Melia/Gameplay (XC1)

Melia is the fifth party member in Xenoblade Chronicles (or sixth, depending on whether her temporary status counts). She is a mix of an ether attacker and a stat support; her main arts summon elementals that buff nearby allies, which can then be discharged at enemies to deal high damage. Her playstyle is very unorthodox: she uses her talent art to build her talent gauge, which when full, provides temporary doubled damage and access to extra-powerful debuffing arts. Her main issues are that outside ether she has the worst stats in the party across the board, and her complex playstyle means that the AI is notoriously poor at managing her.

Elemental Burst aura
Melia's talent gauge represents her progress towards building her Elemental Burst aura, an aura that activates automatically when she reaches 100%. Melia gains 10% talent gauge for each elemental discharged, with an extra 5% (for a total of 15%) if a different elemental was discharged in the last 5 seconds.

While the burst aura is active, discharged elementals deal double damage, and her burst arts (Burst End and Mind Blast) are available to use. However, each discharge carries a chance of ending the aura and resetting her talent gauge back to zero. This chance depends on her current tension. If Melia never discharges anything, the burst aura will be maintained indefinitely. This will greatly hamper her damage output but allow unrestricted use (cooldown permitting) of her burst arts.

Outside of battle, Melia's talent gauge is capped at 90%, so she cannot begin battle with her burst aura already active.