Reworking Chronomancy ver 2

[edge2054]

Because the class is short on locked trees and heavy on unlocked ones. Something needs to be locked. As Spatial Tears is basically the advanced 'warp damage' tree it felt like a natural choice.

[donkatsu]

Some ideas to give Spatial Tears more utility. It doesn't need to be over the top because it's mainly competing with Spellbinding, which I don't think is that great either.

Discontinuity: Each tile has a chance to be a void (blocks movement but not sight or projectiles, like the void tiles in Point Zero)

Fractured Space: More max charge with a lesser effect per charge for a longer buildup with greater payoff. Grants additional effects to other talents at max charge, consuming all charges:

• Spatial Fragments: Each projectile becomes a living Spatial Fragment for 6 turns upon reaching its destination. (Neutral actors that don't do much but have lots of life, there to indirectly boost your damage via Braid Lifelines and Gravity Spike, and maybe tank a little bit)
  Discontinuity: Instead of voids you get cracks in space. (blocks everything, just like solid walls).
  Sphere of Destruction: When the sphere reaches its destination, it explodes and removes sustains.

Sphere of Destruction: Let it crit It's already mediocre damage (assuming 3-4 hits on a given target), high cooldown, and it's the tier 4 of a locked tree. No need to take away crits on top of that. Crits account for a huge damage boost come lategame, which is exactly when you'd be using Sphere of Destruction.

[edge2054]

The crit thing is a coding limitation. If I can figure out a way to implement it I'll change it.

I like those ideas don

[edge2054]

Alright.

Fractured Space charges now go up to six, decay every other turn if you did not generate a charge that turn, and have reduced bonuses per charge.

Discontinuity now deals damage in a radius one ball like Forge Bellows. I nerfed the damage on it because of the overlapping balls. If you have six fractured space charges the wall it creates will block movement, but not sight or projectiles.

Sphere of Destruction can now crit and if you have six fractured space charges it will strip a single sustain when it deals damage.

Spatial Fragments I haven't updated yet.

[donkatsu]

I just finished an Insane run as a Paradox Mage. Unlocks were Spellbinding and Energy. Some thoughts:

• The biggest, most glaring problem right now is Temporal Fugue. With Cease to Exist, Temporal Fugue is way too strong. I killed both Elandar and Argoniel with a Reduxed Temporal Fugue, and that was without using Temporal Form. My main body saw exactly one turn of combat, and that was just to use gloves of dispersion. Without Cease to Exist, Temporal Fugue is... still too good, and boring to use. ToME is fun when it's dangerous, and there is absolutely zero danger when using Temporal Fugue because nothing bad can possibly happen to you. And 9 turns is a long time to be invincible. The base life penalty makes no difference because you'll just use a shielding rune and heroism infusion anyway, bringing your effective life up enough to easily survive 9 turns. The damage reduction doesn't do anything but draw out those 9 turns, making everything take longer. On the flip side, chronomancer npcs using Temporal Fugue meant 9+ turns of absolutely no progress, because nothing I did for the duration of their Temporal Fugue mattered. With Unstoppable at least you can apply debuffs and get them down to 1 hp before your actions stop mattering.
• Stuff to fix Temporal Fugue:
  -Instead of clones having less hp, have them take more damage. This makes it so you can't trivialize the penalty with heroism/shielding.
  -No more invincibility. Have damage carry over in some way, some form. I think the invulnerability is the worst offender in making it a boring spell.
  -Lower duration/longer cooldown. In fights where I optimized, I spent more turns in the Fugue state than outside of it. 18 turns of Fugue with Redux, then Matrixed Energy Absorption let me use it again like 3-4 turns later.
• I stopped using Temporal Fugue and Temporal Form to see what balance would be like without them, and it was a lot more fun. Temporal Form's only problem is that it automatically caps out your paradox spellpower bonus, tossing that whole mechanic out the window. And it's a really good mechanic, lots of calculated risks and situational awareness involved.
• Paradox Mages do a lot more damage than their numbers would suggest, because of two things: Cease to Exist and Braid Lifelines. These two talents are their biggest contributors to damage. Cease practically doubles their damage against single targets, while Braid Lifelines does the same against crowds. And if I'm focusing down a single target in a crowd? Oh boy.
• New Dimensional Shift is much, much weaker lategame where you're getting hit by junk status effects left and right. The old Dimensional Shift was too good, but the new Dimensional Shift might be too random. That's why people call Primal Infusion useless but love Relentless Pursuit.
• Paradox Mage defense is unusual in that every defense that they have only increases the worth of each hit point, but they have no way to actually increase their effective hit points, be it with shielding or healing. This sort of makes them susceptible to attrition, except not really because you can just use infusions and/or Bloodcaller (Bloodcaller was especially effective as a Paradox Mage). Healing is extremely powerful on a Paradox Mage, because of how very valuable each one of their hit points are. Archmages are sort of the opposite, in that they don't really reduce the amount of damage they take, they just soak it with massive pools of health. In the end I think the balance is okay, as long as you're not using Temporal Fugue. Come High Peak I was still taking >1k damage from single attacks if I stayed in melee, and very powerful spells could still hit me for hundreds of damage.
  
  Bugs:
• Bias Weave targeted anomalies don't hit the whole area sometimes.
• I don't think Anomaly Swap works at all when it's targeted, not sure if it works when it's not targeted
• Rethread has a fixed cooldown because it lowers cooldowns, but Energy Absorption also lowers cooldowns and does not have a fixed cooldown. In fact, it can reset its own cooldown. Not sure if intended.
• Energy Absorption's 30% is factored in before invisibility's -70% penalty.

That's all I have for now. I'm going to try a warp/gravity PM next.

[edge2054]

I scrapped Temporal Fugue (kept the name) in favor of Paradox Twin. Don't get me wrong, I love Temporal Fugue, but I suspect there's a whole mess of bugs lurking around and I imagine a number of them aren't really fixable as the game assumes the player is on the map. Between that and the balance issues I don't think it's worth it. I kept the code in the file, commented out, if someone wants to play around with it at some point.

Cease To Exist can no longer spellshock. I may remove the damage and make Trim Threads back into a dot if it's still too strong.

Fixed Anomaly Swap.

Removed the Paradox stuff from Temporal Form.

Dimensional Shift I'm still debating but I'll buff it somehow.

Bugs

Bias Weave is working as intended. Anomalies don't hit every target in the area of effect but rather use a ball to get possible targets.

Fixed anomaly swap.

Energy Decomposition I'm going to use a callback for.

Gave Energy Absorption a fixed cooldown.

[donkatsu]

Rather than not all enemies in the ball being hit, I'm including one enemy inside the anomaly targeting ball and nothing happens. No one else is getting hit (I think), and there's no message displayed in the combat log. Does it choose targets randomly, or does each target have a random chance of being affected? I think it's generally when they're on the edge of the ball, and only certain anomalies, but I'm not sure. I'll start watching more closely.

[edge2054]

It chooses targets randomly so if you're targeting and not getting an affect at all there's a bug (or at least a communication issue) someplace.

[edge2054]

Alright, I made Temporal Fugue/Paradox Twin generate two clones and split all damage between the three of you. All damage any of you do while the effect is active is reduced by 66%.

So it's like a hybrid of Paradox Twin and Temporal Fugue but the player is never removed from the map. It might have some bugs but in the long run I think the bugs will be easier to work out and less game breaking. Hopefully I preserved most of the fun of Temporal Fugue

[Parcae2]

I would slap a fixed cooldown and duration on that. I would also suggest considering limiting clones to the use of chronomancy spells, primarily because of the risk of Empathic Hex abuse.

[edge2054]

Empathic Hex abuse?

[Parcae2]

It's the Corrupter ability that makes any non-fixed-boss fight for you for a short time. Any character can pick up the Hexes tree by siding with the Grand Corrupter.

[jotwebe]

That's Domination Hex, Emphatic Hex is the one where they damage themselves for x% of the damage they do.

[Parcae2]

Oh, yeah, sorry about that.

[edge2054]

It's no_npc. They wouldn't get it.