ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

As it stands, Gather the Threads is a convenient boost for Paradox Mages to give a slight boost to your opening spell in a fight. As such, since it doesn't interrupt Spacetime Tuning, it can also be set to autocast when no enemies visible (along with Spacetime Tuning) for added convenience. However, having both set to autocast as such causes massive amounts of sound effect spam while auto-exploring. While not a huge issue, as you can easily turn off the sound, those who do want to play with sound are forced to compensate for this (it'll drive you crazy in a hurry otherwise).

I would like to suggest that this spell be changed to a sustain that builds in effect over 5 turns, and ends whenever you cast another spell. It would work the exact same way, you just would have to activate it once before or after combat for the next engagement. You might gain a slight extra boost in spellpower because of the fact that it would always be at its max accumulation of extra spellpower, but I don't see that being a problem as the skill is fairly unimporant/not very impactful anyway, and not really worth putting extra points into (as far as I can tell). If absolutely necessary though, you could always tweak it to give reduced spellpower one way or another, but I don't see a need to.

Edit: I forgot the paradox reduction it gives while active. That could also be reduced to compensate, seeing as its c/d is currently longer than its duration, and changing it to a sustain would give it much more paradox reduction over time. Alternatively, just remove the sound effect for activating it.

I like the sustain idea.

Just cut the paradox reduction down to (0.3*TL) and make it a 75-100 sustain, works pretty well.

Paradox Mages have a lot of good sustains to keep damage down-an offensive one in a locked category would be nice, and Gather The Threads is pretty questionable in power right now.

(On a related note, Carbon Spikes could probably use a cut down to 50 sustain cost or so. It's sorta a questionable skill when you consider that it costs the same as Entropic Field, for a much lower impact. Even with full on 70%+ Armor Hardiness, 50 Armor isn't likely to produce as good of an impact as 25-30% more physical resistance, and the latter certainly is something I wouldn't suggest removing from PM, on the grounds that their gimmick is passive defenses+low raw durability.)

Edit: Oh, and to make it more interesting, make the fifth turn of charge(when it caps out) give the big Spellpower bonus, rather than the first one.

This makes it a very small constant Spellpower boost and a very large boost to your initial assaults. Fits better that way.

Or maybe just do something more along the lines of, say, an option to disable the sound effect for talents set to automatic (could be either in the options menu or in the menu to set talents to automatic). I mean, it's kind of a universal thing that can be pretty annoying for a lot of classes--like if a Sun Paladin wants to put healing talents an auto, that sound will eventually drive you nuts, especially running around between fights. ZHOOO, ZHOOO, ZHOOO, ZHOOO...

kazak wrote:Or maybe just do something more along the lines of, say, an option to disable the sound effect for talents set to automatic (could be either in the options menu or in the menu to set talents to automatic). I mean, it's kind of a universal thing that can be pretty annoying for a lot of classes--like if a Sun Paladin wants to put healing talents an auto, that sound will eventually drive you nuts, especially running around between fights. ZHOOO, ZHOOO, ZHOOO, ZHOOO...

Mmm, this please. Just an option to "disable sounds on auto-use" or something like that. I like the sounds in general, but this can get annoying.

kazak wrote:Or maybe just do something more along the lines of, say, an option to disable the sound effect for talents set to automatic (could be either in the options menu or in the menu to set talents to automatic). I mean, it's kind of a universal thing that can be pretty annoying for a lot of classes--

This is the best solution.

SageAcrin wrote:I like the sustain idea.

Just cut the paradox reduction down to (0.3*TL) and make it a 75-100 sustain, works pretty well.

Paradox Mages have a lot of good sustains to keep damage down-an offensive one in a locked category would be nice, and Gather The Threads is pretty questionable in power right now.

Edit: Oh, and to make it more interesting, make the fifth turn of charge(when it caps out) give the big Spellpower bonus, rather than the first one.

This makes it a very small constant Spellpower boost and a very large boost to your initial assaults. Fits better that way.

I agree that Gather the Threads is not super powerful at the moment, but it scales fairly well with talent points and does have its tactical uses supporting Time Skip, Quantum Spike or Temporal Clone. It's also nice to boost Static History or Haste.

Not sure about the sustain, apart from the fact that the above solution solves the OP's problem much more elegantly. I like the feel Gather the Threads has at the moment.

One thing I do like is that making it a sustain would remove the slight anti-synergy it has with Fade From Time. But why cut the Paradox reduction by a factor of five?

Putting the big effect at the end would be bad: It would make it unfeasable to use tactically mid-combat, while with the current system there's a fairly interesting trade-off. It is also quite possible to lose an expected turn either to ghoul speed or by being stunned etc. - currently you can plan for that by not casting on the last possible moment, with this suggestion you couldn't. IMHO it would make Gather the Treads less instead of more interesting.

My suggestion for a small boost would be to keep it activated, but have each round after the first increase spellpower by half of the preceding round's value. E.g. if you have a bonus of 40 initially, you'd get 20, 10, 5 and 3 in the successive rounds.

(On a related note, Carbon Spikes could probably use a cut down to 50 sustain cost or so. It's sorta a questionable skill when you consider that it costs the same as Entropic Field, for a much lower impact. Even with full on 70%+ Armor Hardiness, 50 Armor isn't likely to produce as good of an impact as 25-30% more physical resistance, and the latter certainly is something I wouldn't suggest removing from PM, on the grounds that their gimmick is passive defenses+low raw durability.)

This suggestion, on the other hand, I like.

On another related note, here's one of my own:

Precognition and auto-explore don't play well together either. How about making Precognition into a sustain, and when you deactivate it (or die), you're transported X turns (maybe about half the current duration) into the past? To avoid people keeping it on the whole time, once you do anything apart from moving, opening doors or Spacetime Tuning, it should deactivate, but give you an effect like the current version so you can still try different tactics if you like. Foresight could manage the duration of that.

Probably a beast to code, though.

I agree that currently, it's well designed for the purpose of tactical use in mid-combat. However, it's specifically coded to be "friendly" with Spacetime Tuning. As such, it ought to synergize well with being put to "auto-cast when no enemies are visible." However, it's not for two reasons: one, the aforementioned sound issue; two, because its c/d is longer than its duration, there's a decent chance it'll be down and on c/d while autoexploring when you find an enemy. I find that to be very irritating, it's just no feasible to work around that as it is, hence my suggestion of making it a sustain. I don't think either its current state or being a sustain is the ideal solution though. More ideas would be great.