Playtesters needed! (1.3 Chronomancers)

[overgoat]

Better idea! After beating the temporal clones Choronmancers could get a new tree unlocked with some of the old talents like Dust to Dust. Probably overpowered, but it would be fun

[64legos]

Better idea! After beating the temporal clones Choronmancers could get a new tree unlocked with some of the old talents like Dust to Dust. Probably overpowered, but it would be fun

Wasn't there talk about chronomancers (or at least paradox mages) having unlockable trees, like archmages?

[Doctornull]

Thing is, Dust to Dust is weaker than the current chain-lightning Rethread. From a balance perspective, it was a better t1 talent.

[overgoat]

Thing is, Dust to Dust is weaker than the current chain-lightning Rethread. From a balance perspective, it was a better t1 talent.

I don't disagree and it definitely fits the theme better, but I'm always a fan of having more trees available to unlock to give more build variety.

[Parcae2]

The original draft Edge posted had an incredible number of unlockable trees. The problem was that no one is going to unlock a tree for Dust to Dust, so you have to add defense and utility to make the tree viable, but then the class has too much defense and utility, so Edge wound up having to consolidate/remove a lot of stuff.

[64legos]

The original draft Edge posted had an incredible number of unlockable trees. The problem was that no one is going to unlock a tree for Dust to Dust, so you have to add defense and utility to make the tree viable, but then the class has too much defense and utility, so Edge wound up having to consolidate/remove a lot of stuff.

Still, having time travelers unlocking a tree that had skills from previous versions would be funny meta-wise.

[Parcae2]

That's a neat idea. Maybe some of the more imbalanced stuff could return as a prodigy.

[edge2054]

Temporal Reprieve is not working in conjunction with Contingency. Its eighter a bug or description is not correct.

Fixed cooldown was a hidden stat introduced in 1.2. As far as I know it didn't really do anything.

In 1.3 fixed cooldowns will be displayed. Spells with fixed cooldowns can't have their cooldowns reduced. Temporal Reprieve has a fixed cooldown. Contingency doesn't work on talents with fixed cooldowns.

I could add it to the talent description but I'm hoping that as players become familiar with fixed cooldowns that it will become intuitive. As an example, timeless no longer affects talents with a fixed cooldown and itself has a fixed cooldown. I didn't change the talent description.

[twas Brillig]

I'd say if it's an explicit limitation, it's just obscure enough to warrant mentioning. Timeless affects cooldowns directly, so I'd say the connection there is reasonably intuitive (though since that's still different than actually reducing the cooldowns, that's debatable). Contingency uses a spell in a way that's explicitly disconnected from cooldowns. If it took the spell off cooldown, the fixed cooldown limitation would be more intuitive.

Of course, I'm wordy. And as long as there's some explanatory error when you try and contingency a fixed cooldown effect, it may not need to be explicit to the skill description.

A question that may only be relevant to adventurers: how does contingency interact with spells that start out untargeted, but become targeted with enough investment? Like stone wall, for instance. Will your contingency just stop working without warning?

[edge2054]

Yeah, I can see it more so on Contingency. I just don't want to add an extra line to ten different talents to make it explicit. I'll let others weigh in, I'm certainly not opposed to being more specific on Contingency.

As to Contingency Stone Wall and other talents. It's going to depend on if they're coded properly. Stone Wall specifically will Contingency correctly but once you advance the talent level it will become targetable which will probably require a turn to use when it pops. I'll tell Contingency to force the target for this kind of edge case.

[Toranth]

Yeah, I can see it more so on Contingency. I just don't want to add an extra line to ten different talents to make it explicit. I'll let others weigh in, I'm certainly not opposed to being more specific on Contingency.

Unfortunately, Contingency right now relies on several keywords: Active, non-targeted, non-fixed-cooldown, Is: a Spell, and the hidden "All other preconditions to cast the spell are met". You can set Time Stop or See the Threads as your Contingency spell, but if you don't have enough Time Dilation stacks or you've already used StT, the Contingency will just fizzle instead of activating.

Active, I understand - passives make no sense, and some Sustains could be complicated. I'd like for it to work with sustains like Defensive Posture (and for the Adventurer abuse - Contingency Fearscape!), but I can understand why not.

Non-targeted - Again, I understand the desire for simplicity. I'd prefer if the game simply interrupted after the triggering action to ask the user for a target, then resumed whatever was going to happen anyway afterwards. Even a simple rule, like "Will target the nearest foe" or "Will target the player" would be OK. Incidentally, this is basically what happens right now if you set Bias Weave to be your Contingency spell.

Non-fixed-cooldown, I don't understand. The Contingency ability already ignores the Cooldown status of the talent. Unless the objection is that having those specific spells on Contingency is too powerful?

That said, this is absolutely awesome to have available, and I'm looking forward to abusing the heck out of it.
Is: a Spell - I'd prefer if this requirement wasn't there either. I'd love to trigger a Regen or Wild infusion, since I can trigger a Shielding rune.

Other conditions - Something needs to be done about this. Time Stop, for example, will work correctly if I happen to have all the Time Dilation stacks needed when my HP goes low enough, but fails if I moved or was moved right beforehand. I think this should either ignore the requirement that same way it ignores Cooldowns, or should be prevented from being Contingency'd in the first place.

At the same time, certain spells can be set to Contingency that make no sense, like Spacetime Tuning, Timeport: Point Zero, and Bias Weave. It might be best (read: most intuitive and easiest for the player to use) just to prevent specific abilities, rather than trying to fine tune all the conditions.

[Doctornull]

Since "Fixed Cooldown" is visible on every talent, just list the limitation in Contingency and in Timeless.

I'll tell Contingency to force the target for this kind of edge case.

Could you put an attribute on talents which (might) need forced targeting instead of hard-coding Contingency? That'll make it easier for addon writers to code correctly, and will make maintaining the main codebase easier too I think.

[Sheila]

was fighting the ritch hivemoter and this happened a few times when using gravity spike, might've been confused at the time

[PurpleXVI]

Firing up the 1.3 Chronomancers for the first time, I'm immediately enthusiastic. Before, I had a bunch of Paradox Mage skills I'd never even look at sideways, but now almost everything looks way more interesting and way more useful(actual usefulness subject to testing, of course), but a couple of things stand out nonetheless.

The exact functioning of Preserve Pattern seems kind of vague. Does it actually turn damage into Paradox, protecting you? Or does it just increase Paradox without reducing damage?

Losing Turn Back the Clock and Dust to Dust does feel like it subtracts some direct damage potential, though. Level 4+ Turn Back was a very, very handy Paradox Mage spike due to the double bolts, and while it feels like Rethread is supposed to be the new Dust to Dust, the fact that it loses damage with each hit leaves you doing less damage overall, and the chain-lightning-y functionality means that positioning suddenly matters less, which I think is a detriment. I suppose Temporal Bolt works as a new "reverse" Dust to Dust, but it's a lot more subject to enemy movement and, again, feels like it does a lot less damage. Overall it feels like Paradox Mages lose a lot of their early punch, but I suppose it might be exchanged for more mid/late punch? Hard to tell this early on.

Rethread also seems to lose a lot more than 33% damage per jump, so I think someone might've mucked up a decimal point somewhere. It goes from 73 on first hit, for example, then down to 4 and then to 1. This seems to happen consistently.

I get huge loads of errors when Warp Mines intersect with "real" traps.



The error didn't occur immediately, hence why I'm almost out of sight of the troublesome area, partially. But as you can see, there's a fireball trap in the upper right, inside the vault, and what seems to have caused the issue was my Warp Mines intersecting with the fireballs spawned by it. I get about... nine of those errors, identical ones. I made Warp Mines inside the vault twice before, with no issues, and no instant issue even with the fireballs around, but it seems like the thing spazzed out when the fireballs were about to detonate(or perhaps when the Warp Mines were about to fade away? Not quite sure.). I suspect I can just brave nine errors per turn and simply leave the level, but it's still quite annoying.

[a few minutes pass]

Well, I could, but I forgot I was in the Skeleton starter area and accidentally went down instead of up. When I then returned, to brave the trip to the up stairs... it started spamming errors again, but this time more than nine per tick. In fact, it started spawning infinite identical errors and I had to close the game with the Task Manager to get anywhere.

So I think that's a bug reported, right there.

[Sheila]

Idea: make temporal reprieve look like a beach, or at the very least give it an umbrella and a folding chair, because why not?