Playtesters needed! (1.3 Chronomancers)

[edge2054]

Temporal Wardens are just about done but will need a lot of playtesting for balance.

Still shy two talents but one I've got figured out, just needs coding.

[Fayd]

What's in the rest of the tree, maybe we can help come up with the last 2.

[edge2054]

I've got it Fayd. We figured it out on IRC last night. Thanks though

Icons and balance aside TWs should be feature complete today as long as I don't run into any snags.

[elboyo]

I'm loving the Temporal Warden so far. My biggest so far is that Braided Blade is almost unusable in most circumstances because it cannot be ground-targeted.

Is it possible for this skill to be done in a semi-circle like the Obliterating Smash that Doombringers have? It doesn't have to hit the full 180 degrees, but an AoE of 3 consecutive spaces like it can do now would be just fine.

There are so many times when I have two enemies that I want to use the talent on, but they are separated by a single empty space that prevents me from striking both of them.

[edge2054]

I made it a beam on melee hit. Targeting still needs some work.

Latest changes are here BTW

http://git.net-core.org/edge2054/t-engine4

[edge2054]

Last talent pushed for Wardens. There will be a lot of balance tweaks as I do a test playthrough but saves should remain relatively stable.

Use the address posted above please to grab the branch.

[twas Brillig]

So the first thirteen levels (all the tier 1 and tier 2 dungeons) of Temporal Warden are pretty fun, with no bugs that I could see. Kudos on fixing a class that I could only barely stand to get through the starting area. I've been playing it mostly grabbing everything that looks shiny and buffing magic. I picked up Temporal Hounds at level 10, and so far that's been a good decision. Mostly it's been pretty easy, aside from one or two tight spots, but we'll see if that holds up in the harder dungeons.

• Something funky in Point 0 (some buff I didn't notice I had, or possibly high paradox after the Temporal Defiler fight) made Weapons Folding look deceptively good. Like, adding forty damage good. That's not a big problem, and it may not be fixable without fixing things that aren't just the TW, but still.
• Switching weapons with skill usage mostly feels really smooth and frankly pretty bad-ass. I have exactly two problems with it in spite of that: 1) There's no way to do that in the starter zone, since you'll only get Threaded Arrow after everything. That's both a little clunky, and doesn't serve to introduce the player to the mechanic. 2) This feature is never mentioned anywhere, though having the skills not gray out is a solid hint.
• Preserve Pattern doesn't actually say it reduces/converts your damage, only that it increases Paradox. It's not a big leap, but it should probably be explicit. Once you have it going the effect is very clear, however.
• Aside from being a little anatomical, saying time must be "fully dilated" for Time Stop is also sort of oblique. Mentioning the stacks needed would be nice. (though it sounds like you might have changed this for the next version already?)
• Invigorate says "Most other talents on cooldown will refresh twice as fast". Which ones won't? If it's just talents without a fixed cooldown, I'd say that and not leave people wondering.
• How does the extra damage from Singularity Arrow work? Does everything take the same damage (increased by the number of targets)? Does the damage reduction apply to all the damage, or to the bonus physical damage?
• It'd be nice if Spacetime Tuning told you what your maximum 0% failure Paradox was. I've also noticed that I seem to rest to one higher than my desired paradox, which may be a rounding issue.
• Dimensional Step fizzling when used out of line of sight is frustrating, but I guess consistent with teleport mechanics. (I lost an escort this way--the other one was just me being an idiot.)
• Strength of Purpose doesn't help you when equipping armor, which seems to undermine the point a little. The stat requirements on armor lag behind weapons, so it means your investment (point or equipment) doesn't need to be as extreme, but it was a little unexpected that it was necessary at all. If that's working as intended, cool. I guess I get physical power out of the deal.
• Precognition and Line of Sight may be a little odd? I mainly use beams and AoEs, but does Arcane Eye let you target enemies out of light radius if they're seen by Arcane Eye? I had a rare in the Gloom I could target (with Arrow Stitching, if that's somehow relevant) through their darkness even though I could see them with Precognition, which felt wrong.
• Phase Pulse seems a little underwhelming. Maybe if it had knockback on a failed teleport?
• Arrow Stitching should mention the (one turn?) duration on the clones. It's still a cool effect, even though it's hard to appreciate them when they disappear so fast.

I have a lot of thoughts specifically about the hounds.

• It's really nice (especially given all the speed boosting) that the hounds will eventually teleport back to you if they get too far behind. The leash distance could be a little shorter, though, since I feel like I'm often without my hounds for long stretches. It'd also be good if this mechanic was mentioned somewhere explicitly.
• My hounds have a level-up arrow that I can't do anything about. That's kind of a shame, it'd be neat to have that sort of customization. Horribly unnecessary, given that they're already very useful minions, but hey.
• A cheap "Command: Heel" or "Command: Return" skill that lets you pull hounds back from enemies out of your line of sight (for instance) would be convenient. It's annoying having them wander off to get killed by a rare I can't quite see while resting. (especially when that leads the rare too me, sans adorable meat shields) Obviously there's tactical overlap with "Command: Blink" here, but even something that clears their target could be helpful in keeping them contained.
• Having Hounds sustained means you can't shoot the "friendly" rogues in Unknown Tunnels. Not sure it's worth coding around that, honestly.
• I could swear my Temporal Clone from Arrow Stitching shot my hounds, but that might have been some other effect.

[elboyo]

Really big bug.

Temporal Bolt is resetting two ability cooldowns fully once leveled to 4 rather than lowering a single ability by 2 turns.

This have been allowing me to spam all my gravity spells without limit.



On a positive note, I love the interaction between the projectile slow aura in the Gravity tree and the Temporal Bolt return time.

[edge2054]

Really big bug.

Temporal Bolt is resetting two ability cooldowns fully once leveled to 4 rather than lowering a single ability by 2 turns.

This have been allowing me to spam all my gravity spells without limit.



On a positive note, I love the interaction between the projectile slow aura in the Gravity tree and the Temporal Bolt return time.

lol, thanks, fixed.

[twas Brillig]

Old Forest completed with no really problems, even when my hounds all ran off to get themselves killed right before I ran into Wrathroot. At that point I'd gotten "Command: Blink" so I really have no excuse.

• Crystal's Astral Binding's triggers Echoes of the Past on spell, working as intended. 1) damage from Echoes is reported as coming from the cast spell which I know because 2) Echoes has friendly fire, which is unfortunate for my poor hounds which are a lot closer to me than the things I'm shooting. This isn't so much a bug as a complaint that Echoes is a good spell that isn't a great match for Dust to Dust.
• Does targeting a friendly unit with "Command: Blink" lead to a massacre or body guards? The equivalent doomed ability has shadows protecting friendly units, but no information is given either way for Blink.

Also, I think this is an unrelated bug, but it did happen on a Temporal Warden so who the hell knows. I broke time a little. Part of this lead to Preserve Pattern hitting me for negative paradox damage (for infinite time, see bug) which I'm not sure how to interpret. Mostly I bring this up because I think it's super fitting that a bug related to the irregular passage of time happened to a Chronomancer.

[edge2054]

Crystle's Astral Bindings will probably go back to Dust to Dust.

Command Blink should work to pull the hounds back to you, if not I'll make sure it does and maybe put something in the description

The bug was produced by poison probably from the water. It should be fixed in head but it sounds like your character's pretty far behind I wouldn't update if you're having fun though. That save I'm sure isn't compatable with my branch.

I read your other post too. Just was a lot of stuff and I was still waking up. I'll take some time to consider some of the things you said there and how to address them.

Thanks for the feedback and playtesting guys! You're helping us out a lot

*edit* Command Blink is pretty spiffy now that I look back over it. If you don't target an enemy it clears their AI target. So it should help with pulling them off rares and what not. I'll clarify the description to include the word enemy.

[twas Brillig]

Command Blink should work to pull the hounds back to you, if not I'll make sure it does and maybe put something in the description

*edit* Command Blink is pretty spiffy now that I look back over it. If you don't target an enemy it clears their AI target. So it should help with pulling them off rares and what not. I'll clarify the description to include the word enemy.

Spiffy! That should be really helpful, so long as I can stick them somewhere they can't see the mailm-- whatever enemies are pulling them away.

The bug was produced by poison probably from the water. It should be fixed in head but it sounds like your character's pretty far behind I wouldn't update if you're having fun though. That save I'm sure isn't compatable with my branch.

Hm? Oh, d'oh. Should we be testing master or chrono_talent_balance?

I read your other post too. Just was a lot of stuff and I was still waking up. I'll take some time to consider some of the things you said there and how to address them.

Yeah, can't blame you. It's just a dump of all the thoughts I had about the class through those thirteen levels. If I do another one of similar magnitude I'll try and break it up a little more.

[edge2054]

chrono_talent_balance would be good

[twas Brillig]

chrono_talent_balance would be good

Okay, so number 1 feedback would be your chronomancer build needs to accept feedback from alternate and outdated timelines/builds. Chopchop.

Do you want feedback on any of the locked trees more than the others?

Early game feedback (through level :

• Still feels pretty strong. No serious equipment drops but managed to kill Bill right at level ~7 with no problems. Obviously that's not super broken.
• It'd be nice if the Rally Call effect could get cleared once you kill the Temporal Defiler. Since there's a good chance players will level up at the end of that fight, having the 300% damage boost exaggerating talents is sort of obnoxious. (Also resting to full with 5000 extra health just isn't happening, which is a more minor issue.)
• Spacetime Tuning takes some getting used to, but I think having the unmodified paradox there is helpful. I still think it would be nice if there was a quick way to set your preferred paradox to 0% anomaly chance, but that's only a small bonus. I'm still getting some sort of weird rounding thing where I rest to one over my preferred paradox, which is annoying.
• Dimensional Shift could probably use a quick line to the effect of "this talent gives you access to three abilities". Passives with durations are always confusing, but overall I think this is less cumbersome than what Stonewarden does for the Deeprock tree.
• Should weapons have their damage modified by magic or strength? I think the version I was using earlier had Strength of Purpose giving you Magic to both requirements and damage modifier, but here's only for requirements. I guess that fits with needing strength for armor requirements, but it feels a little weird being able to use any weapon...poorly.
• I really like the way weapon switching works now. Figuring it out was really natural, knowing that the skills would switch it/that shoot is normally grayed and unavailable without a bow. There is one small bug: bumping with the arrow keys switches you to your melee set, but clicking (like on a diagonal because your laptop doesn't have a numpad) will actually shoot instead of bumping. (I do not have shoot bound to LMB, so I think this is a legit bug.)
• Does Fate Weaving spend its spins, or just require them? It'd make sense either way, but isn't explicit.

Typos:

• Braided Blade is missing the word "hits" in "if either hits you'll".
• Dimensional Anchor is anti-telport.
• Blade Sheer should probably be "shear", unless it's a pun. "Shear" is a verb (cut, sever), "sheer" is an adjective (completely, perpendiculr, or translucent).
• Celerity gives you bonus movement speed for "2 turn".
• Blended Threads cares about what weapons you had when you "initated" the attack.

[Razakai]

Weapon Manifold is kinda bugging me. It's a good concept, but having to effectively press an extra button every 5 turns is a pain for what's already a button heavy class. I think it'd be better if it was a shared cooldown between the effects, maybe buff them all too. Then it'd be a matter of choosing the right manifold for the situation, and lazy players like me can just pick 1 to go on the hotbar and spam that. Maybe also give it a longer duration/better effect + longer cooldown so it's a bigger effect?