EDIT: In general I'm getting a lot of weird damage with Rethread, I'm noticing, even on first targets it sometimes only does, for instance, half damage, despite them having no Temporal Resistance, no active skills to lower damage, etc. Are there any new mechanics that could be causing this that I should be aware of? Because as far as I can tell it doesn't seem to be happening with any of my other offensive skills.
EDIT 2: It feels like I start out with less offensive options, and most of the new offenses are tier 3 or 4 in the various skill trees, or in the Spatial Tears tree which is ten levels away at start. Wormhole remains a skill I'm pretty dubious about the utility of, one I've never really found a good use for. Haste seems to have gotten nerfed, at least as far as I'm judging it by description, without really having needed to be. I also feel like I've lost a good few options to do status affecty stuff. I've got nothing that can Confuse any longer, I've got less options for Slowing and I've got nothing that Stuns or does anything like Turn Back The Clock.
Warp Away Mines also have the issue that they warp enemies away... from THEIR location. They warp enemies in a random direction, which could put them on the other side of you, potentially subjecting you to attack from multiple directions when before the fight was monodirectional. Having the warp mines work more like catapult traps(i.e. they just launch enemies in the opposite direction of the direction the enemy was moving), would give them a lot more utility.
Having tested Preserve Pattern, it appears to basically do the Damage Smearing thing, which it feels like it doesn't describe itself as, at all.
Gravity spells feel like they've received a long-overdue boost, their damage finally feels properly competitive, like they can do something other than just move people aorund, now. I'm really happy with this. Not sure how the bonus damage on Gravity Spike is supposed to work, though, is it just a straight-up boost to the damage of all targets in the AoE, based on # of targets in the AoE? Because I get identical targets at identical distance from the center of effect with differences in damage roughly equal to the damage boost, so does it designate someone as "target 1," then target 2 gets one helping worth of damage boost, target 3 gets two helpings, etc.?
Not sure on the usefulness of Contingency. It's a really handy one, at first glance, but then I realize that most of my un-targeted emergency options as a Paradox Mage are instant-use anyway. It would have a lot of use if I picked up that Sun Paladin/Anorithil tree that has Healing Light, Barrier and Providence, all three really useful defensive spells that consume a turn to use, but as a pure Paradox Mage, I doubt the utility a bit. It seems like really my only options are self-centered AoE attacks, Temporal Reprieve or maybe Phase Shift. It could end up as a lifesaver, but it feels like it would be more worth it if Paradox Mages had more defensive/support skills to pack into it.
The recolour of Dimensional Step makes it REALLY look a lot like Rune: Phase Door, this could maybe result in misclicks on the skill bar.
When using Repulsion Blast and Gravity Spike, I sometimes get some odd Game Log chatter formatted as "Kinetic X Y Z" where X, Y and Z are numbers.
Not sure if it's meant to tell me anything or whether it's just some stuff for testing or that needs trimming.
Spatial Fragments behaves oddly, sometimes it seems to hit enemies with only one fragment, sometimes it hits them with one fragment in one turn, then one in the next, occasionally it hits them with all three fragments at once. I'm not able to regularly reproduce this particular bug, though.
tl;dr, overall positive, but could use a few more offensive choices(if anything, more, bigger offensive skills would make paradox management more difficult and anomalies more of a fact of life than something quite so easily avoided), could use more options to cause status effects, still not sure why Wormhole is even a skill, the bugs are relatively minor.
