The build is basically burn burn burn burn - burning canvas - burn burn burn burn

It does not use Gommage as her primary attack and

Two options. I was playing around with Lithium over Medalum and I am torn

LOL auto correct please

*Lithum

Although lithium is fucking hilarious. I'll let it slide

I really like Lithum giving Virtuose stance for all counterattacks. It's essentially a perpetual Virtuouse stance for me

* I'm fighting Painted Love at the moment and realizing that the Curator has less defenses to Light damage than the Paintress HMMMN.

Anyway. For this build, however, Medalum still seems to be the crowned best weapon because of the double burn and double burn damage

With Medalum I can get to 500 burn stacks rather easily and for reference that's about 10mil damage for burning canvas

Meaning 20 mil per turn. Compared to Gommage that's like 12-17mil per turn with one of the turns being set aside for setting up Virtuose stance

Burning Canvas doesn't seem to care much for stance?? Needs more experimenting

But between Maelle's burn build I have and Verso's burn/aim build they are a scary duo that I'm enjoying to mess around with

The pros of the burning canvas build is that I'm hitting these numbers without sacrificing Maelle's survivability

Meaning while on Expert this is useless. On Story or (is it just called normal?) - the other two modes that this could be extremely viable

On Expert survivability isn't a thing. Everything can 1 shot and the game basically encourages those stakes

I'm going to tweak the build a little more, drop her survivability back down to the Gommage build and compare which is more effective

Here is me trying to complain and fight against the meta

It just bores me. I like Verso's meta build (or at least the variation I have) but Gommage is just...... boring lol

Groans, I don't like Medalummmmmm

agreed, I only resorted to the Gommage setup for Simon

with all those burn stacks, is it ever worth it to use that move she has that consumes burn to deal damage all at once?

Combustion! No, burning canvas is superior in damage and it doesn't diminish your stacks at all. But Combustion is good in early first playthroughs since it's cheap on ap

a lot of this burn build is thanks to Longer Burn and Double Burn. So another reason just using Combustion works for baby playthroughs

You need the 100s of stacks for burning canvas to be better damage

... lol I sound like I'm slowly walking back on my original declaration. I'll just have to compare.

Combustion might be fine if you just Do Not have time to build stacks, and Combustion only needs 10 to be at max damage.

Another difference is Combustion is Physical damage, Burning Canvas is Void. So the element difference could benefit in different fights either way

Okay I did a whole experiment

Combustion does about 2-3mil per turn (about ~1mil per hit of 2 hits)

Burning Canvas with a meager 150 burn stacks does about 1-2 mil per hit with 5 hits

So it deals about 5-10mil depending on what stance she's in, versus the 2-3mil depending on stance

With Verso's burning shots build and Maelle using Medalum, it's VERY easy to upkeep ~200 burn stacks. I had about 150 from 1 turn (fighting the sky snake who EATS AP lol)

You can get WAY more in turn 1 but because AP got eaten I was at a loss for the fight

As far as 1st turn burst goes

The upside to Combustion is you'll ALWAYS have a spare 10 burn stacks. It costs 4ap

Burning Canvas only costs 1 more ap at 5ap but requires some burn stack maint (barely, I wasn't even trying for the 150 stacks I had)

The only cause for Combustion > Burning Canvas might just be elements?

Losing burn stacks also means losing out on some of your DoTs which, if you already have Medalum equipped and are consistently chilling in Virtuose, you are losing a LOT of damage

Anyway, that was fun. Hope it helps theSSjuli lol

oh man, what a good breakdown, ty! I hadn't quite gotten to the point where I could stack that many burns that quickly, or else I just didn't set the build up quite right, but the fact that Combustion hits max damage at 10 does mean you can kinda rapid fire it...interesting!

Yeah, Combustion will always be available, generally speaking

With my current build, I can get Gradient 3 every 2 turns, so it doesn't make sense to use Combustion when Maelle would have Gommage every single turn she takes.

When I up her speed through the roof and she laps the others in turns, Burning Canvas is still the better choice

I could probably get it down to Gradient every other turn but that sounds brain dead and repetitive lol

that's what I tried to do against Simon, but I didn't want to waste Gommage turns if she wasn't in Virtuose and I didn't have at least one of powerful on her or defenseless on him, and I was trying for Sciel's double damage buff too...getting all that set up at once was tough tho

oh and having him stunned, but then I had to choose between using Gradient 3 on gommage or Monoco's instabreak

So for Simon my tactic is usually

Verso-Lune-Monoco
Lune slows
Monoco stuns
Verso uses End Breaker to keep him stunned as long as possible

Then for Phase 3
Maelle-Sciel

Sciel gets the First Strike pictos to guarantee her turn goes before Maelle's

Maelle gets all of the start of combat buff pictos, I forget the names because I only use them for Simon lol but there are pictos that give buffs for the first 3 rounds of combat

So she comes in swinging

She'll have Gradient 3 already saved up from Phase 2
Simon should still have all his debuffs from Phase 2 (theoretically)

If he doesn't have his debuffs then one of Sciel's turns get used for debuffs. There are pictos to fully debuff from base attack

Then Gommage and pray LOL

I had all of those base attack debuff things on Lune, but generally speaking this sounds roughly similar to what I did

LMAO gommage and pray...yes

Yeeeeeeaaaaaaah

Sciel having the pictos to debuff with base attack helps a LOT. Especially for Greater Slow

You have to slow him down or you're very very dead

I was using Cheater but I actually think it was getting in my way

YEAH.....

REALLY? I can't live without Cheater

All my builds rely on Cheater

even WITH greater slow and greater rush with that one weapon Sciel has, sometimes he'd get two turns in a row anyway and gommage people -_-

Yes. It is a risk

He will sometimes get two in a row even with everything in speed

for the most part Cheater was good, but it kept tripping me up when I tried to do Sciel's double damage buff because I'd end up not having one of the setups I needed so the first turn had to be used doing that and the buff got wasted

Ahh

So if you get into a rhythm of like Damage -> Virtuose swap then it should work

If Maelle always starts her turn in Virtuose it works out

yeah, I think when I eventually did beat him it was because I changed Maelle's weapon to something that was easier for me to get her in Virtuose on the first turn with

It just means everyone else has to do the leg work of buff/debuff. Maelle is just a bullet at that point lol

tho I don't remember which one

Medalum!

Purple sword, I assume

yeah that sounds right!

It starts her in Virtuose on her first turn

As much as I dislike Medalum meta, I can't deny it's use for Simon

I was also using her to build up Gradient quickly tho with that one move she has that gives you like 35% all at once

Lithum only works if you 1. aren't doing burn builds, 2. can actually parry everything thrown at you

so I just kept flubbing the order of things LOL

Phantom

Phantom gives the 35%

yeah! that oen

I tried to parry...I could do it on some of his moves, even in phase 2, but nowhere near in phase 3 lmao

Phase 3 is agony

it's so terrifying

I just take my hands off the keyboard. I know Survivor and Second Chance will kick in lol

that was definitely the ultimate in gommage and pray XD

A friend of mine can parry all of phase 3 attacks for Simon

holy shit

But it took him a month of bashing his head against Simon to do that

oh god

Yeah. Don't. Do that. HAHAHA

it took me I think the better part of a week

just to beat it

It took me 2 weeks my first go at him

But I was like ....... level 80

So I had to leave and come back at 99. Kinda embarrassing lol

I was hovering around level 90 with everyone, I think

Yeah, I can't imagine being lower than 90 for his fight

BUT GOD THAT FUCKING SWORD IS SO WORTH IT

I ended up not being able to get to level 99 on the first playthrough because there was nothing left that would give me enough XP

I LOVE THAT SWORD

Simosoooooo

So technically, Renoir's Draft mobs will consistently give good exp and ~1-2 lumina per combat

I was using it when I went back to beat the game again so I could start my NG+ not realizing that it was going to start Gustave with the same stuff Verso had equipped ksdfjsdfg

No, sorry 2-3 lumina

LOL YA It's kinda jarring when you start NG+ and Gustave has all of Verso's gear

so in that first duel with Maelle he pulls out Simoso and I was like WAIT NO hskdhfjg

LMAOklajdslja

Maelle gets pummeled

and then phantom sword pummeled

I'M SORRY MAELLE

(Deserved, to be honest)

hahaha

She's such a brat

/affectionate

I love her

Off topic but we need more interactions at TLV LMAO

agreed!

two fighty little punks that need to get to know each other better

What are you doing for the flood? Are you doing a post?

she'll remind him of Denzel ;_;

NO IDEA who that is, but I'm here for it

he's the orphan kid with geostigma that Cloud takes in, in Advent Children

also a fighty little punk

I am completely canon blind but yes, that sounds Maelle adjacent

I should be doing a flood post! I'm going to have one Very Bad Cloud and one Actually Well-Adjusted Cloud XD

I've got two flood flavors, orphan (like Gustave didn't adopt her) and Maelle ending

I can work with either of those Clouds

omg...Maelle ending is tempting but I actually think it might be fun to do regular Cloud with orphan Maelle, give him the full "can I be a good guardian figure to this orphan" experience

awww that's really sweet

Okay we can do that. Were you gonna do vanilla Cloud in your post too?

I wasn't planning to, so I can either tag into yours or just put a closed starter up for you

Sure! I will likely do a post ... tomorrow I think

(today?)

In x amount of hours lol

(it's not tomorrow until you go to sleep, that's my motto XD)

YES AGREED

this might actually be really good for him ;_; he needs to meet Gustave too

Ohh Gustave had a little intro post, did you see that? I think it was last week?

oh I might have missed it!

Lemme link you on discord, a moment

Sent c: