If there’s one debuff in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that had incredible potential to be one of the best in the game, it’s the Inverted status. Unfortunately, Inverted cannot be applied to enemies, and instead can only affect characters in your party. While the debuff can be utilized in a few ways with unique Pictos and/or Lumina effects, it can’t actually be applied to enemies in any way. Inverted is a rather straightforward status effect that can be incredibly annoying in the early stages of the game, and it works by simply preventing players from being healed.

If a player does try to heal while the Inverted debuff is active, they take damage instead, which can have devastating consequences if you aren’t paying attention or don’t understand what the debuff does. There are a few unique and fun ways of taking advantage of the Inverted status, but ideally, players would be able to apply this effect on powerful enemies that are able to heal themselves, causing them to self-inflict damage instead. Unfortunately, there’s no way of doing this to powerful enemies or bosses in Clair Obscur, and it’s one of the few debuffs that ultimately falls short.

Clair Obscur’s Inverted Effect Can’t Be Applied To Enemies, Which Is A Shame

Inverted Would Be The Perfect Debuff Against Bosses Like Clea

The Inverted status effect is slightly annoying, but it can be taken advantage of in various ways. In particular, the Inverted Affinity Pictos and/or Lumina effect is a great and simple way to acquire an easy 50% damage bonus, while you can also take advantage of this self-applied status with Beneficial Contamination. Inverted Affinity will apply Inverted to a character automatically for three turns, but also give them a 50% damage increase. Beneficial Contamination, on the other hand, gives you 2 AP when applying a status effect, which works alongside Inverted Affinity.

Inverted is technically a status effect in Clair Obscur, but it functions as a sort of debuff on players when applied.

I say it’s annoying because various enemies are able to apply Inverted to your party, which can easily start to eat up turns to remove the effect. This isn’t an issue if you’re very skilled and can avoid getting hit by powerful enemies such as the various Chromatic Nevrons, but in the early stages of the game and for beginners, this effect is not only devastating, but very frustrating as well. More significantly, there’s no way to apply this effect on enemies, which would be a complete game-changer for bosses like Clea or Simon.

An Inverted Mod Could Make It The Best Status Effect In Clair Obscur

Unless They Add New Pictos, Inverted Won’t Be An Offensive Option

I think the chances of Inverted being adjusted in any way to be able to be applied to enemies is more or less out of the question unless we miraculously get some additional Pictos added into the game. For that reason, I think this would be a great opportunity for the Clair Obscur modding community to step in and create a viable Inverted mod that allows players to actually apply this status effect debuff to enemies.

An Inverted mod would add an interesting new layer of strategy and put it more in line with some of the other debuffs and/or status effects in the game that also apply to enemies. Outside of mods, Inverted will remain as it is, and will require players to either avoid getting the status effect applied to them or figure out how to mitigate the debuff with the various status effect removal options in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.