The Persona franchise is famous for weird enemies and bosses that players encounter in various dungeons. The Persona 3 Dancing Hands enemies certainly sit among the top of the weirdest enemies players will face.
Dancing Hands is a Persona 3 mini-boss that appears on the 10th floor of Thebel Block (first block) in Tartarus during the Dark Hour. Dancing hands is a shadow that belongs to the Magician arcana and appears at multiple spots in the game including Arca Block. This is not an optional boss fight and can be pretty difficult as Dancing Hands appear in groups of 3 and each member has 220hp.
Dancing Hands stats and attacks
Each dancing hand has 220 HP and 120 SP. They are extremely strong against magic and physical attacks and their only weakness is Strike attack. Taking down their health is a slow and painful process.
Dancing Hands use elemental and physical attacks with a chance of causing ailments. All the attacks cause major HP damage to the party members, and they can exploit the party’s weakness to the full extent.
Below is the complete list of attacks that Dancing Hands can utilize in Persona 3 Portable during the boss fights
Agi: Light fire damage to one enemy.
Zio: Light electric damage with a 10% chance of shock to one enemy.
Bufu: Light ice damage with a 10% chance of applying freeze to one enemy.
Magaru: Light wind damage to all enemies.
Strike Attack: Standard strike attack to one enemy
Tentarafoo: 40% chance of causing panic to all enemies.
Dia: Restores one ally’s hp by a small amount.
How to defeat Dancing Hands in Persona 3 Portable
Only Strike attack that players will have probably managed to unlock at this point will be Bash used by Orpheus Persona (you can also try to fuse Ara Mitama with much higher Strike damage at level 6). It uses 7% of the player’s HP and can down Dancing Hand (with a 50% chance of missing).
So, carrying health recovery items is recommended for the Dancing Hands boss fight in P3. No magic attacks work unless you want to use Dia on your party members. Stocking up on the items that recover SP is not a wise move for this battle.
Recommended party members against Dancing Hands
This fight is basically a 3 vs 3 with the enemies having distinct advantage over the party. Junpei is weak to Wind attacks and Yukari is weak to Elec attacks. They both don’t have access to Strike attacks and can only be used to deal physical (due to Dancing Hands’ high resistance against elements).
This fight boils down to how you use MC and his acquired persona. Mc weaknesses are related to the equipped persona. Orpheus is a twin edged sword.
Dancing Hands can down MC using electricity attacks. Create Ara Mitama by fusing Pixie and Angel. It doesn’t have any weakness to Dancing Hands’ attacks, but you still can get panicked by Tentarafoo.
Strategy to defeat Dancing Hands
The strategy for the Dancing Hands fight in Persona 3 is pretty straight forward. Give enough room to MC to use Bash attacks on Dancing Hands. Once all of them are down, do an “All-out attack”.
This won’t be enough to kill these monsters. Look out for their attacks and brace yourself. Dancing hands will try to down your party members by exploiting their elemental weakness and earn additional turns.
You have to keep your party alive by using healing items and spells (Both Yukari and Junpei as support). Leave the fight to MC. Once your turn returns, rinse and repeat Strike attacks and victory will be yours.
Dancing Hands are recurring enemies in P3 Portable, but this fight will prepare you for your future battles against them. The same strategy can be applied to any dancing hand enemy and the results will be in your favor.
