Nightmare Win: Pure Temporal Caster Temporal Warden

[hohumbug]

http://te4.org/characters/119928/tome/b ... 365ee55e17

I'm a big fan of playing Temporal Warden as a pure caster, which judging by the vault is relatively unpopular. I won on normal with a similar build in 1.1.5 and figured that now was the time to kick it up a notch. This was my first nightmare victory where I didn't use the vault at all, and went very smoothly after I got going. Pure Caster Temporal Wardens are extremely powerful once you get Temporal Form. I died five times, mostly in the early-mid game. This character was very weak from levels 20 to 29. Before you get a heroism infusion it is pretty easy to get one shot, and I ran out of skills to put points into that made much of a difference early. I probably could have avoided all of my deaths by not autoexploring, but who has that kind of time? I also probably could have avoided most of my deaths if I had better luck with infusions, either getting rune of reflection or an early heroism infusion, but that didn't happen. I finished with 2 lives left, plus blood of life and ring of the dead.

All that being said, at level 30, caster Temporal Wardens become monsters. There are so many buffs, and with Timeless and Invigorate it was possible to keep temporal form, heroism infusions, grace of eternals, haste and damage smearing up for 15+ turns. My global speed ended up being 200%+, my spells all hit for 1000+ damage, and I could use them over and over thanks to Timeless and Invigorate. Damage smearing can combo with lightning runes and damage reduction torques to make you basically invincible.

Everything after going East was pretty easy. Very few things survived longer than Temporal Form lasted. The final battle was a breeze. I buffed up, time skipped the guy with a bone shield, and started to beat down Elandar. My spell power was high enough (~95) to actually land stuns on her, so she didn't even damage me. I managed to time skip her friend 3 times, and killed Elandar before he did anything. Time skip also removes all bone shield charges (I also used flurry for this). Aeryn probably would have survived if I hadn't used echoes of the past so many times, but that skill is so much fun. The final blow of the final battle was an echoes for over 6000 damage.

Buildwise, I put all of my stat points into magic and will power until those were maxed, and then I split between cunning and constitution. My first category point went to time travel, the next two to infusions, and the wyrm bile point went to unlocking stone alchemy. Stone alchemy wasnt really important, but it got me a lot of gold, and it let me put a godelath rock into my black robe which was pretty awesome. My main damage skills were stun, time skip, echoes of the past, and temporal wake. That doesn't seem like very many, but with invigorate and timeless you get to use them over and over again.

Escortwise I got pretty lucky, with an early anorithil and 4 warriors giving me lots of healing. The new vitality is really good and light is just as good as its always been. It's nice that warrior escorts aren't useless anymore as a caster class.

All in all, I think Temporal Wardens are one of the most powerful caster classes in the game right now. The only nerf I noticed was that the murderblade got nerfed, so no more unstoppable on instant switch. Damage smearing is a very powerful skill for keeping you alive, and echoes of the past will kill anything if you get to use it 2-3 times. They also have really strong status effects if you build for spellpower

[edge2054]

Grats on the win.

If you have any feedback on what talents could use buffs and which ones nerfs let me know. I'm in the process of rewriting TWs. I'm planning to increase the cooldown on Echoes a bit and I'd like to make it so Invigorate and Timeless don't interact with each other (I'll have go get the go ahead from Darkgod for that one).

I don't want to completely nerf builds like this but it feels like talents that affect cooldowns shouldn't affect each other just for the sake of sanity.

Anyway, any other thoughts on the class or chronomancers in general would be appreciated

[hohumbug]

I've been thinking a lot about TW talents. For the most part I think that they all work really nicely together, and don't really need any buffs. Some talents aren't really useable for a caster build, but thats to be expected from a class that can go in so many different directions.

There are a couple skills I'm not a fan of. First and foremost is temporal reprieve. Since temporal reprieve removes buffs and debuffs, it is basically unusable. It knocks heroism infusion off, shields off, haste off, grace of the eternals off, damage smearing and temporal form off. TW is extremely dependent on temporary buffs. Without them TWs die very quickly. In the end game the only thing that challenged me was bosses which could dispell me. There is no way I would use a spell that did it to myself. Even if temporal reprieve didn't remove buffs, it still would be of limited use because it takes a turn. I think it would be somewhat usable if it was either instant, so that it could be used in emergencies to escape, heal, or if it didn't affect beneficial effects.

Displace Damage is too expensive and too random to be of any use if you are using paradox to cast spells. I could see how it would be useful for a melee or ranged weapon focused TW, because they would barely use any paradox at all. For a caster TW, paradox goes very high very fast, and static history has too long a cool down to really put a dent in that. Because paradox costs go up as paradox gets higher, sustains that cost paradox are pretty dangerous to use. After temporal form and other buffs, my paradox would usually be at around 600, and by 800 or 750 I was starting to get spell failures, even with the fez, the rod of sarillion and about 100 will power. If I used displace damage, then I would be at the point of spell failure by the time I finished buffing up. All that said, if Displace Damage was somehow less random, then it might be worth the risk of spell failure. However, in my experience, it never came through when I needed it to, and it made every other ability less reliable as well.

Since enemies can follow you through your Worm hole, the spell isn't really very useful for getting away, and since the exit is randomly placed, it isn't useful for moving around. I'll admit I didn't try and use this spell very much, but I had a very hard time thinking of a use for it.

I also think that the chronomancy generic tree needs work. All of the skills in it are basically useless. Precognition is way worse than track, even if you have foresight. If you get a lantern or armor with track than you pretty much don't need any investment in the tree only thing advantage is that it detects traps, but that doesn't make up for the onerousness of using it. I have a hard time seeing who would get a good use out of spin fate, since it either buffs your saving throws after you failed a saving throw and are disabled, or it buffs your saving throws after you already succeeded in making the save. I also have a problem seeing how moment of presience could be very useful. At least as a caster, detecting invisible or stealthed enemies is unnecessary because there locations are revealed by the damage numbers above their heads when I used Echoes. I could see the spell being usable if it increased something that TWs actually had trouble building, like crit rate. Considering TWs only really get two generic trees, I think that this tree needs some love.

Just generally for the class I think it is light on places to put class points and light on places to spend category points. It would be nice if there was another class tree that could be unlocked. That tree would hopefully be useful to many builds of TWs, and that would allow more time travel shenanigans. Either Paradox or Timeline Threading would be great as a locked category. One of those would help offset any nerf to echoes or invigorate and make the class even more fun to play.

Edit: Do you mean that invigorate shouldn't make timeless cool down faster, or do you mean that invigorate shouldn't have its duration extended by timeless? I think that the first of those would be fine, but that invigorate should still get its duration stretched. Invigorate is really one of the class's defining talents, and without it, the class plays in a much clankier fashion. There are too many empty moves when invigorate is down. When you have 200+% global speed, a 5 or 6 turn cool down on all of your skills starts to become a real drag.

[edge2054]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. There was some stuff I hadn't really considered that I'll have to keep in mind as I rebalance everything.

As to Timeless and Invigorate what I'd like is if talents that effect cooldowns couldn't also have their cooldown reduced. So like Timeless could extend the buff duration but not reduce the cooldown of Invigorate. Likewise Invigorate wouldn't make Timeless come off cooldown any faster.

[edge2054]

Also if you're curious here's a list of changes I'm working on. A few things have changed in the process of actually getting it coded but it should give you some idea what direction I'm taking things.

And yes, TWs will have more trees. Six Class, three locked class, and three generics + combat training.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =378488664

[hohumbug]

I really like the direction that you are moving in with TWs. I was worried that things were going to get wrecked, and that I would have to go beat Insane before this patch went live, but now I feel like I can wait, and it will probably be easier.

Are you looking for testers by any chance?

Edit: You mentioned a spacetime prodigy in the description for temporal wake. Is that a replacement for temporal form, or a seperate prodigy?

Also, thank you for reading my feedback, and for all the work you're doing for the game.

[edge2054]

Maybe I should change the name of it but it's an unlockable PM tree that's focused on Temporal/Physical damage split. If you check the Paradox Mage tab on the spreadsheet you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if I'll give it to TWs just because I don't want the two classes to end up too similar.

Testing and feedback would be welcome. I won't do an addon though so you'd need to be able to pull the source from git and either grab the windows binaries from the nightly SVN builds thread or be able to compile. http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... 9&start=90

Hopefully the TW changes minus Particles will be in git this time next week.

Oh, and thanks for the kind words It's nice to be able to do something creative and share it with other people.

[tylor]

I think HW needs durability buff direly. A better shield, or indirect buff to Damage Smearing in a form of more affordable time resist.

And yes, I like your plans for TW a lot too. I was going to suggest something like Preserve Pattern and Strength of Purpose myself.