Time shield and webs of fate both cost 48 paradox baseline now, that seems rather high. Especially for time shield when the same spell on an archmage only costs 25 mana.
Starting under 300 paradox is decently painful now, as some of the talents with baseline investment (like the movement and attack speed talents) will have a duration of 0 and be completely useless until you raise your paradox back towards 300.
1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
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Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
I'm submitting a patch that will keep values from falling below 1.
The Paradox costs are supposed to be prohibitive. Paradox is not Mana and comparing the two doesn't work to well. Rather we're saying X spell should cost more or less because the Mage equivalent costs X mana doesn't really work.
For one there's no Paradox regen base. Nor are there Paradox Surge runes. There's a few ways to get Paradox via talent investments and you can skip a turn to get 10 back. And there's Rune of the Rift that gives 25 back.
But generally speaking, Paradox is recovered by creating time. Rather that's via creating a wall, a wormhole, casting temporal reprieve, time skipping a monster, or just ducking around a corner and pressing 5 a few times. On the opposite side of this Paradox Mages generally have turns to spare if they're investing at all in Speed Control.
All in all I was pretty disappointed that 1.3 went live the way it did. It created a false impression that Paradox is supposed to be this limitless resource and that by setting Paradox to 100 anomalies could be avoided the whole game. This was my fault. I should have tested lower Paradox values more than I did. I did not realize that most players would avoid spells that rely on saves and suck up the spellpower penalty.
Going forward the goal is pretty much as donkatsu outlined in the post on the first page. Defenses will cost a lot to encourage the player to invest heavily in one or two favorites rather than stacking them until they're nearly invincible. Offensive and utility spells will either remain the same or become cheaper (as I mentioned in my last post concerning spellbinding sustain costs).
I'm sure there will be a period of adjustment. Especially as 1.3 characters transition over into 1.31. I know one player had unlocked spellbinding and found that it was no longer feasible to keep those talents sustained. I don't know when I'll be able to roll out changes in sustain costs, I'll have to talk to Darkgod about it some as it will break current characters a bit.
Resist all and effect reduction after teleport still needs to be addressed as well. The 1.31 patch notes lied a bit, that change was reverted as it would have affected current saves.
The Paradox costs are supposed to be prohibitive. Paradox is not Mana and comparing the two doesn't work to well. Rather we're saying X spell should cost more or less because the Mage equivalent costs X mana doesn't really work.
For one there's no Paradox regen base. Nor are there Paradox Surge runes. There's a few ways to get Paradox via talent investments and you can skip a turn to get 10 back. And there's Rune of the Rift that gives 25 back.
But generally speaking, Paradox is recovered by creating time. Rather that's via creating a wall, a wormhole, casting temporal reprieve, time skipping a monster, or just ducking around a corner and pressing 5 a few times. On the opposite side of this Paradox Mages generally have turns to spare if they're investing at all in Speed Control.
All in all I was pretty disappointed that 1.3 went live the way it did. It created a false impression that Paradox is supposed to be this limitless resource and that by setting Paradox to 100 anomalies could be avoided the whole game. This was my fault. I should have tested lower Paradox values more than I did. I did not realize that most players would avoid spells that rely on saves and suck up the spellpower penalty.
Going forward the goal is pretty much as donkatsu outlined in the post on the first page. Defenses will cost a lot to encourage the player to invest heavily in one or two favorites rather than stacking them until they're nearly invincible. Offensive and utility spells will either remain the same or become cheaper (as I mentioned in my last post concerning spellbinding sustain costs).
I'm sure there will be a period of adjustment. Especially as 1.3 characters transition over into 1.31. I know one player had unlocked spellbinding and found that it was no longer feasible to keep those talents sustained. I don't know when I'll be able to roll out changes in sustain costs, I'll have to talk to Darkgod about it some as it will break current characters a bit.
Resist all and effect reduction after teleport still needs to be addressed as well. The 1.31 patch notes lied a bit, that change was reverted as it would have affected current saves.
Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
I finished a 1.3 paradox mage in NM/RL without bothering with the low paradox type of strategy, and it worked plenty fine even with anomalies occurring, though flux helped control them a bit. The final battle was one of the easiest I had so far, and I had huge enough spellpower from high paradox to actually land effects on Elandar and strip him of his sustains despite some of his saves being in the 120s. Atamathon wasn't that bad either, though Linaniil was pretty nasty even with the pre-nerf defenses. I didn't use time shield very much, though did use smearing, decomposition, and webs. Anyway, issues with low paradox base are separate from those of the higher costs, and the changes to tuning and spell durations seem to handle that.
With the changes you now have to wait about a turn to recover the resources of a basic offense spell on a PM, give or take as costs go up at higher paradox, or lose the turn to an anomaly to get it back. That seems like it might be somewhere in the ballpark of reasonable given that PMs have ways to speed things up and make distance, and you have to waste a turn (though not a full game turn typically) to get an arrow back on a TW. Time shield requires between 4-5 turns baseline of doing nothing to get back the resources for the spell on a PM, or quite a few more basic arrow hits on a TW with their paradox reducing talent, by itself. The shield is a decent spell, at least on the difficulties I've played on, but at an almost five fold cost increase from before? Why not just give it a cooldown of 50 or something if you really don't want it to be used? It makes it cost prohibitive not just to stack with other defenses, but to use with itself more than once or maybe twice in a long battle. The 50 paradox cost on the first page of the thread was based on the cost per cd comparison with the attack spells, which to be honest seems like a completely meaningless metric.
Energy decomposition and webs seemed like the bigger offenders on PM defenses, and decomposition got the straight up nerf, as it was like a better extra armor. I only noticed decomposition getting completely ridiculous when I was at high paradox. The main thing with webs is that it is like a displacement shield that doesn't have the aspects of displacement shield that make it suck. And in any case stacking this many defenses does require spending category points as well as quite a few talent points.
The comparison with archmages is because they are pretty similar to PMs, but bigger shields in place of less percentage type reductions. And with archmages the costs of their very considerable defenses are more or less trivial in terms of resources, while now the chronomancer defenses are edging towards prohibitive. I'm not sure there are other classes that rely on their defenses on being cost prohibitive, maybe doomed (but it's more important that doomed defenses are just awful).
With the changes you now have to wait about a turn to recover the resources of a basic offense spell on a PM, give or take as costs go up at higher paradox, or lose the turn to an anomaly to get it back. That seems like it might be somewhere in the ballpark of reasonable given that PMs have ways to speed things up and make distance, and you have to waste a turn (though not a full game turn typically) to get an arrow back on a TW. Time shield requires between 4-5 turns baseline of doing nothing to get back the resources for the spell on a PM, or quite a few more basic arrow hits on a TW with their paradox reducing talent, by itself. The shield is a decent spell, at least on the difficulties I've played on, but at an almost five fold cost increase from before? Why not just give it a cooldown of 50 or something if you really don't want it to be used? It makes it cost prohibitive not just to stack with other defenses, but to use with itself more than once or maybe twice in a long battle. The 50 paradox cost on the first page of the thread was based on the cost per cd comparison with the attack spells, which to be honest seems like a completely meaningless metric.
Energy decomposition and webs seemed like the bigger offenders on PM defenses, and decomposition got the straight up nerf, as it was like a better extra armor. I only noticed decomposition getting completely ridiculous when I was at high paradox. The main thing with webs is that it is like a displacement shield that doesn't have the aspects of displacement shield that make it suck. And in any case stacking this many defenses does require spending category points as well as quite a few talent points.
The comparison with archmages is because they are pretty similar to PMs, but bigger shields in place of less percentage type reductions. And with archmages the costs of their very considerable defenses are more or less trivial in terms of resources, while now the chronomancer defenses are edging towards prohibitive. I'm not sure there are other classes that rely on their defenses on being cost prohibitive, maybe doomed (but it's more important that doomed defenses are just awful).
Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
I finished a normal/roguelike run and had Time Shield, Haste, and Seal Fate on auto-cast most of the game. It was a very noticeable increase in cost once 1.31 went live. I invested heavily in Spacetime Stability but aside from that only really had Wormhole and Rune of the Rift to manage Paradox.
When Time Shield was down I would use Webs of Fate + Heroism Infusion to fill the gap.
I also picked up Static History to give myself some anomaly free time when I needed it and ran Gravity Locus, Contingency, and Phase Pulse most of the game.
Here's my build. Note that Temporal Reprieve I picked up after I killed Argoniel. I never got a chance to cast it.
http://te4.org/characters/81/tome/f70f5 ... 74246c7f1f
When Time Shield was down I would use Webs of Fate + Heroism Infusion to fill the gap.
I also picked up Static History to give myself some anomaly free time when I needed it and ran Gravity Locus, Contingency, and Phase Pulse most of the game.
Here's my build. Note that Temporal Reprieve I picked up after I killed Argoniel. I never got a chance to cast it.
http://te4.org/characters/81/tome/f70f5 ... 74246c7f1f
Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
Would it be possible to have a clearly identifiable sound play when Twist Fate "catches" an anomaly and becomes activable?
Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
Yeah, I'll see if I can find something.
Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
A few notes on TW. Yeah, too late, I know 
1. Pretty much all talents rely on weird asymptotically concave combatTalentLimit().
So the power/level curve is the same, since talents are rarely worth raising past 3.
I was tearing through t1 zones on madness and actually started to think it's a contender, but that feeling subsided.
Suggestion: 1/4 of talents to have linear scaling.
2. Guardian tree is OP, Unity most glaringly so. I believe that passive one-shot protection should be weaker.
Suggestion: Make Unity cd fixed and longer. Swap Strength of Purpose with Warden's Call, lock Guardian, unlock Threaded Combat instead.
3. Some people might have different experience, but I didn't see any necessity for paradox management (as opposed to PM where it is vital).
Now if the purpose of paradox failures is only to provide fun selectable trade-off between power and risk, that's fine.
But if you also want to limit the burst phase, then it didn't work.
Suggestion: make Folding sustain cost 200.
1. Pretty much all talents rely on weird asymptotically concave combatTalentLimit().
So the power/level curve is the same, since talents are rarely worth raising past 3.
I was tearing through t1 zones on madness and actually started to think it's a contender, but that feeling subsided.
Suggestion: 1/4 of talents to have linear scaling.
2. Guardian tree is OP, Unity most glaringly so. I believe that passive one-shot protection should be weaker.
Suggestion: Make Unity cd fixed and longer. Swap Strength of Purpose with Warden's Call, lock Guardian, unlock Threaded Combat instead.
3. Some people might have different experience, but I didn't see any necessity for paradox management (as opposed to PM where it is vital).
Now if the purpose of paradox failures is only to provide fun selectable trade-off between power and risk, that's fine.
But if you also want to limit the burst phase, then it didn't work.
Suggestion: make Folding sustain cost 200.
Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
Guys, just wanted to give a brief enthusiastic "THANK YOU" on your work on the TW. I am currently finishing my first visit to the East on Nightmare. I did clear the room of death, too, but on a previous attempt I had died there. I think the class is super fun to play. He really relies on being a very jumpy fellow, and the field control is a really fun aspect of playing as a TW.
I think that balance of the class is pretty close to spot on. I am finding that I do have to pay some attention to paradox, especially as I decided to go the heavy armour route, but it's not a major aspect. If you wanted to make heavy armour a non-option for TWs, then I agree with the previous poster that the paradox costs might need to be increased slightly. But I actually think that it's perfect as it is.
So, thank you for the great work! Really enjoying this game!
I think that balance of the class is pretty close to spot on. I am finding that I do have to pay some attention to paradox, especially as I decided to go the heavy armour route, but it's not a major aspect. If you wanted to make heavy armour a non-option for TWs, then I agree with the previous poster that the paradox costs might need to be increased slightly. But I actually think that it's perfect as it is.
So, thank you for the great work! Really enjoying this game!
Re: 1.3 Chrono Feedback and todo list
TW are much better balanced than they were back in beta with their 400% damage Arrow Stitching 1 shotting bosses, but I think Warden's Call is a pretty big offender now. It's effectively a passive +60% damage, and counting the additional procs you get it's closer to +100% damage along with additional status effects from Manifold and weapon effects. Using a randart Torment sword and Crippling arrows, every shot would layer on about 4 high power status effects and trivialize anything not immune to them. I think making Warden's Call either have a short CD, or just giving it a chance (the usual 10-33% scaling maybe?) to proc instead would be sensible. To compensate I think Thread the Needle could do with something more exciting, as right now it's pretty dull compared to every other attack talent.