Which weapon surprised you the most? Let us know below! 👇

23:34 actually the 30% increased damage DOES stack. For 💩s and giggles, I put Verso against Duollistes and had him die over and over again. The burn stacks from Burning Death eventually resulted in them taking 20 million damage and Light Holder went from like 1 million damage to 9 million.

I know it's a super niche situation and most likely will never be someone's best option, but as I've been doing all-hit (no parry/dodge, no break, no nuke, etc.) runs, Sucreso has come in handy for super hard-hitting bosses. The trick is that Verso doesn't lose rank when taking shared damage through someone else's Damage Share Picto, so Maelle can use Damage Share while in Egide for much longer (Sucreso keeps Verso alive a lot longer in this situation). Add in Monoco with Esquiaro to split that damage even more, and you end up with some insane survivability for almost all bosses. AoE hits kinda bypass this specific synergy, but Maelle can uses Phoenix Flame at the start of every turn to get Verso and Monoco back up (assuming they also have Confident and thus do not have SOS Healing Tint). Without Confident and with SOS Healing Tint (on those two), you can actually tank Divergent Star first phase at NG+5 indefinitely, at least until you run out of tints (but you get 48 at NG+5). My own run in this regard used Sciel with Duollison and Delaying Slash to clear phase 2 without letting him get a turn lol. This is also all with Yeverum on Maelle and Shielding + Protecting Death on the other two.

To my understanding, cleim does NOT double the extra hits from lightning dance, so it is effectively only a 3x multiplier from the weapon, whilst esquim is a 4.8x multiplier (including the 20%) AND allows for the base attack pictos to be applied. So for single target only enemies who do not resist, esquim in my opinion is better (4.8 / 3 = 1.6 whilst 3 / 2 = 1.5 per turn), especially since big damage turns can synergise better with sciel double damage and gradient overcharge

I like Licorum solely because of its synergy with Gustave's Homage. With the right setup and this weapon's passives, it can easily outdamage Stendahl.

Also worth noting that Duollison gives one Sun Charge with your first free aim shot of a turn and one moon card on your first base attack of a turn (assuming combo attack Luminas). Allowing for either an immediate Twilight switch or double Sun Card generation, which is great for support Sciel.

Esquim Maelle can solo single turn a lot of enemies between guard down, last chance, and burning canvas using Cheater and shortcut pictos. Even worse if you turn monoco into a gradient and burn machine with baguettaro

Sucreso would be cool if the lvl 10 bonus offered 25% dmg reduction per rank, and maybe the lvl 20 added some  AP regeneration upon upranking. This way reaching S rank with enough AP to do more expensive skills would be possible, and you would be rewarded by taking 0 damage in S rank to maintain the level 20 bonus.

11:15
Sidaro also allows you to do that. However the spin is random with each shot, while Cannaro is much more controlled

Also, regaining AP with free aim isn't really RNG, at least with Esquium. Last Chance/Swift Stride will apply Mark, meaning you can follow up with a Free Aim shot and automatically get at least 2 AP back with Rewarding Mark

Adding more drafts to the game would be a great way to add dlc without canonising any of the endings. I would love to see maelles drafts or maybe duet paintings containing monsters inspired by both painters styles

Thank you for doing this, John!!! 💜

Does Duolisson actually stop end slice damage scaling? It’s worded: “any fortell consumed is not removed” which implies the fortell is still consumed just not actually removed from the enemy. So it should still count for end slice I would think.

Edit: also for those that don’t know since it’s not listed on the weapon but you would find out pretty quick when using it - the first free aim shot also generates a sun charge and the first base attack generates a moon charge. Which means she can also enter twilight in one turn.

Esquiso turns Verso into a gradient builder and insurance policy for the team.  It is the ultimate strategic weapon.  I think that is a fair trade off for DPS.  It allows other characters to fill the DPS role.  It is the ultimate support role, pure and simple.  Machine gun build is a must for using this weapon to quickly build back up to auriole after death, and it should be coupled with cheater and revival paradox to maximize it's usefulness.  The benefit of using this instead of Angle Eyes is that you don't have to consume the gradient attacks to be infinitely unkillable.  That frees up gradient attacks for say Monoco's gradient Break attack.  Definitely tier rank S.  If Verso is not immediately killed following reaching rank for Auriole, then he can use End Bringer to follow up on Monoco's attacks to extend stun lock.  Sooo good.  Used properly, it makes for immortality AND maximizes gradient attacks for others who can use them more effectively for damage or breaking/stun locking.

Great video, thank you! Do you also plan to do ranks of base game weapons?

I use Esquiso + breaking death to survive Simon (before getting Simonso) by dying, reviving and immediately breaking to reapply the Aureole. I take the first two Simon phases this way even though I'm terrible at parrying in the second phase.

Regarding duolison. There is also the new picto consuming attack that is a separate multiplier. Every burn stack up to 100 increases base attack by 10%. While sadly it requires 100 per base attack so that's 400 with all 3 combo attack pictos it will far out damage Twilight dance if you can

Does Esqium apply mark with skills that cost 4AP? The text says less than 4.

Licorum imo is extremely ridiculous, with Feint and the ability to preserve the mark on each hit, you can do setups to get 100 burns and (de)buff chains, then on Maelle's turn, use Burning Canvas for a ridiculous 6 (Feint) x 1.5 (Mark) x 1.25 (Powerful) x 1.25 (Powerless) x 40.4 (Base) = 568x base attack damage before all buffs

The best thing about it is that if you are used to doing Stendhal setups, this one doesn't require any modifications at all, making running this build extremely natural

Thanks for the content (both to you and the E33 team)! I have some thoughts to share on a couple of them:

Cleim/Esqim - Similar weapons; both insanely powerful, both unfortunately sharing the trait of encouraging the "elemental trick spam" playstyle that I don't find to be particularly fun.

Duollison - Crazy weapon; being able to apply foretell without consuming your turn is gamebreaking on its own, not even counting the other effects this weapon has. The base attack boost is even more significant when you consider that base attack has unique pictos that give it substantial increases compared to what skills can get (Augmented Attack - 50%, Versatile - 50%, Consuming Attack - 1000%). The weapon also has two hidden passives - the first free aim shot of your turn generates a sun charge, and using a base attack generates a moon charge. This essentially forces an instant twilight if you want to interact with the foretell application, but that's more or less what you'd want to do here, anyways. If you want to build up for a mega-twilight or a hefty End Slice, you'd probably be running Charnon or something similar.

Baguettaro - Hilarious weapon; I did some science with the burn doubling passive to see how many I could get, and if you go past 2^16 burns the stack number disappears. It doesn't immediately crash your game, but if you ever let a stack that big tick your game's probably going to freeze for a while (presumably while your computer calculates the burn damage falloff in sets of 10). From a more practical perspective, the doubling passive is pretty excellent for maintaining enough burns for some of the new builds (the duollison nuke build consumes 400 burn for the base attack, for example).

Dark stains do work like light stains as elemental genesis cannot be used with 4 dark stains