Yusuke Guide: Best Builds & Teams | Persona 5 The Phantom X

Together with the release of the long awaited Persona 5 character banner coming to Persona 5 The Phantom X in the form of Yusuke Kitagawa and his extravaganceness together with his Persona Goemon, many players might want to know how to best optimize his damage output and what are his best builds and teams are in the game.

Therefore, in this guide, we will go over everything players need to know about Yusuke Kitagawa in Persona 5 The Phantom X and show players how they should build him and the best teams to use him in to maximize his potential as a strong DPS character. Let’s find out together!

 

Skill Kit & Leveling Priorities

General Introduction

Yusuke Kitagawa is a 5* Sweeper character in Persona 5 The Phantom X that specializes in dealing Ice elemental damage to all enemies on the field. His skill kit focuses on dealing Counter and Follow Up Attacks against the enemies, making them unable to move by freezing them, making him fit the role of a decently powerful DPS character in the game.

Persona	Element	Class	Role
Goemon	Ice	Sweeper	Main DPS

Yusuke Kitagawa Skill Kit & Passives

In battle, Yusuke Kitagawa can call forth the Persona Goemon to deal various powerful Ice Elemental Attacks against groups of enemies, with various skills and effects dealing big damage to enemies proportional to his defense stat and allow him to inflict the Freeze debuff on the enemies, reducing their attack stats. Additionally, thanks to his Inspiration Effect, Yusuke can also deal damage to enemies outside of his turn with various counterattack effects, allowing him to deal with enemies efficiently and effectively.

Yusuke Kitagawa’s skill effects and important passives includes:

- Frozen Presence: Deals Damage To All Foes Proportional to Yusuke’s Defense stat and inflict Freeze on the main target for 2 turns.

- Bone-Chilling Cold: Deals Multiple Hits damage to enemies on the field proportional to Yusuke’s Defense. When Yusuke has a Shield, his damage is increased by 30%. This attack prioritizes attacking different enemies, with damage decreasing if the attacks hit the same enemy multiple times.

- Keen Eye: A buff skill that increases Yusuke’s chance for counterattack to 100% and increases his counterattack damage in addition to changing it to an attack that hits all enemies. Additionally, grant Yusuke a shield, nullifies his Fire Weakness and nullifies all spiritual ailments, lasting for 2 turns. Inflict taunt on all foes for 2 turns. If the enemy did not attack Yusuke at the start of his next turn, Yusuke’s counterattack will be automatically activated.

- Thief Tactic: Deal 1 instance of AoE damage to all enemies and increase Yusuke’s chance to counterattack by 35% for 3 turns.

- Painter’s Focus (Passive): Each time Yusuke is granted a shield, his damage is increased for 2 turns, up to 6 stacks.

- Artist’s Intuition (Passive): Each time Yusuke is granted a shield, increase Yusuke’s pierce rate for 1 turn.

Yusuke Kitagawa Skill Leveling Priority

To maximize Yusuke’s damage output as a main DPS character, players should prioritize leveling up Yusuke’s skills and abilities in this order:

Highest Priority - Keen Eye: Keen Eye is Yusuke’s most important skill as it not only massively boost Yusuke’s damage output by granting him a shield and boosting his counterattack damage massively, it also taunts all enemies, making them attack Yusuke and allow him to counterattack reliably. Not only that, the skill also nullifies all of Yusuke’s weaknesses, making it an extremely strong skill both offensively and defensively.

High Priority - Frozen Presence & Bone-Chilling Cold: Both Frozen Presence & Bone-Chilling Cold are powerful AoE skills that makes up the entirety of Yusuke’s active skill usage, allowing him to deal with large mobs of enemies, with Frozen Presence focusing on dealing with 1 big enemy with small mobs while Bone-Chilling Cold allows him to deal massive amounts of damage to individual enemies.

Low Priority - Thief Tactic: Thief Tactic doesn’t activate often despite being a very decently strong skill, therefore you don’t need to prioritize leveling it up.

 

Best Weapons & Revelation Builds

Yusuke Recommended Weapons

As a Main DPS character that focuses on dealing damage to all enemies on the field proportional to his Defense stat with counterattacks, players should focus on using weapons that boost Yusuke’s Counterattack damage.

The best weapon option for Yusuke is of course his signature 5* and 4* weapons:

- Jagato:

	Jagato (4* Weapon) Attack (433) HP (1966) Defense (422)
Increase Defense by 18.0%. Each time a counterattack is activated, increase Ice damage by 9.6% for 2 turns. Stacks up to 2 times.

- Shadowkiller:

	Shadowkiller (5* Weapon) Attack (541) HP (2457) Defense (528)
Increase Defense by 45.0%. At the start of battle, increase counterattack damage by 30.0%. After gaining a shield, gain 1 Blade Spirit stack. Increase counterattack damage by 2% per stack. At 6 stacks, increase counterattack damage by 30.0%. This effect is permanent.

Yusuke Best Revelation Build

For Yusuke Revelation Build, players should prioritize on cards that boost Yusuke’s Follow Up and Counterattack Damage in addition to boosting his overall critical damage and defensive stats to help allow him to maximize his damage output as a main DPS option.

For his build players should use put Yusuke on Meditation & Opulence Build:

- Mediation:

	Meditation & Love: After dealing a critical hit, increase the user's healing effect by 28% for 2 turns.
	Meditation & Courage: Increase Physical and Electric damage by 12%. If there is only 1 foe on the field, increase by 24% more.
	Meditation & Opulence: When activating Resonance, increase critical damage by 50%.

• Opulence:

	2 Set Effect: Increase Ice damage by 10%.
	4 Set Effect: Increase Resonance damage by 40%.

For Main Stats & Sub Stats, players should focus on getting these main stats to optimize Yusuke’s build:

	Main Stat	Sub Stats
Moon	Defense%	- Priority #1: Speed, Critical Rate, Critical Damage, Defense - Priority #2: Other Stats
Star	Critical Rate%
Sky	Defense%

 

Awareness Priorities

Yusuke Recommended Awareness

A1 - Natural Talent

Yusuke’s 1st Awareness Level allows Yusuke to deal additional damage whenever he uses The Keen Eye skill 2 times, allowing him to have a more active damaging role in the team and reduce his damage downtime when Keen Eye is not activated.

A2 - Both Beauty And Vice

Yusuke’s 2nd Awareness Level helps massively boost his counterattack damage when he is at 70% HP and above, helping to boost his damage output by a decent amount.

A4 - Still Life

Yusuke’s 4th Awareness Level help boosts his counterattack damage after he uses his Highlight skill by a decent amount.

A6 - Finishing Touches

Yusuke’s 6th Awareness Level completely evolves his counterattacking mechanic into more useful and powerful versions, allowing his counterattacks to deal 2 times more damage by allowing them to deal an additional instance of damage when Yusuke uses them. This also increase Yusuke’s Counterattack Pierce rate by a large amount.

Yusuke Awareness Level VS Signature Weapon Pulling Priorities

In terms of pulling investment for Yusuke and his pulling prioritises between his Signature Weapon and Awareness Levels:

- Yusuke’s Signature provides him with a massive boost in both his defensive stat and boost his counterattacks damage output by a large amount. Therefore, having his signature weapon is a must.

- Among Yusuke’s Awareness Levels, the only 2 Awareness levels that massively changes how you play him is his A1 and A6, with other Awareness Levels only boosting his counterattack damage output without really changing much of his gameplay.

Therefore, with these considerations, players should invest in Yusuke in this order: A0 + F1 > A1 + F1 > A6 + F1 > A6 + F5.

 

Best Team Recommendations

With Yusuke being a main DPS character that focuses on dealing Counterattack against enemies when he’s shielded, with his attacks and skill damage being boosted whenever he have a shield and is high in defense, Yusuke should go with teammates that help him boost his Ice Elemental Damage output by increasing either his Defense stat, provide him with shields or boost his Counterattack damage.

Some of Yusuke’s best teams includes:

Yusuke Ice Team

Yusuke Ice team make use of Yusuke and Kotone’s Ice elemental Persona to deal constant Ice Elemental damage to enemies weak to Ice Elemental damage while being protected with powerful Sustain option like Minami while being supported by Miyu as the Navigator, allowing Miyu to boost Yusuke’s damage by providing him with powerful shields and damage boosting skills.

Yusuke	Kotone	Minami	Miyu
Main DPS	Sub DPS	Sustain	Navigator (Shield/ Damage Support)

For this team, Wonder should equip the following Personas to maximize the team’s damage output by supporting Yusuke:

- King Frost: Provides Shield and Deal Ice Damage to enemies.

- Mithras: Provides Defense Up Buff To all Allies, help to boost Yusuke’s damage output.

- Dionysus: Provides Critical Rate and Critical Damage Boost To Allies.

- Apsaras: Provides the team with Defense Up Buff whenever Wonder uses Highlight Attacks.

Yusuke Hypercarry Shield Team

Unlike Yusuke Ice Team that spread the team's damage through 2 different sources, the Yusuke Hypercarry Shield team make full use of Yusuke’s talent that massive boost his damage when he is granted Shields by running Yusuke alongside only characters that grants shield to allies with their abilities, allowing players to boost Yusuke’s damage to the maximum for long duration.

Yusuke	Yukimi	Haruna	Miyu
Main DPS	Shield/ Defense Support	Sub DPS/ Shield/ Defense Support	Navigator (Shield/ Damage Support)

For this team, Wonder should equip the following Personas to maximize the team’s damage output by supporting Yusuke:

- King Frost: Provides Shield and Deal Ice Damage to enemies.

- Mithras: Provides Defense Up Buff To all Allies, help to boost Yusuke’s damage output.

- Dionysus: Provides Critical Rate and Critical Damage Boost To Allies.

Apsaras: Provides the team with Defense Up Buff whenever Wonder uses Highlight Attacks.

 

Conclusion

We hope that with the help of this guide, players will be able to understand more of how Yusuke skill kit works in Persona 5 The Phantom X and will be able to build him and use him in the best teams possible to maximize his damage potential!