Reworking Chronomancy ver 2

[HousePet]

Would you like me to do anything else?
Pull chronomancy designs from alternate timelines?
Pull chronomancy items from alternate timelines?

Basically, do you need anything while I have this time rift open?

[donkatsu]

I just got the leftover Doomed shadow thing without even using Cease to Exist or splitting the timeline, just using Rethread and Trim Threads, so I guess it's not a Cease to Exist issue.

Time Skip is another one of those things that fugue clones use that actively sabotages me. Can their AI be tweaked not to use it?

I'm sort of on the fence about PM defenses. Often it feels OP, but I've also been oneshot right through Preserve Pattern + Fateweaver + Energy Decomposition by outliers like Shadowstrike Lightning. I think overall it's balanced out by the complete lack of ways to get more effective hp (either healing or shielding) outside of inscriptions, so 500 damage on a PM hurts a LOT more than, say, 500 damage on an Archmage. Then again, I guess you could cheese Disentangle until you get a Time Shield, and that would patch up that particular weakness. I really don't know yet. I'm level 33 on Insane in Dreadfell, and I've died twice because I was "saving" Phase Shift, and eight times because I wanted to see if PM defenses would be enough to take on Insane Dark Crypt. PS- they weren't, but I had no blight resist and I was only in my early 20's, so I think any class would have died.

[Parcae2]

Yeah, I don't really know for sure yet if they're too strong or not. If you run the numbers, their defense is fairly similar to a Mindslayer with Forcefield up, but Forcefield can only be sustained for a finite time. On the other hand, PMs are more vulnerable to things like Disperse Magic and Silence. On the third hand, PMs have great utility/recovery spells like Reprieve, Fugue, etc. On the fourth hand, Paradox is a difficult resource to manage - you need to invest heavily to be able to control it somewhat, and it's very hard to reduce in a hurry.

Anyway, I'd still like to see one of Fateweaver or Phase Shift go. They're too similar. I don't know if they need to be replaced by another defensive talent or just eliminated, or eliminated while buffing the remaining talent, or what.

Edit: Regarding clones using Time Skip, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, sometimes you'll summon them against a boss and they'll instantly Skip her, rendering them useless. On the other, sometimes you'll summon them against a horde of enemies and they'll whittle them down enough to focus on the important ones. I think it's just the name of the game.

Maybe Skip and Reprieve should switch positions. That would serve two purposes: it would gimp physical PMs less (since they wouldn't have to invest so much into the tree just to get Reprieve), and it would enable players to make an informed decision about what they want to do about Skip.

[Parcae2]

Oh, and regarding Time Skip and fugue clones, there are other ways to manage the interaction. You can, for example, repeatedly Time Skip a target until it starts resisting, then Fugue. Then it's just another damage spell for them to use.

[Parcae2]

It is possible to guarantee anomalies by repeatedly attempting a targeted action and canceling it.

[donkatsu]

I think Phase Shift will be okay once it's changed to only trigger on big hits. In addition to distinguishing it from Fateweaver, that'll also nerf the detrimental status-curing part of it, which is good because I think it actually synergizes too well with the teleport talents. Nothing short of Anomaly Blink gets you that many teleport triggers that easily, and Blink gets lost to Dimensional Shift.

Comparing defenses to Mindslayers: If we roughly equate Energy Decomposition more or less with non-transcendent shields, then Forcefield is about 70% reduction, while Fateweaver + Preserve Pattern is about [1-(0.7)(0.7)] = 50% reduction, assuming there are no DoTs, no map effects, you're only getting hit by a single target that has no summons, and they're not dual wielding or doing multi-hits. I think that's enough of a difference and enough conditions to be sorta comparable. Mindslayers have transcendents on top of that, and PMs have Phase Shift, and yeah Phase Shift is probably better in most cases. It's just hard to compare because PMs are better at single hits while Mindslayers are better at multi-hits.

[Parcae2]

Fair enough. I feel a lot better about the class's defenses after just now dying a shitty death in Norgos Lair (Madness).

[edge2054]

I don't like putting long cooldown talents early in trees. I could move skip to tier 4 though, reprieve to tier 3, and echoes to tier 2. This would also keep the defensive talents staggered.

[edge2054]

Would you like me to do anything else?
Pull chronomancy items from alternate timelines?

Basically, do you need anything while I have this time rift open?

If you have time to take a look at items that would be a big help

[Parcae2]

So here's an idea: Maybe Disentangle can lose the "reduce paradox" component (aside from the paradox removed by the generated anomaly), and is no longer instant, but it no longer has a cooldown?

The reason for this is that, as I complained earlier, it is possible to generate anomalies at will by repeatedly beginning and then canceling targeted actions. This can be a very powerful strategy (some anomalies are really good and you have a decent amount of control over them with Bias Weave) but is very boring, especially if you start at 1% anomaly chance.

I would be equally happy with something that made this a less effective strategy. The best option would be to check for anomalies only when the target has been selected, but I don't know if that's something you can easily change on your own.

[edge2054]

You've seen this behavior on the test builds Parcae? Anomaly checks have a turn proc associated with them now so chain canceling out of spells to generate an anomaly shouldn't be working and if it is there's a bug someplace.

[Parcae2]

No, that was theorycraft. Good to know it's already been handled.

[edge2054]

Pushed most of the Spacetime Weaving/Folding changes.

I'll still probably make Dimensional Anchor a map effect and make Dimensional Shift less random. Folding feels a bit weak but I don't know. Wormhole and Tether offer a lot of utility in both controlling monsters and offering self-teleportation but the continuum destabilization adds up quick. My gut reaction is to just throw some damage on them when used offensively but I'd like to hear other thoughts first.

*edit* Then again, Tether + Anchor is fairly nasty on my test character and will just get worse when Spatial Tears is finished.

[edge2054]

Made tether instant, dimensional anchor into a map effect with reduced cooldown (since it can be moved out of), and made dimensional shift reduce the duration of a timed effect rather than being random.

Not sure how I feel about that last change. It's far better when trying to get rid of a single effect and probably better early game but it kinda lost some of its uniqueness in the process. Let me know what you guys think.

[donkatsu]

New Dimensional Shift is still pretty unique, but also still pretty random. People complain a lot about physical wild infusions being random, because even though it's a 100% chance to remove an effect, if you have junk effects on you then it's still a dice roll to get the right one. Maybe have it reduce all detrimental effects? I don't know how you would do the scaling from 1 to 5 on that though. Reducing all detrimental effects by 5 turns is a bit strong, and anything less than that would have at least one level where there's no gain, which I generally dislike on talents.

Maybe have it reduce all detrimental effects by 1 + X% of the current duration? Then you could have whatever scaling you want, it would be like no other status removal talent (that I can think of at the moment), and it would be sort of like retroactive phase door runes, which sort of makes sense from a flavor perspective.