Maelle is the third character you gain control of in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and plays a prominent role throughout the story as the adopted sister of Gustave. You’ll have to wait until the second main dungeon, Flying Waters, for her to join officially and she offers a unique approach to battles. With her Stances, Maelle can increase the damage she deals while also giving herself a defensive boost. Keep reading to learn how to play Maelle and what the best skills and weapons are for her.

Table of Contents¶

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Maelle’s Playstyle - Battle Stance¶

The first thing you should notice when you go into battle with Maelle is that she has the Stance gauge on the right of the screen, starting her off in Stanceless, which offers no bonuses whatsoever. As you use her specific skills, you can place her into other Stances for one turn, that can then be extended by other skills and weapon traits. As such, Maelle may require a bit more setup, but in the hands of a skilled user, can pump out some truly devastating damage. There are three Stances for Maelle, and they are as follows:

• Offensive Stance - Damage Dealt +50%, Damage Received +50%
• Defensive Stance - Damage Received -50%, gain 1 AP per Parry or Dodge
• Virtuose Stance - Damage Dealt +200%

Specific skills will usually place you in either Offensive or Defensive Stance and using a Base Attack while in one of these two stances will switch her to the other. If at any time you use a skill that is of the same stance, it will place you back into Stanceless. There are also specific weapons that may have you start battle in a given Stance, making it even easier to get to a desired stance.

As you can see though, Virtuose Stance is the real winner here, and should be your goal when controlling Maelle in battle. Not only does she get a massive 200% damage increase, but she’ll lose the damage received penalty from Offensive Stance. Unfortunately, you’ll have to jump through a few hoops to get into this, especially during Act I, the likeliest route being the Swift Stride skill when a target is burning. Once you reach later Acts, weapon traits will make it easier, and her first Gradient Attack, Virtuose Strike, will place her in it directly.

Once you get Maelle in Virtuose Stance, look to accrue the AP needed to use her hardest hitting skills, this will easily hit at the damage cap of 9,999 HP per hit during Act II, and higher once you break the damage limit in Act III. Mezzo Forte works as an excellent skill to prolong your time in this stance until you have enough AP to use those skills. Additionally, during Act III, Maelle gets access to her final three skills that will see her damage increase even further.

Maelle’s Best Skills¶

Maelle has many useful skills available to her; there are none that we consider useless, so it’s hard to go wrong. There are two real ways to build Maelle, you either focus on her Fire skills and Burn to deal increasing damage by exploiting that, or you look to get her into Virtuose Stance as soon as possible and using multi-hit skills. We like to consider focusing on Virtuose skill, this is especially useful during Act 2 where you reach the single hit damage cap of 9,999 meaning multi-hit attacks are more valuable. We’ve picked out a handful of skills we believe are among her best below:

Sword Ballet¶

It will take you a while to get to it, located down the far right of her Skill Tree, but Sword Ballet hits like a truck, especially if you get her into Virtuose Stance first. Build Maelle for Crit Rate too and any one of the five hits that Critical will deal double damage too, this allows her to reach truly massive damage numbers and will easily hit the damage cap of 9,999 per hit during Act II. The extra cherry on top is that you will be placed in Defensive Stance following it, adding a bit of survivability to the attack.

Breaking Rules¶

Breaking Rules’ usefulness will be apparent for the entire adventure and become increasingly important as you reach the later stages. While seeing enemies with shields on them is rather rare in the opening stages of Act I, as you get further into the game, you’ll come across enemies that apply five+ shields often. Breaking Rules, then, at the low cost of 3 AP, will deliver two hits that will wipe out all shields that an enemy may have on them, while returning AP for each shield you destroy. Better yet, if you happen to have Defenseless on that same enemy, Maelle will act again!

Mezzo Forte¶

A support skill that is vital for any Maelle build that involves keeping you in Virtuose Stance as long as possible. This skill only costs 1 AP (meaning you can always use it) and will restore 2-4 AP while also keeping you in the same Stance you’re currently in. For Offensive and Defensive Stance, it’s less appealing, but considering Virtuose Stance usually takes some work to get into, being able to essentially stay in it until you have the necessary AP to pull off an attack such as Sword Ballet is invaluable.

Gustave’s Homage¶

You’ll have to wait quite a while until you get your hands on this skill, but when you do, you’ll learn it automatically without the need for Skill Points. This is an extremely hard-hitting attack and is the skill that has the most hits for Maelle at eight. This means it’s the best skill for Maelle during Act II when you’ve hit that single hit damage cap of 9,999 and multi-hit skills become more useful. It’s an expensive skill to use, costing 8 AP, but it also will place Maelle in Virtuose Stance following it, and if an enemy is Marked, not only will it do increased damage, but it won’t remove the Mark either.

Combustion¶

If you do decide to focus on Maelle’s Fire-based skills on the left side of her Skill Tree, then Combustion is a great skill to aim for, especially if you pair Maelle with someone who can easily generate Burn on an enemy (such as Lune). While only dealing two hits of Medium damage may seem underwhelming, it will gain increased damage from up to 10 stacks, this means that if you generate them easily enough, this attack will be very powerful.

Stendhal¶

We don’t want to go into too much detail here with Maelle’s Act III skills (see note below) for the sake of Spoilers, but we couldn’t pass up Stendhal, arguably one of the strongest skills in the game. As your stats skyrocket in Act III, Stendhal will deal absurd amounts of damage with its one hit, ranging from 500,000 HP to easily over a million, all with very little in the way of optimizing.

All of Maelle’s Skills¶

Maelle’s Best Weapons¶

When it comes to choosing the perfect weapon for Maelle, it truly depends on how you’re building her, as she has many weapons to support each playstyle. Still, when we’re looking at them as a whole, there are three clear winners for Maelle that we think everyone should consider.

The first is Medalum, a weapon that you can get during Act I which has some very effective Traits on them. As early as weapon Rank 4 will have Maelle start battle in Virtuose stance, this is a huge boon. At Level 10, every time you apply Burn with Maelle, it will be doubled, and once you hit Level 20, whenever you’re in Virtuose stance, Burn will deal double damage, as you may expect, this can wrack up to some heavy damage at high stacks. Unfortunately, there is a catch, you can only get this weapon by winning the tournament at Gestral Village in Act I as Maelle or defeating Golgra in a duel.

The next weapon on the list is Barrier Breaker, a unique, story-based weapon you won’t obtain until just before the final dungeon of Act II. If you remove Shields from enemies a lot as Maelle, this is your weapon, as at Level 4, you’ll steal the Shields for yourself when you remove them. At Level 10, you’ll switch over to Virtuose Stance whenever you break a Shield and finally, at Level 20, hitting a Marked enemy will break all Shields, very useful!

Finally, if you’re looking for raw damage output, Maelle’s strongest weapon when upgraded to the max level of 33 is the Tissenum, obtained by defeating an optional boss in the Sirène dungeon near the later stages of Act II. Aside from its superior Power rating, at Level 4, in Defensive Stance, you’ll double any Break damage. At Level 10, Maelle will gain 9 AP whenever she breaks an enemy and finally, at Level 20, breaking an enemy will also deal a high amount of Earth damage, the element of this weapon.

Who is Maelle’s Voice Actress?¶

When it comes to voice talent in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, some of the very best is on show. Maelle’s voice is delivered by Jennifer English, most famously known for her role as Shadowheart in Baldur’s Gate 3. She also provided the voice of Latenna in Elden Ring and Carlotta in Wuthering Waves. Following her role as Maelle, you can find her playing the role of Gwendolyn in the upcoming Tides of Annihilation.