Insane Paradox Mage win, with a twist

[bpat]

Here's a link to the character

This might seem like a pretty ordinary win, but one thing I wanted to try was getting to the final battle with spending as few points as possible. As you can see in the screenshot below, at High Peak 10 I only put stat points in Mag and Wil, only spent 26 class and 34 generic points, and only spent one prodigy point on Hidden Resources. I also didn't eat the Wyrm Bile at that point. I had 3/5 in Dust to Dust for a while but I refunded them for High Peak because they weren't needed.



As for how I did this, Paradox Mage has a few talents that are ridiculously good, and a careful player can do a lot with them. These talents, in no particular order, are Stop, Echoes of the Past, Seal Fate, Entropy, Webs of Fate, Dimensional Step, and the entire Flux category.

To deal with hard opponents, usually I would open with Seal Fate, Webs of Fate, and Attenuate, then Stop, then Dust to Dust for two Seal Fate procs or Temporal Bolt if there are multiple enemies, to reduce cooldowns. I would use Attenuate on cooldown almost all the time. I'd use Echoes as either a strong finisher or a regular nuke, and I would also use Entropy as needed.

My overall thoughts on the class is it is one of the most fun and well designed classes in ToME, and having five good locked categories makes the player make tough decisions. It is pretty obvious that Flux and Energy should be taken at levels 10 and 20 respectively, since Flux is by far your best and most important category and Entropy is needed to deal with some tricky enemies. I took Stasis at level 36 mainly for Stop (Time Shield is very overrated on this class, no need to invest more than 3/5 at most). If I wasn't going to be so stingy with points, I would have taken Static History much earlier to safely tune my Paradox to around 500. Timeline Threading and Spellbinding are pretty good, but I don't think either are needed except possibly on Madness. Timeline Threading helped in the final battle, but it would have probably been really easy anyway since neither Elandar nor Argoniel had even close to enough spell save to save against Attenuate and Entropy.

[tylor]

What's so good about Stop? I have heard that those enemies that matter usually ignore Stun, especially on higher difficulties.

Also, what did you use to kill individual targets? In my experience, TM has a lot of survivability and area damage, but individual damage rate is quite slow.

[bpat]

Stop's great because it has almost 100% uptime and is a big AoE. It has the same base damage as Echoes and it can hit around corners. Usually enemies could be either stunned or poisoned (Rod of Spydric Poison is seriously good), and you don't really need to apply both. It also doesn't help that PM's other spells are pretty awful for damage in comparison, there are really just these three worth using and everything else is for good for procs only (double Seal Fate on Dust to Dust, cooldown reducing on Temporal Bolt, Braid Lifelines on Rethread, knockback/pull/slow on Gravity talents). For single target damage I did exactly the same thing as I did to groups, using mostly Attenuate, Stop, and Echoes for damage. As long as I can beat the enemy's spell save, Attenuate is still the best damage talent PM has regardless of how many targets you're fighting. Also Rod of Spydric Poison is great at handling single targets, best item in the game imo aside from Wrap of Stone.

[SmallTownGuy]

You skipped the Temporal Rift, presumably because you didn't have temporal resist penetration nor an alternate damage type.

Was that a problem anywhere else?

[bpat]

I had some resistance pen gear in my inventory which I could swap on if needed. It was annoying at some points but not a huge deal since I could outlast enemies thanks to Hidden Resources and such.

[HammyHamster]

Interesting.

Another challenge for you bpat: no prodigies. (and no Higher... )

From the looks of it, PM should be able to handle that, though.

[bpat]

I could probably have done it with no prodigies, but I would have had to take Static History and go Shalore for Timeless, and maybe put more points into Induce Anomaly. It was really hard trying to do the Charred Scar without Hidden Resources though, which is when I finally spent that first prodigy point, since Paradox Mage can't easily reduce paradox without passing turns which I didn't want to do. Also High Peak would have been awful without Hidden Resources since many fights lasted a long time, though I suppose I didn't actually have to defeat all the stair guardians.

[jenx]

thing with stair guardians is, often you do have to beat them on insane, as they are tough to lure away and then get past to the stairs. i always take them all, because I think, if I can't beat them, I can't beat final bosses.

[posetcay]

I disagree jenx, i once faced a Naga Rogue stair guardian that made the final bosses look like poison ivys. I always skip stair guardians with a movement infusion if im felling even slightly uncomfortable, no risk is best risk in high peak for me!

[jenx]

I disagree jenx, i once faced a Naga Rogue stair guardian that made the final bosses look like poison ivys. I always skip stair guardians with a movement infusion if im felling even slightly uncomfortable, no risk is best risk in high peak for me!

i do confess, i am a clear all vaults, kill everything type player

my only exceptions are celia quest, and on insane, i skip several optional sidetrips

[Majestix]

I find that super impressive, bpat! The obvious question for me would now be: can you beat Madness with a Paradox Mage?

[bpat]

I probably can't beat Madness, it's not even comparable to Insane. I don't have the skill, time, or patience to manage it.

[posetcay]

I wish there was a difficulty between Insane and Madness, the difficulty increase is too high for me. Maybe an Insane bikini run?

[jenx]

I probably can't beat Madness, it's not even comparable to Insane. I don't have the skill, time, or patience to manage it.

phew - i was starting to think there was something wrong with me

[bpat]

I wish there was a difficulty between Insane and Madness, the difficulty increase is too high for me. Maybe an Insane bikini run?

I've been wanting this for a while but sadly it probably won't happen because there's very little interest.

I probably can't beat Madness, it's not even comparable to Insane. I don't have the skill, time, or patience to manage it.

phew - i was starting to think there was something wrong with me

I haven't even tried Madness, but just looking at the numbers I know there is no way I can do it. There are probably under five active players who can realistically beat Madness without playing an OP adventurer.