It heals you before the hit donkatsu. Otherwise you'd already be dead and no healing could take place. I don't know. I might just scrap it.
jotwebe wrote:Feature request: could anomalies get differently colored names in the combat log, depending on their type? Say physical pale yellow, teleport pale purple/pink, temporal the trademarked silvery grey? It'd help deciding which one you want with Biased Weave and to determine whether it's time to put another point in it...
I was under the impression that it temporarily kept you alive until it healed you. How would the anomaly component of it come into effect otherwise? Is that just a vestigial remainder of Preserve Pattern?
It interrupts the hit, compares your life value before and after the hit and tracks it, heals you, then produces anomalies if you would have been reduced below 0 by the hit.
Rather or not you survive depends on what current life + heal - damage ends up being. It won't prevent a one shot because the entire heal will end up being overheal if you're at full life when it triggered. In other words, it works kinda like Vitality.
In order to balance out what, in retrospect, has been a lot of negativity from me, I'm going to talk about what I like about PMs so far.
Paradox Bolt is basically the best thing ever. It's an interesting mechanic that gets a lot of mileage out of strategic planning, and it's a low cooldown damage spell so it really defines how Paradox Mages play, which is great. Honestly if PMs were just pushed as straight carbon copies of Archmages, except instead of Flame they got Paradox Bolt, I would be happy. This spell by itself contains entertainment value on par with entire classes.
Temporal Fugue always makes me giggle.
Cease to Exist has always been a really cool concept and with the fewer spells vying to split the timeline, you can use it more freely. And since it lowers all resistances, it fills the niche of countering high resistance enemies for both temporal and physical builds. It works out nicely that the rest of the talents, except Paradox Bolt, are also things that physical PMs will want to pick up anyway.
Celerity, Time Dilation, and Haste's interactions with each other are way more interesting than the old Speed Control.
The new paradox system has really turned paradox into a unique resource. I actually can't believe you pulled this off. The cost of high paradox isn't something straightforward like not being able to cast any more spells, or having a failure rate, it's something truly nebulous and incalculable: being unable to predict what's going to happen next. And since minor anomalies are no longer risky defensively, it's a risk that a careful player will actually want to take sometimes. In roguelikes, taking a 1% chance to die is like taking a 100% chance to die, so it's hard to incorporate the concept of risk, but I think the current paradox system has actually managed to do it.
And the teleport trees. Oh, the teleport trees. I got the whole set going and it was beautiful. Everything about teleporting is fun and effective and strategic now. Every piece of the set is useful and interesting and I would hate to see any of them go. Even Phase Shift, yeah the damage immunity is problematic, but the random teleport every turn is fun and exciting. And don't tell anyone but I'm planning on abusing Phase Pulse's synergy with Seal Fate to extend every debuff known to man to a million bajillion turns. I'm going to perma stun + confuse Elandar, and Cease to Exist him from 100% to dead. Argoniel will start the fight thinking she's always worked alone, that she's always been the lone final boss of ToME. I'll snicker derisively when in the new timeline she says "I" instead of "we" and she'll look at me like I'm a crazy person and I won't even care because SCREW THE RULES, I CONTROL TIME AND SPACE, MWAHAHAHAHA!
Ahem. I'm okay now. Moving on.
Personally I think the number of trees is in a really good place right now. Some classes just don't have anything to put points into after a while, and it feels like a drag starting in your mid-thirties when all you're doing is topping off your damage talents from 4/5 to 5/5 for an extra 7% damage or whatever. Meanwhile PMs will still be growing in new and exciting ways all the way to 50. Moving Energy to generic was a great decision in this regard.
Also I know I said I was talking about PMs but can I just bring up Temporal Wardens again? Their play matches their original concept beautifully now. The new Strength of Purpose may look overpowered at first glance, combining 4 different talents' worth of effects into one, but that's what it took to make a true hybrid character optimal, and I'm glad you embraced that. When I play the new TWs now I really feel like I'm seamlessly using three different combat styles, instead of just being a tanky Archer with Echoes of the Past. And like PMs, they have a good selection of talents on both the class and generic side, so that you're always progressing.
And that's all! Next time I'll be back with your regularly scheduled programming of ungrateful whining about every little thing.
Double post, but I won't be able to play for a while so I'll list the bugs I've encountered so far.
Temporal Fugue left behind another clone. It had negative health, and slowly regenerated back to 100%. It's in my party but I can't control it. I'm a level 5 Shalore PM in Unhallowed Morass, so there aren't a lot of other talents in play.
When using Webs of Fate, the screen repeatedly flashes black and the game freezes.
Temporal Wake is consistently doing twice the damage listed in the tooltip. Warp Mines are consistently doing less damage than listed in the tooltip.
I concur to everything donkatsu said (including the slightly mad part). Please recieve our love and turn it into energy to fuel your powers of creation.
I'm really bummed Temporal Fugue is still buggy :/ I hope I can manage to get it hashed out. If not, hopefully Darkgod will be able to help me with it when he gets back from vacation.
I'll look at Webs of Fate real quick. It sounds like I forgot to update the timed effect long description when I pulled the movement speed off of it.
I'm still having mixed feelings about Preserve Pattern. I liked the talent and pulled it out of Fate-Weaving because I really liked that tree prior to rewriting it (aside from the movement speed overlap with Celerity). I think I can salvage it and I would really love for TWs to have this ability back. But that's going to leave Temporal PMs short on damage talents. So I don't know.
I guess the debate comes down to this. Preserve Pattern and Trim Threads or Braid Lifelines (rewritten Rethread) and Cut the Cord (Quantum Spike essentially).
*edit* Webs of Fate should be fixed. Induced Phenomena is a mess right now fyi. Cosmic Cycle is done but the rest of the tree is in the process of being rewritten.
Putting the braid effect into rethread sounds really nice. I also like preserve pattern and wouldn't mind having it back but putting pure temporal pm's down to only 2 direct damage spells would really hurt, especially early game.
My idea would be to replace damage smearing with preserve pattern. I know you like damage smearing but i sadly find it kind of weak right now. The sustain cost is hig high high and it reduces damage only by a third. In fact since it actually reduces no damage but only delays it, it is of barely any use in long or drawn out battles like hard bosses for example tend to be.
I'm not all that attached to Damage Smearing at this point. Thematically I really like Preserve Pattern but I'm not sure it really belongs in Time Travel. Maybe I can modify the theme. I'll have to think about it.
Hopefully I'll get Induced Phenomena coded tonight. I'll post when I do
Random thought: Could we maybe get Paradox Shield moved to Tier 1 of Fate Threading? It seems like it would fit well there, and it would also help PMs a lot early on.
Parcae I think you've just resolved a lot of problems I was having
I don't know about tier one though. Keep in mind you talked me into putting Trim Threads there so TWs could have an early game nuke. But I think merging Preserve Pattern's theme into Paradox Shield and moving the effect into Fate-Threading is a really good idea.
I'm not saying it's out of the question that it will end up tier one. But I'd want to see how it feels for both PMs and TWs before deciding where it's going to ultimately end up.
...Yeah, I had completely forgotten that TWs get that tree
That said, having thought about it, a damage shield is even better than a nuke. If you decide not to put it in that tree, or not to put it at Tier 1, it definitely shouldn't be because of any concern about nerfing TWs.
Kiba333 wrote:Putting the braid effect into rethread sounds really nice. I also like preserve pattern and wouldn't mind having it back but putting pure temporal pm's down to only 2 direct damage spells would really hurt, especially early game.
I don't see how that is a problem, with dimstep and plain kiting helping with the cooldown. Other caster classes that are not Archmages or Alchemists have turns without an attack talent available as well.
I've thought about it and I'm going to move Paradox Shield into Fate-Threading and rename it.
I'd like another damage talent for Paradox. Right now I'm leaning towards using the Icarus Paradox in some way. But I'd like a better name for it.
The basic premise will be a single target damage talent that deals more damage to higher ranked enemies and possibly applies debuffs based on the enemies rank. Something like...
Deals X temporal damage. Rank 1 creatures take 50% damage, rank 2 75%, rank 3 100%, rank 4 125%, rank 5 150%. Creatures may be stunned by this effect (the stun duration will have similar scaling).
I'm going to rename Temporal Fugue to something more Paradoxy and rework the bonus damage on Paradox Bolt into a variation of the Lorentz Contraction (Ladder Paradox). It's already doing this basically but I want it to be more like -50% damage if the ball is 10 tiles away from the caster and +50% at range one or something.
Cease to Exist has always been a variation on the grandfather Paradox (removing someone from the Timeline completely and therefore never removing them in the first place).
