Behold: Barry, the fastest man in the universe.
https://te4.org/characters/131233/tome/ ... 7019f94d79
I am going to preface all of this with the statement that I am not actually that good at this game and I play on Nightmare for my own enjoyment and sanity. That said, Quantum Slider is ludicrously overpowered for Nightmare. This build was pretty poorly optimized in several ways that I could identify and undoubtedly many more that I cannot, and there still was not one single creature in the entire game that posed me a significant threat when I encountered it save the post-game Slider superboss.
I am also not that good at writing character reports, so I've ripped off someone else's build guide and am using that as a framework. Bear with me here.
Build TL:DR
Class Talents
Chronomancy / Quantum Theory 3+/1/1/5
Chronomancy / Quantum Coherence 2/2/1/3
Chronomancy / Reality Sculpting 5/3/1/1
Chronomancy / Chronodynamics 5/5/5/1+
Chronomancy / Field Extension 2/3/1/1
Chronomancy / Pocket Universe 3/3/4/4
Chronomancy / Googolplex Existence 5/5/3/5
Generic Talents
Technique / Combat training 1/3/1/0/0/0 (these are a lot of wasted points, mostly)
Chronomancy / Prajna 5/2/2/5
Chronomancy / Beads in a String 5/3/3/5
Chronomancy / Wanderlust 5/3/3/1
Chronomancy / Anomaly Alchemy 5/1/4/1
Chronomancy / Paths 0/0/0/1/1/0/0/0
(Race/Vorloth and Ancient Chronomancy/Sorcery auto-fill with 1/1/1/1)
General Thoughts
You are made out of Goes Fast. Most of your offense and all of your considerable defense are all powered by Goes Fast. Speed stats are your number one priority on gear at all times and nearly any other stat can be sacrificed in pursuit of it. Vorloths can't use infusions, so movement infusion is out, but if playing another race those could be very powerful. Early game I focused on spellpower as a secondary gear stat, but late game when I had my paradox tuned to a comfortable 2100 (with 0% anomaly rate, it could have been significantly higher if I wanted to abuse Coccoon) the massive spellpower that gave me basically made most gear spell power unnecessary. At that point I switched to stacking as many out-of-phase bonuses as I could.
Typical fights went along these lines:
Cast Inertia Beam, autoexplore to the next fight.
Difficult fights went along these lines:
Turn 1: Rune of Reflection Shield, Coccoon, Too Fast To See, Everywhere At Once, (optionally) Moebius Strip; all zero cost actions and Moebius Strip could win a fight by itself in conjunction with Quantum Overcharge. Follow with Grave of the Fireflies to consume the first turn.
Subsequent turns: Inertia Beam, Emit Photon, Temporal Ignition, Googolplex Ways To Die, repeat whatever got its cooldown reset. If you actually did all the turn 1 setup most things won't survive past Emit Photon, and I don't think anything in the game survived past GWTD.
Some notable notes I took when playing:
- Saved the Yeek Wayist by accident just by walking in the door, Subject Z cast Illuminate which caused me to teleport upon taking damage, causing him to take 1594 temporal damage from Quantum Overcharge and exploding instantly
- Killed Fyrk in one shot on the first turn he appeared
- I went into an orc vault, one of the "hidden vault"s in the floor. One of the visible enemies threw a fireball at me as his first action. At over 2,000% movement speed and 106% projectile slow with the Emblem of Evasion, I had killed everyone in the entire vault, picked up all the loot, and exited out the stairs before the fireball landed. In other situations I was pretty regularly dodging incoming spell projectiles from melee distance, as they spawn in their caster's square.
- One shot every single backup guardian except the Corrupted Sand Wyrm (and Pale Drake who always requires two shots)
- Atamathon took all of four game turns and didn't actually manage to hit me
- Also four turns to take out both High Peak sorcerers, didn't even bother with the portals, Aeryn essentially didn't move from her starting square and I don't think either of us took any damage, and I got the achievement for completing the main quest with zero deaths for the first time.
- Postgame Slider superboss deleted me from reality in 2 turns and was at full health when I died, after hitting it with Inertia Beam and GWTD each of which have individually one-shotted every other creature in the universe.
Anyways, onto the build.
Index
1. Cheat sheet
2. Build rationale and analysis
3. Change log
Cheat Sheet
Stat distribution priority
Primary: MAG, WIL (we pump willpower to help reduce the paradox fail chance)
Secondary: CUN, STR/CON to taste
Category Point Order (you get an extra cat point from taking Taltos)
Inscription, Googolplex Existence, Pocket Universe, Anomaly Alchemy, Inscription, put wyrm bile into whatever you want (I stacked mine into Chronodynamics mastery as I was already level 50 when I got the point, already had max inscriptions, and wasn't getting any more talent points. There is room here for optimization if planned properly)
Inscriptions
I used Shielding (then Reflection once I found it), Shatter Afflictions, and Blink. Once I unlocked 4th slot, I put on the Rune of the Rift but I don't think I ever used it once.
Prodigies
Taltos, then Adept. Adept is almost certainly not the best choice here, as roughly 80% of your talents scale with raw levels, not effective levels. However, the ones that do scale with Adept scale quite well.
Notable options instead of Adept include Endless Woes or Master of Disaster, Aether Permeation, Arcane Amp Drone, or Revisionist History if you just want to be an asshole to RNGesus. I actually got both halves of Telos' Staff this run shortly after taking Adept and cursed myself for not saving the prodigy point to finally build that thing, but I have no idea if the staff would have actually benefited me more than the Rod of Sarrilon or the randunique I ended the game with.
Equipment priority
Speed, spellpower(early), temporal dmg, temporal penetration, spell crit, increase crit damage, defense, stun/confusion/silence resist, elemental resists.
Alchemist quest
I didn't do a single alchemist quest lmao whoops
Escorts
This is open for theorycrafting, I got like 4 defilers as escorts and I didn't want any of their curses so I just put those points into stats. Tinkers could be hilariously powerful here if you find any but they're a big generic point sink that you may not want to commit to. Chants are probably good options if offered. I picked up Vitality off a warrior escort because I always do that but I didn't see a lot of return off it on this character. Most enemies were either hitting shields or else not hitting me at all.
Weapon Choice
Staff with the highest spellpower and temporal damage bonus you can find. The randunique I found for my endgame staff had a +shield power mod which was very helpful. I put points into heavy armor intending to use a short staff and shield, and I found some pretty good shield options to use, but I never found a short staff that was good enough to make me want to swap off my 2H staves.
Class Talents
Chronomancy / Quantum Theory
[3] Not Really Here - This is one of your core powers and it can go up to 5/5 if you desire. However, I kept it at 2 most of the game and bumped it to 3 late, and got plenty of mileage out of that. The paradox tuning is important for not exploding yourself in combat but the teleport-on-taking-damage is what we're really here for as that makes a potent combo with Quantum Overcharge as well as just ignoring a large percent of the triggering damage.
[1] Always On The Run - One point, occasionally useful, but it isn't a teleport so it's one of our last resort movement options. You'll have no problem charging it up to be used when you need it at one point.
[1] Just A Blur - Never used this once. Just a 1pt tax. Could be useful as an emergency escape when Moebius Strip is on CD but one point serves that function fine.
[5] Dimensional Tuning - Easy 5/5 for the CD reduction alone, the tuning is a powerful side effect. Giving Too Fast To See maximum uptime is a top priority.
Chronomancy / Quantum Coherence
[2] Adapt - Adapt is core for other builds, but I never really had the spare points to dump here. In fact this whole tree didn't really get the love it deserves in this build. One point early to reach Polymorph and Bondbreaker, salt more points here later if you plan on taking punches.
[2] Polymorph - Speed breakpoint, 2 points early. Polymorph is the first skill in our list with a speed breakpoint, so I'll take the time here to talk about them. You'll want to 5/5 Too Fast To See as early as possible which will give you around 600-something% movespeed. All the skills with a speed breakpoint will let you easily hit this breakpoint from the beginning of the game and no support beyond 5/5 TFTS with 2 points. Basically, if you find something threatening, hit the afterburners and all your breakpoint skills will come online. Later in the game once you have some gear support for move speed, it is possible to have these breakpoint skills up at all times just under your normal, non-TFTS movespeed, but it will require higher investment in your breakpoint skills. I left most of them at 2 points, personally, as having them up during TFTS became all that was necessary (especially as TFTS's cooldown decreases with investment in Dimensional Tuning). Polymorph is one of our better breakpoint skills, applying silence and disarm to enemies in an AoE around us every time we move, which is frequently 6-20 times per enemy turn.
[1] Bondbreaker - 1 point. Occasionally great for ambushing or escaping, but terrain destruction is often more trouble than it is benefit. A single point blows up all terrain in radius 6 which is beyond plenty.
[3] Eternal Core - 3-5 points, great defensive utility.
Chronomancy / Reality Sculpting
[5] Emit Photon - One of our primary damage skills, off the primary damage type. Occasionally useful for taking out things resistant to temporal damage before you have good respen, but the primary use case of Emit Photon is to inflict Irradiation, to be followed up by Temporal Ignition.
[3] Tears of the Forsaken - I didn't even put points into this until I unlocked Anomaly Alchemy. It could be an extremely good skill for a different build. I dropped 3 points in it to use it in Alchemy imbues but this wasn't a heavy hitter on this build. It is, however, an extremely effective AoE debuff when combined with...
[1] Soften Matter - 1 pt for the effect rider, all saves reduced by 46%.
[1] Sands of Time - 1 pt for the effect rider, all damage increased by 64% and automatic talent disabling.
If you actually build into using Tears, which I didn't, I could see it being absolutely nutty. But one of the joys of this class is that it has like 5 really good builds that are exclusive due to talent point economy.
Chronomancy / Chronodynamics
[5] Inertia Beam - 5/5, bread and butter. This is your first response to the existence of an opponent. Killing everything in sight from 13 range away and out of their LOS range is pretty nice (more on this later).
[5] Temporal Ignition - 5/5, bread and butter. If anything survives your Inertia Beam, follow up with Emit Photon and then this. Provided it survives, which most things won't, it'll be pretty close to dead and you'll have given yourself a fresh damage shield.
[5] Stasis Web - if you enjoyed killing everything in sight from 13 range and out of their LOS, you should try killing everything out of sight from 26 range away and around cover. Stasis Web takes Inertia Beam from being simply overpowered to being ludicrously overpowered. Entire vaults of enemies fall in a single blow. Gods and demons get put in the f*n dirt before they even knew you existed. This is the single most overpowered attack spell I have had the pleasure of wielding in this universe and I am a regular Chronomancer enjoyer so that is really saying something.
[1] Siphon Speed - you could 4 this to make use of one of the better Paths but I didn't. 1 point adds some nice extra slow to everything you do, but frankly, most things die in one hit anyway, so this might just be skippable.
Chronomancy / Field Extension
[2] Alpha Strike - Speed breakpoint, 2 points early. Free turns every once in a while, this supports the primary objective of Goes Fast.
[3] Quicksilver Armor - Speed breakpoint, 2 points early. Also actually one of our primary defensive skills. I bumped this to 3 later and I found a 1.3k shield to be sufficient in most cases, but it is a good candidate for 5/5.
[1] Dhikr - Great skill, 1 point is all that's necessary. Heal 500-1000 health every time you kill something. The temporal weavers it warns you about are a complete non-issue, I killed every one of those with melee bonk attacks just out of principle.
[1] Temporal Induction - 1 point if you took Siphon Speed, you can probably ignore this and put the two points from it and SS somewhere more useful in this build. Tears maybe.
Chronomancy / Pocket Universe
[3] Sins of the Past - Speed breakpoint, 2 points early. I put a third in this for radius and extra talent fail chance, one of the best debuffs in the game.
[3] Erratic Reconstruction - AoE sustain deactivation on teleport, which you will be doing constantly. This combined with GWTD will strip every single sustain off any boss enemy in one turn. It even does damage to boot. 3 points is plenty, especially with Adept.
[4] Coccoon - 4 points for Path. Coccoon can be abused to operate at ludicrously high Paradox Spellpower levels if you're up for the micromanagement. I was not, so I just abused Coccoon to unlock the requirements for Taltos, then left it alone. Didn't use this much.
[4] Too Far Too Long - CD reduction on teleport, excellent skill for this build. Good candidate for 5/5 but I didn't push it that far. This is mostly useful for having GWTD reset the cooldown of your other attacks. It also benefits Moebius Strip to a lesser extent.
Chronomancy / Googolplex Existence
[5] Grave of the Fireflies - 5 points, Aletheia makes these really nutty and we want as many on screen at a time as we can get.
[5] Quantum Overcharge - core and key to our build. 5/5 points ASAP. This one does a lot of heavy lifting with Adept.
[3] Aletheia - Great skill, but 3 points is plenty. This skill causes your Graves to follow you when you're sped up, and because we're taking Path of Temporis this means that the Graves attack every time we move while speedy. Pro move here is to drop a grave or two, pop TFTS, and then walk the grave through a wall to attack something that can't even see you let alone attack you back. I cleared nearly the entire Rak'shor pride like that just for funsies. It also deletes all ground traps from the game if you didn't already have enough reason to invest here.
[5] Googolplex Ways To Die - teleport right up next to a target several times and set off all the other riders we have on teleports. This is the Murder Button. There are precious few creatures in the game that are going to survive a single cast of this, and to add insult to (considerable) injury, Too Far Too Long means using GWTD resets the cooldown of all our other attacks too. This synergy ties Inertia Beam for most dangerous attack in the game, it's lower ranged but you can target it right through walls.
Generic Talents
Technique/Combat training
[1] Thick Skin - You should max this. I didn't invest in CON at all and therefore did not max this.
[3] Heavy Armour Training - 1pt for heavy armor accessories. Probably don't put the other two points in, they weren't useful to me.
[1] Light Armour Training - 5 pts for the defense rating, if you're feeling threatened on higher difficulties. I was not. I also didn't invest in DEX.
[0] Combat Accuracy - We have no use for this.
[0] Weapons Mastery - Nope.
[0] Dagger Mastery - Also nope.
Chronomancy / Prajna
[5] Shorten Distance - 5/5 ASAP. Increased sight and damage range are most of what makes this class so busted in regards to Inertia Beam.
[2] Auspex - 2 points gave me enemy sense in range of 17 which was plenty for me. Especially paranoid players may wish for more.
[2] Intuition - 2 points gives map range 14, see Auspex. both Auspex and Intuition also give a bit of useful confusion and teleport immunity but I don't see those as the main draw of the skills.
[5] Nirvana - 5/5, best defensive escape skill in the entire game by a large margin, I didn't use it once.
Chronomancy / Beads In A String
[5] Moebius Strip - I actually left this at 3 for most of the game, 5 is probably not necessary but additional teleport distance is rarely a bad thing. I stuck points here late when I wasn't sure where else to put them.
[3] Klein Bottle - Speed breakpoint, 2 points early. I bumped it to 3 later for bonus resistances.
[3] 5 Minutes Alone - Great skill, never used it but for once or twice. Taunt minion with traps around it, what's not to love?
[5] Everywhere At Once - Triggers all of your teleport riders every game turn and lets you freely swap position with enemies. This skill is core setup for any tough fights. Among other things it will make sure your out of phase bonuses stay up all the time.
Chronomancy / Wanderlust
[5] Too Fast To See - the single core utility skill of this class. 5/5 immediately, ignore everything else you can until then.
[3] Futurepast Shield - Speed breakpoint, 2 points early. I always kept wanting to put more points into this skill but honestly it isn't necessary. I bumped to 3 late game but 2 will carry you fine if you're smart.
[3] In Great Need - Great skill, never used it. Powerful healing and reset of quicksilver shield in a pinch. At 3/5 with my high paradox the heal vastly outstripped my actual HP maximum by more than three times so you might be able to get away with just a single point in this.
[1] Paradoxical Rearrange - 1 point for projectile slow and Aletheia support, we aren't using the mysticism tree in this build so we don't care about it beyond that. Adept helps boost the projectile slow quite a lot and that combined with Emblem of Evasion's projectile slow is how I managed the 106% projectile slow I talked about above.
Chronomancy / Anomaly Alchemy
[5] Anomalic Steps - 5/5 here is what let me crank my Paradox so high and benefit from the spellpower boost it gives. Also boosts spell crit bonus so don't forget to stack up some crit chance on gear.
[1] Reality Tides - 1 point tax, not especially useful in most cases
[4] Spacetime Bebop - Weaving spells into other spells is always a good time and this is a good way to strap Emit Photon onto Inertia Beam for even more damage and passive procs of irradiation so you don't have to waste a turn between Beam and Temporal ignition.
[1] Imbue Anomaly - I committed a great sin against this talent in my usage of it, especially having taken Path of the Seer to support it. If you're going for this tree then 5/5 Imbue Anomaly. It's worth it to increase the talent level of the talent you're imbuing. In my case, I used this as secondary fire support with small cast-on-cast% chances for Inertia Beam, Emit Photon, and Tears of the Forsaken. Tears on my robe was my primary way of inflicting Tears in combat.
Chronomancy / Paths
We take Path of Temporis first and later Path of the Seer on this build.
Prodigies
Taltos: Take this one first. Use Coccoon to achieve the paradox levels necessary. Unsustaining Not Really Here helps with this.
Second prodigy is really up to personal taste I think, I took Adept and it was fine though not nearly as good as it is on other classes.
Runes - Vorloth cannot use inscriptions
Shielding/Reflection: Standard fare here. 0% use time so just pop this before threatening combat.
Shatter Afflictions: We will use this to cleanse stuns and freezes, most other things can be walked off under TFTS.
Blink: Between Moebius Strip and this blink, we have a couple of good options for mobility if we need to make an escape or deal some precision teleport damage while GWTD is cooling down.
Rune of the Rift: Useful in theory and it gets a good damage boost from our spellpower and temporal damage bonuses but I don't think I ever used it for anything. This slot is a free slot and left as an exercise for the reader.
Final Thoughts:
We absolutely obliterated the entire game with next to no resistance from anything, and I was completely unable to even scratch the final superboss. It's certainly a puzzle that I think this build is missing a couple of pieces of. Being able to prevent healing and reduce resistances more effectively than I could might be key to making a dent in it, the 1500HP/turn healing factor was definitely a thorn in that fight.
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(Interestingly, while the Vorloth race birth descriptor expressly only allows the male sex birth descriptor, the character creation dialog still lets you select female, and the "elf_male" character doll has both bikini and mankini images, the former amounting to roughly a bikini bottom:
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