Reworking Chronomancy ver 2

[edge2054]

Warp?

Warp Field - Sustain. Surround yourself with a Warp field that inflicts X physical and temporal damage and a random status effect on enemies that damage you out to a range of X. This effect can only occur X times per turn and only once per enemy. (Ranged retaliation damage).

Wall Phasing - You can now phase through solid matter while Warp Field is active. This disables your Warp Field for X turns.

Displace Damage - Your Warp Field now displaces X% of the damage that triggers its warp effect onto a random enemy within range.

Warp Blast - Active. Destabilize your Warp Field, inflicting X physical and X temporal damage on all enemies in a radius of X. Affected targets may be blinded, stunned, pinned, dazed, or confused. Using this talent disables your Warp Field for 1 turn.

[SageAcrin]

My initial reaction is tentatively iffy on that, but not because it's unworkable.

It's just relying on stuff that needs very high figures to be useful, and it can be challenging to make it not better for enemies than the player.

I think, though, if you can make it work, it'll be very unique and cool. So it's worth a try if you want to do it.

Warp is a good concept regardless, feels like you're on the right track on that end no matter what.

[donkatsu]

I know you're pushing past Temporal Wardens, but here are a few last niggles I had:

Trim Threads: Have anomalies act like Catalepsy, where the remaining damage is increased, say by 25%, in addition to making it instant. Right now the duration is too short for instant damage to really matter, and without meaningful anomaly interaction its thematic tie to the rest of the tree is really weak. Then cut the base damage on Trim Threads a little to compensate, since its damage is already pretty good.
Disentangle: Why not just say the base paradox recovery on random anomalies is 100%, and Disentangle recovers X/2% more, instead of saying base is 200% and Disentangle recovers X% more? Unless I'm misunderstanding the math?
Frayed Threads: Could be a lot stronger. Since it only affects the damage portion of the respective sustains, and doesn't help at all against the primary target, I think its value could be safely doubled and still be a fairly weak talent.

[edge2054]

Yeah, Fray Threads bothers me a bit.

Trim Threads is going to interact with another talent that PMs will get. I've considered extending the duration and reducing the damage but I don't want to nerf it to much to make the instant thing good. I'll think about having it deal additional damage when triggered.

Disentangle is trying to communicate the base value, which is Paradox * 2 of whatever spell you cast. So if you cast something that costs 20 Paradox and it triggers an anomaly, you get 40 Paradox back. Disentangle modifies this base. But I'll see if I can word it better.

[edge2054]

Considering doing a Phasing tree.

Phase Shield - Will replace displace damage and work similarly, but will be active and have higher values (time shield stand in).

Phase Shift - Your Phase Shield now removes one random status effect per turn. Each time this effect is triggered the remaining duration of your Phase Shield is reduced by 1. Learning this talent increases your Phase Shield duration by X.

Phase Walk - While Phase Shield is active you may pass through actors and terrain. Doing so reduces the duration of Phase Shield by 1. Learning this talent increases your Phase Shield duration by X.

Phase Blast(not sure on this one) - While Phase Shield is active X% of all temporal damage you deal is converted into physical damage.

The current Phase Shift will become Void Walk and give the player bonuses after a teleport (like the ones on phase door rune and void walker egos).

[SageAcrin]

Good thematic idea and a lot simpler to do well than the last idea.

You sure you have enough blasting without Dust to Dust, though? I haven't looked over the details there. It seems probable, just covering my suggestion bases.

[Parcae2]

As a general rule, I am not a fan of timed defensive effects. They strike me as an unnecessary level of hassle, since they wind up being something you cast at the start of every battle anyway (and, unless they're also instant, autocasting them is a bad idea). I would rather see Phase Shield as a sustain whose power is reduced or increased by Phase Walk (and regenerates slowly over time).

For Phase Blast, bear in mind that it is much easier to get +temporal damage than +physical.

[edge2054]

Well they're certainly utility heavy but I think they'll be alright.

Energy (defense, utility+single target nuke, redux, utility+ ball nuke)

Fate Threading (ball nuke, utility, utility, defense)

Gravity (cone nuke, ball nuke, utility, ball map effect)

Paradox (beam, utility, clone, utility)

Speed Control (all utility)

Timeline Threading (beam, clone, cone, mass clone)

Spacetime Folding (ball traps that nuke, beam, utility, utility + nuke)

That's just the unlocked trees.

But yeah, I wouldn't mind something other than Phase Blast. Maybe even keep the name but have it do something neat like proc radius X physical balls when you deal temporal damage and temporal chain lightning bolts when you deal physical damage (% based, only one of each effect per turn). Not sure how well that fits the theme but some kind of spell proc is an idea I've been playing around with for awhile.

[edge2054]

As a general rule, I am not a fan of timed defensive effects. They strike me as an unnecessary level of hassle, since they wind up being something you cast at the start of every battle anyway (and, unless they're also instant, autocasting them is a bad idea). I would rather see Phase Shield as a sustain whose power is reduced or increased by Phase Walk (and regenerates slowly over time).

For Phase Blast, bear in mind that it is much easier to get +temporal damage than +physical.

I hear ya Parcae but I've heard several times now, why don't PMs get Time Shield! And, well, they kinda do (Damage Smearing).

Anyway I'll think about making it a sustain. I haven't started coding it yet.

[SageAcrin]

On the record, I prefer an active shield, but that's me.

[donkatsu]

What I really like about Phase Shift on Temporal Wardens is that it encourages a lot of teleporting in combat instead of just saving them for escaping. By comparison, void walk bonuses, I believe, last for 5 turns, so it only incentivizes teleporting once every 5 turns, which you could keep up permanently with just Temporal Assault and Temporal Wake without even thinking about using Dimensional Step as something other than an escape. If Temporal Wardens are to lose Phase Shift for Void Walk, some sort of stacking benefit would be nice so you're still rewarded for being aggressive with your teleports.

I'm okay with timed defensive effects as long as they're short. Like 5 turns, tops. If they last too long then there really is no reason not to just pop all of them at once, but if they're short enough, with a long enough cooldown, then there are enough situations where I'd want to strategically time it, and that's more interesting than a sustain or a passive.

[edge2054]

I'd be alright with renaming Phase Shift too. It's really the name that makes it feel like it belongs in that tree.

[Parcae2]

I agree that short timed buffs with long cooldowns are fine. The problem is that, based on the skill descriptions, there's a second talent that increases the duration (plus it has to be reasonably long so that it doesn't expire immediately when you're walking through walls). To me, that says that the duration will wind up being around 10ish, which is long enough that it will normally be cast at the start of battles ... while at the same time being juuuuust enough of a tactical choice that you can't autocast it. Hence my preference for a sustain.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, that's why it's hard to do an entire tree around one active buff; It's hard to make meaningful talent investments without them feeling like talent point taxes.

Why not a talent that only takes effect while Phase Shift is on cooldown? A passive buff that ups some defenses while it's recharging? You could use that instead of the duration buffer, and it could perhaps still allow for the mobility effect at a reduced power. Partial Phase?

That's interesting, as it makes this the clear first defensive talent to use without totally cheapening the effect into essentially a talent tax sustain.

[Parcae2]

Just saw that the new Paradox Clone talent shares damage between you and the summon. Doesn't that make the talent kind of useless? I don't relish the prospect of getting one-shotted because my clone was too dumb to step out of melee range.