers and give it to Jun. This is in Innocent Sin.

oh sorry, I made an explanation for nothing (damn Yukino, you're always losing your powers)

Its okay, that tidbit about P1 Tartarus was still useful! I only read the P1 Manga (Which might have some Low Multiversal feats but that doesn't matter anymore thanks to 2-B) so this was a welcome tidbit. (Yukino please try to keep your powers next time)

This obviously isn't the same Nyx/Tartarus as P3 right?

Nyx from Persona 3 is the embodiment of death, and Nyx from P1 is the Greek night goddess who is known in the game as Night Queen (although her goal was also to bring "the fall" into the world, so maybe she is too an avatar from nyx).

The tartarus is the underworld where your personas are trapped when characters die in combat, and you must physically enter it to rescue their personas.Yuriko's explanation is that when a character dies, in exchange for them remaining alive, she reaps her "other life," in other words, the Persona.

Megaten has a few entities with the same name but that are completely differently, specially Persona in general. Yaldabaoth, Izanami and Personas are some other examples.

DarkGrath said:

Looking at the composite, I just generally have quite a few problems.
1: While not by much, Late Game Makoto Yuki should be stronger than End-Game SEES

2: Nyx Avatar should be far stronger than Erebus

3: Already mentioned this, but the Single PT's Post-Qliphoth definitely aren't as strong as the Twins by themselves

4: Considering it took the effort of all of SEES (excluding Makoto, of course) to defeat Erebus, with even Métis insisting that Erebus could not be stopped by them, Erebus should be considered far stronger than just ">>" over a single one of them. Probably at least ">>>"

5: While I understand the reasoning, I disagree with Lavenza being stronger than Caroline and Justine. It's too much of an assumption to say that they notably increased in power by fusing then they were fighting together.

6: Makoto with the Universe Arcana should be far stronger than the Nyx Avatar

Despite all my problems, I'm quite impressed by all the effort put into this blog post! With the aforementioned problems removed, I'll write down what I think the composite scaling chain should look like once I'm on my computer (I'm on mobile right now, already hating writing this XD)

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1. That's true, but still, I didn't want to get too deep into who's barely stronger than who. Each member of the End-Game SEES should be able to at least keep up with Makoto on their own, due to Makoto himself still needing their help to take on Nyx Avatar.

2. Afaik, there is no evidence to support this. Both Nyx Avatar and Erebus scale to End-Game SEES, after all. Not the other way around. If anything, the SEES that fought Erebus should be stronger than the SEES that fought Nyx Avatar, because of the events of the Answer. We can't even argue the later lack of Makoto, since Aigis had his specific Wild Card abilities in the Erebus fight.

3. This was the only way I could make things make sense. Lavenza, Igor and presumably Margaret all collectively lost against the Holy Grail during the takeover, and Caroline & Justine are weaker than Lavenza based on the implication that they'd lost a bunch of their power when they were split. It's a little hard to believe that Caroline & Justine could each hold their own for very long against the Holy Grail. It's even harder to believe that the Phantom Thieves could beat the HG with only relative difficulty (based on their states during the GoC transformation cutscene, in which they were only tired as opposed to exhausted), while being individually inferior to either of the Twins.

4. True. It's been a while since I've seen the Answer, so there were bound to be some mistakes in magnitude. This should also apply to Nyx Avatar.

5. It's easy to assume that Lavenza would be notably stronger than just the combined forces of Caroline and Justine. Remember that most abilities in Persona are tied to the mind, and the Twins were missing major gaps in their memories and general knowledge. Strong enough memory loss is considered a complete reset button for regular Persona-users, as evidenced by the Q games, so I can't imagine that the loss of a significant portion of Lavenza's memories wouldn't lead to some serious effects on their overall power.

6. Makoto has no AP feats to put him notably above Nyx Avatar. I was already stretching it by assuming that he could probably take on Nyx Avatar alone.

Solacis said:

Remember that most abilities in Persona are tied to the mind, and the Twins were missing major gaps in their memories and general knowledge.

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This is so true. This is another reason why I believe Maki is stronger than the rest of P1 and P2 simply because of her ability to enter the Kadath Mandala by sheer of will, without resorting to the Silver Key provided by Randalph Carter, who was one of the very first humans and Persona users (AKA the ancient humans and "legendary Persona user".)

Although I'm now curious on how high the P1/P2 and Kadath peeps should be at. It is pretty obvious from the whole Kadath thing that Philemon and Nyarlathotep are higher than the Ancient humans, who were the ones who created the CU. Also, Kadath is a realm inaccessible to anyone of lower mental power than the likes of the ancient humans, so this means Maki should be ranked very high among all Persona users, including P3-5, since she could open the way to the Kadath and enter it with her sheer will; a feat only done by the ancient Persona users.

I'll just leave the P1 and P2 scaling to the people knowledgeable about it. I don't have any further input regarding those games.

@MattadorProne argued that each member of End Game SEES shouldn't be capable of fighting Elizabeth alone, to which I say... eh.

Reminder that End-Game SEES canonically split into two teams during the Nyx Avatar fight. Only 4 of them (including Makoto) stayed behind to fight Nyx Avatar. The rest fought off the Shadow hordes approaching from Tartarus.

Now, assuming that each member is at least roughly comparable to each other, even assuming that Makoto is notably stronger than the rest of his teammates by the End-Game, Nyx Avatar is still strong enough that Makoto couldn't hope to beat it on his own, despite having done so with Elizabeth when he was weaker. Thus, the three remaining members of SEES that participated in the battle should each be at least comparable to Late-Game Makoto by virtue of keeping up with and significantly damaging Nyx Avatar with individual attacks.