Reworking Chronomancy

[edge2054]

I'm going to start working on Paradox Mages and Temporal Wardens after 1.2 is released.

A few things I would like to address.

Paradox Talent Tax
I'd like to rework Static History and Spacetime Tuning. Possibly removing Static History and merging it into Spacetime Tuning in some way. Basically I don't want the player to have to dump five talent points into Static History just to play.

Make Willpower Mean More
I'd like to change paradox spell costs so they no longer scale up with current paradox. The idea here is to make Willpower worth more as it would allow players to run with higher paradox pools to increase damage without having to worry about paradox costs so much.

Make Melee TW Viable (Again)
Here I'd like to unnerf Weapon Folding. Due to how fast bows attack the gap here wasn't as big as I figured to begin with. Doctornull also made a convincing argument in this thread for changing all willpower based talents over to magic and spellpower. I think that's a good idea and with the willpower changes above will keep willpower still valuable for TWs without it being a primary stat.

Additionally the sustain costs need to be looked at and overall TW damage should be addressed. As it is they feel like a low damage escape artist and while that's fine thematically it's boring to play.

Fix Chronomancy Tree
This will probably become a Fate Spinning tree. Spin Fate will be reworked and become the first talent. Later talents will work off Spin.

Clean up other talent trees
Here's where I could really use some help. Which trees suck? Which trees are good? Which talents don't fit the current trees? What is it that Paradox Mages are really lacking right now? How about Temporal Wardens?

Maybe introduce some new trees
Doctornull said he had a couple ideas for new trees. I have some as well. I think TWs could use a Temporal Archery and a Temporal Melee tree of some kind. I don't have any specific ideas here yet and everything here is in order of priority. In other words, I might not get this far.

So that's it. Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Salo]

Hi, I quite like Paradox Mages and consider them an extremely strong class. I was able to win on nightmare quite easily with one. http://te4.org/characters/107678/tome/d ... 1695b8d326

It's great that you want to improve Paradox mages/temporal wardens. Thank you for that. Some comments:
- Why do you think it's necessary for a paradox mage to put 5 points into static history? I'm pretty sure I only maxed it because I had too many class points at the end of the game and I know other nightmare paradox mages players never did (http://te4.org/characters/5574/tome/db6 ... 09ba11d681).
- With regards to your proposition to not scale spell paradox cost with paradox: why do you consider this buff necessary and do you want to nerf PM's in other ways to compensate? Getting buffs to your favorite class is always fun, but I have no idea why PM would need one at all.
- Making melee TW viable would be awesome!
- Making the Chronomacy tree more useful and interesting would be great as well.

For other tree's:
- Perhaps make going full gravity a bit more viable, as it is now only gravity well is great and the 3 other spells are crap.
- Perhaps add a talent that allows you more easily to cancel spells that split the timeline. Very often when using precognition/see the threads you want to stop it before the time on it is over so you often end up right clicking the effect to cancel it earlier, a talent that does this for you would be neat.
- See the threads would be much more useful if it costs less stamina.
- Fade from time would be more useful if it was instanteneous.
- Time skip can apparantly remove buffs/enchantments from enemies, which shouldn't be the case (might be bug fixed by now).
- Whatever you do, I think you should stay true to the core idea of the concept of the class, which is a very mobile mage that has huge crowd control and uses it to wittle enemies down over long fights thanks to their infinite resource. So I'd advise against adding talents or changing talents that make PM's capable of dealing the kind of damage you'd expect only of corruptors, arch-mages, etc.

I actually think PM's are a very well designed class since they're fun to play with many ways to build and prioritize spells and a huge toolkit. TW on the other aren't well designed because they're so incredible boring to play. Can't say too much about specific TW spells.

[Doctornull]

So here's my thinking on PM:

1/ They're pretty great already. They've got good control, good mobility, some very good recovery.

2/ They're not totally great. There aren't many interesting builds. You have two high-level trees, and you will unlock both of them unless you get Celestial / Light from an escort and you're not a Cornac.

3/ Not all trees are equally viable. It's less good to focus on Matter and Gravity than to focus on Time Travel and Age Manipulation.


What my Nulltweaks changes do is to address some of that. Next I'm going to add at least two new high-level trees, and here's the direction I want the PM to go in:

Two Builds. One pure Magic (low Willpower, so you have plenty of points to max out Con + Cun); one max Magic + Willpower (so lower Con or Cun).

What I did was to split the high-level trees into Magic (Threading) and Willpower (Paradox). The two new trees I'm envisioning ought to follow that: one pure Magic, one which requires and rewards high Willpower.


Some Outstanding Issues:

- PMs have no way to avoid self-damage from their spells. This makes e.g. Destabilize kind of awful, and makes Slow and Stop less good than they could otherwise be. I suggest a safety talent in their Generic tree, maybe put it as a passive effect of a moved Static History so you can pay the tax and feel good about it.

- Precognition isn't always an awful talent, but it is an awful gateway talent. Make it the capstone of the Generic tree instead of the entry fee. That way you're free to skip it if you don't want it, or if you have access to See The Threads and prefer to use that.

- I've mostly played PM and TW in normal, and some PM in Nightmare. Very seldom did I get any Anomaly action, even in extended fights, and I'm not the most careful player. I'd like some way to voluntarily trigger an Anomaly, or force someone else to have an Anomaly and get back some Paradox for their pain.

- TW weapon proficiencies are terrible. I've addressed that with one possible fix in Nulltweaks, which allows a TW to put points into one mastery for all his weapons (daggers, one-handers, and bows). Another option would be to make a TW-specific weapon mastery talent.


For the TW, I'd really like to see 3 viable builds: melee, archery, skirmisher. For that to work out in practice, I think we need a new low-level TW active talent tree which uses Stamina and which has talents that work in melee or at range, so you're not committed to one specific path super early when your options and gear are limited.

[SageAcrin]

Couple of thoughts;

A: I really still like the idea of Age Manipulation(unlocked, 1.0) on TW. It fits really well, and gives you more reason to care about Magic than before.

B: Something to consider; Why not swap the odds of Anomalies and Backfires, making Backfires the more rare element?

Anomalies are generally more benign and less dangerous, and this would allow you to keep the ramping paradox costs(though you could change the ramp speed), while still making the impact of higher paradox more workable.

Otherwise, I do agree with most of the points made, though I would definitely like to see Static History/Spacetime Tuning revamped. Even if you don't 5 it, a 3 is pretty nearly required as it stands(or temporary point juggling), and other mages have their resource replenishment talents as more of a bonus and less of a requirement.

Seems like just tossing a burst effect onto Spacetime Tuning that's equal to L3 or so of Static History, and tossing Static History for a more interesting skill(A buff that grants its current no-failures effect for longer, plus some other temporary buff effects?) would be better.

[MarginalMagus]

I've beaten Nightmare as a Paradox Mage (and enjoyed it a lot), and these were my observations:

http://te4.org/characters/52461/tome/be ... ed971ea2be

1. Paradox is fine as is. I found the resource fun, there's definitely good adrenaline to those first few times you use Temporal Form and see numbers over 1000. I also learned to fear extended fights because the anomalies and failures can bring the fight way out of your control, in a cool way. I attribute my relative difficulty with paradox management to finding very little +Paradox Failure gear, and I do wonder if those should be nerfed a bit, since the paradox is part of the fun, and it is almost exactly equivalent to Wil as far as a PM is concerned. As far as Static History goes, the first time you desperately wish you'd put more points in it (since paradox is trivial early game) is a very roguelike moment, and leads to some good old-fashioned turn-based panic. I like having that decision.

2. I agree with Salo on all his comments, except that bow/staff Temporal Warden is awesome as hell. Agreed that melee could use help.

3. The current implementation of Paradox Clone is very disappointing. The ai is bad, which led me to avoid fun 1-point spells in order to maximize their effectiveness. They hit you with debuffs, they bug out and hang around after their time expires, they use Rune of the Rift indescriminately on bosses immediately upon their summoning, leaving you with high paradox and no damage dealt to show for it 4 turns later. The ai is manageable, though. Like I mentioned, it is possible to build around it, and you can use Rune of the Rift preemptively so it will be on cooldown for the clones (aren't they from the future? shouldn't their spell have cooled down? never mind). My issue with Paradox Clone is that when it takes you back in time IT DROPS YOU IN THE SAME PLACE YOU WERE WHEN YOU CAST IT. Not where you put the clone, but where you were when you cast it. That doesn't even make sense. It's supposed to be time travel. The game literally makes you perform the same turn-based actions again only THIS TIME YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. In fact, if you do, it disadvantages you as the Paradox you use carries over into the future. If you have Wrap of Stone, you cast clone, do your fight, go back in time, press Wrap, then press R. Not only does this not distinguish the skill from Forgery of Haze in terms of game outcome, it is actually MORE boring to use in practice. The resulting most effective gameplan in most situations is to place your clone suicidally forward, let him tank all the damage (he's functionally invulnerable with cauterize btw), and stand safely by a corner spamming your low-cooldown damage. When you come back just dimensional step back out of sight; press R.

As a note, I still had tons of fun with the skill because Redux is hilarious.

I think it is possible to switch where the skill pulls you back to, so you become the "clone," and the whole thing makes any sense at all. This would resolve my biggest complaint with the skill. However, I'd like to propose another implementation (which would definitely be hard if not impossible to make, and would break redux, but would make it as cool as it deserves): When the spell is cast, the game records all your inputs/actions, including targeting of specific enemies or of specific locations. When you come back from the future (cooldowns, paradox etc. preserved from the future state), you THEN see two Paradox Mages, with the past self repeating his actions, and you now responsible for the survival of both until your time in the past expires. At this point, the player would take control of the past self, with the future self evaporating into a different timeline. This would be high risk/high reward, but cool, unique, and logically sound (!), which is rare but imo important for satisfying time travel.

4. My favorite event in Tome was when I threw out a Turn Back the Clock, used Cease to Exist on an enemy, hit him with a beam, then the Turn Back the Clock projectile struck and he died. He Ceased, and then the projectile hit the guy who was behind him! HOLY COW SO NEXT LEVEL. Best skill in game.

5. In response to SageAcrin: TW is already good as a caster lategame. I don't like the idea of them starting with a good spell projectile, and playing as tweaked PMs instead of as a unique combination of every type of offense.

Sorry if this got off topic, respect to this community for being so consistently self-reflective and working to improve the game. Respect especially to the developers for suffering so many opinions yet continuing to keep development very open.

[Salo]

B: Something to consider; Why not swap the odds of Anomalies and Backfires, making Backfires the more rare element?

Great idea, I would love this as well.

Even if you don't 5 it, a 3 is pretty nearly required as it stands(or temporary point juggling)

Why do you think this? This has honestly not been my experience at all: as I recall it, paradox management is completely optional until in the east (and even then), when you have plenty of tools to help with it and can pick whichever you like. Unless you don't reset your paradox each fight, but why wouldn't you? (Note: please make spacetime tuning faster at recovering paradox to decrease the time you're resting)

I have the impression you want to make paradox easier and safer to use, but that would obviously destroy one of the fundamentals of the class, no? Even if you succesfully convince me that paradox is too dangerous to use without getting talents to help with it (in my opinion only the case late in the game), you would still have to convince me why paradox being dangerous without appropriate talents is a bad thing. Isn't paradox supposed to be dangerous in long fights even if you do everything to control it?

There aren't many interesting builds.

This sentiment surprises me, as they start with 5 damage trees unlocked of which 4 are perfectly viable and one is somewhat weak/niche (gravity). Of course you could have long discussions about which of these trees is better and what the optimal build is, but that doesn't mean there aren't many different ways to build them!

To clarify, after grabbing some spammable damage spells of choice (turn back the clock and time skip obligatory, maybe dust to dust) there are an absurd amount of spells from different trees that you could easily consider to be worth leveling up first: echoes of the past, age reversal, temporal fugue, stop, slow, haste, rethread, quantum spike (+ redux), gravity well, cease to exist, etc. All extremely useful spells and all very much worth getting, but obviously you can't get all of them first so you have to make meaningful decisions. Unlike many other classes, it is not obvious what the optimal order of getting talents is and the order in which you unlock the 2 trees is not obvious either. That said, more locked trees would be nice.

I want to reiterate I think it's great that you want to improve the class and want to add more trees. More options are always good. I'm just saying that the talents PM already has are very well balanced already and as such I don't think much change is needed at all. In addition, most of the suggestions here are straight buffs, which I feel are unnecessary and risk taking the challenge out of the game (i.e. why does every class need a talent to prevent self-inflicted damage?). Again, please make interesting new trees, please don't overhaul the class for no reason.

Paradox Clone

Oh yeah, when I used it I thought "well, this might be useful in the perfect circumstances, but it's way too cumbersome for me". It's not worth the hassle and the implementation doesn't make sense, but it's a cool idea.

[Torokasi]

My basic comment on TW there is that trying to figure out creative attacks to replace the archery/dual wield trees would probably be more rewarding in the end than sticking with these. DoctorNull's idea of a sort of mix would be good as a basic tree, but I'm currently struggling to imagine how that'd work without looking like one of the current PM magic trees.

I'd also support backfires being the rare effect, presuming the current system is kept, though that's mainly a PM change as TW doesn't stress that resource as much right now.

One of the major TW issues I find I have is that my use keys wind up the same as either Marauder or Archer (and it's usually hard to justify going with their melee), so trying to figure out some unique actions that play at least a bit differently from either of these two and keep the themes TW has going.


As a quick new TW archery tree idea:

Warp Shot: First skill in the tree; the TW shoots a target within range, over monsters (but not through walls). Relatively good damage/low recharge; the idea is a similar Steady Shot that doesn't have the upfront damage but has more utility for the user. Possibly boosted critical rate or damage as it advances, with the concept being it's easier to hit a weak point if the arrow can hit any part the archer wants?

Temporal Crack: Shoot an arrow at a target, then step back in time and break the arrow before it's shot, forcing the two timelines into one and causing a surge of temporal damage in radius 2 on the target, along with the damage from the arrow. Gives area of effect damage to weaken crowds while badly damaging the specified target.

Phase Shot: Shoot an arrow that passes through targets, dealing matter damage instead of physical and penetrating through shields. If the final tile in the line selected is open (no enemies/walls), the TW steps through space to that point and recovers the arrow. Gives a bit of added mobility and functionality.

Echo Shot: Shoot a target for ~X% average damage, attempting to apply a temporal status that repeats the damage every turn for 5 with ~33% decay applied. (So at 100% average damage, the echo status damage would do 66%->44%->31%-> etc). Unlike a lot of the other archery trees, this final skill is entirely ST (one could make it have some radial effect on the target - perhaps for each reduction in damage it does the damage to a wider radius?) but the possible damage to the target would be intended to rack up. None of TW's stuff will ever really meet the output of Rapid Shot or Aim at most points in the game but this would give them their own ways to try and make the TW<->Archer comparison less apt.

I can work on pulling up my melee ideas but that'll take a while longer. Feel free to use any/none of this as you want. I'd say focus highly on melee talents that move the TW or his enemies - a teleporting whirlwind-style attack, a melee attack at high damage that basically acts as a single target Banish, etc.



Salo: I believe most of the hatred of how Paradox currently works is that the people with the issue (I am guessing, as this is my issue with it and why I basically don't play PM, ever) do not have the patience to twiddle their thumbs while Spacetime Tuning resets their paradox, which is the answer I would give to "why wouldn't you reset your paradox each time".

Without that, your option is... Static History. And that won't be a full heal at any point. It's basically a quality of life issue, but it's a massive one; I'd rather play the game than crack a book open every time I catch that I need to use Tuning to reset my Paradox.

Basically I'd suggest two things: give another (unlocked, but can be weak) paradox heal that can be used midfight (Rethread starts locked, is my issue there) and un-craternerf Spacetime Tuning. Having Paradox as something that can be a threat during a protracted fight or a complication in problematic scenarios is actually one of the neatest effects of Paradox. Having no good fast way to reset your Paradox to something sane really, really isn't. It can snowball way too fast into something unmanageable, and makes you either immensely tense about managing it or blindsided once it slips out of control.

Removing paradox costs scaling rapidly with higher Paradox... my initial inclination is to suggest that, if you feel this is a problem (I would generally agree, Edge), first start by reducing how fast paradox costs ramp up and see if that works better. I think removing it/flattening Paradox is... It may be useful in the end to do that but I'm not convinced that's necessary yet. Interested in listening to talk about this.

[MarginalMagus]

Yeah the slow speed of spacetime tuning is pretty embarrassing, but that might just be an optimization issue. I doubt it'd be too much of a buff to double or triple the rate of recovery on it. There are few opportunities to use it in fights.

For now, I recommend resting, then reduxing Static History, then resting lategame instead of resting the whole time.

[Plak]

The main reason Temporal Warden are boring right now is that they were ostensibly designed around the gimmick of using both bows and dual weapons simultaneously, but in practice it's just not a good option - so you end up playing a boring archer that knows a few spells. I think Temporal Warden should ideally be able to effectively be a highly mobile faster who fluidly alternate between close and long range, rather than just focusing on one damage source always being optimal. Weapon Folding overriding weapon mastery, providing off-hand damage and perhaps using Magic instead of Strength for bows and 1h/daggers (similarly to Lethality for rogues) would make sense flavor-wise and save the TW from requiring a lot of really boring passives. A few possible skills that could help make the TW work as a mixed warrior:

-Shoot an arrow through higher dimensions that instantly hits your target and can pass through enemies, then follow its wake to teleport to your target, swap weapon sets, and perform a stunning melee attack against it. Essentially a better Shadowstep that automatically swaps you to the right weapon set when to get in melee range.
-Slash your target with your weapons for X% temporal damage, teleporting them to a random location, through a wormhole. If you have a bow in your other weapon set, swap and fire an arrow through the wormhole to pin them to the other side. Allows you to either get some breathing room or follow your target through the wormhole to fight it one on one.
-A reverse banish, teleporting all foes in radius X as close to you as possible, followed by a weak Whirlwind that disarms for 1-2 turns. This gets you surrounded, but you're just a Dimensional Step away from repositioning to a safer spot, with your foes now conveniently packed.

[parcel]

The unfun part about classes like PM is not so much that they aren't neat, but that they are too busy. Spending time swapping weapons, painstakingly aiming TBTC, and instablinking is boring but tolerable, but you should also bear in mind that not everyone plays with enough room for many actions to fit on one page. Some slightly better emphasis on tighter builds would be good, generally speaking, so there's less reliance on sprawling use of talents.

The thread has hit the nail on the head by pointing out two really boring talents: spacetime tuning and paradox clone. ST just needs to tune faster, I agree, but PC should become more streamlined. How about making clones non-contemporaneous? Namely, on casting, possibly as an instant, you play as yourself but with less substance, like reduced damage. After K turns, you resume existence as your old self exactly on the spot that you stood when you cast, with exactly the same cooldowns and such. If you die while playing as your clone you still come back into existence, but you take damage and penalties for each turn left on the duration of the spell. This would be a cloning technique with power and risk that doesn't interrupt gameplay.

[edge2054]

Great discussion so far, I appreciate everyone's feedback.

I'm not really planning to nerf paradox mage damage, though I'll probably have to nerf items with +willpower for paradox or whatever it's called. I don't want those items to not be valuable but I do want to encourage the player to invest in Willpower and have them feel like they're being well rewarded for it. I feel that overall Paradox Mage killing power is fairly low late game and that they burn through Paradox much too fast which is part of what's creating this artificial need for such heavy investment in Static History. I also think that it's contributing to boring gameplay as long fights in a long game lead to burnout.

As to Paradox Clone, I agree it's not a great spell. The biggest issue I see with it is that it can't be used in conjunction with Cease to Exist. Currently I'm thinking that this effect could be redone and possibly be moved to another tree Have it pull a double from another timeline. Perhaps you're linked and share some damage with each other. Paradox Clone was the inspiration for the Chronoliths so this would make sense. I'll have to look at the AI.

Temporal Warden Weapon Mastery issues are something I'm also looking to address.

So if Static History goes, which it probably will, any thoughts for a nifty Time Travel spell? Something that uses timeline splitting would be good as it's really appropriate to the tree. Maybe something defensive in nature.

[MarginalMagus]

While with Forgery of Haze it makes sense for the clone to tank things, it seems very irresponsible for a Paradox Mage to allow himself or even his alternate-timeline self to die, so whatever the new implementation, both bodies should have some survival imperative. I think parcel's idea is good, but weaker than the current implementation in terms of gameplay result.

To Plak: teleporting arrows is a cool and flavorful idea! I'd love to have more of the space-bending aspect of any time manipulation available to the TW. Blinking ultra-fast fencer/archer is an awesome archetype.! However, forced weapon swapping is a bad idea, as it limits build variety/has the potential to be obnoxious on a class where switching back has no cost except player boredom.

Edit:
Oh and I like Torokasi's ideas also. Remember in Eragon (I know, I know but it's relevant) when the guy realizes instead of flinging rocks he can just close arteries? Temporal Warden (and for that matter Mindslayer) feels like it hasn't figured that out yet. I mean, how do these guys ever miss an arrow? It's not like there was unforeseeable wind...

[SageAcrin]

Why do you think this? This has honestly not been my experience at all: as I recall it, paradox management is completely optional until in the east (and even then), when you have plenty of tools to help with it and can pick whichever you like. Unless you don't reset your paradox each fight, but why wouldn't you? (Note: please make spacetime tuning faster at recovering paradox to decrease the time you're resting)

Because even a low (1-2%) fail rate can equate directly to an instant death potentially, unless you're running off non-Paradox skills for your escapes/heals/etc. (My two PM deaths, way back before it was nerfed a bit but generally played the same, involved failed Dimension Steps. They were my fault, because I hadn't leveled Static History and didn't know Redux would work with it... but that was before its impact was halved.)

There's a fundamental problem with that on Roguelike-something which I need to note none of the characters posted so far in this thread are on. I'm not saying better Paradox reduction is the only answer, but it's the simplest one and the least annoying-requiring a class whose escapes are powerful to pack a Teleport Rune, or to randomly RNG up deaths at a low rate whenever you do anything remotely risky, are not really good design to me.

(To be clear, though, I'm not necessarily saying the Paradox recovery values are too low now, per se. Just that they are too low at L1 without Redux, and that the class really does not need required skill point sinks. It has a ton of cool moderate impact spells that are much more interesting to level.)

[HousePet]

I generally agree with everything so far.
Wall of text warning!

Paradox Mage:
Space Time Tuning is too slow. Its fine early game, but it needs to scale with something.
Static History should stay. It allows variety in how you manage your Paradox.
Willpower and Paradox Mastery need to be more effective at managing Paradox.
Something to avoid/reduce self damage would be useful.
Basic categories are mostly fine.
Locked categories are icky and there needs to be at least one more.

Temporal Warden:
Sustain costs are too high. This makes it impractical to use any paradox spells.
Having your weapons spread across three different mastery talents is not good.
This could be resolved by doing something like making Strength of Purpose a mastery talent for weapon types. (which the current mastery code supports)
Another option would be to make it viable to use weapons without the mastery talents. eg. You get a reasonable damage boost from weapon folding, a decent physical power boost from Strength of Purpose.
TW currently has too many important stats. Cunning is pretty much the only one you don't need.
An adjustment to the sustain costs would allow Willpower to be less important, but remember to balance things so that you can still get a good benefit from spending in Willpower.
Constitution would be the next easiest stat to reduce need for. You would just need to improve the survivability options.
Thematically, control over Time would make it very easy to buff your own Dexterity. This could be easily added by making Celerity into a small cost sustain that improved Dex and movement speed.
This would mean that there is a sustain for boosting each of the three primary stats of Str, Dex and Mag. Which allows the player more flexibility in which stats they choose to focus on, as more Willpower can easily be used to power these sustains.
The combination of weapon combat and chronomancy needs to be improved. Currently the class is a combination of weapon talents and chrono spells that don't really synergise at all.

[Salo]

Clearly spacetime tuning getting faster would solve the main problems (all problems?) people have with paradox management. Maybe you can make it go faster the longer you wait, so it's not much better in fights but much faster when resting.

The unfun part about classes like PM is not so much that they aren't neat, but that they are too busy. Spending time swapping weapons, painstakingly aiming TBTC, and instablinking is boring but tolerable, but you should also bear in mind that not everyone plays with enough room for many actions to fit on one page. Some slightly better emphasis on tighter builds would be good, generally speaking, so there's less reliance on sprawling use of talents.

Why do you think this? I could not disagree more to be honest. The most fun part about classes like PM is that they're very busy. Spending time swapping weapons, carefully using many different spells and abusing your great mobility is great. You should keep in mind many people play like to use many varied spells and that you can expand your toolbars. Some emphasis on increasing your versaility and allowing more diverse builds would be great, so there's less reliance on only a few good spells.

Like, it's okay to have a different opinion, but we're discussing actually changing the base class and there's no reason why we need more classes that have tight builds.

I feel that overall Paradox Mage killing power is fairly low late game and that they burn through Paradox much too fast which is part of what's creating this artificial need for such heavy investment in Static History. I also think that it's contributing to boring gameplay as long fights in a long game lead to burnout.

Could you elaborate? Why are long fights bad? How powerful do you think lategame PM's currently are (I think you might underestimate PM's damage) and how powerful do you think they should be?

So if Static History goes, which it probably will

If you do end up chaning a talent already in the game, despite many people saying it's fine as it is, I feel you should give more reasoning why! In addition, you should explain how you would rebalance spacetime tuning, because I fear it's very likely you'll make paradox management even more trivial than it is currently.

Because even a low (1-2%) fail rate can equate directly to an instant death potentially, unless you're running off non-Paradox skills for your escapes/heals/etc. (My two PM deaths, way back before it was nerfed a bit but generally played the same, involved failed Dimension Steps. They were my fault, because I hadn't leveled Static History and didn't know Redux would work with it... but that was before its impact was halved.)

Why is this problematic, even if it were true?

You're saying that losing a turn because your escape/heal failed is such a horrible horrible thing that the player if absolutely forced to use a turn to cast another ability first. Do you see the inherent contradiction? Do you disagree when I (and others) say these situations leads to an interesting conundrum for the player?

At the start of this thread, the argument for removing static history was that it was mandatory to max and hence boring. This is false. Now you're saying that it should be removed because it is useful. This does not make sense. The usual argument to remove a talent is because it is boring, but we just established that it leads to interesting decisions (lose a turn now for sure, or risk to lose a turn due to failure later). The implied argument that paradox can be dangerous if you do not use this spell and hence it should be reworked so paradox can be safe even if you do not invest in it does not make sense either, because paradox is supposed to be a volatile/dangerous resource in long fights even when you take care of it.

There's a fundamental problem with that on Roguelike-something which I need to note none of the characters posted so far in this thread are on.

Why is it wrong to expect roguelike players to plan ahead in case they get a failure? Just like how you expect roguelike players to plan for enemies getting crits and many other luck related gameplay aspect. Why do you assume this is a bad thing?

To reiterate: it's great that people want to improve this class. There are things that certainly can be improved, like having to rest too long between two fights waiting for spacetime tuning. The danger in some of the changes proposed however is that will take the challenge out of playing the class and that they will make managing paradox even more easy.