Persona 3 Reload: How To Defeat Controlling And Dependent Partners
With only one more Gatekeeper battle to go until you can reach the first of your Monad Passages and hit the border floor in the Yabbashah block of Tartarus in Persona 3 Reload, you’ve got one heck of a fight ahead if you’d like to continue.
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PostsControlling and Dependent Partners are strong Gatekeeper Shadows that attack you together, and they’re pretty determined to heal and buff one another, making you put in a little extra work to counter their support work on one another. With only one Shadow actually weak to any damage, they won’t go down without a fight.
Party Setup And Recommended Levels
Since you're now well into the Yabbashah block of Tartarus, you'll have Aigis in the party already when you encounter the Controlling and Dependent Partners Gatekeeper battle on 91F, just before the border floor into the second half of the block.
This is also where you'll find the Monad Passage Elizabeth was telling you about, but you'll need to defeat Controlling and Dependent partners before you can investigate.
Aigis having joined the party is a great thing, since one of the Gatekeepers is weak to Pierce damage, and only to Pierce damage. Because of this, both Aigis and Yukari make great choices for the team due to their innate physical damage both being Pierce.
In addition to her Pierce damage, Yukari has a wealth of healing moves that will come in handy during this battle when the Partners tie of healing one another and begin inflicting damage onto your team, since they're quite powerful Shadows.
We'd recommend rounding out the team with Junpei, since he not only has impressive stats by the time you encounter the Partners Gatekeeper (if you've been leveling him, of course), but he'll also be able to help you deal Pierce damage when he's not busy exploiting the regular affinity to Fire on the Controlling Partner with your protagonist.
As for your level, we'd recommend being at least Level 36-38 before taking on the fight.
Controlling And Dependent Partners' Affinities
In the tables below, we've kept track of both partners' respective affinities, and knowing them ahead of time can save you the SP of asking Fuuka to scan them yourself.
Controlling Partner's Affinities In Persona 3 Reload
Affinities and Weaknesses
Slash
Strike
Pierce
Fire
Ice
Wind
Elec.
Light
Dark
Almi.
Nul
Nul
-
-
-
-
-
Nul
Nul
-
Attacks and Skills
Tarukaja
Increases one ally's attack power for three turns.
Rebellion
Increases one ally's critical hit rate for three turns.
Diarama
Restores a medium amount of HP to one ally.
Garula
Medium Wind damage to one foe.
Dependent Partner's Affinities In Persona 3 Reload
Affinities and Weaknesses
Slash
Strike
Pierce
Fire
Ice
Elec.
Wind
Light
Dark
Almi.
-
-
Wk
Nul
Nul
Nul
Nul
Nul
Nul
-
Attacks and Skills
Makarakarn
Erects a barrier that repels magic attacks for three turns.
Arrow Rain
Pierce damage to all foes.
Diarama
Restores a medium amount of HP to one ally.
You'll find the Shadows healing one another quite often, so be prepared for a lengthy fight with healing items and spells of your own.
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PostsHow To Beat Controlling And Dependent Partners
With two tough Shadows to beat in this Gatekeeper fight in Persona 3 Reload, you'll need to attack each Shadow separately for the majority of the fight, since they don't share many common affinities.
One of the largest frustrations of the fight is that the partners are intent on healing and buffing one another throughout the fight, with priority, it seems, given to healing the other if you've knocked the other Shadow down or hurt it too badly.
The other is that Controlling Partner doesn't have any weaknesses in its affinity chart, only things that deal a normal amount of damage. You'll need to completely avoid Slash, Strike, Light, and Dark moves, as Controlling Partner is completely immune to them.
Just be mindful of Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, which provide either physical or magical coverage for the Shadow for three turns. During this time, they repel that damage back to you, so don't hurt yourself trying to hurt them.
This makes the battle against Controlling and Dependent Partners a great time to liberally make use of your Theurgy skills, both the teammates you brought and your growing assortment of them. Theurgy ignores affinities to deal a huge amount of damage, so do your best to come to the fight with your Theurgy gauges already charged.
Especially helpful are Theurgy skills that can down the enemies, as Dependent Partner's weakness to Pierce damage is easy to exploit even if you're not using our party recommendation above.
Between HP-based physical damage moves and default Pierce damage from those who can use it, Pierce is Dependent Partner's only weakness, so exploit it wherever possible.
Should you manage to down Controlling Partner, it's helpful to immediately hit Dependent Partner with a Pierce attack to down it as well for an All-Out Attack, as this is your only chance to do so with Controlling Partner not having a weakness.
Even if you can't use many All-Out Attacks, you can keep the battle in your favor by trying to keep the Dependent Partner downed through constant Pierce attacks, which leads to the Controlling Partner focusing on healing them to spend the turn without doing damage to your party.
You'll likely defeat Dependent Partner first due to the imbalance in weaknesses, but what's interesting is that Controlling Partner spends a turn or two mourning for its lost partner after Dependent Partner falls. This is a great chance to lay on your heaviest damage to bring the fight home.
NextPersona 3 Reload: Complete Monad Passage Guide
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