Maelle Skills Guide
Last Updated:April 24, 2025|Changelog
Maelle is the third party member, and joins Gustave and Lune when they reach The Manor while travelling through Flying Waters. She is the youngest of the group and has no known immediate family, which has lead to her feeling like somewhat of an outcast that has difficulty trusting others. In battle, Maelle wields a sword and has a focus on melee Physical and Fire damage, but also has some great support options. This guide details each of Maelle's skills, with notes on how to use them, then continues on to suggested synergies and team compositions.
Maelle's unique mechanic involves her Battle Stance, which she can change at will by using various skills. There are 3 main Stances:
- Defensive Stance: less damage received, gain 1 AP on parry/dodge.
- Offensive Stance: more damage received, but also deal more damage.
- Virtuose Stance: deal even more damage, with no relevant downside.
When not assuming any Stance, Maelle is considered "Stanceless" - her neutral combat state. When switching between any Stance, aside from the inherent bonuses gained, Maelle also gains 1 AP any time she swaps.
Skill Breakdown
Offensive Stance
| Skill | Notes |
|---|---|
| Offensive Switch | This is one of the skills that Maelle starts with when she joins, and despite it being a relatively weak attack, it is useful for much of the game due to its ability to inflict 3-turn Defenseless, a powerful debuff that makes enemies take 25% more damage from all sources. |
| Degagement | An early game Fire attack that also inflicts Fire weakness on its target. |
| Rain of Fire | Another Fire-themed skill that does fairly decent damage, with the added benefit of being able to stack Burn, which is always great to have as a source of residual damage. |
| Combustion | Instead of applying Burn, this skill consumes it to deal additional damage. This is one of the less appealing Fire skills, since Burn is quite good on its own and also provides some of the best offensive support in the game thanks to Pictos like Critical Burn and Burn Affinity. |
| Guard Down | A cheap utility skill that applies Defenseless to all enemies for 3 turns. It definitely has some niche uses, but for most multi-enemy encounters, the battle is unlikely to last 3 turns to get the full value from this. For single target, it's just better to use Offensive Switch. |
| Guard Up | Gives party-wide Shell, which is a pretty good defensive buff that has a lot of useful support Pictos associated with it. Some of these include Greater Shell, Longer Shell, and Powerful On Shell. |
| Breaking Rules | This skill is extremely situational, but also extremely strong under the right circumstances. There are several encounters throughout the game where enemies are constantly stacking Shields, and this skill shuts that strategy down completely. It's highly recommended to slot this skill when up against any encounter that involves Shields. |
| Fencer's Flurry | A great first-turn AoE skill that applies Defenseless. When using this skill, ideally Maelle should always act first (by boosting her Speed via Pictos), so that the party members that attack after her benefit from this skill's debuff. |
| Burning Canvas | Late game skill that heavily incentivizes a Burn-focused party setup to really shine - the damage output from this skill reaches insane levels with enough dedication. |
Defensive Stance
| Skill | Notes |
|---|---|
| Spark | Essentially the counterpart to Rain of Fire. When playing a Burn-focused setup, swapping between these two skills is a good, cheap way to quickly stack Burn. |
| Revenge | A high damage skill that incentivizes taking damage, which unfortunately limits its usage. |
| Pyrolyse | The ultimate Burn-stacking attack that also deals very solid damage on its own. Coming off an Offensive Stance attack, it applies a staggering 21 baseline stacks of Burn. Its only real downside is its cost, which means it competes with other great (and expensive) skills in Maelle's arsenal. |
| Payback | A situational attack that rewards parries in the form of reduced AP cost. This one's not too great - it's usually just better to spend the cost of this skill on something else; Maelle has plenty of great options. |
| Percée | Low damage, but gets an additional boost if the target is Marked. Again, not great, and it's usually better to fire off a naturally high damage skill while still benefitting from the inherent damage increase provided by Mark. |
| Égide | An interesting skill, but doesn't always work too well in practice due to the random nature of enemy attacks. There's also no real reason to protect allies most of the time, since generally most party members have similar defensive capabilities. The exception to this would be if you were to stack Maelle with defensive Pictos, essentially making her a "tank" character. |
| Momentum Strike | Pretty much the exact same thing as Percée, just with more damage. |
| Sword Ballet | Incredible skill that heavily favors a Luck/Critical-based Maelle setup. The base hits already do a ton of damage, so a Critical means you are most likely reaching damaging cap at a very early stage of the game. This should be your go-to nuke for bosses and other challenging enemies. |
| Phantom Strike | Late game AoE nuke for regular encounters. Stack Energising Start and Energising Turn to make quick work of enemy groups. |
Virtuose Stance
| Skill | Notes |
|---|---|
| Last Chance | Potentially risky, but a great way to setup a high-powered nuke (such as Sword Ballet) in Virtuose Stance. With support, a loop of Last Chance and Sword Ballet is completely viable as a playstyle. |
| Swift Stride | Low damage with a conditional Stance switch. Not a great option, but if you have constant Burn support it's all right for forcing Virtuose Stance. |
| Spoiler Skill | One of the better high-cost skills that also has pretty nice synergy with the Mark effect, since it gets to benefit from the damage increase without actually removing it. Using this skill typically comes down to preference, since it's fairly competitive with Sword Ballet. |
Stanceless
| Skill | Notes |
|---|---|
| Mezzo Forte | An AP generator that keeps you in your current Stance. Overall, not very useful or appealing in most cases. |
| Fleuret Fury | This is a pretty good skill just because it locks you in Virtuose Stance, so long as you can keep up its cost. The damage is respectable, and it is a multi-hit skill that has the ability to Break. Not the worst or best, but pretty solid overall. |
| Stendhal | Kind of a weird skill; good damage (though there are better options for basically the same cost) that also inflicts self-debuffs. Not a particularly great choice. |
Gradient Skills
| Skill | Notes |
|---|---|
| Virtuose Strike | As a low cost Gradient Skill, this one's pretty solid. Good damage with multiple hits, so combining it with a nuke like Sword Ballet can produce a pretty destructive single turn. |
| Phoenix Flame | This is a skill that comes in clutch in the face of an impending party wipe. Use it when the situation is dire to turn the tide of battle. |
| Spoiler Gradient Attack | One hit, and has a culling effect on weak enemies. Despite only striking once, the damage dealt by this skill is noticeably higher than other skills with the "extreme" damage tag. |
Build Synergies
Maelle is a pretty awesome all-rounder that has ways to both benefit her party and benefit from her party.
- She has multiple ways to inflict the Defenseless debuff, which is just great for multiplying damage taken from all sources. Fencer's Flurry is typically the best source for normal encounters, while Offensive Switch is better suited for single target.
- Maelle is quite good at offering Burn support and also reaping the benefits provided by it. This makes her a great choice to pair with Lune, since between the two of them, they can inflict an obscene amount of residual damage. Burn has some great supporting Pictos, including Critical Burn, Burn Affinity and Healing Fire, making it a great strategy to take advantage of. Rain of Fire, Pyrolyse and Burning Canvas are all great skills to lean into this playstyle. Furthermore, there are certain weapons that encourage this, such as Medalum and Facesum.
- On the support side, Maelle has access to Guard Up for party-wide Shell. This can be combined with Longer Shell and Greater Shell for a pretty substantial defensive boost. She also gets a damage boost at the same time by equipping Powerful On Shell and supporting it with Longer Powerful and Greater Powerful.
- Maelle fills an important role in some battles with access to the Breaking Rules skill - this is invaluable in certain fights against enemies that constantly generate shields.
Summary
- Maelle is a versatile fighter that uses Stance change to fill either a defensive or offensive role in any given situation.
- Her skills tend to focus on Physical and Fire damage, and occasionally Void damage.
- Possesses great multi-target and single target nukes, such as Phantom Strike and Sword Ballet.
- She can support her team with the Defenseless debuff, the Shell defensive buff, and Burn damage and its related synergies.
- In general, Maelle is a great fit for any team composition.
Written by: snail