LogFAQs > #964746524

PK_Spam posted...

I wouldnt say Melia is complicated

Just throw Poison/Ice Boost Gems on her, and make sure she lets off her DoT after a bit of a streak in a Chain Attack and her poison will suddenly melt a quarter sized portion of the boss health bar every 3 seconds.

Her Summon Bolt is decent, too. And ice/poison aren't available early on.

keyblader1985 posted...

Maybe I'm just dense or something, because I never understood how to play Melia effectively, even after someone explained it to me. I'll have to try again with my next playthrough.

She summons elementals, and can store up to 3. While stored, they have a passive buff for the party or in an area around Melia (Bolt raises Ether damage, Earth raises defense, etc...).
When you use her talent art (center), she will discharge her summons in reverse order to how they were summoned, for an effect (water heals the party, the rest all do damage to enemies). Say you summoned Bolt, Earth, Ice (in that order). You would discharge (in order) Ice, Earth, Bolt if you did it 3 times in a row.

Generally, it's suggested to use summons that you like the passive buffs for first (Bolt or Earth, mainly), then the ones you want to attack with. Discharge the last 1 or 2, keep the first 1 or 2, summon new ones to attack with, and repeat.
When her talent gauge fills, you enter "Elemental Burst" or whatever and all her summons will do a lot more damage. At this point, sometimes just spamming discharge is worth it for lots of damage quickly (if the summons' cool down is done, you can even immediately summon and discharge more), but it will draw shit loads of aggro to her. When all your summons are off cool down is also a good time to unload all of them since you can just re-summon at that point.

Of course, the main time to unload summons is a chain attack. Melia is the best character in a chain attack, because talent arts (discharge in her case) count as any color. So you can have her discharge, other two use a pink (Break) art, Melia use a discharge, then they switch to red, and the multiplier keeps increasing. For example. Since she can use her talent art up to 3 times in a row and basically have it usable at will while as most others only can use it once before it drains and need to slowly fill it up, she excels at keeping the max damage multiplier going.

Her best summon discharges are Earth (AoE poison damage over time), Ice (AoE ice damage over time), and Bolt (single target instantaneous electric damage), in that order.
Her best summon passive buffs are Bolt (Ether +20% per summon), Earth (defense %15% per summon), and Ice (magic defense +15% per summon)

Melia can pump out crazy damage, the issue is being picky about when to do it so you avoid aggro and quickly dying. Damage over time (DoT) is nice b/c it draws way less aggro than doing the damage in one shot. You should play as Melia (computer is bad w/ her) and have Riki in the party (lots of art color and DoT synergy), and 3rd person either Sharla or Seven. People call this the "Ether party" since it's focused on magic attacks mostly.

@keyblader1985