Is the Braseleur orb ranged attack bugged, or is this intentional?

[The Everlasting Stillness ☯]

I went to Frozen Hearts very early, it seems, because my weapons are about +11/12, was level 39ish and Stalacts have as much AP as a raid boss in an MMO and even regular enemies either 1-shot me or 2-shot me, but I am too stubborn, so I stuck with it and got like... 7 levels from that area alone because every encounter was giving me something like 220k or 250k XP.
Now, here is what I mean in the title - since I fought many Braseleurs, I noticed that if I parry their ranged orb attack, they keep using it over and over again and there doesn't seem to be a limit. Like, I even use this as a strat sometimes - I need about 18 counters to kill one, since I am dealing 9999 damage at max. However, if I dodge the attack or get hit, they stop firing.
I wonder, is this intentional? They're not that difficult to kill anyway, just takes long at my level and with my +12 weapons, but it seems strange that they would have an infinite fire loop. Hmm.

[Crimsomrider]

Unfortunately only the devs can truly answer that, but their inconsistent behavior definitely is very odd. Even the Danseuses in that area are not behaving as one would expect (they cannot spawn their clones properly).

So could most likely be a bug, but nobody here can say for sure.

[The Everlasting Stillness ☯]

Originally posted by Crimsomrider:

Unfortunately only the devs can truly answer that, but their inconsistent behavior definitely is very odd. Even the Danseuses in that area are not behaving as one would expect (they cannot spawn their clones properly).

So could most likely be a bug, but nobody here can say for sure.

They spawn clones for me just fine, though? So did their Teacher (who I fought for nearly 30 minutes because she had something like... 2 million HP and I am capped at 9999 damage), but even she spawned clones. You can see it in my screenshot here.[imgur.com]
Very strange.
Have you noticed this with Braseleurs or do you just prefer dodging instead?

[The Everlasting Stillness ☯]

Ok, this can't be intentional, I unequipped all pictos and lumina and used a lvl 1 weapon and I'm pretty sure I did over 30-something parries in a row before I just quit out. This is the only enemy (s0 far) I have seen to do this. It is exploitable, but very strange.

[Riyshn]

I suspect it's intentional. Frozen Hearts feels like it's mostly designed to be a gimmick area, highlighted by the Danseuse Teacher: Parry everything. Everything is too strong for the point in the game you're teased to go there to unlock most of the merchant's inventory at Monoco's Station, but outleveling you also means everything is faster than you, which combined with every enemy type having easily exploitable attacks means they all kill themselves on your counterattacks.

Danseuses only have 2 attacks, one extremely simple 3hit combo and the Gradiant divekick.
Pelerins only attack can't actually be counterattacked, so you're actually safe to use the safer Dodge. But it's own counterattack when it's in Ice mode can be, allowing you to control the pace of the fight.
Braseleurs probably have the hardest combo to parry reliably, but in exchange the orb attacks are easily exploitable.

[Meewec]

Originally posted by The Everlasting Stillness ☯:

Originally posted by Crimsomrider:

Unfortunately only the devs can truly answer that, but their inconsistent behavior definitely is very odd. Even the Danseuses in that area are not behaving as one would expect (they cannot spawn their clones properly).

So could most likely be a bug, but nobody here can say for sure.

They spawn clones for me just fine, though? So did their Teacher (who I fought for nearly 30 minutes because she had something like... 2 million HP and I am capped at 9999 damage), but even she spawned clones. You can see it in my screenshot here.[imgur.com]
Very strange.
Have you noticed this with Braseleurs or do you just prefer dodging instead?

wait, did you attack the teacher?

[The Everlasting Stillness ☯]

Originally posted by Riyshn:

I suspect it's intentional. Frozen Hearts feels like it's mostly designed to be a gimmick area, highlighted by the Danseuse Teacher: Parry everything. Everything is too strong for the point in the game you're teased to go there to unlock most of the merchant's inventory at Monoco's Station, but outleveling you also means everything is faster than you, which combined with every enemy type having easily exploitable attacks means they all kill themselves on your counterattacks.

Danseuses only have 2 attacks, one extremely simple 3hit combo and the Gradiant divekick.
Pelerins only attack can't actually be counterattacked, so you're actually safe to use the safer Dodge. But it's own counterattack when it's in Ice mode can be, allowing you to control the pace of the fight.
Braseleurs probably have the hardest combo to parry reliably, but in exchange the orb attacks are easily exploitable.

When you put it that way, it makes much more sense, honestly. After all, my 30-minute counter session with the Dance teacher required 270+ parries and gave me a 75% increased counter damage Picto, so I guess this really is the parry skill check area.
Loved the designs and the flourishes of the Danseuses, they look so graceful.

I actually am enjoying the challenge of the area itself -because of their insane health pools and damage, it feels like a little MMO dungeon where I control everyone, and my Maelle is a devastating counter machine, but I think coming here so early is gonna make me too overleveled to enjoy the story path content, which is a shame.
I'll probably need to change my picto/lumina build and use weaker weapons. One thing I don't like is how the game sometimes randomly upgrades some weapon that I was keeping unupgraded for this exact purpose, but what can you do.

It never occured to me to bother dodging the Pelerin, since the 2-hit combo is so easy to parry with Parade Curative to restore some HP if I screwed up and it feels pretty cool to bonk his head for his third hit, lol. They can go eat dirt, though, that aoe 14-22k heal against my 9999 damage cap prolonged so many fights needlessly. And they recover from Fracture so fast too.
Agree about Braseleur's melee combo, you have to parry so insanely late that it always feels like you are gonna miss it. I swear, it feels like Sciel has the tiniest bit of a better parry window than the others (she doesn't, I know), so I just learned the parries with her and now I can reliably do it. Didn't really have a choice when she has 2300 HP and the braseleur takes off 2k in 1 non-crit swing, haha.
The stalacts are the one enemy that I simply cannot reliably parry the normal melee combo of. The first hit always throws me off. The follow ups are much easier, so I end up dodging hit 1 or hits 1 and 2 and then parry the rest for AP.

[The Everlasting Stillness ☯]

Originally posted by Meewec:

Originally posted by The Everlasting Stillness ☯:

They spawn clones for me just fine, though? So did their Teacher (who I fought for nearly 30 minutes because she had something like... 2 million HP and I am capped at 9999 damage), but even she spawned clones. You can see it in my screenshot here.[imgur.com]
Very strange.
Have you noticed this with Braseleurs or do you just prefer dodging instead?

wait, did you attack the teacher?

No, I talked to her with Lune, she asked me to dance with her, then I did. Then I talked to her later, she asked for one final dance and I said "but I don't want to kill you..", to which she replied "Shame." I assumed I had to "dance" with her to finish the quest, so I did. It was a dialogue option, I didn't directly attack her.
Usually the nevrons one can spare, you need to specifically antagonize or attack, but here, she was the one who wanted to "dance".
The only one who didn't follow this pattern is one I found in Amber Leaves, who I had to pay liek 100k chroma to, but even him, I could choose to attack or not..
If it screws up some quest though, I can still revert to a previous save, because I don't NEED her picto right now, I am not gonna be dealing above 9999 damage anyway.

[Riyshn]

Originally posted by The Everlasting Stillness ☯:

It never occured to me to bother dodging the Pelerin, since the 2-hit combo is so easy to parry and it feels pretty cool to bonk his head for his third hit, lol. They can go eat dirt, though, that aoe 14-22k heal against my 9999 damage cap prolonged so many fights needlessly. And they recover from Fracture so fast too.

If you can reliably parry their first two hits for the AP then go for it, but the last hit of their combo being a jump-dodge means you always get the bonk whether you parried or not, and can never get a regular counter attack.

The AoE heal is another part of controling the pace of the fight with the Pelerin. If there's multiple in the fight, hit all but 1 with a fire attack (or AoE fire, then single target Ice on one, whatever works) to get them in different stances, then focus them down one at a time by baiting counter attacks from a single Ice one at a time. Their heal only hits targets the same element they currently are.

[The Everlasting Stillness ☯]

Originally posted by Riyshn:

Originally posted by The Everlasting Stillness ☯:

It never occured to me to bother dodging the Pelerin, since the 2-hit combo is so easy to parry and it feels pretty cool to bonk his head for his third hit, lol. They can go eat dirt, though, that aoe 14-22k heal against my 9999 damage cap prolonged so many fights needlessly. And they recover from Fracture so fast too.

If you can reliably parry their first two hits for the AP then go for it, but the last hit of their combo being a jump-dodge means you always get the bonk whether you parried or not, and can never get a regular counter attack.

The AoE heal is another part of controling the pace of the fight with the Pelerin. If there's multiple in the fight, hit all but 1 with a fire attack (or AoE fire, then single target Ice on one, whatever works) to get them in different stances, then focus them down one at a time by baiting counter attacks from a single Ice one at a time. Their heal only hits targets the same element they currently are.

To be fair, parrying for the AP was very crucial in my case because of my damage cap and their HP pools, so lucky coincidence.
Oooh, damn, thanks for that last part! Man, if I was a bit less stubborn, I could have avoided quite a bit of headache. I just thought I was getting bad RNG, lol. I generally do only AoEs with Lune, so I'll just use Thermic Transfer to control the flow.
I realized right away you can manipulate their stance change and bombard them with the opposite element, but I did NOT notice that their heal heals only the same element. What an awesome detail. I will make a note of that!