ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The Paradox Mage is really interesting to play. Awesome damage spells, powerful controlling spells...but for me that's the problem - it's very hard for me to make a build that's focused and efficient.

Playing as an Archmage, I could just focus on 1 element (e.g. Fire -> Wildfire), supported by two or three class talent trees just for a few critical spells (e.g. Spellcraft, the various shields). By the time I reached Dreadfell game I would have 5/5 in a few talents, and have a pretty good strategy to deal with everything - Shield up, Inferno, Fireflash, Flameshock...

But with the Paradox Mage, by the time I reach Dreadfell, the most heavily invest skill is only 4/5 of Turn Back the Clock, and I have 1/5 or 2/5 skills scattered everywhere. Because all the skills look awesome! Time Skip! Slow! Stop! Cease to Exist! Rethread! What about a better Static History? Or to heal myself better with Body Reversion? Quantum Spiking is Amazing! But I need Dust to Dust for more cost efficient crowd killing!

...as you can imagine, I always feel that my character was spread too far by then. The fact that I don't have awesome tanking abilities makes me rely even more on niche stuff like Time Skip -> Redux Quantum Spike combo, but even then my Quantum Spike is only 3/5, and I find it hard to take 2 extra points out of anything to put there...Almost every single talent have some synergy with something else.

So anyway to recommend me to build a Paradox Mage in a more focused matter? I've checked the PM Mage guide many times over and it basically says "all the skilz roxxors" which isn't helpful for someone who wants to prevent skill points spreading too thin.

Try gravity next time. The gravity skills start out kind of weak but get much, much better with investment, especially gravity well, which is my favorite spell in the entire game currently. Huge range, just throw it down at a distant group of enemies and walk away. When you come back they're all dead.

Also, every paradox mage, whatever the strategy, should have both dust to dust and turn back the clock maxed by Dreadfell, just so you know. Those are your main damage dealers. Rethread is really awesome too if you choose to unlock that tree early(I did). Oh, and you should be sustaining both Energy Decomposition and Entropic Field at all times(carbon spikes isn't that great).

If you want, you can take a look at my char, I'm doing really well so far:http://te4.org/characters/29007/tome/3039d146-aef6-4af3-9ee9-04bb7aebd1be

Hasn't been updated in a week despite me playing him every day, strangely. Since then I've put more points into the gravity tree and ashes to ashes(which synergizes well with repulsion field). Any questions, just ask.

Wow, 5/5 Gravity Well looks just...er...painful for anyone to suffer from it.

For some weird reason - maybe due to it dealing physical damage instead of temporal looks weird for a mage who's supposed to mess with time and space - I don't particularly like Gravity tree. Instead I like to concept of blowing up Destabilized enemies to molecules with Quantum Spikes...Ok I'm going one last time with it, this time play it more focused on the skills. If I die again, time for the Mindslayer.