Playtesters needed! (1.3 Chronomancers)

[Isotope-X]

The poor little guys didn't know what to do after seeing their master BAMF out of the timestream.

[donkatsu]

Temporal Hounds also didn't disappear when their owner Ceased to Exist, but unlike the Shadows they acted normally instead of being frozen in time.

edit:
Lua Error: /engine/Level.lua:126: Entity 75456(materialize barrier) not present on the level

This was from casting Cease to Exist, then Materialize Barrier, then Cease to Exist rewinding time while Materialize Barrier was still up.

[themuffinthief]

Temporal Hounds also didn't disappear when their owner Ceased to Exist, but unlike the Shadows they acted normally instead of being frozen in time.

On a similar note, Temporal Hounds don't disappear if their owner drowns. Last Hope will forever have 3 hounds, sitting by the edge of the water, waiting for their master to surface from the depths. That's the only time I've ever felt guilty drowning last hope citizens.

[edge2054]

Hounds and Shadows I got fixed.

I couldn't reproduce the materialize barrier bug. Is it consistent?

[donkatsu]

It only happened once, in Dreadfell, but I haven't tried to reproduce it yet either.

Just had another really bizarre, probably situational bug. I got sleep and Inner Demons from a Solipsist rare, then an inner demon spawned and used Spatial Tether on me. I used a phase door rune to get rid of the Inner Demons and Spatial Tether effects, and the rune does not take a turn or go on cooldown. It seems to stay that way, too, after resting for 100 turns, leaving the zone, and dying.

[edge2054]

I broke phase door rune right before b2

[Thasero]

Points in Blended Threads / Warden's Call are fabulously powerful compared to points in the actual Blade Threading / Bow Threading talents you're using.

A math request: Please change Arrow Stitching so the 2 bonus wardens have a flat 50% damage reduction. That will make it much easier to figure out the amount of damage it gains from the next point. Right now I have to calculate "OK, I'm getting 24% * 2 of 71%, on the next level I get 36% * 2 of 82%..." 2 50% wardens makes it deal a straightforward total of twice as much damage as the shot from the original warden.

The new auto-tuning on Spacetime Stability is useful but could stand being bumped up a little; for comparison, the paradox reduction on Threaded Arrow scales from 10 => 22, which comes out to 2.5 => 5.5 per turn if you spam it (and there's no reason not to, since it's free).

There's little reason to put more than one point in Twist Fate in the Flux category; for one thing, by the time you're triggering anomalies, you've probably put your other spells on cooldown anyway, so immediately launching the held anomaly might be the best action you have left to take. I would suggest giving it a constant 2 or 3 turn holding period, just to tempt risk-takers, and change it to start with a high cooldown that scales down with additional points.

I would rather have Reality Smearing just give me all the paradox immediately, so I can look at my resource bar and know how I'm doing, rather than needing to mouse over a debuff to calculate the paradox that's waiting in the wings. Delaying paradox is not nearly as big a deal as delaying damage.

Also, it's a bit odd that you can just maintain Reality Smearing forever, no matter how high your paradox goes. Suggestion: Make it like Antimagic Shield - take the paradox, then perform a check; if it fails, Smearing turns off and immediately triggers an anomaly.

[donkatsu]

I broke phase door rune right before b2

Well I feel silly.

Just got a similar Lua error as the materialize barrier thing, except this time the terrain feature was warp mine: away and the time rewinding spell was See the Threads.

[edge2054]

I'm looking at some changes for Flux. I'm not sure if they'll make it into 1.3 or 1.31.

I like the idea of Twist Fate cooldown scaling. I'm considering making it the first tier talent.

I was having similar thoughts about Reality Smearing just dealing the damage at once. I'm also thinking of making the conversion ratio a flat 3 to 1 so it's easy to figure out the scaling on. I'm not sure it should deactivate when you cause an anomaly. It already competes with Time Shield and that makes it the last thing I want to nerf.

I think I'd like Reality Smearing to do something when you get hit with an anomaly though, similar to how Attenuate work but some kind of self buff maybe. I don't know yet.

I want to make Induce Anomaly the last talent and have it pull up a dialog box. I'm not generally in favor of dialog boxes on talents that you'll use in combat but pulling up the anomaly list and picking what you want off it feels like it will be worth the hassle.

In addition I want to go through the anomalies one more time and update all of the descriptions and streamline them a bit. The anomaly code was one of the first things I went over when I started rewriting talents and in hindsight I wished I'd done it last. Now that we have lots of finished chronomancy talents I think it would be good if the anomaly list better reflected some of them.

Anomaly Gravity Well, as an example, is a pin :/

[edge2054]

Points in Blended Threads / Warden's Call are fabulously powerful compared to points in the actual Blade Threading / Bow Threading talents you're using.

Depending on what build you're on Warden's Call was doing full damage. Blended Threads, and I wish I could articulate it better in the talent description, works like this. weapon multiplier * (1+ blended%). So it's good sure. But it's much much better if you do 5/5 Warp and 5/5 Threaded for instance. It's also much worse with say, rank 1 Blink Blade (0.7* 1.6 = 1.12)

But I'll make the Warden's Call proc limit global anyway so that Arrow Echoes can't double the effect.

A math request: Please change Arrow Stitching so the 2 bonus wardens have a flat 50% damage reduction. That will make it much easier to figure out the amount of damage it gains from the next point. Right now I have to calculate "OK, I'm getting 24% * 2 of 71%, on the next level I get 36% * 2 of 82%..." 2 50% wardens makes it deal a straightforward total of twice as much damage as the shot from the original warden.

This is a nerf but sure.

The new auto-tuning on Spacetime Stability is useful but could stand being bumped up a little; for comparison, the paradox reduction on Threaded Arrow scales from 10 => 22, which comes out to 2.5 => 5.5 per turn if you spam it (and there's no reason not to, since it's free).

I'll have to think about this.

[donkatsu]

The new auto-tuning on Spacetime Stability is useful but could stand being bumped up a little; for comparison, the paradox reduction on Threaded Arrow scales from 10 => 22, which comes out to 2.5 => 5.5 per turn if you spam it (and there's no reason not to, since it's free).

While Paradox Mage resource management has become nearly impossible to manage in the long run, I actually think this is a good thing. It's sort of like stamina, where your resources will definitely, steadily deplete over time instead of the usual "spam skills, refill resources to full with one button, repeat" pattern that a lot of classes have. Except "running out" of paradox is way more interesting than running out of stamina, so I actually like to see it happen. Flavor-wise I also like that Temporal Wardens are much better at managing paradox, since guarding the timeline is their thing, while Paradox Mages tend to be a little more... liberal.

One thing I'd like to see on Spacetime Stability is smoother scaling. I think having decimal amounts of paradox is better than the weird progression where the second point adds twice as much as the first point, but the third point doesn't add anything at all.

I'd also like to see Static History bring back the anomaly suppression feature. Something like no major anomalies during its duration, or major anomalies get turned into minor anomalies, or failure chance gets reduced by a percentage amount (like fatigue), or even, if you want to give it some antisynergy with Flux (since thematically they're kinda opposed), have it suppress minor anomalies, including from Induce Anomaly and Twist Fate. It was a weak-ish talent for everyone but Shalore when it was tier 1, and as a tier 4 it's sorta sad and bland right now. While the Stasis tree is already strong due to Time Shield, PMs are tight on class points, so improving the weakest talent in a tree generally doesn't make the tree outright stronger, just more versatile.

[Thasero]

I feel rather the reverse as far as which class can more easily manage paradox; the Flux tree makes paradox nearly free for PMs as long as you don't turn on Reality Smearing.

Most classes do get a "refill my power" button, but then they burn out in combat when that button is on cooldown and they're still out of power. I think it's OK for resources to mainly drive strategic choices (did I put enough points in the "refill" button) rather than tactical ones (should I push my "refill" button now). Unlike other classes, chronomancers actually have to think about that second question because dropping paradox decreases your power. Plus, chronomancers have to balance their speed against their cooldowns; I think the real resource management game for a chronomancer is having a useful talent not on cooldown every turn that you're under the effects of Haste.

For wardens, my concern is that skills like Invigorate and Thread the Needle for reducing cooldowns only make sense if it's practical to be in combat long enough that you need them. If paradox recovery is too harsh, then once you've blown through your talents on Haste, it's optimal to run away completely and rest.

I would prefer to simply have the old Static History back, especially since the description fit with the lore of chronomancy: You retcon recent events so they didn't involve crazy time magic, cleaning up the paradox.

[donkatsu]

I feel rather the reverse as far as which class can more easily manage paradox; the Flux tree makes paradox nearly free for PMs as long as you don't turn on Reality Smearing.

I would hardly consider dedicating an entire category point for the sole purpose of resource management "free". I mean if spending a category point is considered free, a Temporal Warden could just unlock an inscription slot and use that time skip rune for paradox management, which would accomplish the same thing as a no-Reality Smearing Flux except it would also save class points. Reality Smearing is the soul of that tree.

I don't think it will ever not make sense to use Invigorate as long as it does its double cooldown speed thing. And given that I can comfortably kill most things on Insane as a Paradox Mage before anomalies start to be a major issue, without no-Reality Smearing Flux, or in fact any resource management talent besides 2/5 Spacetime Stability, I think paradox recovery currently is just fine for both classes. It's a serious consideration without being overbearing.

If the old Static History is to come back then I would prefer it to be worth X turns of Spacetime Tuning, rather than a flat amount of paradox, which I feel should remain more of Flux's schtick. This also gives it synergy with Spacetime Stability, which would be cool.

[edge2054]

Static History's spiritual successor is Induce Anomaly.

I'm seriously considering pulling the paradox recovery from Attenuate and letting you dump smear 'damage' when you create an anomaly instead.

No minor anomalies on Static History I think could work.

I'll bump the regen on Stability a tad and not round it.

[donkatsu]

Thoughts on Spacetime Folding after playing with it in dev mode to learn the mechanics and getting to level 36 as a Paradox Mage with 3/5 Warp Mines and 4/5 Spatial Tether:

Warp Mines is great, Spatial Tether has good utility and does a huge amount of damage. It might actually warrant a slight decrease in damage, but the setup is really fiddly and the damage isn't immediate, so I feel that mostly justifies the damage.

Dimensional Anchor is decent, but Banish has no reason for being raised past the 1/5 you need to get Dimensional Anchor. The only reason I haven't gotten Dimensional Anchor yet is because there are like six other talents I need to get first, and I just happen not to need more damage at this juncture. After thinking it over, here are two suggestions:

1. Move Dimensional Anchor's stun/pin/blind/confuse to Banish, scale the duration to Banish's TL, and have it attempt to apply the effect separately from the teleport so that it still works on anchored enemies. The main reason for this is pin. Pin can be great in some situations, and really bad in other situations, like when you want to use Warp Mines, Repulsion Blast, or Gravity Spike to get tether/anchor procs, so it's better to be able to choose when you're okay with a pin, rather than Dimensional Shift just tossing you free pins when you don't want one. Also this makes Banish better, obviously, and it fits thematically with Phase Pulse's mechanic. In fact, you could make Banished enemies emit pulses at origin and destination just like Phase Pulse.
2. Have teleports check for Dimensional Anchor before checking saves. You shouldn't be able to save against damage unless you're a Solipsist. Spatial Tether, for example, would go from being amazing, to being sorta bad, if all of its damage could be negated by saves.