Chronomancy Transversion Discussion

[HousePet]

The thing is, this whole thread is predicated on the discovery that TW willpower cannot mitigate high paradox. PM can do exactly that, because they get Paradox Mastery and because they depend on fewer stats so they can stack Willpower.

Then why no just fix this instead of nuking Willpower?

The one who can make good mechanical use of high Willpower should do exactly that, and the other one should not do. What the heck seems wrong about that?

Why not just make Willpower work then?

A bow class needs Dexterity for bows. A dual-dagger class needs Dexterity for its daggers and for its dual-wielding of the aforementioned daggers.

If we had something like Strength of Purpose acting as a generic weapon mastery talent and went high willpower and magic with the current talents, you could avoid using levelling dex.
You would get lots of weapon damage from strength and Weapon Folding. Combat Accuracy will give you enough accuracy. And some dex buffing equipment with a possible dex boosting sustain would be enough to cover stat requirements for high level daggers and Flurry.

So you could avoid dex as a primary stat.

It might be possible to twist every talent until a pure-Willpower build was viable, but why do that when it's not necessary?

Or you could just alter the way paradox fail is calculated?

What's the motivation for keeping Will as the dominant stat for the TW?

Lore, Variation, allowing Temporal Wardens to chain paradox talents, not having to change those chronomancy based artifacts that bost willpower.

[Doctornull]

Then why no just fix this instead of nuking Willpower?

A) Because the fix is not obvious.
B) Because the Paradox Mage works great, and screwing up the Paradox Mage in order to fix the Temporal Warden would be a bad idea.

If we had something like Strength of Purpose acting as a generic weapon mastery talent and went high willpower and magic with the current talents, you could avoid using levelling dex.
You would get lots of weapon damage from strength and Weapon Folding. Combat Accuracy will give you enough accuracy. And some dex buffing equipment with a possible dex boosting sustain would be enough to cover stat requirements for high level daggers and Flurry.

So you could avoid dex as a primary stat.

Outside requirements, Dexterity adds a lot to the TW: accuracy, defense, weapon damage scaling, ability to wield better daggers and bows.

What would it add to the game to avoid all of those nice things, just to build Willpower?

What would it add to the game to require spending ~15 talent points to compensate for Dexterity, instead of just building Dexterity?

How would the TW be cooler or more fun if every single TW were forced to spend ~15 talent points on boring passive power-up talents?

Lore, Variation, allowing Temporal Wardens to chain paradox talents, not having to change those chronomancy based artifacts that bost willpower.

Chaining Chronomancy talents is already an absolute failure. The current state of the game is that if your TW actually sustains all of the TW sustains, you can't reliably cast even one Chronomancy spell. Not even one. That's kinda sad, don'tcha think?

If you think that "allowing Temporal Wardens to chain paradox talents" is how the game should work, then you shouldn't really be fighting to preserve the status quo.

That's one of the things I'm trying to fix.

[HousePet]

Outside requirements, Dexterity adds a lot to the TW: accuracy, defense, weapon damage scaling, ability to wield better daggers and bows.

What would it add to the game to avoid all of those nice things, just to build Willpower?

What would it add to the game to require spending ~15 talent points to compensate for Dexterity, instead of just building Dexterity?

How would the TW be cooler or more fun if every single TW were forced to spend ~15 talent points on boring passive power-up talents?

'Ability to wield better dagger and bows' sounds like its inside requirements and the defense from Dexterity is pretty bad.
Accuracy is a good thing. Weapon damage scaling isn't that good, Dexterity is only have the equation for daggers and bows.
I didn't suggest you avoid all those nice things and just build Willpower. I suggested it could be interesting to allow people to not build Dexterity as the primary stat. Since I said you would use Weapon Folding as an extra source of damage, I was implying you are levelling Magic strongly as well. You can't even just build one stat, so why would I be suggesting it? Did I state it would be required not to raise Dexterity?? Am I communicating that badly???

Chaining Chronomancy talents is already an absolute failure. The current state of the game is that if your TW actually sustains all of the TW sustains, you can't reliably cast even one Chronomancy spell. Not even one. That's kinda sad, don'tcha think?

If you think that "allowing Temporal Wardens to chain paradox talents" is how the game should work, then you shouldn't really be fighting to preserve the status quo.

That's one of the things I'm trying to fix.

I think I am aware of the problem, I have an addon that wipes out 150 of that rediculous Paradox sustain cost.
I don't see how removing Willpower and pumping Magic more is going to allow more casting of Chronomancy spells, even with less sustains/costs.

If you think I'm fighting to preserve the status quo, then you haven't been reading what I've been writing.
I'll summarise again: The class needs work, the sustains cost too much, you can't use any paradox costing abilities, too many mastery talents required and I even like your talent suggestions. I just don't see removing Willpower working.

[Doctornull]

Combat Accuracy will give you enough accuracy. And some dex buffing equipment with a possible dex boosting sustain would be enough to cover stat requirements for high level daggers and Flurry.

So you could avoid dex as a primary stat.

I didn't suggest you avoid all those nice things and just build Willpower. I suggested it could be interesting to allow people to not build Dexterity as the primary stat. Since I said you would use Weapon Folding as an extra source of damage, I was implying you are levelling Magic strongly as well. You can't even just build one stat, so why would I be suggesting it? Did I state it would be required not to raise Dexterity?? Am I communicating that badly???

You talk about "avoiding dex" and "allow[ing] people to not build Dexterity".

If you don't want to agree that "avoiding dex" is your goal here, then I have no idea what you are trying to communicate.

I don't see how removing Willpower and pumping Magic more is going to allow more casting of Chronomancy spells, even with less sustains/costs.

If you don't understand how removing most of the sustain costs will allow more casting of Chronomancy spells, then I'm not sure how you'll be helpful in commenting on me doing specifically and precisely that.

Feel free to chime in, but I don't want to discuss any further whether the basic premise is valid or not.

[HousePet]

Allowing people to not build Dexterity is not the same thing as forcing people not to build Dexterity.

Removing most of the sustain costs will allow the casting of more chronomancy spells.
Reducing the amount of Willpower people get, decreases the amount of chronomancy spells they can use in a row.
So the outcome of doing both depends on the numbers.

A Paradox Mage needs high Willpower, Static History and Paradox Mastery to cast bosses to death.
Temporal Warden doesn't need to be casting all the time, but your plan removes high Willpower, they don't get Paradox Mastery and I can't remember if they can get Static History. They do get Weapon Folding, which is good at reducing Paradox over time. So they will definately be able to use a spell every so often and attack to reset paradox, but Temporal Warden is more mobile than tanky, and that agility has Paradox costs. So ideally, they wouldn't want to risk getting their fail chance too high that an escape might fail. Which could mean that snazzy paradox attacks are avoided.

Paradox failure starts as soon as your Paradox exceeds your Willpower, so if you have no Willpower or effective Willpower, you will start getting fail chance after 20ish Paradox. Which with no sustains, only takes a couple of talents. This means that chaining talents will be dangerous as you might need to use an escape that could fail.
So how are you specifically and precisely addressing this?

[HousePet]

Oh wait, Paradox fail doesn't start until 200 paradox.
That shouldn't be a problem then.
Why didn't you just remind me?

[HousePet]

Okay, that was a hardcore derp. Where is Revisionist History when you need it?

Please ignore most of my previous posts in this thread, I was getting the Paradox mechanics mixed up with Equilibrium.

Starting again...

This sounds like a good idea.

Strength of Purpose could easily scale with Spellpower and could work as a mastery talent, so you don't need 2-3 of them.
Weapon Folding is good already.
Displace Damage should still have a fairly high Paradox sustain cost, cos its powerful.
Quantum Feed seems useless, but someone might think of a good mechanic to change it to.
Reversed Timeless sounds epic.
Not sure Dexterity needs to remain as a required stat. If you compare it with Strength, it has pretty much equal importance as far as weapon stats goes. How about having a Dexterity boosting sustain as well? Then we can choose if we want to level Strength or Dexterity first, along with Magic. Or even increase neither. Warping Time to enhance Dexterity seems fairly obvious. Perhaps the categories could be rearranged into the warping of time and the warping of space, for combat reasons?

[Doctornull]

Okay, that was a hardcore derp. Where is Revisionist History when you need it?

Feel free to use the Edit button to hide traces of derp.

This sounds like a good idea.

Strength of Purpose could easily scale with Spellpower and could work as a mastery talent, so you don't need 2-3 of them.
Weapon Folding is good already.
Displace Damage should still have a fairly high Paradox sustain cost, cos its powerful.
Quantum Feed seems useless, but someone might think of a good mechanic to change it to.
Reversed Timeless sounds epic.
Not sure Dexterity needs to remain as a required stat. If you compare it with Strength, it has pretty much equal importance as far as weapon stats goes. How about having a Dexterity boosting sustain as well? Then we can choose if we want to level Strength or Dexterity first, along with Magic. Or even increase neither. Warping Time to enhance Dexterity seems fairly obvious. Perhaps the categories could be rearranged into the warping of time and the warping of space, for combat reasons?

I dig the idea of a new Mastery talent.

Yeah, Displace Damage is very powerful, that's the only current sustain which ought to be a "lifestyle choice" IMHO.

I think that the TW will want early Dexterity talents and gear and accuracy and weapon damage, and the character has to put points somewhere... I'm not seeing the problem with expecting a split Magic / Dex investment early. But I also don't see any problem with putting a mild Dex boost into Strength of Purpose for the Dwarf & Yeek TW population, if necessary.

Dunno if I've said this yet here, but I see the TW as a light armor class, so that's part of why I'm shying away from assuming Strength investment. I'd kind of like it if the TW had some reasons for staying in light armor, like maybe giving them Technique / Mobility as a place to spend Generics if they lose their reason to go deep in dagger and weapon mastery -- and I might even do something to actively discourage it, like making their Speed Control effects only work in Light or no armor, or something.

Cheers!

[grayswandir]

I like TW's because the Will focus and the two sustains along with Spin Fate give you crazy saves. If you make any changes, please keep a high-save TW build viable.

[Doctornull]

I like TW's because the Will focus and the two sustains along with Spin Fate give you crazy saves. If you make any changes, please keep a high-save TW build viable.

Absolutely!

Building Willpower will just be optional rather than required.

[HousePet]

High Strength is good for physical power, all weapon damage boost (from the physical power) and the damage mods on the weapons. So it is always going to be good for a non pure caster Temporal Warden. Dexterity is more weapon/casting neutral, but since the defense from Dex is crap it doesn't count for much. The crit avoid is good for everyone though.

High strength doesn't have to mean heavy armour. Especially with how nasty fatigue will be on a low Willpower TW. A Dex boosting sustain could grant extra defense. That would make it a little more useful for going with light armour.

Going Willpower heavy would allow you to have loads of sustains and still use Chrono talents. Would also help avoid issues with fatigue on Paradox. But it would be nice to have some things that still scale with Willpower, just not the core stuff.

[HousePet]

Well splitting talents into Spatial Combat and Temporal Combat doesn't look like it will work, too many talents end up in Spatial Combat.

So instead, how about Celerity for a Dexterity boost? Its a single effect passive talent that just increases movement speed.

So how about adding 10-20 dexterity and defense to Celerity and maybe change it to a 25-50 paradox sustain?

[Doctornull]

So instead, how about Celerity for a Dexterity boost? Its a single effect passive talent that just increases movement speed.

So how about adding 10-20 dexterity and defense to Celerity and maybe change it to a 25-50 paradox sustain?

I am against adding more sustains. In fact, I'm going to make Strength of Purpose a Passive, so there are only two sustains in the TW's base trees: Weapon Folding (25 Paradox) and Displace Damage (125 Paradox).

They ought to be able to live happily below 200~300 Paradox with just Weapon Folding; if they decide to go into Displace Damage, they can either build Willpower, stack gear, build Static History, or live dangerously.

Sound good?

[HousePet]

Let's try some numbers:
Weapon Folding and Displace Damage give 150 paradox.
Paradox talents cost between 5-25 in general.
So average of 15 paradox per talent used.
That means three talents could be chained without reaching 200.
That assumes only one enemy though.

Weapon Folding reduces paradox by around 2-4 per attack. Let's say 3.
This is a hybrid fighter/caster so assume one weapon attack per enemy.
For standard enemies that actually require effort, assume its one spell and one bump to kill them on average.
So +12 paradox per enemy.
That means you can kill 4 moderately tough enemies in a row without hitting 200.

Bosses and multi rares would get you above 200, can't see it going over 300 unless its a rather nasty boss.

Hmmm. I think you may have overshot the sustain reduction. The Displace Damage investment doesn't seem to matter.
I recommend throwing an extra 50 sustained paradox into the mix.
25/50 for a buffed Strength of Purpose and 25 for a buffed Celerity would be my choice.

[Doctornull]

Let's try some numbers:
Weapon Folding and Displace Damage give 150 paradox.
Paradox talents cost between 5-25 in general.
So average of 15 paradox per talent used.

You're looking at the source, but not taking into consideration that Paradox costs rise as you gain Paradox.

Start off a fresh Temporal Warden. None of the talents actually cost 5 Paradox, they're scaled up to 7.5 Paradox at 150 base Paradox. The average would be 22.5 Paradox per talent, with costs increasing as your base Paradox gauge increases.