ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Is it intentional or bug?
Overall Precognition/moment of precisense combo does not look useful now. Length of precog is not big enough, see invisible too small and useful only in few situations, see environment is readily available from equipment already, increase in powers after MoP is not significant because it seems is not scaling with stat.Turn to activate precog make it dangerous in hard fight, exactly where it should be used by design.Player have to monitor precog counter to use MoP, wich is annoying. As a combat, often-used action Precognition shouldn't save to disk and activate progress bar.
Spin Fate is fun, but Precog/MoP is in need of rework IMHO.
Suggestions:
Precognition should be instantaneous
Get rid of save progress bar after activation precognition ,and if possible save only current level and not on disk but in memory
If saving on disk inevitable, just remove progress bar and take player attention with something else - show environment for example.
After end of Precog dialog should ask if player want to activate MoP (if ready)
MoP duration should be increased by remaining Precog duration and after activation of MoP Spin Fate should be converted into powers each turn - that way player don't have to monitor precog counter
% of Spin to power should scale with willpower and/or Paradox

Just my .2 gold pieces

Thanks for the feedback Postman.

First of all, Precognition taking a turn to activate is not a bug. By design it's meant to be used with a bit of foresight by the player. The short cooldown on the ability, coupled with the Foresight talent is meant to give the player that foresight (no pun intended). In other words, if you're on a level you know has a tough boss you can scout it out and find the bosses location with Precognition and Foresight and simply not use Moment of Prescience on that Precog run. Once you have a better idea of the bosses location you can activate Precog, engage, build up Spin Fate, and pop Moment of Prescience once you feel you need the offensive buffs.

Second of all, more talent points invested into Precognition will let the player have a larger time frame to play with. In other words, it will let the player babysit their Precognition timer less. The tree, especially for those wanting to use Precog/MoP is meant to be a heavy talent point sink. If you just want to use Spin Fate, which is pretty awesome by itself, you can. If you want that Spin to build up twice as fast and be able to make something out of it offensively, you'll want to invest more then one talent point in Precognition and Moment of Prescience.

Ultimately though the tree isn't a must have. If you have great racial talents you'd prefer to invest in the class still has Combat Training and Spacetime Weaving so you won't lack for other places to spend generic talents. The very play style that a heavy Chronomancy tree investment creates isn't going to be for everyone but I think some players will really love it as it is.

All of that said, Moment of Prescience could stand to have a bit of a buff. I like the idea of it scaling off Paradox and overall I think the tree could use Paradox scaling (the duration on Spin Fate, Precog, and Moment of Prescience could all scale off Paradox). I think the base percentage of Moment of Prescience could be improved a bit (something like 10 + 10 *tl instead of just 10 * tl) and I think Temporal Wardens could stand to have 1.3 mastery on this tree and spacetime weaving (they both feel very appropriate to the class and in many ways belong as much to them as to Paradox Mages). These changes would put the base conversion on Moment of Prescience at 23% with a 75% conversion at talent level 5 (6.5) and would improve Spin Fate a bit as well... which would give more Spin to convert.

As to the save progress bar stuff and writing to disk, that's beyond my realm and is tied into the chrono saves themselves, which is something I sadly don't know enough about and that Darkgod would have to chime in on.

All my rambling aside, this is still open to discussion. I'd like to get more feedback on this tree before I go making many changes too it and see what everyone else thinks about it.

I just want to say I really like the recent changes to the chronomancy classes (although I've only played as a TW). Precognition is an awesome talent even if it takes a turn to use. These classes have other escape options, and I don't really see Precognition as a primary escape talent (since if you die while under precog., then you die for real). The generic Chronomancy tree doesn't seem underpowered to me, and changing the mastery from 1.1 to 1.3 for TW doesn't seem necessary (maybe compromise and do 1.2?).

I agree with the point Postman was making in that Moment of Prescience could use a bit more lovin'. I view dreads and dreadmasters as one of the primary threats to TWs, so increasing see stealth/invis and the duration a little more could be a major boon to the class. Another option (which may very well be overpowered or abusable--you've been working on this far longer than I have, edge2054) could be to give an option to cut Precognition short and return to the moment Precognition was first used. This would be useful if the player gets a little too ambitious or careless while exploring a future timeline. One mechanism to accomplish this would be to give the player a sister talent called "Moment of Reminiscence" (or whatever) when "Moment of Prescience" is at talent level 3 or greater. Just a thought.

Hmm... I'll have to think about that tiger_eye. It sounds like the ultimate get out of jail free combo, especially when combined with Moment of Prescience. A really patient player could fight only with Precog active and opt in or out whenever he felt like it and basically nullify 90% of dangerous situations.

Maybe if it took a turn to kick in, so you could abort a Precognition if things started to look dicey but you'd have to do it before that Oh shit, I got one turn to live moment.

Really though, what's wrong with 4/5 Dimensional Step + Precognition as a bail out? Dots aside.

Yeah, edge2054, they don't need another primary escape talent. Perhaps "Moment of Reminiscence" (or whatever) could only be used when no enemies are in view, and the buffs could also be suitably reduced (perhaps proportional to the duration spent in the future timeline). Hence, you would need to duck around a corner or banish all nearby enemies out of sight before using the talent to get out of a dicey situation. The main rational for having the new talent is that if you invest heavily in Precognition so the duration is 15-17 turns, you are essentially trapped in that timeline until the duration expires. There are situations in which a long duration is not desired.

I'm not sure I like that either though. It sounds like it would basically do what resting would do.

Maybe Precognition itself could teach you to end your visions early. Say at talent level 3 or 4 you learn another talent called Abort Precognition or whatever. If your Precog's current duration is under 50% of it's maximum duration you can Abort it.

In other words, if you cast Precognition and the duration is 10 turns, you can cast Abort Precognition any time after the Precog duration hits 5 turns.
This would still be a fairly powerful escape option but..
A) You'd have to be extremely patient to bias your Precognition durations to take maximum advantage of it since you wouldn't even learn the ability until your base Precog duration was pushing 10+ and..
B) Chrono restores take place at the end of the game turn, so you could still be killed between the time you cast Abort Precognition and the time the spell actually took affect.
The talent would also take a turn to use (again to keep the talent as more of a scouting tool rather then making it an uber get out of jail free card).

How's that sound to you guys?

How about.... Make Precog's duration constant/dependent only on Paradox, and investing more into the talent decreases the time before the supplementary talent lets you cancel it? That way, investing in Precog is always beneficial. The main upside to increasing Precog's duration is that it allows you to "scout" more, but that's more of a matter of resting, Tuning, and trying again.

Hey, relatively new player here - just joined a week or two ago, and already paradox mage is pretty much my favorite class, up there with alchemist. At first, I looked down on Precognition a bit, lacking caution and tending to barge into things, and seeing that icky little 'a vision of your own death is still fatal'. However, with time, it's grown on me a lot, and the whole idea and ability is a really awesome idea, but I still think the whole mechanic still needs a bit of tweaking, though.

I like the being able to cancel it a bit, and wouldn't even mind a harsher cooldown/cost if it happened - possibly even make a very long cooldown or larger paradox cost come only if you do cancel it, to keep scouting easy.

Some of the problems I see with the skill, though, is it's kind of hard to justify investing more than one point in precognition itself, and I still can't really see myself using moment of prescience at all. Plus, See The Threads seems very redundant, especially for a final-tier talent, and seems to be dragging down that whole tree - I can't find anyone on the chat who likes to use the Timeline Threading tree.

With precognition itself, investing a point in it is easy for me, because it's a step towards Spin Fate, which is a very amazingly powerful defensive tool, building up saves and defense to very high levels with minimal maintenence. Thing is, you don't really need precognition to get a spun fate to high levels in the most relevant spin fate stat goes - defense. Enemies will be attacking you all the time, raising your defense, while with saves, the most important save is the first one - if you're stunned or dazed or whatnot you could end up dead, and enemies don't tend to reapply status effects anywhere near as fast.

Without needing precognition to build up spin fate, the main reason I use it is to scout around - and having a too long duration actually can sometimes increase the danger there - you're locked in whatever dangerous situation you were peeking into, giving them more time to give you a fatal 'vision of death'. Plus, almost all longer-duration scouts can be equaled with multiple applications of 1/5 precognition with a bit of carefulness.

The finishing blow for fully investing in precognition/foresight talents, for me,is the fact that there are just so many essential generic talents for paradox mages, many of which are needed for me to survive inside a fight , while precognition generally helps me prepare for a fight (not counting spin fate, which by itself is essential for me to survive), but don't directly do much inside the fight.

Moment of Prescience is a bit dubious for me - since I don't actually try to fight enemies in Precognition, there's very little randomness in what ends up happening, so I don't usually need to keep a precognition when I can just do the same thing after it hops back. I could see it having a bit of use, but again it kinda gets stuck as a 1 point thing, especially because investing 5 points just to see (the admittedly horribly evil and cruel) dreads and ruin banshees is a bit pricy. The thing which really baffles me though, is how it apparently converts your Spin Fate defenses into offense - what does a paradox mage need with accuracy, mind power, or physical power? To rub it in, magic afflictions are fairly rare compared to the others, so you won't even get spellpower very often. The fact that you only get 11% per point of what's already a not-huge number means you'll only end up getting like 1-5 spellpower in a fight, probably, with a lot of work carefully cultivating spell power spin

As far as Seeing the Threads goes, it seems too similar to precognition + moment of prescience, only this time even if you get the result you wanted, you're possibly locked into one or two more visions, each of which you have another chance to die in - which will then stick! Considering this is the final tier talent of a paradox-mage only school you have to spend a category point for (in contrast to precognition being usable for temporal wardens too) it seems a bit too cautious. Then, you consider the fact that someone with precognition can upgrade precognition to do other things as well, while seeing the threads is locked into the one thing, makes it seem worse all around.

Maybe Seeing the Threads needs some powerful, unique effect to separate it - possibly something like being able to survive a vision of your own death, at a cost? Maybe something like knocking you back to your starting point, with a very dangerously large amount of paradox, a guaranteed anomaly, or both? Heck, if it wasn't too much that'd be a pretty awesome addition to the generally usefulness of precognition, though it might be too powerful for such an early power, though you could restrict that effect to 5/5 or even add it on as a side-effect of learning or raising moment of prescience.

Sorry if I kinda rambled or presumed too much, I just really have been interested in the possibilities of precognition, and saw this thread and had to comment

First of all thanks for the feedback. It's always good to get another perspective on things.

You bring up some interesting points but as far as Moment of Prescience goes for a Paradox Mage, keep in mind that it's not just a Paradox Mage tree. Wardens should find turning spin into offensive boosts a lot more affective (free accuracy, physical power, and spell power on a class that uses all three?).

Paradox Mages can also be built as melee characters. The first Paradox Mage winner in fact was melee and I don't think that option has really been nerfed. But you're right, Paradox Mage casters generally have better things to invest generic talent points in which in my opinion is fine. The Energy and Spacetime Weaving trees I think are both amazing and for a caster focused Paradox Mage I think they work very well.

One thing I think you may have missed about See the Threads is that it does not take an action to cast. This opens up a lot of strategic options, especially in a boss fight.

But I'll ponder some more on how to make Precognition worth investing in along with Moment of Prescience. Note that my focus is still going to be on melee for the Moment of Prescience/Spin Fate combo. But maybe I'll move Spin Fate to end of the tree and have it scale with points invested in the rest of the tree or something along those lines. The ability is probably a bit to good in the current state of the game (I had balanced it right before all these save changes went in) so it could stand to be toned down a bit. If people still want it to be as good as it is now they can invest a bit more in the prerequisite talents.

By the way, most forms of scumming involving time travel have been removed but I've found that you can still use Precognition + Moment of Prescience to scum Melinda's father's quest reward, non-farportal boss drops, and the final stats on Limmir's amulet. Not sure if those were left in intentionally, or if they're an oversight, but there they are.

I've run a couple Cornac temporal wardens not particularly far in the new version and I have to agree that Foresight has problems.

My first attempt pumped it and died because he ran into something while scouting that confuse locked him at least once. The simplification of wild infusions into three types has made it a lot harder to get by with just one that does the really important stuff.

The main problem I have with Moment of Prescience is not only that three out of its four benefits are entirely useless for Paradox Mages, but that one out of four of its benefits is entirely useless for pretty much near all conceivable classes that might get the talent (unless someone puts in Chronomancer class escorts so that Mindpower using classes can get the talent). Right now I rate the odds of someone implementing a psionic time traveling class as not very high.

Meanwhile, while Temporal Wardens might benefit from three out of four, they will still benefit if it only gives Spellpower, thanks to Temporal Folding. Not only that, the power will actually increase in usability to them since now they can convert mental saves into Spellpower instead of the useless Mindpower.

But, I dunno, maybe the full tree just isn't meant for Paradox Mages.

As I said above the first paradox mage winner was actually built to melee. But you're right, the tree is geared more towards Temporal Wardens. I'll have to think about Moment of Prescience too. I'm giving a lot of thought to how to rebalance this tree. I think the ideas are solid but the numbers need some tweaking, Spin Fate for instance is too good and there's still not a lot of reason to invest in the other talents.

As to Mindpower. It was simply because of the relationships between the relevant saves and the attack values. Mind saves convert to mental power and while it's true that that doesn't really do anything for either of the two classes it's there for the sake of completeness. I could have just left it out and I don't think people would have really noticed. Some day though we may have a psionic/chronomancer hybrid so who knows. But I'll give that some more thought too.

But yeah, maybe all Spin could be converted to spellpower as you suggested Kaja, that sounds like an interesting idea.