[Clair Obscur]: NG++ plurk 
Apparently the scaling continues until about NG+++++
And you can have up to NG+++++++++
At what point do you just never need colour of lumina anymore
THIS NEW PATCH
I know I could just take off Painted Power if I wanna play hardmode but ... that's hideously unreasonable when everything has 100mil hp in NG++
But I'm glad there's a gradient now
Did I double all enemy hp yes. 
SUFFERING
It should also make NG5+ to NG9+ scalable when before they were not
If it's still too easy with double hp on every mob/boss I'll see about dampening damage output
But beyond setting that up I haven't played
I got up to the festival and got all sad
I've seen the prologue... 4 times now?
Bitch, I'm still crying over it 
I didn't wanna even do the prologue, but Alex was asking for my Verso build (Gustave inherits it anyways so it's fine) but there's no party menu until you reach the festival
So I had to get through sadness to get her the build details
I sent it to her, closed the game and now she wants Sciel's lol
Maybeeee another day
TODAY WAS ANOTHER DAY
So it seems to be scaling pretty okay?
But using Clea's Life on everyone isssssssss................................. it's giving unbalanced~
So I've got the hp x2
But I was thinking
What if I just did all of Act 1 with just .... Gustave
I mean. That would be a challenge, he scales horribly and despite all the buffs I shove onto him he just can't compete with the other party members
He's genuinely not designed to function decently beyond the first playthrough's Act 1
I should probably do Sciel, Maelle and either Monoco or Lune - I have them built about the same tbh
Just Lune has more elements at her disposal and dots while Monoco is king of the shields and both are decent debuffers
HOWEVERrrr
I will steam roll everything
I could put enemy HP at x100
Is it times of %
Whatever. I CAN MAKE IT WORSE
I am going to bed but I will test this out tomorrow
I usually get frustrated with Gustave pretty quick so lol
We'll see if I cave and just buff the enemies more or if I stick to it and try to just solo all of act 1 with him
So the Solo with Gustave idea seems to be working?
Like it's a decent challenge
I'm only passed Flying Waters, granted. But lol his build is completely whack
I just let him inherit Verso's build and. Honestly. It's better than the Gustave-specific build I had
But also. The pictos have gained a lot of levels since Gustave was in my party last lol soooo Gustave's build might still be better for him than Verso's but.
I can't be assed to recoat him
I already need to adjust Maelle's build. But I won't bother with her until Act 2
Done Act 1 with just Gustave solo'ing the whole way 
The only death I had was ... I forget the boss's name but the one in Yellow Harvest. The tree guy near the boats
I messed up the timing on the root attack and nothing could save me lol
Uncreatively, I'll try to do Act 2 with just Verso and Act 3 with Maelle
The only exception to Act 3 will be Simon just because you literally can't beat him as a solo artist
^ do u get the pun
doyadoyadoya
Ah.... 
I one-shot Crushing Cavern worm guy
By which I mean it died in one turn
HMN. I guess I'll up the difficulty
I forgot how weak Gustave is by comparison 
Verso just annihilates everything. It's embarrassing
So I had enemy life multiplier at x2
I'm going to try x10 for the next boss and see if that works better
....... Nope
Killed the overworld lantern carrying boss in 4 turns
x20 and we're going for Sprong lmao
Sprong took me 5 min
LOL I DON'T WANNA DO x50 THIS IS GETTING DUMB.
It's now at x50 but I'm going to bed 
I have a feeling Act 3 is going to have to be entirely x100 with Maelle
Verso's not even the heaviest hitter. This is so dumb 
But also. I could limit damage output but
Man, I worked hard on these builds. I don't wanna rearrange these builds for a damage cap
That would mean building a whole new build for everyone
Maybe that will be NG+++
For the record, Verso has nearly 600 lumina 
This is not a 1st playthrough build. I've been aiming for this for a while
Maelle's build is way cheaper. She really just needed 150 to get rolling and now she's around 450 and I'm just taking pictos for ~funsies~
Verso is so expensive lmao
I have met my match. I can't do Dark Shores with Verso solo yet. I will try again once I have gradient dodge but it's impossible with gradient dodge disabled :c
Literally just have to face tank it and against 3 at the same time... ya he's not gonna make it even with angel eyes and second chance and all that
I can survive 2 back to back, base shield eats 1 and angel eyes recovers the other, but I can do nothing to survive a third
I can get Gradient level 3 every 3 turns
So with Cheater that's like a turn and a half lol
I did do the Stone Waves.... Cave boss. The guy with the glowing rock on his back
That glows to red unless you shoot at it
Verso demolished it .-.
I stunned it within the first turn and then every turn after stun stun stun stun
Poor little guy didn't even get a turn
It took a while
But no turn means no damage taken means ez pz
Lol I'm probably gonna send a ticket like
Hey so. Verso is broken af can you nerf him please
lmao...
I could, theoretically, do this to Simon
I can get Gradient 3 in 3 turns, Monoco can use Break Point
Then Verso can keep him stunned for the rest of eternity so long as he keeps speed up
Which he can keep greater rush up forever. And if we can also tack on Greater Slow... probably Simon won't even get a chance to breathe
But we'll see. I'm just theorizing now
My Verso build when he burns people, too
Not nearly as efficient with it as Maelle, but he does what he can
I'm finding most fights even with Challenge at 50x hp aren't difficult... it's more endurance 
This one only took 15 min. But I definitely start to lose focus after 10 min or so and usually it costs me Second Chance to correct
Verso didn't go down at all this fight, but Survivor kicked in at one point because I lost focus lol
HOWEVER
THE REASON I couldn't concentrate is less the timing and more this creature's fault
COULD I FEEL MY FINGERS? No, not really. She is 12 lbs and while not all her weight was on my arm... lol it was enough
Especially when my Verso build requires free aim every single turn it was like Challenge Mode ++ lol
Oh. My. Good. Grief. Simoso is so fucking op. It's dumb
He should be dead. I got hit by 3 one-shot worthy hits
But because he was in S rank with Simoso, he survived every hit
Should have died 3x over lol but had no deaths
I don't have a choice on party for Renoir's fight
He is a bit chonky 
I can now consistently get tier 3 gradient in 2 turns
Can we get it down to every other turn?
Very weak wind up 
No powerful, no defenseless, no mark, no nothin'
lol Verso does 8mil with a 2ap skill
I really gotta work on Maelle's build for Act 3, this won't do
You know I'm struggling in a fight when Verso is pulling off this many burn stacks all on his lonesome
200 is a new record for him, I think 
Since I got gradient dodges now, I went back to Dark Shores
And hooooly crap these guys are so easy with Simoso
Like.............. I thought they were hard. I remember them being so difficult. But the last playthrough I fought them without gradient dodge
gradient......... parry, whatever
What a difference this makes lol
Okay so I sped through Act 2 cause Anna wanted to see how Act 2 finishes
But I reloaded an old save, the oldest I could find in the file which put me back in the monolith
Cause when I was speeding, I dropped my playing.... rules
Like I had 3 party members, I got rid of the challenge hp multiplier
But nowwwwwwww
Hello Renoir 
Regrets intensify
I think he has 11mil hp by default
But we'll... see how much this puts him at
I forgot to do this initially and I one-shot him with Verso 
So hopefully this should at least let me see Phase 2
BECAUSE APPARENTLY YOU CAN SKIP IT??
riddle me that, game what the heck
WHOOPS I MEANT THIS 
1 mil damage later, his hp bar didn't budge
........ So does he have 1,100,000,000 hp?
Am I in danger
lol I was absolutely in danger
2 days later I'm still stuck fighting him
I got him to phase 2 where he heals (1.1bil HP LMAO)
And I then got promptly overwhelmed because of Berserk
Rage?
Whatever, the thing that lets them have two turns within 1 turn
Honestly, he's worse than Simon
I can handle Simon, even with his intense amount of speed and phantom swords
There's a strat there
BUT RENOIR? Buddyyyyyyy.......
Also, I realized I don't have Double Burn pictos on Maelle
Which is just ???
I LIED she has it. It's Verso who doesn't. 
645 burn stacks
And if I managed to break him with Verso instead of Monoco that would get doubled yet again to 1290 stacks
But I did not do this because I was using the Monoco-Verso duo stun combo
The strat, if anyone is actually reading this (lol you shouldn't, this is like trash tv)
Monoco uses Break Point, Verso uses End Bringer
And then you just use End Bringer with Verso every single turn or every other Verso turn if you have Cheater
And the opponent never gets a chance to recover from stun
So that was the strat all through phase 1, but then obviously with Berserk rage.... Renoir gets 2 turns in one so even if I continue the stun through 1 turn, he'll recover in his second turn no matter what
Also I should mention
End Bringer is broken. It is not doing what it is intended to do
Stun continuation is only supposed to work if Verso's in A Rank, but in its current state it works just as well in S rank
However, even if this was fixed, you can use Leadership on his first turn and then End Bringer in the second to ensure he stays in A rank for End Bringer
This is, again, assuming you use Cheater pictos
Obviously if you use Leadership, you're losing a damage pool turn. But it's a small sacrifice to make to ensure the thing your fighting that can one shot you stays incapacitated
THAT said lol
I do love my current team's build
So long as the thing is stunned it's basically
Verso free aim shoots until no more AP, gets Powerful/Shell/Rush in doing so. Then Base Attack back up to full AP and applies Defenseless/Powerless. Second Verso turn uses End Bringer so long as Stun is ongoing
Maelle literally just does Swift Stride in turn 1, Gommage turn 2
Monoco enforces Slow and Break Point if stun wore off, alternatively just Creation Void if I have a turn available to just deal damage with him
So... I'm not optimized at all with pictos. Maelle's build needs work in particular
But with all of that, we're looking at about 25-40mil damage per round
I really need to optimize Maelle lol
She's been on the backburner with this "solo" run
Oh I should mention
Verso is the one burning things for the above mentioned strat
Using Burning shots
If I can maintain stun, Maelle gommages. If I can't maintain stun or I mess up a turn then Gradient has to be held so Monoco can use Break Point, in which case Maelle starts Burn Stacking
Hence 645, I was having her stack burns
Although I gotta say, the return for that many stacks isn't like. Amazing
I think each turn Renoir got he was taking ..... maybe 3 mil burn damage
There's clearly a like damage ceiling with burn stacks. It's disappointing
I'm gonna try with x50
So he'll have ~550mil hp instead of 1.1bil lol
Even at only x50 
Okay so it took me 2 hours to defeat Renoir at x50
And I don't feel like dealing with the Paintress at x50 lol
A Paintress fight that takes 2 hours...
I don't think I'll have the Rage issue with her (if I'm remembering the fight right?) that I did with Renoir
So it might be a really painless, just long, long fight
Verso-Monoco strat comin in hot
What a duo
You can't tell me the devs didn't build them up this way. They knew what they were doing lol
Not gonna lie though
The challenge mode multiplier makes these fights feel like how they're supposed to?
Like they are arguably these "immortal" beings and it really should take hours to take them down, right?
Idk it feels way better than without challenge mode
Welp.
I set her to 20x max hp. I didn't have the wherewithal to do another 2 hour fight
It wasn't even a fair fight
She can one shot me right
Number of parries: 7, dodges: 0, damage taken: 30k
She got 3 attacks off and spent the rest of the fight Stunned
I thought, oh. Phase 2 she'll have a chance to recover and attack me again right
Wrong!
She kept the stunned status effect so she was Stunned for ALL of Phase 2
Even if I set her to 50x or 100x, there's no challenge involved it's just a test of attention span
I AM TOO POWERFUL 
I should have tried soloing her with just Verso lol
STUCK WITH MY ORIGINAL PLAN BUT
DAMN this team is just. Chef's kiss
I can't wait to fight Simon
And test this strat and these builds against him
I have yet to fully polish off some of them but we are easily on our way
Only difference with Simon is Maelle swapped for Lune
I need Maelle with Sciel and I need her to one-shot Simon if at all possible
I have a lot of work to do for Maelle's build
She got sidelined hard this playthrough (for good reason)
New burn record
And I didn't use a single fire attack from Maelle
It's all Verso burning shots and double burn and longer burn and Burning break
Aaaaand Simoso helped too, of course
LOL FUCKING RUDE 
