Reworking Chronomancy ver 2

[grayswandir]

Is Edge supposed to be back soon? If not, maybe I'll write this up as a replacement class.

That's a shame, I was really looking forward to a new Heavy remodeled like the new TW.

[Doctornull]

Is Edge supposed to be back soon? If not, maybe I'll write this up as a replacement class.

That's a shame, I was really looking forward to a new Heavy remodeled like the new TW.

The Heavy already has some melee spells, but he's not strictly limited to melee spells.

IMHO that's a good model for the TW: some Technique stuff, some Chronomancy stuff, lots of synergy between them.

[Razakai]

Well, my TW Nightmare Roguelike run ended in Telmur. As powerful as I was, I got overconfident with a high damage Shadowblade rare and a string of anomalies resulted in my death. I'm about to try another run going for Threaded Combat instead. Some suggestions I'd make:

- Remove the friendly fire on Singularity Arrow or make it ball targeted. At the moment it's just too risky to use as mobs can move mid-shot, resulting in you getting pulled in and taking a lot of damage
- Likewise, removing the friendly fire on the time breath for hounds would be nice. Currently it's a little awkward to use anyway as it requires all 3 hounds to be alive and in the right position. Or even have it give you a buff if you get hit by the breath
- Haste is kind of weak for such a long cooldown effect that also requires stacking of Time Dilation. Plus it scales very poorly with point investment.
- In general, the class may need some number tweaking. Damage and defence in general is very high, but no particular talent stands out as being the source of the problem (although Arrow Stitching/Temporal Assault are pretty crazy). This is lower priority though, it's not Wildfire AM level broken or anything.

Aside from that, the class is in a very good position. Very fun to play, feels strong with no outstanding weaknesses but without feeling totally broken either.

[0player]

Razakai, in my playthroughs I found that having temporal/hysical damage resistance is essential in the fine job of not blowing yourself up with your clones, or vice versa. Adding more friendly fire would shift the theme of the class away from "your folly is your greatest enemy".

[Razakai]

Except for breath and singularity arrow, I don't think theres any friendly fire left at all in chronomancy. PM in particular has none at all thanks to the new gravity sustain.

Even with resists, arrow also pulls you in which can be very dangerous against melee. Currently its an awkward to use gravity spike so I can't see myself using it much.

[Bormoth]

Umm it is much better then i thought it would be. I had quite a lot of fun with gather thread in old yeek chronomancer, but this iteration is good.
Though few gripes.
--Is there any chance dimensional anchor affect you as well, Kinda see, tether, anchor,wormhole dance be pretty strong and unique combat experience. Though Wormhole, with movement infusion can be quite good already.

--Also is there any chance for cracked space wall having 3 charge factor to make wall impassable for both projectiles and you. Looks like good synergy with first gravity skill making it much more reliable, and less dependable on second skill.(Btw. first gravity skill synergies quite well with summons quite well too.)
For now it is like 5 turn setup (Pull mines, anchor, tether/Pull with gravity through mines, wall, push) for just 50% extra damage, or 7 for double.
While (shards, wall, push) would at least make it up for times when enemy not too far.

--Another thing is gravity locus. Is there any chance for it affect on any hits not just melee, it looks poorly on paradox mage to let stuff close to you and in most cases melee can't even hit you most time. Passive or aura would be cool too.

--visual cue on time dilation of how much time of buff left until it loses stuck similar to movement infusion(because now it is pain to use with movement infusion, it just disperses at most inappropriate moment) Though maybe it is not that big deal if I use super synergy with temporal reprieve(3-4 total points just required), for setup, but still.

--Induced phenomena is pretty neat idea I hope you find to make it work, maybe add damage every time wave expands or contracts(weaker version of "ashes to ashes") so it would look more dynamic and wouldn't lose momentum, but I can see it working quite well with other time damage talents or even as support to other talents, even at current state.

P.s. "Crystle's Astral Bindings" use old dust to dust skill, any chance at least to make it do warp damage(Ok, I know they meant for ice archmages and necromancers, and endless woes(maybe), but still one more to stack of cracked space is hard to resist. And it is already doing physical+temporal.)

[Razakai]

I agree that Gravity Locus applying the debuff in a short range aura might be more appropriate, but I haven't played around with Gravity much myself.

Also, a few bugs I found:

- The projectile for Thread the Needle is currently a placeholder
- The damage log for Fateweaver has a typo (Fatewever)
- Your Paradox Mage clone in Daikara as TW has the new Temporal Fugue. This is ridiculously buggy, I had them applying multiple sever lifeline stacks, spawning several temporal rifts and more

[Bormoth]

It is pretty solid now Razakai as long as you use abilities to full potential damage is in numbers of 400 at 20ies on normal Though I have 35% increased physical damage(20% tier 4 stuff, and 15% stone cloak)
The problem comes when you meet drakes or other knockback immune enemies. In fact knock-back is such minor status in terms of monsters I'd have it 60%-70% reduced for you gravity spells.
Also that Discontinuity walls just scream for synergy, but to much of setup hassle. So the best bet against knockback resistant or immune enemies is actually knockbacking summons into them(like spiders from mummified sack of Ungole), but they die too fast inside gravity well.
Found bug with it(Gravity well, and slowing field anomaly are exclusive and overwrite each other(Sad to see that 15% slow overwriting my 50%))
Also correct me if I am wrong but knockback resistance is pretty much common endgame(I haven't got a chance to get end game yet my previous PM was killed in large Vault by Fearscaping boss.

Most humiliating that not even boss who killed me and not even fearscape.
Despite fearscape had poor layout for me but I managed to dispel it, only to get teleported by it inside pack of mobs and boss disappear(probably it should return actors to their previous places, instead of returning them to caster position.

Btw same thing with dreaming horror, I summoned in ruined dungeon. Instead of epic fight he just dreamscaped me next turn I stand alone with half health and he is dead(Are my clones so strong to kill him not leaving loot?))

[Razakai]

So my latest TW died in the prides after entering a fearscape portal. Level 90 greater demons are painful. I might give them a break for now, as I've seen nearly all the class has to offer. Some suggestions:

- Strength of Purpose should really apply to ammo as well. Having to gear swap to get the str required for the high end artifact quivers like Siege Arrows was annoying
- I think arrows should pass through your clones by default. Half the time when using Twin Threads I'd either end up killing my own clones or be unable to fight back as they'd block my shots while I got pummeled by AoEs
- With the reliance on teleports for debuff cleansing, vaults and other no teleport zones like the Weirdling Beast fight are utterly crippling for TW. I'd really make Dimensional Shift cleanse debuffs even on a failed teleport
- The scaling on several talents should be looked at. In particular:
Webs of Fate: The main draw is the stun/pin removal. Maybe have the cooldown dependent on points?
Fateweaver: After 2-3 points you get maybe 1% damage reduction per point, which is negligible
Blended Threads: As above, 2 points is all you need really. Maybe give it a TL5 unique effect of some sort?
Haste: 2 points pretty much caps this ability out. In general though it feels very weak compared to other speed boosts, which is disappointing considering this class's theming

[edge2054]

Hi guys, thanks for the continued feedback.

Had some personal stuff to sort out but I'll be implementing some of the balance suggestions you guys have made while I was gone.

TWs aren't going to change much. I like them going more the Reaver/Sun Paladin route vs. the Shadowblade/AB route and overall I'm happy with the design though I'm sure some of the numbers still need tweaking.

PMs won't see any major changes before 1.3 releases but Induced Phenomena may make it in in a future release (I really do love the concept of that tree). I see TWs being more 'feature complete' than PMs but the updates to both of these classes took a lot out of me and I ended up really pushing for perfection and feeling overwhelmed with it all so had to take a step back.

Over the next few weeks I'll be looking at balancing the talents the two classes currently have, going through egos and artifacts so they play more to the classes current strengths, updating monsters, and adding graphical effects to the talents that still need them.

Stuff I'm currently looking at...

- Speed Control: The tree feels weak, especially for masters of 'time'. I may make Haste passive and tie it into Time Dilation/Celerity.
- Time Dilation: Really needs a graphical effect, preferably one that gives an indication of stack size.
- Fateweaver: I'll probably decouple this from spellpower to give it smoother scaling. I think Parcae suggested this a long time ago and I was too stubborn to listen
- Webs of Fate: Scaling.
- Gravity Locus: Knockback reduction will apply to all gravity damage prior to being applied (in other words, it will be a global effect for the tree rather than for Gravity Locus' on hit effect).
- Discontinuity: I don't like that the wall 'breaks' when a mob is directly targeted. I'll see if I can get it to respect terrain but ignore actors when the wall is created.
- Temporal/Physical balance on egos/artifacts. Right now it's biased towards Temporal which leaves Physical/Warp behind on damage.
- NPC stats. I'll be sure to look at the TW quest as was mentioned and plan to go through all the other temporal monsters to make sure they're up to date.
- Damage reduction stacking. Going to double post to talk about this a bit as it's probably the biggest issue that needs to be addressed.

So those are my priorities.

Some stuff I'm on the fence about.

- Twin Threads: The cooldown, duration, and damage the Twins do all scale. I'm not sure how it caps out at 2 points. As far as positioning goes I can see how having your shots blocked can be frustrating but the class also has access to an instant CPD spell. I'm not opposed to changing it but I think I'd need to hear some stronger arguments.
- Command: Breathe: I can see how this could be an issue for more melee oriented TWs. I used Temporal Hounds extensively on a more ranged oriented build and Command Blink + Breathe seemed very affective. But I could look at changing how the breath affects the caster. Maybe a heal based on the temporal damage affinity the hounds get rather than damage for the caster.
- Singularity Arrow: Another talent I used quite a bit on my TW playthrough. I didn't see much issue with it. Often I would target empty tiles rather than firing directly at monsters to prevent it exploding in my face. I also coupled it with Time Stop a few times. But Razakai isn't the first person to mention having problems with it so I'll admit that it's at least counter intuitive. Maybe giving it an instant travel speed would help?

Anyway I'm open to more feedback but I may not reply to everyone. I think trying to make everyone happy was part of why I got overwhelmed. I really want to prioritize and get things polished for 1.3. Major changes will have to wait.

[edge2054]

Alright, defense stacking.

The way I see it TWs/PMs have three primary forms of defense. Defense (Chronomancy tree/Spin Fate), Damage Reduction (lots of this), Positioning (teleports and summons).

I think Defense and Positioning are okay and that Damage Reduction is what needs to be looked at the most. So that's what I want to take a look at.

Here's the Damage Reduction talents I could find.

Shared
- Preserve Pattern
- Fateweaver
- Phase Shift

Paradox Mage
- Temporal Fugue
- Energy Decomposition

Temporal Warden
- Guardian Unity

Of these talents Fateweaver and Preserve Pattern are probably my favorites as far as how they function mechanically. They're also both more passive. Energy Decomposition seems to be the one mentioned the least and it's probably the one that scales the least with difficulty level (in other words, Energy Decomposition is probably a great talent on normal difficulty but loses a lot of oomph on higher difficulty settings).

Phase Shift and Temporal Fugue have a lot of overlap. They're both active talents that reduce damage by a flat percentage. Of the two I'd say Temporal Fugue is the most interesting though Phase Shift has some nice synergy with Dimensional Shift and Phase Pulse. Phase Shift also has some strong overlap with Guardian Unity. Here we see a passive talent and an active talent. Both trigger based on how much damage you take. Both reduce damage by a percentage.

So I'm thinking that Phase Shift is probably our prime candidate for some adjustments. That said I do like the effect. I think it's logically consistent with how the Lightning Rune works and I like the synergy it adds to the tree. On the other hand it also seems to be the biggest offender with Spellbinding abuses.

I'm leaning towards dropping the damage reduction. Maybe it could work well as an evasion effect or even a defense bonus, keeping it somewhat consistent with Lightning Runes. Of the two I prefer defense bonuses.

So here's my initial idea. Make Phase Shift a buff that raises your defense by a percentage (similar to the Marauder talent mobile defense). While Phase Shift is active any ranged or melee attacks that miss cause you to teleport a single tile. This would let it keep it's synergy with the rest of the spacetime weaving tree and would shift it out of the Damage Reduction talents and into the Defense talents.

Now I know that Defense isn't anyone's favorite stat and I know that changing Phase Shift alone may not be enough to address Chronomancer 'tankiness'. But I think it might be a good start and personally, I've always loved Mobile Defense and I think this approach would synergize well with some of the Defense talents the classes already have.

Thoughts?

[Candesce]

- Singularity Arrow: Another talent I used quite a bit on my TW playthrough. I didn't see much issue with it. Often I would target empty tiles rather than firing directly at monsters to prevent it exploding in my face. I also coupled it with Time Stop a few times. But Razakai isn't the first person to mention having problems with it so I'll admit that it's at least counter intuitive. Maybe giving it an instant travel speed would help?

Oooh, an instant travel speed would be lovely.

Accidentally hitting yourself with one of these because the timing worked out that your target got to take a step towards you just before the arrow hit is a really unpleasant surprise, even if it doesn't happen very often.

I actually use this talent fairly often, but pretty exclusively at level 1; not only are there lots of other lovely places to put the points in, increasing the radius of effect frequently reduces the number of situations where I'm actually willing to use it. Vaults and tunnels and etc just don't have the room, sometimes.

(Especially since there's a vault I remember that has a number of rooms with a lovely opening for a minimum-radius singularity, but will pull you through a door into a killzone with a radius one higher.)

[MarginalMagus]

Edge is back!

[MarginalMagus]

First off loving the class!

I think there are definitely too many sources of damage reduction--they overlap confusingly (which applies first?), and have hard-to-gauge end results. I like the idea of choosing between different styles of defensive power to suit your playstyle but there seems to be no reason not to just stack them indiscriminately. I agree with the proposed phase shift changes and propose the following: preserve pattern could receive a buff and be changed to only apply to non-physical damage, so that defense remains necessary. Energy decomposition could be removed, or changed to be a non-sustain, brief but powerful effect.

In addition, I think phase pulse's damage should increase enormously (more even than doubling) on a failed teleport--this could counteract the prevailing "don't fight at above 0% fail rate" wisdom and lead to more exciting gameplay moments.

Edit:

Interestingly, physical damage from a magical source, which wouldn't be defended against, is mainly from gravity PMs, and PMs themselves would have gravity immunity.

[Doctornull]

Okay I've gotten my thoughts coherent on the current revision.

Chronomancy Proposal

— Temporal Warden —
There were three different Clone talents. Clones are neat but c'mon, that's too many of the same thing: <insert clone joke here>.

Blade Threading
- Warp Blade - if you hit, impose Wasting effect on target with highest of Spellpower or Accuracy
- Ripple Blade - attack all targets in a row (distance 2-4 beam)
- Arc Blade - attack all targets a frontal arc; if you hit, try to Daze
- Blink Blade - (Temporal Assault, renamed to be more descriptive)

Bow Threading
- Ricochet Arrow - (low CD) arrow bounces once like Slime Spit
- Recursive Arrow - (low CD) fire two arrows at a target
- Singularity Arrow - make it friendly-fire because clones; otherwise it's great
- Paradox Arrow - piercing arrow moves backwards in time from most distant target

Temporal Combat
- Weapon Folding - passive or sustained; deal extra Temporal damage and gain APR (as it is now)
- Impact - Gain 3 activated timed effect talents, which deal the same damage as Weapon Folding. Each effect lasts for 5-15 turns, and you can only use one at a time:
Fold Fate: 50% chance to confuse target for (3-9) turns, and each hit moves your Paradox closer to your chosen baseline (Paradox number improves with investment and Spellpower)
Fold Gravity: deal extra Physical damage, which can pin
Fold Void: deal extra Darkness damage, which can blind
- Invigorate (as-is)
- Breach (as-is)

Temporal Guardian
- Strength of Purpose - as-is except DON'T replace Str for damage calculation. TW get a ton of bonus damage and building Strength ought to be a valid gimmick. Do let people wield weapons without having enough Str, of course.
- Weapon Braiding - (passive) Once per turn, when you damage an enemy, add that enemy to your Braid group for (3-8) turns. Braid group clears when you leave a level.
- Guardian Unity (as-is)
- Guardian Clarity - 10-50% immunity to Silence and Confusion, 4-20% physical and temporal respen

Speed Control
- Currently, Celerity stacks can be preserved in spite of making archery attacks by move-scumming. Optimal play is tediously watching the icon duration go from 1 to 2. Just make it a Passive which increases Movement speed, that worked fine and didn't promote tedium.
- Time Dilation - a bit too complex IMHO, perhaps make it a ground effect which slows enemies and enemy projectiles but not you & your projectiles?
- Haste - also too complex IMHO, especially since a simple global speed buff would interact nicely with all the other effects in this tree. Making it the same global speed buff that Shaloren use would mildly nerf Shaloren Chronomancers which is also a nice perk.
- Time Stop - awesome effect, maybe have it only work when you're standing in a Time Dilation ground effect? Your own or an enemy's, of course.

Spacetime Folding
(suggest replacing Wormhole with Banish for better synergy with Dimensional Anchor, but not bad as-is)

Temporal Hounds
(their breath damage is too randomly targeted, make it friendly-fire)

Threaded Combat
- Frayed Threads
- Thread the Needle
- Blended Threads - replace, this can be scummed by canceling targeting and makes optimal play tedious.
- Twin Threads - maybe rename to include the word "Clone"?

Fate Threading
(make this locked and high-level and see below)

Timetravel
(REMOVE, this class should not have direct attack spells)


— Paradox Mage —
The issue here is that there's basically one build. You get too much benefit out of Temporal damage to bother going deep into Physical, which is a shame since Gravity is so nice, and your only way to deal with Paradox is Disentangle, so you're pretty much stuffed into Rethread + Temporal Bolt, and Rethread alone was buff enough to carry my test Adventurer through Dreadfell 8.

My proposal here is threefold:
- Give two different ways to handle Paradox, one conservative and the other one focused on generating Anomalies on purpose.
- Make it viable to build for Physical, while retaining the good stuff that Temporal can do.
- Move awesome but overpowered effects like Rethread into high-level trees, where they can be balanced while still being awesome.


New high-level tree: Stasis
(this is the "conservative" tree for Keepers of Reality PMs)
- Static History
- Stop
- Slow
- Paradox Mastery

Fate Threading: make high level, and rename to something wild and crazy like "Anomaly Weaving" or "Invoked Paradox"
(this is the "wild and crazy Anomaly" tree for guys who play fast and dirty with reality)
- Disentangle - rename to Sever
- Preserve Pattern - rename to Preserve Self, because screw the 'pattern'
- Trim Threads - awesome
- Bias Weave - reduce friendly-fire damage from minor Anomalies by 20-100%, and from major Anomalies by 10-50%. That's good enough to let me run wild, but preserves all the "fun" effects like getting knocked around.


New tree: Matter
- Dust to Dust (CD 4) - it's still on gear and monsters and NPCs, and it's a good spell if we bump up the CD to make it work better alongside Temporal Bolt
- Disintegrate - (passive) buff up Dust to Dust to penetrate digable walls up to 1-3 tiles, and impose Disintegrating status on enemies (-% physical resist, -50% teleport immunity).
- Hardening - (sustain) gain armor hardiness and 10-50% immunity to knockback and stun.
- Entomb - just like the Anomaly effect except on purpose.

New high-level tree: Carbon
- Carbon Spikes (sustain)
- Hurl Spike (active, CD 4) - smite targeting, Bleed damage, attempt to Pin; requires and consumes 1 spike.
- Infiltration (passive) - while Carbon Spikes is sustained, any Bleeding you impose also reduces the target's Accuracy and Spell Save by 10-50 (scaled with your Spellpower), and all damage by 10-30% (scaled by talent level only).
- Animate Spikes (passive) - while Carbon Spikes is sustained, you have a 20-100% chance to cast Hurl Spike on a random adjacent enemy. This casting requires a spike, but does not consume a spike.


Timeline Threading: make high level
- Rethread - fine at CD 4, level 10, especially with the 3-target nerf
- Braid Lifelines - maybe have it work like Braid Weapons, plus working on everyone hit by Rethread
- Temporal Fugue
- Cease to Exist - used to be awesome as a high-level capstone, still ought to be good in that role