Playtesters needed! (1.3 Chronomancers)

[edge2054]

Yeah, sorry gray. I think raledon is right, it's so much of a one point wonder with runes.

As for gravity spike. For now I'm going to clarify the description on it. It's really just dealing damage once.

[Effigy]

What about having Chronomancy as the escort reward, but don't give Contingency as the talent reward? You'd need to unlock the category and spend multiple points to get it. I like having the first talent available as a Track substitute for non-antimagic characters.

[donkatsu]

Comments on beta1 Paradox Mage:

• Materialize Barrier is comparable to Stone Wall and Temporal Reprieve, except with a cooldown of 10 instead of 40/50. If it is to have a low cooldown then it can't break line of sight as reliably and as long as it currently does. Maybe give it beam instead of wall targeting, or only create a single matter tile? The way wall targeting is implemented in ToME is really funky and unintuitive anyway. Edit: actually a beam would be terrible with Dust to Dust; I have no idea what to do with this short of making it not block LoS at all.
• I still think Spellbinding is the weakest unlockable tree, it's gotten relatively even weaker now that all of the other unlockables have had the crucial defensive talents scattered amongst them.
• On Archmages, Time Shield is reasonable (relatively speaking, considering Archmages as a whole are ridiculous), because their other defenses are also flat amounts of damage, so Time Shield basically adds onto them instead of multiplying. But since every other Paradox Mage defense reduces damage by a percent, Time Shield's flat amount becomes indispensible, especially in the early game, where flat reduction shines the most. This could be fixed by changing another percent reduction into a flat reduction, to make Time Shield less relatively good. My suggestion is to swap Webs of Fate and Seal Fate, since Seal Fate isn't useful early on anyway, and then make Webs of Fate displace the next X damage, sort of like a 100% displacement shield, instead of displacing X% of all damage. Here are some example numbers for a level 20 Paradox Mage:
  
  Now
  Max HP: 350
  Time Shield: 450
  => 450/350 = +128% survivability (compare to Reality Smearing's ~30% which comes with downsides instead of a slew of upsides like Time Shield)
  
  If Webs of Fate displaced the next 250 damage
  Max HP: 350
  Webs of Fate: 250
  Time Shield: 450
  => 450/(350+250) = +75% survivability. Still way higher than every other defense, but considerably less tilted in Time Shield's favor without a direct nerf.

[raledon]

Gravity damage scaling appear to be quite, if not overly, high:
Comparing the gravity tree to fire, it has about the same aoe, higher damage instantly, no travel time, no self damage (After level , more cc (no stun, but 2 knockbacks and a slow) and very low mana cost.

[Effigy]

Time Shield is fine if you ask me. It helps a lot during the early game, but since it can't crit it's only decent in the late game.

[donkatsu]

None of the Paradox Mage defensive talents crit.

Edit:

Vigilance makes me want to put Warden's Focus on a trash enemy, which I will then completely ignore, so that I can take reduced damage from the actually dangerous enemy. Giving up Blink Blade and a chunk of crit/accuracy is worth taking 32% less damage from a dangerous boss. If this is intended then okay, but thematically it feels off. The thing that I'm ostensibly focusing on is the last thing I want to kill.

[Kazimier]

I'm not sure it was intended, but casting dust to dust on yourself, while having disintegration sustained(1.3 talent level), digs all the walls in range and not up to 1 tile as per talent description. Seems broken, but nevertheless amazingly useful in sandworm lair
Apart from this, love the new paradox mage
Also, sustaining matter weaving causes glitchy afterimage when I move, but this could be caused by my copmuters graphical incompatibility...

[Effigy]

None of the Paradox Mage defensive talents crit.

Maybe not, but it's still a matter of relative value. A 400hp shield is very helpful when you're level 10, but much less helpful when you're level 50 and have Heroism infusion plus a bunch of +hp items. Not to mention other damage shields like Shielding rune or Barrier that can crit for 1k+ easily at endgame.

If we think Time Shield is truly overpowered at low level, I would recommend just reducing the base value a bit and make it scale more from spellpower.

[donkatsu]

Maybe not, but it's still a matter of relative value. A 400hp shield is very helpful when you're level 10, but much less helpful when you're level 50 and have Heroism infusion plus a bunch of +hp items. Not to mention other damage shields like Shielding rune or Barrier that can crit for 1k+ easily at endgame.

If we think Time Shield is truly overpowered at low level, I would recommend just reducing the base value a bit and make it scale more from spellpower.

Yes, instead of being 500% better than other defenses like it is in the early game, in the lategame it's only slightly better or roughly even. What of it?

Level 50
Max HP: 2000 (with equipment and a heroism infusion)
Time Shield: 650, plus healing
=> 650/2000 = +32.5%

In the very, very worst case scenario, at the very end game, Time Shield is still on par with its competition, which hovers at around 30-40%. Nerfing Time Shield directly is another possible solution but not necessary; its impact on Paradox Mages can be easily lessened by giving them more flat reduction and less percent reduction.

[edge2054]

None of the Paradox Mage defensive talents crit.

Edit:

Vigilance makes me want to put Warden's Focus on a trash enemy, which I will then completely ignore, so that I can take reduced damage from the actually dangerous enemy. Giving up Blink Blade and a chunk of crit/accuracy is worth taking 32% less damage from a dangerous boss. If this is intended then okay, but thematically it feels off. The thing that I'm ostensibly focusing on is the last thing I want to kill.

Yeah, I don't like that. Not sure how to fix it though without nerfing Warden's Focus. I.E. Warden's Focus canceling if you hit someone else (would be bad for AoE). I could reduce the damage you deal to non-focused targets but again that nerfs Focus to fix Vigilance.

Open to ideas though.

I'm not sure it was intended, but casting dust to dust on yourself, while having disintegration sustained(1.3 talent level), digs all the walls in range and not up to 1 tile as per talent description. Seems broken, but nevertheless amazingly useful in sandworm lair
Apart from this, love the new paradox mage
Also, sustaining matter weaving causes glitchy afterimage when I move, but this could be caused by my copmuters graphical incompatibility...

It's matter weaving plus motion blur. Some rodents are doing it too when they disengage or whatever with stone skin active.

The wall digging is per tick. So self cast dust to dust will dig things out each time it deals damage.

Gravity damage scaling appear to be quite, if not overly, high:
Comparing the gravity tree to fire, it has about the same aoe, higher damage instantly, no travel time, no self damage (After level , more cc (no stun, but 2 knockbacks and a slow) and very low mana cost.

I'll give the numbers another look but keep in mind that fire and physical damage are very different when it comes to how much gear supports them. Paradox and Mana are also very different resources. So costs aren't really comparable straight across like that.

[edge2054]

Comments on beta1 Paradox Mage:

I'll take a look at materialize barrier. It's certainly a hard thing to balance I'll admit. I'm not a fan of changing the targeting though.

I've also got my eye on Time Shield. Thankfully it doesn't interact well with Reality Smearing.

Webs of Fate on the other hand is very early in the effect chain. I could move it so it's called when Reality Smearing is. So basically it wouldn't do jack if Time Shield (or any other shield) was up.

I don't know. I'll have to think about it. The flat shield I don't like. Feels too much like displacement shield.

[Thasero]

I'd rather not have shields disable the effect of Webs of Fate, simply because it would be a hassle to monitor my shields vs. my buffs so I know when it's optimal to activate each one - "OK, Webs of Fate is down, now I can shield. My shield is down, now I can Web."

[edge2054]

I hear ya Thasero.

Okay I set the duration of Materialize Barrier to a flat four, no scaling. Considering it costs a turn and takes some positioning to pull off right I don't think this will be too cheesy. It's scaling will suffer a bit but I set those durations up before it could be exploded for damage so I'm not too worried about it.

Vigilance damage reduction now only works on rank 1 and 2 enemies.

Looking over Gravity now and still thinking about Webs of Fate/Time Shield.

[edge2054]

Alright, I'm playing with some fairly heavy nerfs to gravity spike and repulsion blast. Haven't got gravity well yet. But I'd like people that have played gravity builds up to high level to be able to weigh in before I commit any changes.

[edge2054]

So I left the base damage values pretty much alone on gravity, capped bonus damage at 50% on spike and blast. Reduced damage on Gravity Well a bit.

Right now I'm looking at Spacetime Stability and trying to figure out what we can do with it that is more fun and balanced.

Still debating on Time Shield + Webs of Fate but Thasero mentioned in chat that just about everything makes shields better. i.e. resists. So I don't know.

*edit* Also Shielding gives +52% on Time Shield. Doesn't Time Shield + 5/5 Shielding still blow Time Shield + Webs of Fate out of the water?