[b36] Dwarf Paradox Mage

[donkatsu]

http://te4.org/characters/8893/tome/d32 ... 25900d6212

Basically curbstomped the entire game. Defeated Atamathon without taking a single point of damage. Paradox Mages may be a bit too strong currently, mostly because of their myriad disabling options.

Here are a few suggestions to bring them more in line with other classes (these are not meant to be implemented all at once!):

• Increase Temporal Fugue's cooldown to 14. Now it's still better than the Anorithil and Berserker confuses (beating them in range and cooldown, respectively), but a little more reasonable.
• Drastically cut the severity of confusion in general. 100% confusion is quite easy to achieve and definitely the most crippling status effect in the game, like pin except you don't need terrain and you're not limited to ranged attacks. Instead of scaling from around 80% to 100%, have it scale from 60% to 80% and never, ever let it go above 90% on any talent, ever.
• Make confusion resistance more common on NPCs, on par with blind and stun resistance.
• Reduce Dimensional Step's range by 2 at 5/5.
• Don't allow Wormhole's exit radius to reach 0 at 5/5.
• Increase Energy Absorption's cooldown. As a comparison, look at Temporal Reprieve, which has a cooldown of 50 and reduces the cooldown of all talents by 7. Energy Absorption has a cooldown of 10, reduces the cooldown of 5 talents by 8, AND cripples one enemy. Temporal Reprieve is already pretty decent, and Energy Absorption is like a better version that you can use five times more often for half the paradox cost.

On the other hand, the Timeline Threading tree could use some help. It's not that the spells in that tree are bad, it's that they're not better than the trees that are come unlocked and they're all easily substituted by said spells. Static History, with its cooldown reduced by Energy Absorption and Temporal Reprieve, was more than enough paradox recovery for me and even if it wasn't, I could occasionally double it with Redux for a whopping 700 paradox recovery in two turns. Rethread is more or less the same as Dust to Dust with twice the cooldown. The status effects are negligible because they're so short, and Temporal Fugue and Stop already cover your disabling needs in spades. Temporal Clone is also of limited use as it's useless in boss fights, and only disables one enemy. Again, Temporal Fugue and Stop are already going to be disabling ALL of your enemies simultaneously, including bosses. See the Threads competes with Cease to Exist and Paradox Clone as your spell that's going to be splitting the timeline, and loses soundly to both of them. Cease to Exist will increase your damage by 50% at worst, only getting better the more resistance your target has, and Paradox Clone's power and utility require little explanation. See the Threads might be useful if the outcome of a couple of turns of battle were wildly different, but usually what ended up happening when I tried it was that I would just play out pretty much the exact same 6 turns 3 different times. Not only was it useless, it was also tedious to use. See the Threads would be good in an environment that was unpredictable (like, say, if Fugue confusion only blocked 60% of actions instead of 100%) but Paradox Mages have such good control over their surroundings that there really is no unpredictability.

The Gravity tree, although I didn't go into it much, looks good as it is.

Overall, this class is very fun to play but it does sort of feel like cheating.

[edge2054]

Thanks for the feedback.

I think Temporal Fugue would probably be better off having its duration reduced rather then the cooldown increased. Looking at your character sheet I think the real problem isn't that you can use the talent so often but that 8 turns is more then enough time to kill anything, especially on a paradox mage. Either that or as you said, 100% confusion may be to much.

Energy Absorption could be toned down a bit but something to consider is that the cooldown reduction isn't guaranteed. It can only cooldown your talents if enemy talents are affected. I can look at tweaking the numbers but I also think the cooldown on Temporal Reprieve may be to long.

I'll have to think about the rest. Especially the threading tree.

[donkatsu]

You're probably right about the duration; I was only thinking of boss fights where the real issue is that you can keep them permanently confused by going alternating Temporal Fugue and Energy Absorption or Time Skip, but against masses of grunts you're not going to be re-applying the confuse. I was just thinking about Warshout which is basically the same thing, but seems to be balanced around cooldown instead of duration.

Energy Absorption's limitation, in practice, is not very meaningful. In the east, even non-elites have enough talents to absorb the full 5. It offers less utility for you in the west, but is more crippling to your target, especially bosses, because if it's not getting the full absorption that means that your target doesn't have any more talents. Without talents, the only thing that's still dangerous (in the west, anyway) is archers.

[edge2054]

I've implemented a lot of these changes on my local copy and I'm putting together a patch for when darkgod gets back.

I bumped the cooldown of Rethread back down to 4 for now. Still considering how to help out that tree otherwise.

Temporal Fugue's cooldown got bumped up to 14 and the confusion efficiency reduced.

Energy Absorption is still cheap and on a short cooldown but it affects fewer talents per cast and the time it puts them on cooldown as well as the amount it gives your talents back has been cut down.

Dimensional Step had it's range scaling from talent level reduced. Wormhole it actually looks like I never intended to hit 0 accuracy so I just moved a number to fix it.

I'm also working on some Temporal Warden/General Chronomancy changes.

Weapon Folding damage was greatly reduced and the armor penetration removed. It does now give back a small amount of paradox though every time you swing.

Spin Fate max bonus halved and it no longer Spins defense. Moment of Prescience now increases defense by a flat amount + some bonus from Spin along with the detect and see invis bonuses (no longer ends premonition). Dying with Premonition active will just cancel the spell making it a more affective (and safer) scouting tool. I also lowered the confusion power on Swap to stream line it with Temporal Fugue.

The goal, with Temporal Wardens at least, is for the classes damage out put and defensive options to be reduced. I want them to have to rely more on their mobility to survive. The passive Paradox reductions I'm hoping will let them move in and out of combat more often and I'm hoping the damage nerf and spin fate nerf will make staying in combat for long periods of time less viable.

Thanks for the feedback donkatsu.

e: I also nerfed Turn Back the Clock but don't tell anyone.

[tekrunner]

Did you leave the spin-doubling effect of premonition? As far as I understand there will be no way to cancel premonition anymore, so it will purely be a risk-less exploration tool, and having spin build up faster does not seem really useful then.

Also, do you have numbers for the "great reduction" in weapon folding damage reduction? With my short experience of the game I found the first half of the game as a temporal warden not particularly easy, because the class tends to spread thin, and having some decent damage from weapon folding really helped.

[Postman]

Weapon Folding ...It does now give back a small amount of paradox though every time you swing.

= No one will play TW any more. Not because of nerf itself, it's just psychology - paying constant attention to paradox level is distracting and annoying. Better solution would be just make Weapon Folding activated one-hit with some fun effect like confusion, stun, freeze etc, may be ranged attack. There is no ranged attack with effect for now, correct?
Another solution is to add chance of Anomalies instead of increase of paradox.

Spin Fate max bonus halved and it no longer Spins defense.

Not a good idea IMHO. Saves usefulness is greatly reduced after b36, and Spin Fate as is barely enough to make saves effective for dwarf with +50 saves form PisM +20 from CofF and another ~15 from equipment. Halving Spin will make it useless for saves. Defense bonus is not overpowered either - it take time to accumulate noticeable defense, and most dangerous critters still punch through it often enough. DOn't forget most of TW wear heavy armor and don't have other big sources of defense.

The goal, with Temporal Wardens at least, is for the classes damage out put and defensive options to be reduced. I want them to have to rely more on their mobility to survive.

For this good idea would be to move Static History to unlocked tree form locked for TW. Also, how would TW be able survive one-hit-death combos from bosses?

Also most high of level TW are archers. Mlee TW need some boost it seems, and archer can afford some nerf

[edge2054]

Did you leave the spin-doubling effect of premonition? As far as I understand there will be no way to cancel premonition anymore, so it will purely be a risk-less exploration tool, and having spin build up faster does not seem really useful then.

Also, do you have numbers for the "great reduction" in weapon folding damage reduction? With my short experience of the game I found the first half of the game as a temporal warden not particularly easy, because the class tends to spread thin, and having some decent damage from weapon folding really helped.

Yeah, Precognition is going to straight exploration tool. Weapon Folding damage has been reduced so it's in line with Ruin (the Reaver talent).

@Postman - I think you misunderstood. Weapon Folding isn't going to cost paradox. It's going to give you paradox back every time you swing. So I reduced the damage and gave them some passive paradox regen basically.

Spin Fate is broken. I'm sorry, I've heard it from numerous people and experienced it myself. It's extremely over powered. I won't comment on saves being affective, I don't have enough experience to know how they work in the current betas but as that's something else that is still being balanced we can readjust Spin Fate if need be down the road. The defense bonus though is basically getting moved to Moment of Prescience and will be an active buff on a cooldown rather then just a, as long as things are attacking me they can't hit me ability. Also melee TWs can take dual-weapon defense which is a nice defensive talent and ranged TWs are, well, ranged.

As to your last point, see point one I think you misread what I was saying about Weapon Folding. They'll need Static History even less.

[donkatsu]

That's a pretty cool take on Precognition. Here's to hoping See The Threads gets something along the same lines.

I wouldn't really worry too much about balancing Spin Fate until the entire defense system gets overhauled. Right now even the two powerhouse defense skills, Spin Fate and Mobile Defense, only make you untouchable until the lategame when basically anything with a noteworthy melee attack has upwards of 80 rescaled accuracy (200 accuracy pre-scaling), hitting the accuracy cap with startling frequency. And when that time comes, even Spin Fate and Mobile Defense do literally nothing. As long as a stat makes you immortal for 90% of the game, and then becomes useless for the remaining 10%, it'll be difficult, if not impossible, to balance.

That said, with these changes Spin Fate will become almost purely a vehicle for Prescience, and it won't even be a very good vehicle because saves get checked like, maybe two or three times total in a typical encounter unless you luck out with something like a Circle of Death or Gravity Well. It might help a bit if it spins all three saves each time any one of them is checked.

The only nerf archers need is symmetrical LOS, or the removal of Pinning Shot. Alternatively, give Dual Strike/Stunning Blow/Shield Pummel a paralyze that doesn't check stun immunity and melee can call it even.

[tekrunner]

Oh, another question: what will be the new maximum range for dimensional step? Also, doesn't nerfing mobility talents go against the spirit of making TW rely more on their mobility?

(also also, I think you're exposing yourself to misunderstandings if you say that something "gives paradox" when you mean that it's reducing it D:)

[edge2054]

I wanted to mention something about Spin Fate. It's not exactly clear in the talent description but Spin Fate actually gets called when the saves are checked and added pro-actively. In other words if you have Spin Fate your Spin will apply to the check that triggers it rather then the next check, so your saves are, for all intents and purposes, higher then they'll appear on your character sheet.

As to Dimensional Step, I'm thinking 3 + Raw or something. Which would put it at 8 range at tl 5 and 4 at tl 1.