Paradox mage advice?
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Paradox mage advice?
I just unlocked Paradox Mage, and I figured it looked neat, so I'm trying it out. Any advice? What are the best talents? What's a good Paradox level to hit between battles?
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Kaja Rainbow
- Thalore
- Posts: 145
- Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2011 1:41 pm
Re: Paradox mage advice?
To start with, you want fast cycling bread and butter attacks. Turn Back the Clock debuffs nicely and does hefty damage to bosses since you can target both blasts onto them, but enemies can move out of the way sometimes. Dust to Dust is a no-frills attack but it can be pretty decent and it recharges fast which is important. Repulsion Blast is a fast-recharging cone with knockback. Rethread used to be a good candidate before it had its recharge doubled.
Aside from that, the Paradox Mage seems to have a lot of pretty good moves and it can be hard to decide. But I find it quite noteworthy that the majority of the PM winners in the Vault've invested very heavily into the Gravity tree. And after trying it out, I really must agree with the choice. What the Gravity tree gives is a hefty amount of positioning control. You can knock enemies around, suck them into a single area, and pin them down. Not to mention bouncing back anyone that even dares to approach you.
You definitely want to get Dimensional Step to 4, and 1 into Banish isn't bad as an emergency backup. Those are great escape options. After that, it's up to your option how much to invest into the rest of the Spacetime talents.
Invest at least one point into each of the Speed Control talents. They provide useful afflictions. Stop and Slow particularly can use the extra points. Most especially Stop, to grow that tiny AoE into something decent as well as lengthening the stun effect and upping the damage. Combined with Energy Absorption from the Energy Tree, you can prevent tough enemies from using a lot of their talents.
Speaking of the Energy Tree, depending on your race and escort unlockable choices, you might or might not have the generic points to invest into the first two talents (the damage-reducing ones). Skeleton for example has far better options in its racial tree. Whichever way, invest in talents to help your survival. Speaking of which, you want points in Body Reversion. It's useful as it acts as a heal and physical status curing wild infusion in one.
But in general, feel free to play around and experiment with your talents. PM has a lot of interesting and neat talents and not nearly enough points to max them all. You probably want to unlock both the Paradox and Threading trees, too. Just be aware that the Rift in Daikara has temporal immune enemies so you might want to stay out if you don't have good alternative damage (like the Gravity Tree). Though if you do manage to get through it, the Rune of the Rift is really great for a PM.
As for Paradox? Honestly, keep it as low as you can. The increased power doesn't generally make up for the greater chances of failure. Though sustained abilities will provide a floor beneath which you can't go, and during a long heated fight you'll often find yourself running a bit 'hot'. That's fine, just try to keep it low.
Note that I haven't yet won the game with a Paradox Mage, though I'm currently working on it. So take my opinions with a grain of salt and try out your own ideas, but I've gotten to at least level 20+ on Adventure Mode. You might want to check out the Paradox Mage winners in the Character Vault for some ideas. Note that there's some variety in talent selections, and that the class's gone through a lot of changes so all of the winners were on old versions of the class.
Aside from that, the Paradox Mage seems to have a lot of pretty good moves and it can be hard to decide. But I find it quite noteworthy that the majority of the PM winners in the Vault've invested very heavily into the Gravity tree. And after trying it out, I really must agree with the choice. What the Gravity tree gives is a hefty amount of positioning control. You can knock enemies around, suck them into a single area, and pin them down. Not to mention bouncing back anyone that even dares to approach you.
You definitely want to get Dimensional Step to 4, and 1 into Banish isn't bad as an emergency backup. Those are great escape options. After that, it's up to your option how much to invest into the rest of the Spacetime talents.
Invest at least one point into each of the Speed Control talents. They provide useful afflictions. Stop and Slow particularly can use the extra points. Most especially Stop, to grow that tiny AoE into something decent as well as lengthening the stun effect and upping the damage. Combined with Energy Absorption from the Energy Tree, you can prevent tough enemies from using a lot of their talents.
Speaking of the Energy Tree, depending on your race and escort unlockable choices, you might or might not have the generic points to invest into the first two talents (the damage-reducing ones). Skeleton for example has far better options in its racial tree. Whichever way, invest in talents to help your survival. Speaking of which, you want points in Body Reversion. It's useful as it acts as a heal and physical status curing wild infusion in one.
But in general, feel free to play around and experiment with your talents. PM has a lot of interesting and neat talents and not nearly enough points to max them all. You probably want to unlock both the Paradox and Threading trees, too. Just be aware that the Rift in Daikara has temporal immune enemies so you might want to stay out if you don't have good alternative damage (like the Gravity Tree). Though if you do manage to get through it, the Rune of the Rift is really great for a PM.
As for Paradox? Honestly, keep it as low as you can. The increased power doesn't generally make up for the greater chances of failure. Though sustained abilities will provide a floor beneath which you can't go, and during a long heated fight you'll often find yourself running a bit 'hot'. That's fine, just try to keep it low.
Note that I haven't yet won the game with a Paradox Mage, though I'm currently working on it. So take my opinions with a grain of salt and try out your own ideas, but I've gotten to at least level 20+ on Adventure Mode. You might want to check out the Paradox Mage winners in the Character Vault for some ideas. Note that there's some variety in talent selections, and that the class's gone through a lot of changes so all of the winners were on old versions of the class.