Persona 5 Strikers guide: Bond skills (and our favorites)

Instead of upgrading your Bond with individual friends like in Persona 5, Persona 5 Strikers allows players to pick from a Bond skill tree. These skills offer a variety of stat-based and ability-based passive bonuses, and you can upgrade them each time you upgrade your Bond level — primarily earned via story progression.

You’ll steadily unlock these skills during Persona 5 Strikers, and some won’t be available until very late in the game. Each skill has a different point cost and several levels. For some Bond skills, you’ll need to beat side quests to unlock higher levels of the skill (the game calls these out in side quest descriptions).

Here’s a look at all the Bond skills in Strikers and a few that we recommend you upgrade as soon as you can.

Stat upgrades

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These Bond upgrades help improve your character’s stats.

• HP Boost — Increase max HP of all party members
• SP Boost — Increase max SP of all party members
• Strength Boost — Increase St for all party members. Affects physical attack damage.
• Magic Boost — Increase Ma for all party members. Affects magical attack damage
• Endurance Boost — Increase En for all party members. Affects defense.
• Agility Boost — Increases Ag for all party members. Affects Criticals/auto-evades
• Luck Boost — Increases Lu for all party members. Affects Crit evasion/ailment rates

Persona upgrades

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These Bond upgrades help improve your Personas and mid-combat bonuses.

• Pass Appeal — After performing a Baton Pass, the Showtime gauge will fill faster
• Harisen Helper — Increases chance to trigger Harisen Recovery
• Oracle Recovery — Restores HP and SP to all party members at end of battle
• Martial Arts — Increases damage for physical Persona skills
• Spiritual Arts — Increases damage for magical Persona skills
• Tactical Arts — Increases chance for Persona skills to inflict status ailments
• Supportive Arts — Increases duration for buffs and debuffs from Persona skills

Combat upgrades

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These Bond upgrades give the Phantom Thieves bonuses in and out of combat.

• Joker’s Wild — Increases chance for masks to manifest
• Ambusher — Restores HP to all party members after a successful ambush
• Phantom Striker — Increases damage when performing a phantom dash
• Avenger — Evading an enemy attack can grant a much stronger counterattack
• Ammo Hoarder — Increases ammo count for all party members, based on gun type
• Proper Showman — Increases damage for Showtime attacks
• Spirit Striker — 1 More attacks restore attacker SP and All-Out Attacks restore party SP

Economy upgrades

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These upgrades help the Phantom Thieves get deals or collect more XP, items, and money.

• Smart Shopper — Score better deals at Sophia’s shop
• Metaverse Medic — Increases the effects of healing items
• Bondmaker — Bond level will increase more quickly
• Highwayman — Increases chance to obtain items at end of battle
• Extortionist — Increases money obtained at end of battle

Jail upgrades

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These upgrades help the Phantom Thieves unlock special chests or get bonuses from Jails.

• Safecracker — Allows more difficult chests to be picked open
• Master Chef — Enables the creation of more food with stronger effects
• Treasure Hunter — Increases chance to encounter Treasure Demons
• Packrat — Junk parts become easier to obtain

Best Bond skill upgrades to prioritize

While all of these upgrades net some kind of bonus, some are more powerful than others. You should prioritize a few. Upgrade these Bonds as soon as you unlock them.

Bondmaker – Bond level will increase more quickly

Bondmaker is one of those classic video game skills that gives more XP the longer you play. Upgrade this early on to ensure you get the max Bond level you can.

SP Boost – Increase max SP of all party members

SP is the most annoying resource to run out of in Persona 5 Strikers, as it limits your ability to cast spells with your Persona. Upgrading your overall SP will let you cast more frequently between checkpoints, improving your combat abilities and making boss fights much easier.

Pass Appeal – After performing a Baton Pass, the Showtime gauge will fill faster

Showtime abilities are like ultimate skills, and they deal a ton of damage to bosses and normal enemies. Pass Appeal helps you earn more Showtime attacks per fight as long as you’re swapping Phantom Thieves frequently.

Joker’s Wild – Increases chance for masks to manifest

Joker’s Wild helps you collect more masks for Joker’s arsenal. This is useful for a couple reasons, as it helps you fill out your Persona roster without using the Fusion system. It also helps improve the amount of PP (Persona Points) — currency to upgrade your Personas — that you earn because collecting masks once your inventory is full just automatically sells them.

All of the Jail upgrades

Aside from Bondmaker, these are the best upgrades in Strikers. They’ll help you get bonus junk, bonus Bond XP, and better items from chests. You won’t be able to max out most of these until you complete some Requests, so just get them as powerful as you can until you get later in Persona 5 Strikers.