Reworking Chronomancy ver 2

[donkatsu]

I can't reproduce the Temporal Assault bug, is it consistent? Can you type in the console =game.player:reactionToward(game.player) and tell me what it returns?

It returns

Code: Select all

1 :=: 100

That time it hit a Snow Giant twice, killed it, then it hit me on the third hit. There was also a Void Horror about 4 tiles away from me.

[donkatsu]

Going back to playing with Paradox Mage now:

-Trim Threads is not restoring paradox on kill.

-I noticed the spiders in Unhallowed Morass have 120% global speed. While thematic for a chronomancer start area, it makes the entire zone a dice roll. If a spellcaster rare spider gets a double turn on you, you're basically dead. This is especially true on higher difficulties, but I imagine even normal difficulty players will run into double turn oneshots once in a while. 120% may be interesting on enemies in later zones when the player has more options, but as the very first dungeon, it doesn't add any strategy, just random deaths.

-The Temporal Fugue change is headed exactly where that talent needs to go. Something that makes it so that things that happen in the fugue state have some sort of consequence to the player.

-It would be nice for physical PMs if Temporal Reprieve wasn't sitting on top of three temporal damage talents, but I don't really see a good way to rearrange it, so I guess it can just be like Shivrogoth Form. What if physical PMs could make use of those three talents somehow? I mean, Time Skip is already pretty okay for physical, but how about if using Temporal Bolt or Echoes From The Past while inside the Temporal Reprieve has some sort of minor beneficial effect, like lowering cooldowns or recovering life/paradox or giving a buff or something? That's something that temporal PMs will be less inclined to do, since they actually want to use those talents, but physical PMs will do just because they don't care as much about using them outside of Reprieve and it's not like there's much else to do in there.

-I really like Braid Lifelines being a weak, passive part of another spell. It was always weird as its own spell-- too good against a clump of enemies but a waste of a turn. As a minor passive effect instead, it just affects your playstyle without swinging the fight too heavily.

[HousePet]

Players on normal will never encounter a spellcaster rare in the Unhallowed Morass.

[edge2054]

Still not sure on consolidating the Warp trees. I like PMs having a strong disable right off the bat. I don't like them having Warp Mines. And vice versa on TWs. I'll have to think about it some more.

I'll probably code Spatial Tears today.

*edit* And why Warp damage on Spatial Tears? I thought this was supposed to be a physical damage tree

*edit 2* Nevermind. I think I'm following your line of thinking. Consolidate current Warp/Spacetime trees and drop Spatial Tears in as the unlockable tree. I'll get Spatial Tears coded and see how I feel about it.

[edge2054]

Oh. Right.
Sustaining Gravity Locus makes Gravity spells not hit escorts/thralls in Hidden Compound, but they still hit tentacle summons. Probably they don't hit anything of friendly faction (friendly fire off, instead of just selffire?)

I could only reproduce this with repulsion blast which was indeed had friendly fire turned off. Thanks

-I noticed the spiders in Unhallowed Morass have 120% global speed. While thematic for a chronomancer start area, it makes the entire zone a dice roll. If a spellcaster rare spider gets a double turn on you, you're basically dead. This is especially true on higher difficulties, but I imagine even normal difficulty players will run into double turn oneshots once in a while. 120% may be interesting on enemies in later zones when the player has more options, but as the very first dungeon, it doesn't add any strategy, just random deaths.

I'll change the speed on the spiders but plan to do more work on this zone before 1.3.

[donkatsu]

Bugs:

In the damage log, the Braided effect damages and kills things that are already dead.

Cease to Exist on a Doomed rare left behind a shadow that didn't move and whose effects didn't tick.

Ideas:

With -resist all back and so many other temporal damage options, I don't think Cease to Exist needs a DoT component anymore.

My least favorite Warp-related talent is actually Banish. Warp Mine Away does most things better. It does damage while Banish doesn't, it can trigger Dimensional Anchor up to 3 times compared to Banish's 1. Warp Mines is also more fun to use. In fact, spending a turn to trigger Anchor damage once isn't even a good deal, as your basic tier 1 spells do more damage, and those don't require setup. Other than the inclusion of Banish I like Housepet's proposal for merging, except using Wormhole like Swap is kind of weird since they don't target the same way. Putting Swap on Dimensional Step makes more sense to me. I'd also just remove the confusion component since it overlaps and interferes with Phase Pulse.

I'm not super fond of Singularity Arrow, and you want to make Warp Mines TW-only to fit in with the ranger concept, so how about replacing Singularity Arrow with an arrow that drops warp mines when it reaches its destination? And then you can keep Warp as the Warp tree tier 1 for PMs to have a good disable.

Not sure if this is intentional but actually a lot of stuff has negative synergy with Seal Fate. If I have an enemy stunned, I have to turn off Phase Pulse before I can Seal Fate because otherwise I'll overwrite my 22 turn stun with a 3 turn stun. Talents and weapons with weak effects also greatly reduce the efficacy of Seal Fate. I doubt it'll be a real balance problem, it's just one of those things that feel bad. Can Seal Fate have a greatly reduced chance of activation, but increase the duration of ALL detrimental effects by 1? I would be okay with the cap being reduced, or even not scaling at all past 1 or 2, and instead just having the activation chance scale with talent level.

Edit: Oh also Disentangle sometimes doesn't restore any paradox; I think it's certain anomalies that are doing it.

[edge2054]

Spatial Tether was another teleport idea I really wanted to do but didn't find room for. It could replace banish. I'm thinking of dividing the trees up into persistent (folding) and immediate (weaving) effects.

So...

Spacetime Weaving
Dimensional Step - Can swap with enemies at tl 5. No longer causes confusion.
Dimensional Shift - Reduces the duration of one status effect by X turns when you teleport.
Phase Shift - As is but only triggers when hit for more than 10% of your maximum life.
Phase Pulse - When you teleport you deal Warp damage to nearby targets.

Spactime Folding
Warp Mines
Wormhole
Spatial Tether - Tethers the target to the target location. Each turn it's not at the location it has an X% chance (based on distance from target location) of being teleported back to the target location.
Dimensional Anchor - Maybe change this to a map effect that applies a short duration debuff.

Spatial Tears
Cracked Space - As is. Maybe a better name since I kinda stole it for Fractured Space.
Discontinuity - As is.
Fractured Space - Replaces Warp Mastery. Grants X% chance of warp damage debuffing enemies and X% physical and temporal resistance penetration for warp damage only. Percentages are based on talent level and how many charges you have. Charges are built by dealing Warp damage and decay rapidly.
Sphere of Destruction - As is.

[edge2054]

Bugs:

In the damage log, the Braided effect damages and kills things that are already dead.

Should be fixed. Thanks. No idea on the shadows thing. I'll have to look at the summon code.

With -resist all back and so many other temporal damage options, I don't think Cease to Exist needs a DoT component anymore.

Probably not. If I take it off I'll probably make trim threads back into a dot.

I'm not super fond of Singularity Arrow, and you want to make Warp Mines TW-only to fit in with the ranger concept, so how about replacing Singularity Arrow with an arrow that drops warp mines when it reaches its destination? And then you can keep Warp as the Warp tree tier 1 for PMs to have a good disable.

I kinda like Singularity Arrow though the class doesn't have a lot of synergy for it. I'll probably let it go live though I may replace it at some point.

Can Seal Fate have a greatly reduced chance of activation, but increase the duration of ALL detrimental effects by 1? I would be okay with the cap being reduced, or even not scaling at all past 1 or 2, and instead just having the activation chance scale with talent level.

The issue I see with % chance to activate on this and Phase Shift is really the same. It sucks to pop a buff and have it not do anything. But all detrimental effects by one turn might still work if I make the percentage chance scale well enough with talent level.

Edit: Oh also Disentangle sometimes doesn't restore any paradox; I think it's certain anomalies that are doing it.

I think disentangle is sometimes failing outright but still going on cooldown. I'm sure it's something in the anomaly function. The fact that it's also not reducing paradox might give me a clue into where this is happening. It's really intermittent though so hopefully I can track it down.

*edit* And note that Trim Threads has a Paradox cost. To break even you have to kill two mobs with it. Maybe I'll remove the cost.

[donkatsu]

Oh goodness, Spatial Tether sounds amazing. In fact, every single one of those changes sound great. I'm a bit sad to see the physical side neglected though; sounds like physical PMs will just be gravity + warp damage. By the way, when choosing warp damage numbers, keep in mind that +80% temporal damage and +80% physical damage is harder to get than just +80% temporal damage or just +80% physical damage, so warp damage will increase more slowly as the character progresses through the game compared to single-type damage. I haven't looked at the actual numbers but it would be nice if warp damage scaled faster with spellpower compared to pure temporal or physical damage.

Regarding Disentangle, sometimes nothing happens and I don't get paradox, but other times Bias Weave gives me an anomaly to target, and I still don't get paradox back.

Another bug: an anomaly wormhole just moved me onto the same tile as an enemy, and now whenever something tries to hit me, it hits that enemy instead. Moving fixes the issue.

And yeah, I just realized that Trim Threads cost extra. Whoops.

[edge2054]

Do you use Time Dilation a lot donkatsu? I think the Temporal Assault and Wormhole bug might be tied into Time Dilation.

*edit* nm on that, I think I needed a sanity check in Temporal Assault. Not sure what's going on with anomaly wormhole. I should update it to the new wormhole code anyway though.

[donkatsu]

I don't use the Speed Control tree at all.

[edge2054]

I think I have Temporal Assault, Anomaly Wormhole, and Disentangle fixed.

[HousePet]

Dimensional Shards instead of Cracked Space?

I said Warp damage for the Spatial Tears as I thought it was just a physical damage that gets benefits from Warp Mastery?

[donkatsu]

Warp damage is half and half. Also, more bugs:

Died to disease damage on the turn I cast Temporal Reprieve, and it got stuck forever trying to load the Eidolon map.

Temporal Fugue didn't remove the real me, then I died while in a fugue state and got sent to the Eidolon, then when I came back there were two of me. I have no idea how this happened; I've used Fugue a bunch of times and it's only happened twice so far.

Disentangle still doesn't work sometimes, although I feel like it did get a little better?

[edge2054]

I think I got Disentangle fixed (again) and maybe that temporal reprieve bug.

Did the clones spawn when Temporal Fugue failed to remove you?