[1.6.6.] The Untouchable ghoul Paradox Mage against Madness

[visage]

Madness really brings out the toxicity in the community, it seems.

Yeah, it definitely seem that way. :-/

[fateriddle]

Wow, the rage, I honest can care less about save scam or using vault items on Madness win(Unless the whole build is around something not likely to be found like a cd reduction 40% item, which is not the case in this guide). It provides us with brand new approach that is viable to the madness, that's what this post is about. In fact now I have a Ghoul + Dark Reign + Shadow veil adventurer idea in mind thanks to this post.

I really enjoy OP's introducing of the ghoul flat damage cap and detailed explanation of how damage reduction/affinity works and also the finding of Untouchable. If I find those stuff, I'll probably not choosing to air it in this forum, since nerfs will come as a result. Yeah, I'm bitter, having emotion when it comes to nerfs, it seems Dark God would nerf every "op" talent to keep everything mediocre, but I doubt that's a good way to keep the game exciting. If I decide to pick the game up for a build, it's definitely have to be in some way op, or why bother?

But one point I agree with the raging guy, that the changelog is so vague that it doesn't really help old players to find what exactly changed. Description like "change to class A", "rework of class B". You know it means for a player to read every single tree of a class to find out what's changed with that kind of description right? Also nobody remember the former numbers so I can do that and still not seeing the change. I'd suggest narrow it down a talent skill, if you prefer not providing detail change but let us find out in game, this is still manageable.

In fact, the change to Ghoul is so massive for core players, yet nobody seem to even notice it till 1.6.6 a post like this brings it up. That's a bit sad, isn't it? Technically till this post, I'd say ghoul isn't changed at all for 99% of the players, and even after, to those old player who don't visit the forum, ghoul is still not changed. Not sure if that's what Dark God intended for his massive work on a major version release.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi all!


To Mankeli:

I wrote formerly:
“If you have any interest in science or in a scientific field, then you know: the biggest PROOF for something is REPRODUCIBILITY.”

So, I never mentioned I am a scientist because I am making videos about my gameplay.
(However I am a scientist, but not because of this)
I said, the biggest proof for something is reproducibility. That was all I said with this sentence.

To react some of your statements:


1, Equipment & Items Vault:

I did not use the Items Vault for this run.

NOTE: Also, I just went into the Fortress at Video 16, so after the Backup Guardians.
So, where I found my end-game gear?

a, I found the Bloodcaller at the Salvers Compound (video no. 7, at 01:30:40)

b, I found The Untouchable at the Ruined Halfling Complex lvl 2 in a vault
(video no. 8, I am clearing that vault from 00:24:20 to 00:40:10, and picking up it at 00:29:50)

c, I found my double undeterred boots (that I used before Aetherwalk) at Dreadfell lvl 7
(video no. 10, at the end after I cleared all Dreadfell level 1-7 in one game session I am checking my gear at 02:30:10)

d, I got my end-game belt from Ukruk
(video no. 11, the ambush starts at 01:07:03 and you can see the belt at 01:16:30 when I left)

e, I found the Umbraphage at the Ruined Dungeon locked vault
(video no. 12, from 01:40:05 I picking up)

f, I found the Wheel of Fate at Vor Armoury locked vault
(video no. 14, at 01:24:05 I am picking it up)

g, I found my orange Radiance cloak at the Scourged Pits lvl 3
(video no. 15, just pause the screen at 01:33:32, you will see I picked up Radiance ‘Islasenn’)

h, I found the Rod of Sarrilon at Ardhungol lvl 1 (video no. 17, at 00:09:50)

i, I found the Aetherwalk at Rak’Shor Pride level 1
(video no. 18, just watch the video from the start. An enemy drops it at 00:02:17 and I pick it up at 00:04:54)

j, I found my end-game rare gloves at Vor Pride lvl 3 (video no. 21, at 02:35:00)
(Before this I just used the Crystle's Astral Bindings)


If you really interested in my equipment, I can search after the few remaining pieces like my totally average rare mindblast torque or my totally average randart wizard cap.



2, Spell cooldown reduction:

I do not understand your point in here and why do you mention this. This build is using exactly 0 % of spell cooldown reduction.
However I found a Quickening Pickaxe (10%), several Spellbinding Shoes (10%) and I also found Zemekkys’ (10%), so I could use a total of 30% spell cooldown reduction, but I did not used any.

You can see my equipment and I also explained that I found other gear more useful.


In my former guide I reached 100% spell cooldown reduction, yes, but that was with an ADVENTURER. (Meta – Quicken Spells, Sun – Suncloak, + gear)
So, it has no common or connection with this Paradox Mage.



3, Savescum?

From what you wrote I guess you thinking about the bug happened at Grushnak Pride.
Okay, so here is the link of that video (no. 25):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQKryKdDp8

If you see the video, I killed every enemy in all 3 levels of Grushnak Pride, including Grushnak himself.
I also cleared all the vaults in level 1 & 2.

Then after I cleared all 3 levels, I started to do vaults (I am doing vaults, just after I cleared the level)

I cleared the first one, and when I wanted to enter into the second one, the level generation went “crazy”.

This is a known bug. The random map generator algorithm can go into a loop when it cannot generate a vaild map or it can take a very long time to generate too.
After this happened, I chatted with people in the bug-thread at the Discord channel and people told me this who are experienced in coding.

So, why should I savescum AFTER I KILLED EVERYTHING IN ALL 3 LEVELS in the Pride and CLEARED ALL THE VAULTS TOO, except one?




You are also mistaken about that, I am “wildly mad” because you and one other person asked after why my character in not uploaded in the ToME Vault.
I explained in details, why I do not care about that.

Do not take it personally, but what if 1 or 2 (or any) person does not believe my run was legit?
Okay. It’s their (or your) opinion. There will be always some people who do not believe something.
I cannot force you to believe in something and I do not want to force you. I do not care.
You have a free will, you can believe in what you like to.
Why should I bother with convincing you? I do not know you at all.
(Again, do not take it personal, I do not care about convincing anyone who do not believe this)



I also do not understand your “example”. Why are you talking about the Vault as a “rewiever” in ToME?
You just admitted it is possible to create a character that seems totally legit, while it was made with cheat. Another player also wrote this formerly.


You wrote this:

If you know what you are doing you can still notice all kinds of suspect things even when stats/gear etc seem completely normal. So making a character look like a non-cheater in the vault really isn't as simple as just editing your stats back to normal or whatever.

So making a character look like a non-cheater in the vault really isn't as simple as just editing your stats back to normal or whatever.

So, I have to ask from you, how do you know this?

How do you exactly know: making a character look like a non-cheater in the vault is really not simple?
How did you gain this knowledge?
How do you know, what small details has to be looked after in a character sheet to decide if it is legit or not?


You also wrote:

Even if we were to accept that your plays on any given video are legit and the game is non-edited all it proves is that you you can play for 2 hours without dying with X amount of save scumming in between.

I am confused here, I do not understand who is WE?

Also, if you watch my videos, I am not “just surviving for 2 hours”. I am killing every single enemy, clearing every single vault in the game (except in High Peak).
I am always clearing 1 or more full areas in every game session/video.


I am also a bit confused about your opinion because in your reply, you act as you have doubts about my build/run, but in your last few sentences you writing, you BELIEVE my build can win madness in 1.6.6.
So, I am happy that we agree on this.
Yes, my build is a very strong build and it can beat madness in 1.6.6.



For me it looks like both you and the former person has real problem with the mechanic changes from 1.5 to 1.6.
Both of you are referring to this.
I have to tell you, I have nothing to do with this (or any) mechanic changes that was made in 1.6.


I am just playing ToME and making videos from my runs.
Why is this bothers you or others?
I really do not understand this.
There are several person who uploads ToME runs in YouTube (or other forums).

If you do not believe my run was legit, then you do not believe this. It’s your business.
But why this run & guide bothers you at all?

So, you have problems with the 1.6 mechanics changes, therefore I ask you to write to the developers or to DarkGod about your problems.
And not to me.
Again, I have nothing to do with the changes. The changes were not made by me.
Also, I cannot change them back.



To fateriddle:

I am happy to read you enjoyed my guide and it gave you an idea too.
I am always trying to write everything in details to make people understand more my builds and choices.
I hope you will enjoy playing with your adventurer.

[Mankeli]

I honest can care less about save scam or using vault

It may come as a surprise but some people, myself included, actually play this game like a roguelike and people who do, care. And it was clearly the OP's intent to present this run in question as a non-cheater one so....

Glad we can agree on the patch notes being trash though.

How do you exactly know: making a character look like a non-cheater in the vault is really not simple?
How did you gain this knowledge?
How do you know, what small details has to be looked after in a character sheet to decide if it is legit or not?

Because I know what a character sheet on insane/madness should roughly look like not just statwise but regarding everything else too and have burned cheaters who try to pass their win as legit and brag about it mainly/purely looking at the character sheets before without there being obvious clues like all stats being at 10000. And you gain the knowledge of doing so by playing this a game a lot and trying to learn about it while doing so. Not any more complicated than that.

I am also a bit confused about your opinion because in your reply, you act as you have doubts about my build/run, but in your last few sentences you writing, you BELIEVE my build can win madness in 1.6.6.

What exactly is the confusion here? Believing that your build can win but expressing some concerns regarding the run provided as a proof of completion are in no way contradictory positions. The concerns aren't related to your build but your past actions, refusal to upload the character so that ppl can see what's going without spending 57 hours watching youtube vids etc.

Ofc none of the things I mentioned actually prove you cheated _on this particular run_ either, if you did not then good for you!

So, you have problems with the 1.6 mechanics changes, therefore I ask you to write to the developers or to DarkGod about your problems.

If you read the forums you'd notice that there has been all kinds of feedback already regarding 1.6. Clearly, changes in the game are not your fault and as I said already, you deserve credit for finding out the flat dam cap change because I haven't seen any non-dev writing about it before you did.

[btonasse]

deleted due to abusive language.

[whitelion]

.....

Your post is incredibly unkind and disrespectful to Tradewind, the developers, and a number of members of the community who have no involvement in this thread or issue. If you can't make your points without insulting and disrespecting others, you'll just go the way of ster/Dajawn and get banned. Ultimately, Tradewind can't prove their win is 100% legit, and you can't prove it isn't. If you want to present evidence that disputes their claims and let people decide what they think, fine, but don't be a jerk about it.

I also reject your implication that some small clique of elite players should/does serve of the arbiter of what is legitimate and has value in ToME. This toxic elitism has long been present, and is one of the reasons I played for years before getting actively involved in the community. Condescending toward newer and less experienced players and telling them they suck when they get excited and post here about something they did or discovered for themselves just serves to deter people from participating in the community and ruins their enjoyment. Disrespecting the efforts the developers put in on a game that is affordable/free will likely make them care less about the concerns of high level players. The vast majority of time in ToME is spent below insane. Why should developers spend time addressing the problems that players who play on insane+ experience if they're just going to be jerks about it anyway? I'm not sure that 1% of the customers are always right.

I think too that guides can be thought of as "here is something I did that worked for me on settings X, and here is how you can do it too." A guide doesn't need to give strictly optimal recommendations at all times. If it clearly explains the build, its goals, the reasoning behind it, and how to play it, then it is a fine guide, and other players can try the build, see what they like and don't like, and then change things to their taste.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!


To btonasse:

You wrote:
“I'll give you a hand: https://git.net-core.org/tome/t-engine4 ... c8f27e6eb5 . Note how the message doesn’t mention ghouls at all, and wasn’t included in the main commit revising ghouls”

LOL, you write the message that you linked doesn’t mention ghouls at all!
Please see your linked message closer and better:

ghoul_mention_shields.png (19.63 KiB) Viewed 15136 times

“Notably, the old order of operations has a lot of antisynergy with shield runes, which Ghoul uses a lot.”

Do you see the mention of ghouls & damage shields under the title?
Because I can!



Also, you wrote:

Trust me, I don't need tips from midwits such as yourself. Thank you for correctly identifying that flat damage cap before this change was absolute garbage at least. Only Freeze really existed for dangerous single-hit damage, maybe if you made a really convincing argument for 2-hit attacks like Shadow Veil and Ice Claw or heavy consistent damage like Flamespitter/Elandar you could argue resilience helps against them.

LOOOL

Okay, from this point I basically do not believe that you ever played in madness.

“Only Freeze really existed for dangerous single-hit damage” really?
“Maybe Shadow Veil and Ice Claw for 2-hit attacks?”


I am sorry, I cannot take this anymore…

Have you ever heard about Archer? (Especially in 1.5, but it’s still incredibly dangerous in 1.6)
Have you ever heard about Flurry?
Have you ever met with a Worm that Walks (elite/rare/unique/randboss)?
Do you know what is Rampage in madness?
(again, especially in 1.5, but it is still very dangerous)
Do you know what is Echoes from the Past?

I am not continuing the list...

So, you saying ghoul resilience is not useful against these, because they do not deal enough damae to trigger the damage cap?
At around talent level ~40 - 50 ? In madness?

LOOOL



Okay, I understand now better why my guide bothers you, and why is this rage.

You mentioned a “group of elite players”. And this group of “elite players” are validating ToME wins…
And I guess, you are a member of this group of “elite players”.


In my last reply to you I asked you about a recorded madness play. (normal class & showing character sheets like I did).


In this reply you wrote this:
“Sounds like you weren't searching hard enough since there are several.”


BUT YOU DID NOT SEND ANY LINK TO PROVE IT!
You did not sent any recorded madness play...


So, see the facts:

There is a group of “elite players” who claim, they are elite (so, best of…)
This group of elite players want to validate my madness win.

But if I ask this elite group to SHOW ME any video evidence that PROVES they are “elite”, this elite group cannot provide me any evidence.


So, it seems for me, this group of elite players cannot prove their “eliteness”.


You are criticizing my playthrough, meanwhile you cannot prove that you played madness even just 1 time in your entire life.


The fact is, you can criticize my madness play, because I HAVE MADNESS PLAYS.
And I cannot criticize your madness play, because you do not have any, you cannot prove it, you cannot show me.


Doing something and criticizing something are two very different things, you know.
I.g. you can criticize easily every football player from your sofa, in front of your TV.
But when you are at the football field with the ball, things are not that easy like it was from your sofa and you will be not as clever as you were in your sofa.



Your image (from Discord I guess?) is an interesting image. I do not know if you edited or not,
BUT if you see the DATE, you can see: 28.09.2019.
At that time I played with my adventurer yes. (I wrote my adventurer “guide” at 05.10.2019.)

Before this I played many many many times with PM in madness in 1.5, yes.
And I used the builds & guides that are written here in the forums.

I tried all relevant (so after the PM change) guides, and I mainly used this one:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=46979

(Mankeli, who also wrote here wrote this guide and it also suggests madness play with it)
I used this the most times, because I liked the core idea of Cele – Light + Fugue Clones + shields.

Unfortunately I did not managed to beat The Master with this build. (or with any other PM build that was written here).


I also tried this build too:

https://te4.org/characters/20007/tome/a ... cd2e18b634

Because it is a „legit madness winner PM” in the ToME Vault.

This build, made by shesh was turned out very weak for madness. If you see the skills:

a, the build unlocked Stasis, and put 5 points in Spacetime Stability & just 1 in Time Shield???

b, 0 points in Time Stop???

c, just 1 point in Temporal Reprieve ???

d, no Wormhole, no Energy Decomposition, Energy Absorption and no Redux???

e, no Hidden Resources but instead FLEXIBLE COMBAT ???

So, a melee Paradox Mage in madness?


So, when I started playing madness, the first I have done was to search the forums for guides and try all.
After I failed & failed & failed I also searched the Vault for madness winners.
I tried also and failed & failed.

Then I went to adventurers because they are much stronger, and after a while I succeed with adventurers.

After I beat the game with 3 adventurers, I wrote a guide about 1 of my build (05.10.2019.)

And I went back to Paradox Mage again, but now I started to create my own PM build, because I failed with all the “legit vault winner” and all the guide builds.

Finally I created my Spatial Tether PM at 17.12.2019. (it’s just below this guide)
But this was still not enough good for madness, I still had to change several things, i.g. choose a new race and spend my talent points a bit different.

So, many many months ago when I started to play madness (so way before that date what you linked in your image) I was not successful and I was stucked at The Master with Paradox Mages,
but it turned out, this was because first I tried builds, that are weak for madness.


Also, you are saying (and just saying again without any evidence):

a, I do not understand armor
b, I do not understand Seal Fate
c, I do not understand Attenuate

Anyone can say anything.

Do you have any verifiable calculations to show me and prove, why I do not understand these things, or again you are just in lack of evidence and talking into the air?



Your point about massive armor is better for my character then The Untouchable is a bit weird.

First of all: fatigue is really bad for PM, because 2x the fatigue is a multiplier for paradox anomaly failure.
You will usually have a chance of failing in longer fights (and if you progress further in the game, most of the fights will be very long), and even a 25% total fatigue means -> your fail chance is multiplied by 1.5.
You really do not want your 8% fail chance to be 12% or even more all the time.

Second, I explained in my guide why The Untouchable is so good for this build.
Due to your damage reduction & healings, you can take damage turn by turn and that means, The Untouchable is even capable of giving you a damage shield of 4-600 (or way more) at every, or every second turn. For free.




You also mention, running into Orc Patrols is a problem for Paradox Mage.

Run into orc patrols on the way to Briagh? Doesn't matter, you stop the recording, cut back to last save and try again.

I have to tell you: running into any patrol with a Chronomancer is not a problem at all in any difficulty.

You have: Time Stop, Dimensional Step (that you can even Redux), Wormhole, (movement infusion under Time Stop if not undead) or Ghoulish Leap under Time Stop.


So you can just exit from the Patrol Ambush under Time Stop, and the Patrol is gone forever from the map.
(or after deactivating it if you still have extra time)

It seems you do not ever utilized the power that the combination of PM skills offers.



Another statement of yours:

This is just the tip of the iceberg. almost 4 hours are missing from your video run time compared to your in-game playtime (roughly 53:38 of video time). Where did they go? Shouldn’t the video time be slightly more from having to open and close the game and from the constant FPS drops playing tome gives, not significantly less?

So, I will help you with math okay? Stay with me, we will add together all the duration of my videos.
(just click on each link in my guide one by one to check the durations)


1. video is: 2 hours 22 min
2. video is: 2 hours 3 min 32 seconds
3. video is: 2 hour 1 min 58 seconds
4. video is: 1 hour 41 min 21 seconds
5. video is: 1 hour 23 min 29 seconds

So, I will add together each 5 videos to be more controllable.

This is totally: 8 hours & 90 minutes & 140 seconds.
That is: 9 hours & 32 minutes & 20 seconds so far.

6. video is: 1 hour 57 min 47 seconds
7. video is: 1 hour 36 min 50 seconds
8. video is: 2 hour 16 min 29 seconds
9. video is: 1 hour 46 min
10. video is: 2 hour 31 min 12 seconds

This next 5 block is totally: 7 hours & 186 minutes & 138 seconds
Converted: 10 hours & 8 minutes & 18 seconds totally.

11. video is: 2 hour and 58 seconds
12. video is: 1 hour 45 minutes 21 seconds
13. video is: 2 hour 33 minutes 44 seconds
14. video is: 2 hour 21 minutes 10 seconds
15. video is: 1 hour 38 minutes 57 seconds

This next block is totally: 8 hours & 137 minutes & 190 seconds
Converted: 10 hours & 20 minutes & 10 seconds totally.


So, we arrived ~to the half of my run (15 video from the 29) so I will add the first 3 block of 5 together:
1. block is: 9 hours & 32 minutes & 20 seconds
2. block is: 10 hours & 8 minutes & 18 seconds
3. block is: 10 hours & 20 minutes & 10 seconds

So, totally: 29 hours & 60 minutes & 48 seconds

Converted: 30 hours & 48 seconds
And this is just the half of my run. Let’s continue!


16. video is: 2 hour 11 minutes 2 seconds
17. video is: 1 hour 4 minutes 21 seconds
18. video is: 2 hour 15 minutes 31 seconds
19. video is: 1 hour 14 minutes 28 seconds
20. video is: 3 hour 12 minutes 54 seconds

So, this block of 5 is: 9 hours & 56 minutes & 136 seconds
Converted: 9 hours & 58 minutes & 16 seconds totally.

21. video is: 2 hour 50 minutes 17 seconds
22. video is: 1 hour 25 minutes 6 seconds
23. video is: 1 hour 40 minutes 55 seconds
24. video is: 1 hour 45 minutes 54 seconds
25. video is: 1 hour 33 minutes 4 seconds

So, this block of 5 is: 6 hours & 193 minutes & 136 seconds
Converted: 9 hours & 15 minutes & 16 seconds totally.

26. video is: 2 hour 43 minutes 10 seconds
27. video is: 1 hour 53 minutes 4 seconds
28. video is: 2 hour 42 minutes 10 seconds
29. video is: 1 hour 1 minutes 7 seconds

So, this last block of 4 is: 6 hours & 139 minutes & 31 seconds
Converted: 8 hours & 19 minutes & 31 seconds totally.


So, I will add together now, the last 3 blocks:

4. block was: 9 hours & 58 minutes & 16 seconds
5. block was: 9 hours & 15 minutes & 16 seconds
6. block was: 8 hours & 19 minutes & 31 seconds

So, the last 3 block are: 26 hours & 92 minutes & 63 seconds
Converted: 27 hours & 33 minutes & 3 seconds.

So, this is the second half of my run.


The first half was:
30 hours & 48 seconds

The second half is:
27 hours & 33 minutes & 3 seconds


So, adding them together is:

57 hours & 33 minutes & 3 seconds


So, what kind of “roughly 53:38 of video time” are you writing of?


I posted an image of 2 days 9 hours 7 minutes 7 seconds total in my guide, but you can see this in my last video too.
This 57 hours 7 minutes & 7 seconds totally.

The total duration of my videos are ~ 26 minutes longer totally, then my net playtime.
I made 29 videos, so the "dead time" is less then 1 minute per video.
This is because at the start of every video and at the end of every video, there is extra time while I do not play (loading...)


You are making mathematical errors in basic math.
Saying that my videos are ~53:38, while they are ~57:33 means
~7 % ERROR in your calculations.


I found your lack of evidence in everything, your error in basic math, your lack of knowledge about damaging talents,
your lack of knowledge about how to dismiss all patrols with a PM really interesting.

I really start to enjoy this conversation!




Oh, I just realized, you mention the name “Shesh” amongst the names, who “non-validates” my win.


I already wrote this, but I also tried his build too a lot of times, here is the link again:

https://te4.org/characters/20007/tome/a ... cd2e18b634


This is a half-melee Ogre PM build using:

5 point in Spacetime Stability
1 point in Time Shield
0 point in Time Stop
1 point in Temporal Reprieve
no Wormhole
no Redux, no Energy Decomposition

using staff combat & Mercy and going for melee.
In madness....



So, I do not care about “validation” for my madness win from this “elite group” thank you.

1, You cannot prove that you are good madness players with recorded madness play/s.

2, You know nothing about dangerous talents in madness that can kill you.

3, You are afraid of patrols with a PM

4, You have no proof about what you are saying (like I do not understand Attenuate, Seal Fate)

5, You have problems with basic math

6, One of your member has a “legit” Paradox Mage Madness winner in the Vault
with probably the worst and one of the weakest build that I ever saw & tried


Thank you for your really enjoyable comment!

[fiske]

.....

Your post is incredibly unkind and disrespectful to Tradewind, the developers, and a number of members of the community who have no involvement in this thread or issue. If you can't make your points without insulting and disrespecting others, you'll just go the way of ster/Dajawn and get banned. Ultimately, Tradewind can't prove their win is 100% legit, and you can't prove it isn't. If you want to present evidence that disputes their claims and let people decide what they think, fine, but don't be a jerk about it.

The post in question is:
A wall of text that says very little compared to pointless insults thrown around constantly.
Written by someone who joined the forum very recently but claims to have a wealth of experience.
Claims that "wise" people have quit playing ToME yet writes obsessively about the game.

Pretty much 99% chance the post in question is written by someone already well acquainted with being banned from the forums.

[whitelion]

.....

Your post is incredibly unkind and disrespectful to Tradewind, the developers, and a number of members of the community who have no involvement in this thread or issue. If you can't make your points without insulting and disrespecting others, you'll just go the way of ster/Dajawn and get banned. Ultimately, Tradewind can't prove their win is 100% legit, and you can't prove it isn't. If you want to present evidence that disputes their claims and let people decide what they think, fine, but don't be a jerk about it.

The post in question is:
A wall of text that says very little compared to pointless insults thrown around constantly.
Written by someone who joined the forum very recently but claims to have a wealth of experience.
Claims that "wise" people have quit playing ToME yet writes obsessively about the game.

Pretty much 99% chance the post in question is written by someone already well acquainted with being banned from the forums.

Yeah based on the post decent chance it's ster AGAIN.

Regardless, I'm tired of people like that coming in here, acting like they own the place, and insulting and condescending to everyone and anyone, so I decided I'm going to call it out when people do that. Not that I think I have any special influence here, but I think that such behavior should be unacceptable, and I want other users to know that there are many forum users here who do not want to put up with this kind of crap.

[btonasse]

Hey, hi!


To btonasse:

You wrote:
“I'll give you a hand: https://git.net-core.org/tome/t-engine4 ... c8f27e6eb5 . Note how the message doesn’t mention ghouls at all, and wasn’t included in the main commit revising ghouls”

LOL, you write the message that you linked doesn’t mention ghouls at all!
Please see your linked message closer and better:

ghoul_mention_shields.png

“Notably, the old order of operations has a lot of antisynergy with shield runes, which Ghoul uses a lot.”

Do you see the mention of ghouls & damage shields under the title?
Because I can!

Key phrase: under the title. Searching ghoul on the git doesn't get it because the commit message doesn't mention it, check for yourself: https://git.net-core.org/search?group_i ... arch=ghoul. No rebuttal about the most notable change to the race not being included in the MR for changes to the race here? https://git.net-core.org/tome/t-engine4 ... 87f14c7f67

Also, you wrote:

Trust me, I don't need tips from midwits such as yourself. Thank you for correctly identifying that flat damage cap before this change was absolute garbage at least. Only Freeze really existed for dangerous single-hit damage, maybe if you made a really convincing argument for 2-hit attacks like Shadow Veil and Ice Claw or heavy consistent damage like Flamespitter/Elandar you could argue resilience helps against them.

LOOOL

Okay, from this point I basically do not believe that you ever played in madness.

“Only Freeze really existed for dangerous single-hit damage” really?
“Maybe Shadow Veil and Ice Claw for 2-hit attacks?”


I am sorry, I cannot take this anymore…

Have you ever heard about Archer? (Especially in 1.5, but it’s still incredibly dangerous in 1.6)
Have you ever heard about Flurry?
Have you ever met with a Worm that Walks (elite/rare/unique/randboss)?
Do you know what is Rampage in madness?
(again, especially in 1.5, but it is still very dangerous)
Do you know what is Echoes from the Past?

I am not continuing the list...

So, you saying ghoul resilience is not useful against these, because they do not deal enough damae to trigger the damage cap?
At around talent level ~40 - 50 ? In madness?

LOOOL

You're wrong. It's time to post about how wrong you are.
START 1.5 MECHANICS CHAT. ASSUME 1.5 UNLESS VERSION IS SPECIFIED
1.5 talent levels are different to 1.6, instead of being mostly uniform there are "primary" and "secondary" investments. Primary ones end up ~TL 55 by High Peak, secondary ~TL 20.

If those attacks you mention deal enough damage to trigger the cap, every single hit they deal will.
Ghoul doesn't have Heroism. You get to take three hits to your HP that activate Resilience with Smearing on if you've got >5% of your HP in die_at (not unreasonable) or four if you have >40% (unreasonable, that's 528 hp on a property that comes in mainly 40-80s, 6+ slots dedicated), and you can't really take advantage of Fugue and Resilience at the same time; you already have to take a 75% mhp hit with Webs, Fugue activates before that too for 225% your mhp, even Energy Decomposition reduces damage before Resilience finally kicks in.

Now I'm going to pull a few examples here. All level 50, High Peak, peak of the scaling, things you don't even really have a reason to fight or spend turns in LoS of. All decimals in damage numbers rounded down, decimals elsewhere taken forward. The ghoul is assumed to have 1319 HP, same as your 1.6 one without the freebie 100 HP for playing.

If Flurry is triggering Resilience through all forms of reduction you are outright dead. Here's some numbers from the first Rogue rare I found on High Peak in dev mode just now:
TL 17 Flurry (presumably not a "primary" skill for it to be levelling), 52 Dagger Mastery. It's an orc fighter gaining 19% resist penetration, though hasn't activated Orcish Fury yet for 14% all damage with Fugue Clones in LoS.
482/433 melee damage and 42/42 APR
207% crit mult and 67% crit chance
First, Armor reduces the damage of each weapon. With 100 Armor, that gives us 424/375 base damage. Then each hit is multiplied by 170% weapon damage, giving us 720/637 per hit. Let's say hits 1,2,5 and 6 are critical, I found another one with 120% crit rate but he didn't have Flurry so this one with an anemic chance of a critical is chosen instead. This gives us an attack sequence of 1490/1318/720/637/1490/1318. First resistances are taken into account. Out of Phase will give more than this but let's say the character has a physical resistance of 30% - 24.3% after Skirmisher's 19% res pen. 1127/997/545/482/1127/997 damage.
Then Fugue reduces damage of each hit to 1/3. 375/332/181/160/375/332. Then Webs of Fate reduces that damage to 67%. 251/222/121/107/251/222. Then Energy Decomposition (5/5, 100 sp) reduces by 66 or to 70%, whichever is lower. 185/156/84/74/185/156 damage, 840 total. This is disregarding stun, it's disregarding OOP, it's disregarding so much, it still barely does (20%) more than 5/5 100 SP time shield has shield power. It's also disregarding Greater Weapon Focus, but as long as the cornac keeps his Heroism up he has higher EHP than the ghoul; and we have already established this full attack sequence is not touching Resilience whatsoever so that is not in favor.

TL 48 Flurry has 252% damage instead, from checking 1.6. Even increasing the damage by a factor of 1.48 doesn't make a single hit go anywhere near the Resilience threshold, and if this was 1.6 it would apply before other relevant defenses and enemy weapon damage would just barely approach 300 by High Peak, critical shrug off becomes relevant e.t.c.

So if you got caught off guard with only passive defenses available, would Resilience save you here? Obviously not. You'd take 462 damage per hit to HP and 198 to paradox (adjusted by Smearing TL) every hit and die or trigger Cauterise by the 4th hit assuming you have at least die at -67. You do have to put effort in and, at least, activate Time Shield, Webs of Fate and a ~750 HP shielding rune or a Heroism Infusion to survive in High Peak, unsurprisingly.
Is Flurry a relatively dangerous talent on Madness? Sure. Is it one of the absolute worst examples you could ever use in favor of Ghoul? Yes.

What if he had used his 364% TL 52 Dual Strike instead, and both hits were critical?
424/375 x (2.07 x 3.64) -> 3194/2825 x 0.757 -> 2417/2138 x 1/3 -> 805/712 x 0.67 -> 539/477 - 66 -> 473/411. Slightly better at 874 but so far Ghoul has still done nothing for you.


1.5 Archer is severely weakened from the 1.4 incarnation due to the Marking system. There's no Piercing Arrow and Steady Shot's multiplier scaling is significantly worse. Another High Peak monster: Archer with 367 weapon damage, 5 APR, 115% critical chance. It's a daelach with no notable source of inc_dam or penetration, or critical multiplier. Its TL 52 Steady Shot, the strongest talent it has on turn 1, deals 394% damage. So he deals 367 base contested by 95 armor - 272 x 1.5 critical multiplier x 3.94 talent multiplier gets us 1607; at this point you may note that I include criticals because itemising for 100% critical shrug is an implausible task. In 1.6, of course, critical shrug is linear instead of only useful at 100%. So he deals 1607 x 0.7 (30% resist) -> 1124 - 66 (Decomposition) -> 1058 x 0.7 -> 740 damage. If you have no active defenses up at all, no webs of fate or fugue or shields, this attack will deal 10.91% less damage to a Ghoul than a cornac. If you have even a single one of those defenses there is no benefit to the generic sink and race choice.
However, Ghoul is very helpful against the most dangerous talent Archer actually has: Venomous Explosive Shot. 80% poison resistance means you're only one item away from never having to deal with near-90% talent failure for even a turn.

Yes, Freeze is that dangerous; Elandar's stat line without his +60% cold damage gives roughly 1905 damage before a critical, and this is an attack with no travel time. For an Archer to match that with the same TL 52 Steady Shot, it would need to have 483 base damage after armor. That's only at all likely in High Peak and sublevels but Freeze slows its scaling down around the East.


Worms that Walk are a monster Normal players complain about, you're better than that I would hope. Blindside is fixed range 6 so a yellow one should never, ever pose a real threat to someone with range 12.
Besides that, their only notable trait as a randboss is Corrupted Strength. Corrupted Strength is mainly relevant on classes that have melee talents classified as spells; so Sun Paladin, Reaver and Shadowblade. With a white champion of Urh'Rok for reference, I get 232% weapon damage. Shadowblade Shadowstep scales at twice the speed of Flurry and is one of the most dangerous talents these classes can use both tactically and strategically, so TL 48 is 504% damage x2, 232% damage x2, knives damage track. Let's use the statistics of the rogue above to simulate a worm that walks shadowblade.
424 main-hand and 375 off-hand damage after adding APR and subtracting 100 armor, if you forgot. Same critical multiplier, 2.07x, gets us 877/776 damage. Then weapon damage multipliers are added. Shadowstep deals 4420/3911, Corrupted Strength after deals 2034/1800. Resistances apply - same 30% as before, although blight and darkness are significantly more common on gear so this is less representative of reality. WTW has no innate penetration and neither does Shadowblade so none will be assumed. 3094/2737/1423/1260. Fugue applies - 1031/912/474/420. Webs applies - 690/611/317/281 damage. Energy Decomposition - 624/545/251/215 damage in total. Even a base damage of over 12000 gets reduced to the point where Resilience cap is higher than each individual hit with only most of PM's defensive layers active. Said worm that walks will need another synergistic class such as Necromancer rolling Frostdusk to do enough damage that Resilience begins having any effect.
Doombringer also has dangerous synergy here in theory but Ashes is closed source and I don't own it to test.

Cursed is a dangerous monster type that can also hit you 8 times in a round with Frenzy so relying on Resilience sounds like not the greatest move. Let's see this Cursed here, it has 609 base damage though negligible critical chance and 4 APR. In fact, a monster like this with 8% critical rate is something that provides a great justification for Armor Training and heavy armor, but that's beside the point.
It is, of course, an orc with 19% resist penetration. It only has two usable active talents: 790% damage Slash and 163% x4 Frenzy. Brutality gives it 78% physical damage when it rampages.
We ARE wearing heavy armor, so it won't critical. Its Slash has an absolutely monstrous 513 (-96 armor) x (7.9 x 1.78) - 7213 damage expected. The usual 30% resistance, 24.3 after penetration applies - 5460 damage. Temporal Fugue, 1820 damage. Webs of Fate, 1219 damage. Energy Decomposition, 1153 damage. This breaks a full Time Shield and deals 453 to HP, so Smearing would start coming into effect now - 317 to HP, 136 to paradox.
What about its Frenzy? 513 x (1.63 x 1.78) gets us 1488 damage 4 times, 1126 post resistance, 375 post Fugue, 251 post Webs of Fate, 185 post Energy Decomposition, 129 to HP/56 to paradox per hit after Smearing. A survivable 516/224 in total even after the Slash broke our damage shield assuming it double-turns with its >200% attack speed. 833 HP and (360 x 0.36 -> 129 paradox over 3 turns), not even into Heroism Infusion territory.
If the ghoul is missing Fugue for any reason your survival is a coin flip between Slash being used first or Frenzy being used first.

Ghoul resilience does NOTHING unless you neglect to use your other defenses in all the situations you listed. If you have no "finesse" whatsoever. And if you don't use your other defenses, Resilience working at all is based on whether the AI plays nicely and chooses not to use its Frenzy, its Abduction, its Dissolve, its Flurry, its 400% global speed blinkwyrms with rampage. It is a version of Cauterise - a passive last resort against any amount of damage - that refuses to work in every situation and has such a huge opportunity cost in actual combat that's far more than a prodigy that no one will play the race.
Just think for a second about what you spend. 1 category point, 6 class points, at least 10 generic points, Movement Infusion, Heroism Infusion, 20% global speed. That's the opportunity cost.
Are you giving up Flux to get this?
Are you giving up Time Shield and Stop to get this?
Are you giving up Spellbinding to get this?
Are you giving up Energy to get this, so monsters can roam free with Total Thuggery, Stalk, Stealth, Call Shadows, Munitions et al active, let alone the reduction from Energy Decomposition and the utility of Redux?
Are you giving up the absurd force multiplier Fugue is to get this?
11 generics can get you a full investment in Light or Energy. Is this worth the entire Energy or Light tree? As well as 6 class points that would go to, say, 1/5/0/0 Stasis?

Are you perhaps talking about a different class entirely that is madness viable and benefits from Ghoul?

Anyway, I hope this enlightened you a little on how "10000" damage doesn't actually happen

As for Echoes from the Past, it's a talent that does (20,220) spellpower scaling damage on its first hit, slightly less than Manathrust. CombatTalentTimit puts the % of missing HP damage at 60% maximum. The player is rank 3. You would need to be at -250% HP for this to trigger ghoul resilience if you had no other ways of reducing the damage whatsoever. The extra damage part is likely to do 0 because the first hit should not break your damage shield either way. Are you trolling? Have you ever played the game, let alone Madness? After all, this is offline play. You could have posted someone else entirely's footage and claimed it was yours.

END 1.5 MECHANICS CHAT

Okay, I understand now better why my guide bothers you, and why is this rage.
You mentioned a “group of elite players”. And this group of “elite players” are validating ToME wins…
And I guess, you are a member of this group of “elite players”.
In my last reply to you I asked you about a recorded madness play. (normal class & showing character sheets like I did).
In this reply you wrote this:
“Sounds like you weren't searching hard enough since there are several.”
BUT YOU DID NOT SEND ANY LINK TO PROVE IT!
You did not sent any recorded madness play...
So, see the facts:
There is a group of “elite players” who claim, they are elite (so, best of…)
This group of elite players want to validate my madness win.
But if I ask this elite group to SHOW ME any video evidence that PROVES they are “elite”, this elite group cannot provide me any evidence.
So, it seems for me, this group of elite players cannot prove their “eliteness”.
You are criticizing my playthrough, meanwhile you cannot prove that you played madness even just 1 time in your entire life.
The fact is, you can criticize my madness play, because I HAVE MADNESS PLAYS.
And I cannot criticize your madness play, because you do not have any, you cannot prove it, you cannot show me.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”
If you had just had a character in the vault and no video, you would have been treated like gcar and subsequently ignored.
Instead, you deliberately choose to make yourself known as incompetent.
You are correct that you cannot criticise my run. You are correct that I am criticising yours. Because

Doing something and criticizing something are two very different things, you know.

You don't need to play NetHack to know it's the worst game in the genre. You don't need to work in a scientific field to see that https://timecube.2enp.com has no scientific merit. So, bound to your staggering incompetence, and assuming that my wins have somehow vanished out of existence, nothing is stopping me from criticising you for your blatantly obvious faults either way.
By the way, you mention Youtube a lot. The videos, though VODs now, are on livestreaming sites so people can see the run unfold as it happens. Posting it two weeks later as a prerecorded video allows for far more tampering and non-interaction.

I.g. you can criticize easily every football player from your sofa, in front of your TV.
But when you are at the football field with the ball, things are not that easy like it was from your sofa and you will be not as clever as you were in your sofa.

You can choose to learn from my advice but okay I guess you don't want to.
No, I don't make gigantic tactical mistakes like forgetting to prebuff in a dungeon that forms a progression bottleneck when I play.

Your image (from Discord I guess?) is an interesting image. I do not know if you edited or not,
BUT if you see the DATE, you can see: 28.09.2019.
At that time I played with my adventurer yes. (I wrote my adventurer “guide” at 05.10.2019.)

Yes, the official Discord. from: Tradewind_Rider#7586 savescum in the search field gets it.
IDs 434391496591147010-627336384901808159
434391496591147010-627336575134597120
etc if you go and delete it now.

Before this I played many many many times with PM in madness in 1.5, yes.
And I used the builds & guides that are written here in the forums.

I tried all relevant (so after the PM change) guides, and I mainly used this one:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=46979

(Mankeli, who also wrote here wrote this guide and it also suggests madness play with it)
I used this the most times, because I liked the core idea of Cele – Light + Fugue Clones + shields.

Unfortunately I did not managed to beat The Master with this build. (or with any other PM build that was written here).

Stop blaming builds and start to blame yourself.
A guide can only tell you what to play and much less so how to play. The author can't read your mind and tell that you can't handle Create Minions. The version of that build posted in the guide, the one intended for Insane and newer players, has both Entropy and Empower by the time you fight The Master and you couldn't do it?
You are pessimistic because you project your own skill level onto other builds.
Players like myself tend to be optimistic because of projecting this skill level onto those builds.
This is why the mindset of "yes, this character could be a winner, but there are inconsistencies somewhere or the wrong player is playing it" is around.

I note that you immediately go on a tangent about which builds you were savescumming on when savescumming is brought up. It doesn't matter what you were playing, the fact that you use scumming as a pure progression tool is more than enough.

I also tried this build too:

https://te4.org/characters/20007/tome/a ... cd2e18b634

Because it is a „legit madness winner PM” in the ToME Vault.

This build, made by shesh was turned out very weak for madness. If you see the skills:

a, the build unlocked Stasis, and put 5 points in Spacetime Stability & just 1 in Time Shield???

b, 0 points in Time Stop???

c, just 1 point in Temporal Reprieve ???

d, no Wormhole, no Energy Decomposition, Energy Absorption and no Redux???

e, no Hidden Resources but instead FLEXIBLE COMBAT ???

So, a melee Paradox Mage in madness?

It's not legit, it uses his own addon (improved player targeting). Next question.

So, when I started playing madness, the first I have done was to search the forums for guides and try all.
After I failed & failed & failed I also searched the Vault for madness winners.
I tried also and failed & failed.

Then I went to adventurers because they are much stronger, and after a while I succeed with adventurers.

After I beat the game with 3 adventurers, I wrote a guide about 1 of my build (05.10.2019.)

And I went back to Paradox Mage again, but now I started to create my own PM build, because I failed with all the “legit vault winner” and all the guide builds.

Not here for your life story.

Finally I created my Spatial Tether PM at 17.12.2019. (it’s just below this guide)
But this was still not enough good for madness, I still had to change several things, i.g. choose a new race and spend my talent points a bit different.

So, many many months ago when I started to play madness (so way before that date what you linked in your image) I was not successful and I was stucked at The Master with Paradox Mages,
but it turned out, this was because first I tried builds, that are weak for madness.

So serious question: are you projecting your inability to read? I quote that post about the Tether PM several times, I don't need you to tell me where to find it.
And say it how it is: You found an exploit that allowed you to win without effort and expected it to get you through the game yet you still had to savescum and use cheat addons.

Also, you are saying (and just saying again without any evidence):

a, I do not understand armor
b, I do not understand Seal Fate
c, I do not understand Attenuate

Anyone can say anything.

Do you have any verifiable calculations to show me and prove, why I do not understand these things, or again you are just in lack of evidence and talking into the air?

The evidence is the fact that you posted it in what was intended to be a serious and honest strategy discussion. If you're already seeding your guides with misinformation then you can consider yourself an honorary elite.

a. In the Tether PM guide you say this:

For me, Energy Decomposition is better than Matter Weaving, because it reduces all type of damage, not just physical. It is basically an extra Armor trigger with a 30% hardiness.

Completely false, Armor is applied at the start of the damage calculations: the only effects that take priority are ones that block damage completely such as Wards. 39 armor from 100 mag 5/5 weaving reduces the damage of Gnarg's giant leap windblade combo by 234 assuming no criticals are involved - if they are, the armor reduces the damage by more comparatively. Decomposition with the same investment and 100 sp would only reduce it by 132. I sure wonder if there's any correlation between "every single hit of a flurry triggers ghoul resilience" and "I don't know where armor is in the damage calculations"? It's something even a Normal mode player would know, and that I am having to spoonfeed you.

b. and c. are just you not understanding how PM is played. There's no math involved.

Your point about massive armor is better for my character then The Untouchable is a bit weird.

Read the post again. It said without a reason to use light armor. It was talking about the cornac in robes all game and not the untouchable gimmick exploit.

First of all: fatigue is really bad for PM, because 2x the fatigue is a multiplier for paradox anomaly failure.
You will usually have a chance of failing in longer fights (and if you progress further in the game, most of the fights will be very long), and even a 25% total fatigue means -> your fail chance is multiplied by 1.5.
You really do not want your 8% fail chance to be 12% or even more all the time.

PM is the class with the most relevant effect from fatigue since paradox is your HP and spellpower and it's still not an issue for them.
There are only two long fights in 1.5 and three in 1.6 - Vor Armory floor 1, Briagh's Lair and Gorbat Pride floor 1.
You can dump paradox easily enough by disengaging with movement infusion or potentially one of the artifact boots, no fail rate involved at all there. Otherwise, a 1 point dip in Static History is a reasonable build choice for those paranoid about fail rates to get off your win spell of choice. You can cancel it when you want to cause minor anomalies to decrease paradox after all. In Gorbat you should be jumping from house to house after scouting them anyway as they have a bad habit of being dug into by spire dragons. In Vor the terrain is perfect for using wormhole to stall enemy approaches and separate enemies of different speeds so reducing your paradox on those dead turns is no issue. That just leaves Briagh with all its Cursed/Wyrmics/Mindslayers. I give you Briagh, you can't reasonably stop fighting there until you win.
Or you could be sitting tethered to several points and unable to do any of this.

You also mention, running into Orc Patrols is a problem for Paradox Mage.

Run into orc patrols on the way to Briagh? Doesn't matter, you stop the recording, cut back to last save and try again.

I have to tell you: running into any patrol with a Chronomancer is not a problem at all in any difficulty.
It seems you do not ever utilized the power that the combination of PM skills offers.

You forgot Celerity to never run into them in the first place, and Banish in case an orc wyrmic's orc soldiers spawn on the exit - or a similar situation occurs with another orc with escorts.
The choice of example was not the relevant part of that post. It was the statement itself, that you have free reign to edit all footage before uploading.
Let's try another one: You get stuck in Gorbat Pride floor 1 because 2/3rds of the floor are concentrated in the wide open foyer area after a five minute fight where you refuse to scout the situation. You can immediately cut the video, reload the save and try again before uploading it. Why should I trust your videos if this could be the case?

So, what kind of “roughly 53:38 of video time” are you writing of?

Bait. Didn't even have an argument to go with it, just wanted to waste your time and made up a number.

I found your lack of evidence in everything, your error in basic math, your lack of knowledge about damaging talents,
your lack of knowledge about how to dismiss all patrols with a PM really interesting.
I really start to enjoy this conversation!

The classic no-u. Refuted all these points already.

Oh, I just realized, you mention the name “Shesh” amongst the names, who “non-validates” my win.


I already wrote this, but I also tried his build too a lot of times, here is the link again:

https://te4.org/characters/20007/tome/a ... cd2e18b634


This is a half-melee Ogre PM build using:

5 point in Spacetime Stability
1 point in Time Shield
0 point in Time Stop
1 point in Temporal Reprieve
no Wormhole
no Redux, no Energy Decomposition

using staff combat & Mercy and going for melee.
In madness....

Shesh is a round robin account used for testing and messing around and not an actual person. No one is responsible for any particular run, it would be more accurate to say that several of the players mentioned and some of them unmentioned played on Shesh at some point.
That build is garbage indeed. You're learning!

So, I do not care about “validation” for my madness win from this “elite group” thank you.

It's an opt-in system, you can get validation from normal mode players and people with anime avatars instead if you want then. Or create your own elite with blackjack and blow.

1, You cannot prove that you are good madness players with recorded madness play/s.

2, You know nothing about dangerous talents in madness that can kill you.

3, You are afraid of patrols with a PM

4, You have no proof about what you are saying (like I do not understand Attenuate, Seal Fate)

5, You have problems with basic math

6, One of your member has a “legit” Paradox Mage Madness winner in the Vault
with probably the worst and one of the weakest build that I ever saw & tried


Thank you for your really enjoyable comment!

1. You can't find the recorded runs in such a small category of ToME play.
2. You don't know how to directly answer a question when asked and your tangent was outright wrong.
3. You attack the hypothetical instead of the hypothesis.
4. You think you can make posts and then completely twist their meaning after they are written.
5. You have problems distinguishing useful data from white noise.
6. You blindly follow anything you can get your hands on, yet you can't read my posts saying such a win is not legit.


Now, I have my own points to make. Reply to them instead of your constant deflecting from the issues.

1. How do you justify the presence of an unofficial addon of any sorts on the ghoul, let alone the cheat addons present on every one of your characters?

2. Why is it that every time an uncomfortable question like the likelihood of save scumming being present in this run you refuse to answer it? Anyone who's familiar with this game and its players can tell what you're doing here, win or not.

2a. Since the parts of the game I am accusing of being save scummed were deleted in the last post I will repeat them. You personally admitted to save scumming in the past; evidence deleted by mods as collateral. Here it is again.


2b. Between videos 19 and 20 you save and quit right next to Limmir. In the starting minute of video 20, you happen to gain what you consider the highly desirable bloodstone amulet; except the bloodstone is imbued a random gem along with the two artifact gems picked. That is an 8.8% chance normally; not negligible but your suspect behavior around how it was obtained leads me to believe you rigged it. In videos 17 and 18 by your own admission you obtain the "BiS" Aetherwalk and Sarillon from a white orc in the foyer and a fixed unique, respectively. These two items your guide rates very highly just happen to drop just before the Prides, in track range of the staircase of the first floor. You claim to have issues progressing in the Prides. Your videos have no continuity because you stop playing at the end of a video before entering the next dungeon, so you can save scum from the first floor instead of having to maintain continuity in it. Ergo, between videos you save scummed to have these items all drop at the right place and time, never mind any deaths that could have happened.

3. In what way does your Ghoul build differ from the quickbanned 1 max HP rat possessor that also has x low max HP value for the sake of resilience and then uses an oversight to never attempt to engage with said max HP?

3a. Mex is not the original source of the "Exploits will invalidate your win" quote.

4. Why are you incapable of finding the videos without having your hand held? You know who I am and where they were posted, are you really unable to put that into a search engine?

5. Why did you not only use Mex as a source for what sorts of wins are valid as well as choosing to misinterpret his posts to suit your ends? Video evidence is not live video evidence in front of an audience for obvious reasons.

6. Why would you ever argue that Flurry is a point in favor of using flat damage cap as a defense.

7. Why are you trying to knowledge-grift here?

Thank you for coming to these forums to troll; it's rare that I post outside my place so it's good that you made my time worth it.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

To btonasse:


Thank you for your lack of evidences again, I am getting used to it.
Again, I asked you some proof of madness play from you or from the “elitist group”, but again you just sending nothing.

I still not understand why you are doing calculations with the old 1.5 mechanics.
As I said before, this is a 1.6.6 guide and you just cannot understand this.


1, According to armor for Paradox Mage:


I wrote this about armor in my former PM guide (just below this):

“Armor is very useful against weapon damage, you are right.
If a player playing with a PM, and continuously facing with melee enemy weapon blows,
then that player not using many of PM skills.

PM have:

Dimensional Step, Wormhole, Induce Anomaly (several anomalies are good here), Repulsion Blast, Gravity Spike, Time Skip, Temporal Reprieve, Temporal Fugue, Time Stop, Banish, Spatial Tether, Warp Mines, Materialize Barrier and PIN from Phase Pulse
to get rid of melee enemies.

Also, PM can Blind, Confuse enemies very effectively and that also get rid of ranged weapon users too.
(barrier here also good and some anomalies too)”


So, I totally understand that armor is useful for you and you need high armor.
If you play with PM like a Bulwark and you continuously engaging into melee combat, then yes, you NEED very high armor.


But as I wrote before, PM has many tools to negate melee enemies:

With Repulsion Blast & Gravity Spike you can send melee enemies away.
PM have Time Skip, Time Stop to break away from melee.
PM also have Banish to send many enemies away.
PM have Tethers and with my multi-tether tactic, I am continuously applying RANDOM_WARP (stun, PIN, blind or confuse) to enemies TWICE per turn.

So, basically I just PIN DOWN every enemy.

If it’s 100% pin immune, then I am blinding it and confusing it and stunning it …
If something it really dangerous, then I am banish it.


So, I totally understand your point, there is no disagree here.
If you cannot negate melee enemies and you continuously engage in melee combat with a PM, then you really need high armor, yes.

I CAN negate enemies: most of the enemies are stunned + blinded + confused + PINNED DOWN continuously, so I do not need high armor.

This build is not just “Untouchable” because I am using the artifact Untouchable.
A big part of the enemies actually CANNOT TOUCH ME AT ALL.
They are PINNED DOWN + stunned + blinded + confused until they die.


2, According to Armor Penetration:

The fact is, you are unaware about many many factors, that reducing your armor.

Just from 1 ego in weapon, an enemy can have 5-30 APR, but enemies can have RARE or RANDART weapons too with more egos and more APR on it.
There is “acidic”, “corrosive” egos in gear that can reduce your armor by ~ 30-50.
There can be APR on body armors and on helms too from egos (5-20) & (4-8).
There are egos on cloaks too (murderers, backstabbing: 5-15, 3-10 APR).
There can be APR on gloves too: 5-15.
There can be APR on boots: 3-13.
There can be on amulets: 10-20 APR.
There can be on rings: 7-17 APR.
There can be on lanterns: 5-15 APR.
There can be on pickaxes: 4-8 & 5-15 APR.

These are just single egos and just from gear.
You also do not take into consideration: enemies has talents too.

Berserker has Shattering Blow to reduce your armor by 155 for 24 turns.
Rogue and Shadowblade has Expose Weakness that gives a passive 50 APR and also an active 173 APR for 3 turns when used.
Wyrmic has Corrosive Mist to reduce your armor by 33 for 9 turns.
Doombringer has Reckless Strike that ignores all armor.
Doombringer also has Obliterating Smash that reduces armor by 60.
Temporal Warden can halves your armor hardiness by Breach.
Mindslayer has Psi Tap that gives passive 33 APR.
Gunslingers have Supercharge Bullets, that also adds 88 APR for 13 turns.
And I am sure I miss several other things…
But lastly I would like to mention Marauders.
Vicious Strikes adds a passive 82 APR.

Yes, some enemies has 20-40 APR in madness, but there are many enemy with 50-60 and there are also enemies with 100-120 and there are some enemies with 150 too.
And meanwhile your armor can be reduced by huge amount from many effects too, not just from APR.


So, as I said before: melee enemies are not the main problem for a PM.
Also, armor can be negated/reduced close to nothing due to madness scaling.

Armor is very effective in insane and lower, because you can cumulate the same amount of armor on insane that you can cumulate in madness.

But in madness, many enemy will negate most or all of your armor, while they won’t in lower difficulties.


Also, you wrote:

There are only two long fights in 1.5 and three in 1.6 - Vor Armory floor 1, Briagh's Lair and Gorbat Pride floor 1.

You can dump paradox easily enough by disengaging with movement infusion or potentially one of the artifact boots, no fail rate involved at all there.

Really? There are just 2-3 long fights in madness?
You are saying there were just 2 long fights in 1.5 Madness?
Where late game enemies had ~ 300 000 – 500 000 life?

Also, paradox management is not a problem at all in madness?
You are just disengaging with movement infusion?

Enemies can have 2000% - 3400% movement speed in madness.
They have much higher stats than you have and they can also have infusions (movement infusion too).
Also, you have no chance to run from a Cursed or from a Wyrmic.
You have no chance to run from any enemy with Conveyance Tree.

So, this is your paradox management? Activate a movement infusion and run away?
Then wait to reduce your paradox?
The enemy/enemies will go after you and they are way faster than you!


3, According to Damaging Talents in madness:

NOTE: I will use for talents talent level 40 with mastery of 1.3 in my calculations (eff. tlvl of 52).
Late madness enemies can have higher effective talent levels too, like 65, so it’s not maximum.


A huge mistake in your calculations:

you assume that you will always have all your damage reduction talents on use.

You cannot have Webs of Fate continuously up, even with Matrix/Extension.

PM sustains are magical therefore vulnerable to Disperse Magic too, not just overall sustain deactivators.
An Archmage or Corruptor will clear most of your sustains/effects with just 1 Disperse Magic/Corrupted Negation. (10-13 sustain & effect totally)

Temporal Fugue has a 24 turn cooldown and a 9 turn duration.
While it’s activated, the talent is not cooling down.

Meanwhile Ghoul Resilience is passive, it cannot be “deactivated” at all.
It can save you even if you are in a bad situation and you lost some or all of your other damage reduction sustains/effects.

You are writing always about optimal theoretical situations, but in real game the situation won’t be always optimal. Especially not in madness.

Following your logic (that using all possible defense is always up), we could say:

Reaver and Corruptor are the best classes for madness (like stabya did…)
Reaver & Corruptor has/had Bone Shield, so nothing can kill them not even in madness.
If you lose your Bone Shield, just activate your Movement Infusion and escape to wait for the Shield is whole again.
Like you said for paradox management…

Following your logic, we could also say:

Berserker & Marauder are also top classes for madness, because they have
Unstoppable, so they also cannot die in madness.

You are doing exactly the same here, what stabya did in his madness Reaver guide...


Also, I did not know, I should use just critters & weak rare enemies in calculations… like you did


About Flurry:

Flurry can definitely trigger resilience.
But again, if you use a weak Rogue in your calculations, then it cannot.
But there are not just weak enemies in ToME, for example strong Marauders are exists in ToME.

Using the mainhand/offhand damage that you give: 482 / 433
a Marauder is a little bit stronger.

Total Thuggery gives ~ +88% attack speed, + 116% (so max) crit chance & ~73% phys res penetration.

Vicious Strikes gives ~+103% crit multiplier & 81 APR.

So, Marauders can easily have more than 100-120 APR and a minimum 253% crit multi.

Flurry deals ~233% weapon damage.

Mainhand damage = 482 x 2.53 x 2.33 = 2841 damage
Offhand damage = 433 x 2.53 x 2.33 = 2553 damage

And your phys resist is reduced by 70% against these and your armor is negated.
And no extra damage% or crit multi% involved from gear at all.

This will give a: 2841, 2553, 2841, 2553, 2841, 2553 damage sequence.
A little bit stronger than your: 1490/1318/720/637/1490/1318 result.
But I will come back to Flurry a little bit later, so this is not a final result.


Did I mention Lunge?

Lunge deals ~728% Weapon damage with offhand weapon.
Let’s see that too with our Marauder:

433 x 2.53 x 7.28 = 7975 damage from a single hit.
No armor against it and also capped phys res pen.


But as I mentioned before, not combat damage is the main problem.


Anorithils & Corruptors are really dangerous enemies, because they have a total ~ 300 – 400 % crit multiplier. (Hymn of Detection or Dark Ritual)

Hymn of Detection with 117 spellpower gives +213% crit multiplier.
Anorithils also have passive extra darkness damage% (Hymn Incantor: +125% Darkness Damage)
And Anorithils can also have a capped Darkness damage resistance penetration (Totality).

So, let’s see just a high level Moonlight Ray okay?

With 117 spellpower, it just dealing 1032 darkness damage.
With the Incantor Extra damage: 1032 x 2.25 = 2322 darkness damage
Add in crit multi of total 363% due to Hymn of Detection:
With crit: 2322 x 3.63 = 8429 darkness damage. (with 3 turn cooldown)
With capped darkness resist penetration.
AND NO GEAR INVOLVED, just talents, so the damage can go higher than 8429.



Okay, but at this point I have to ask something from you:
Do you know why Adventurers can be incredibly powerful in ToME?


Because they can have talents from any class.


The biggest mistake in your point of view is:

You assuming all in your calculations: enemies can have just 1 class!


So, I have to tell you: in ToME, enemies CAN HAVE multiple classes.
This makes all your calculations for every talent about potential maximum damage totally false.


Let’s say the formerly mentioned Marauder is a Corruptor too with a +196% crit multiplier from Dark Ritual.
Let’s see again the damage of the Flurry:

Mainhand damage = 482 x 4.49 x 2.33 = 5043 damage
Offhand damage = 433 x 4.49 x 2.33 = 4530 damage

Again, no armor against it (100-120 APR) and phys resist penetration is capped on the enemy.

So, this: 5043, 4530, 5043, 4530, 5043, 4530 Flurry looks a bit stronger than your
1490/1318/720/637/1490/1318 result, no?

Our Marauder can be a Cursed too…


Lunge?

433 x 4.49 x 7.28 = 14153 damage from a single hit.
Armor is useless & phys res pen is capped on the enemy.

But again: not melee enemies are the main problem:


Have you ever met with a level 146 Archmage + Corruptor stair guardian at High Peak?

With just 108 spellpower, Lightning deals 500 – 1500 damage on its own.
Add in Tempest: + 80% lightning damage & 59% lightning res penetration.
The damage will be: 900 – 2700
Dark Ritual gives + 196% crit multiplier.
So, add in Dark Ritual, a total ~346% crit multiplier:
900 – 2700 x 3.46 = 3114 – 9342 lightning damage with 59% lightning resist penetration.
With a 3 turn cooldown!
And still NO GEAR INVOLVED in the calculation.

And next turn, you will get a Chain Lightning too.
Or this turn, if the Archmage + Corruptor is Shalore and have Grace of the Eternals.


Let’s look another example: Shadowblade + Anorithil.

With a spellpower of 119 (with Shadow Cunning and madness stats & tlevels it can be even higher)
1.6.6. Shadow Grasp deals 2156 darkness damage on its own.

Hymn Incantor: +125% Darkness Damage

Hymn of Detection: + 213% Crit multi
Lethality: +42.5% Crit multi
Shadowstrike: +85% Crit multi
(so a total 150% base + 213% + 42.5% + 85% = 490.5% crit multiplier)

Damage = 2156 x 4.905 x 2.25 = 23794 darkness damage

With a capped darkness resistance penetration from Totality.
And again, NO GEAR INVOLVED in the calculation.
Can you take a 23794 damage with capped res pen without flat damage cap?


Next example is: Archmage + Anorithil, okay?
Let’s see Fireflash.
With a 117 spellpower Fireflash deals 1486 damage on its own.
Archmage has Wildfire that gives extra 40% fire damage & 59% resist penetration.
Anorithil has Chant Radiant that gives + 125% fire damage with 117 spellpower.

That means a total 1486 x 2.65 = 3938 fire damage in a radius of 19.

Dude will crit (Ano) and Anorithil has a +213% crit multi from Hymn of Detection.

That means a total 3938 x 3.63 = 14295 fire damage in a radius of 19.
With 59% fire resistance penetration.
Again, NO GEAR in the calculation, just talents.

On gear, enemies can also have a bit of extra damage%, resistance pen% and crit multi%, so damage can go above 20000, paired with high resistance penetration in some cases.


And now I really have to tell you:

Some enemy has even 3 classes!

Okay, I just won't calc further the Shadowblade + Anorithil...


NOTE: several enemy base types has several talents even without having a class, so even a single class enemy can have synergies like a dual class enemy.

So, damage can be really high in madness.
But if you are using very weak examples, it can be low of course.


4, According to Temporal Fugue:

I found very interesting that you always mentioning Temporal Fugue in your defensive effects in a madness play.
Just to make it clear, Temporal Fugue is not a madness viable talent at all.

You are wrong about Fugue in the damage reduction order.
You mentioned:

Out of Phase will give more than this but let's say the character has a physical resistance of 30% - 24.3% after Skirmisher's 19% res pen. 1127/997/545/482/1127/997 damage.
Then Fugue reduces damage of each hit to 1/3. 375/332/181/160/375/332. Then Webs of Fate reduces that damage to 67%.

So, you are saying, the order is:
1, Resistances
2, Temporal Fugue 67% reduction
3, Webs of Fate 33% reduction

So, I have to tell you: this is not true.

Fugue is triggering when you or one of your clones taking a damage directly into your life.
Fugue is triggering just right before Reality Smearing and after Damage Shields.

Fugue.png (209.71 KiB) Viewed 14900 times

As you can see from the TOP image, when I took a hit, at first:

1, Webs of Fate is triggering (reducing the damage by 1590)
2, Then Energy Decomposition is triggering (reducing by 80)
3, Then my Time Shield triggers (reducing the damage by 777)

4, And after this, the remaining damage (2349) was split to 1/3 amongst the three of us
(783 shared damage)

5, I am also taking the 783 damage
6, Then Reality Smearing triggers (783 x 0.3 = 235 damage converted)
7, Then I am taking the remaining 783 – 235 = 548 damage

Meanwhile my clones also taking the shared 783 & 783 damage.

When any of you or the Clones taking shared damage, there is just
Damage Shields and Reality Smearing.

My Clones also had a 777 power Time Shield like I had, so it will trigger for the shared damage
and reducing it.
Damage will be 783 – 777 = 6 damage

Then the Reality Smearing of my Clones triggers and converts 0.3 x 6 = 2 damage to paradox.
And the Clones will take 4 damage into their life.

NOTE: The UI for shared damage directly into life is BUGGED, the Combat Log is not showing any damage into life from Fugue shared damage, just:

into Damage Shields
converted Damage (Reality Smearing)

But you and your clones taking actual damage into your life too, it’s just missing from the Log.

This is because in the code, there is just “shared damage” declared in Effects/Other.Lua when an Actor is sharing (so giving) the damage via Temporal Fugue.


On the BOTTOM image you can see another test, when not me, but my Clone was hit.
My other Clone had a stronger Time Shield than me, so his shield reduced all the shared damage.
But I took a 10 damage into my life (not shown by the log) and I took 5 damage as paradox.


So, against this split, shared damage there is NO RESISTANCES, NO WEBS OF FATE, NO DECOMPOSITION.
Just your damage shields and Reality Smearing.

So, the damage reduction order, when some of you taking DIRECT damage is:

1, Resistances
2, (Ghoul Resilience now in 1.6)
3, Webs of Fate
4, Energy Decomposition
5, Damage Shields
xxx, (Ghoul Resilience was here in 1.5)
6, Fugue Split Sharing damage
7, Reality Smearing

And, if anyone is taking the SPLIT, SHARED damage:
1, Damage Shields
2, Reality Smearing

Temporal Fugue damage split in applied in callbackOnHit, just like Reality Smearing.
And this was in 1.4 and in 1.5 too.


Also, the Clones are buggy too and sometimes they are really dumb.
Even if you set their talent use weight, they do not follow that order exactly and just instead doing stupid thing like going for melee attacks sometimes.

Also, you have to be aware that Temporal Fugue is not just a “simple 67% damage reduction”.
When one of your Clone is taking damage directly into his life, then he will SHARE the 1/3 of the damage with you too.
And you have just DAMAGE SHIELDS & REALITY SMEARING against this shared damage.

You can easily take a lot of damage into your life even if you do not take any hit or any damage directly, bur your Clones do.
Also, there are many AoE damage effects that damages all 3 of you at the same time.
This means if any 3 of you are taking damage after Damage Shields, he will share the damage with the others.

Let’s see an example:

AoE Damage is 8000 and affects all the 3 of you.
Your resists are capped, so the damage will be: 2400
Webs of Fate: 1608
Energy Decomposition: 1541
Time Shield (1000 power): 541
Then all the 3 of you will split & share the 541 damage.

NOTE: because none of you have Time Shield now, all the shared damage will go directly into life (so, just Reality Smearing will trigger).

You will take 180 damage and share the 180 & 180 with the others.
That means 126 damage into your life & 54 converted damage into paradox.
But both of your Clones do the same, so they will share you 180 & 180 damage too.
So, you will take 378 damage into life & 162 into paradox.
That is totally 540, so exactly the same that you would took if you did not activate Fugue at all.

So, against AoE effects, Fugue is useless.

Also, casting Fugue takes a turn, and if you want to control them that also takes a turn each time you switch between group members.
So by giving them exact orders, you are losing turns.

Also, your damage will be reduced to 33% under Fugue and this means, all your fights will be 3 times longer.
How are you outdamaging crazy healing & regen on madness enemies with a 33% damage?
How are you outdamaging crazy flat damage reduction talents in madness with a 33% damage?

You cannot even scratch many enemies if you are just dealing just 1/3 of your damage.
Also, your Clones cannot even scratch them.


5, According to your mentions about Savescumming:

I already gave you the date from which day I started to play with my ghoul Paradox Mage, so please create and post images after that day (from ~20.01.2020.) and not from way before.

You can cry about why some items dropped at the first part of my videos, but some items (like The Untouchable) are dropped in the last part of my videos.
Items drops in ToME are RANDOM.

You are saying that: Aetherwalk, the Limmir amulet or Rod of Sarrilon are BiS for my build, but you are so mistaken.

Did you realized this?

I saved the Lost Merchant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txHnOskRwZw

But I did not buy anything from him?


In my 27. video, I am starting from Last Hope with 55000 gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1AdqwbPnHs


And I am just going to High Peak, without buying any randart from the Merchant…
I already gave you the exact times & videos where I found all my gear, so you can check that I never used the Merchant.

Also, if you think Rod of Sarrilon, a Limmir amulet or Aetherwalk are Bis, you never bought anything from the Merchant.

I could bought even a Suncloak imbued staff or even just a staff with way better Magic, Will, Temporal damage & res pen than Sarrilon.

I could bought a shoe with spell cooldown reduction + extra temporal damage.
Aetherwalk is just giving a smaller (~20-30% extra) damage to teleports as arcane damage.
Tethers deal way more, so a +30% temporal damage shoe would be so much better because that also affects Tehters, but also Attenuate & Echoes too.

I could bought an amulet with Stun resist too, but there is also healing mod, + All Resist Cap on amulets.

Basically I could just buy 13 randart from my 55000 gold as many times as I just want.
If I wouldn’t be satisfied with the result of the 13 gained item, then just stop the video and start again as you said…
But I did not do it.

So, if I am savescumming, then why I did not bought any randart from the Merchant?


6, According to how “elite players” play madness:

You are really funny when you just saying “Shesh” is a non-existing person, just a fake account.
Many players in several threads refer to Shesh and saying they are consulting with him, so on…


I would like to thank you that you made me clear:

Mex was a CHEATER with his Wildfire Archmage madness run.
You made it very clear, Mex couldn’t prove at all, he made the madness run legit with his own build.


Also, because you did not send any video evidence about an “elitist madness play”, therefore I searched a bit.
I still did not found any video, but I found a very interesting evidence.


So, here is a LEGIT Madness Winner of one of the member of this “elitist group”: Mankeli.

https://te4.org/characters/121593/tome/ ... 0d1f6bc418

As you can see, it’s totally “legit”, there is no extra addon.


“Elite player” Mankeli also wrote a post here about his legit madness win:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=43430

Let’s look a little bit closer what the “elite player” wrote about his own run, okay?
I attach a little bouquet about some very interesting sentences here:

lol.png (89.51 KiB) Viewed 14900 times

A, “Elite player” Mankeli writes in the original post (Jan 26, 2015), last paragraph:

He is following Mex’s guide!
Elite player thinks, Mex’s guide is perfect, he just modified a bit the build order!

So, “Elite player” Mankeli is following exactly a CHEATERS guide in his legit madness run, and he found the CHEATERS guide is perfect!

Meanwhile Mex couldn’t prove his legit madness win with his own guide!


B, At Mar 04, 2015 “Elite player” Mankeli wrotes, he won!
The same day in a reply to Mex, “Elite player” Mankeli CONFIRMS that, the CHEATERS build is perfect.


C, In the same reply at Mar 04, 2015 “Elite player” Mankeli wrote about:

Invasion portals in madness are crazy! Enemies inside invasion portals are level 200+ in madness!
So, stronger than High Peak enemies and Sorcerers (~level 150).

Just right after this, “Elite player” Mankeli wrote, he ACCIDENTALLY WENT INSIDE TO AN INVASION PORTAL IN MADNESS!!!

He pressed on “enter” instead of “destroy” because he thought it doesn’t matter!

Inside the invasion portal, there are a dozen of level 200 enemy in a very small area and “Elite player” is accidentally entered into the portal.
Of course, “Elite player” did not give any details about, how the hell did he even survive!


Right after this “Elite player” wrote, he found Telmur Tower completely insane.
It was very crowded and in one level there was 2 boss. He almost died there.


D, Still the same day a user “Supermini” wrote to “Elite player”:
Telmur Tower is not necessary to do for going back to the East.
You can just go back through the Farportal in Reknor as you did first time.

“Elite player” replies to Supermini:
“Elite player” was not aware of this!
“Elite player” thought Telmur Tower is a necessary quest to do in the main campaign.

“Elite player” had no accurate knowledge about even the MAIN CAMPAIGN during his “legit” madness run.
“Elite player” took unnecessary risks and almost died because of this.


But there are even more interesting facts about “Elite player” madness win:

lol2.png (85.56 KiB) Viewed 14900 times

In the formerly mentioned, same thread:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=43430

On Feb, 01, 2015 “Elite player” wrote:
He did Vor Armoury and got back from the East.

On Feb, 10, 2015, so 9 days after “Elite player” wrote:
He is progressing, he did 2 Orc Prides.


And 2 days after this!
On Feb, 12, 2015, “Elite player” creates a new topic in this forum:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=43594


And “Elite player” asking for help about how Cleansing Flames from the Wildfire tree exactly works.
“Elite player” did not understand exactly the CORE TREE of the build that he follows.

Meanwhile 3 days before “Elite player” rocks in madness with his Wildfire Archmage, clearing Orc Prides, so on…
Following a guide wrote by a CHEATER…

Thank you very much, I really enjoyed to search after how “Elite players” playing madness and win on madness legit.


Can I guess, btonasse?

After Shesh,
Next non-existing, imaginary person will be Mankeli?

[Mankeli]

Heh, what is moving the goalposts. The OP writes a wall of text and spends apparently very considerable amount of time in searching for my posts that are literally five years old trying to prove...uh something to btonasse?

1) Mex's guide

Yes, the build was very good, good enough to win madness with. Like I already wrote in my last post that you apparently "forgot", even a cheater can come up with a build that is good enough to win madness. That is true of Mex and it's true of other probable cheaters, such as yourself. Coming up with a build and executing that build in practise are two different things, I don't understand why you keep insisting this is not the case.

Also, Mex was only 100 % caught cheating on other run much later than any of the posts you came up with. So Mex wasn't a known cheater at the time of the of the publication of the guide and it seems to me you are just trying to deliberately obfuscate things.

2) Cleansing Flames

Wildfire having 100 % or more resistance to self-inflicted damage only happens if you get extra mastery in wildfire even with 5/5 so yeah it's an issue that doesn't even come up until you have more wildfire mastery from some source. Implying that finding out how this breakpoint works is somehow crucial to get to prides is beyond dumb. In fact, the whole clearing buffs from yourself part is completely overshadowed by the fact that cleansing flames could dispel vitality. OFC in 1.6 and on your run vitality is now a non-issue and enemies don't have HP anyway after the madness nerf.

3)

He pressed on “enter” instead of “destroy” because he thought it doesn’t matter!

Heh, this is just getting sad. You literally quoted the part where I said this:

High Peak has level 150+ monsters, invasion portal had 200+ level monsters. Yeah.

BTW, the only reason I entered the place was because of a bug: The portal was already destroyed once but then when the whole level was cleared and I used autoexplore the autoexpolore landed my char on the portal and the question "enter or destroy" popped up again. I pressed enter by accident or because I thought it woudln't matter but turns out you can enter the portals after destroying them.

As everyone can see I didn't enter the portal for fun but because the portal reset for some reason ie bugged after being de-activated earlier (this can still happen p sure, not that common though). If you are trying to commit some kind of character assassination then at least try not to post the part that proves you are just trying to mislead people.

4) Telmur

This is the only relevant fact in your post that I did not know and yes Telmur can be very bad news yes if you encounter let's say dreadmaster archmage because of dispersion. So yeah that was p dumb. But which is dumber, going to a place that is bad by accident or going there deliberately as you did on your runs? Ofc entering the place deliberately is only dumb if you have some sort of chance of actually dying because of some kind of dispersion/CN/silence combo in a very tight space -with savescumming you do not!

Also one important note, I did upload my character. You can see my winner's table etc here https://te4.org/user/121593/wins. Also you won't find posts of me questioning whether it's legit to use savescumming and item vault because unlike for yourself, it's always been clear to me it's not legit.

Lastly, and this is the most important point, ofc not any of the things I said about my ancient run matter. All madness winners have and should be questioned but my run wasn't the topic of this thread. I've had people present to me much more relevant questions during the many years that have already passed and it doesn't really bother me as long as the questions are in good faith, unlike the OP's were.

It feels increasingly weird to me that you claim you don't care about what I or btonasse or whoever think about your run but make 57 hours of videos and spend probably hours trying to dig up all the posts made during the last 5-6 years in these forums just to prove something. All people who bother to write guides and tell about their runs do care, me included, some to larger extent than others. Pretending that you don't care, not being able to answer why you didn't upload your character for ppl to see when you clearly do care, spending hours do try to dig up dirt on other people and the constant fallacies just make your actions look (even more) dishonest.

If you truly don't care then there is no point for you to even reply. Taking some time off the keyboard may be a good thing anyway, this is just a game after all even if we do care about it!

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

First of all, thank you for at least admitting: my build is works as I described.
And my build is capable of beating 1.6.6. madness.


Unfortunately I cannot say this from you and from your “elitist player build”.

Here is the link of your Paradox Mage guide that I also tried many times when I started to play with Paradox Mage:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=46979


Your CORE talents in this build are: Temporal Fugue and Bathe in Light (for high damage shields).


In your guide you are writing TOTALLY FALSE INFORMATION about how Temporal Fugue damage reduction triggers.

Fugue_build.png (90.11 KiB) Viewed 14732 times

At first, you are writing: Time Shield is not actually very good in insane+ …
…but with Clones, it is 3 times better.


Also, you are writing in a very detailed way, how bad Fugue Clones are…
How buggy and how dumb they are…
(in this part you are correct, Fugue Clones are buggy and bad)


And you also writing:
“Taking control takes a turn which is a pretty big deal. But we can live with that!”

NO!!!

In madness, you cannot just lose turns by switching control between party members!

(You cast Temporal Fugue = 1 turn)
You cast Bathe in Light = 1 turn
You switch to your Clone = 1 turn
You cast Bathe in Light with your Clone = 1 turn
You switch to 2nd Clone = 1 turn
You cast Bathe in Light with Clone = 1 turn

So, you lose totally 5-6 turns for having the 3 x Bathe in Light map effect.
You cannot lose 5-6 turns in madness!


But the very worst thing is, when you give FALSE INFORMATION to ToME players.

You writing:

“RS (Reality Smearing) does not trigger for shield damage. However the TF (Temporal Fugue) damage splitting does activate before shields are check.”

This is COMPLETELY FALSE!

Temporal Fugue damage split is triggering in callbackOnHit, just like Reality Smearing.
So, AFTER Damage Shields.

I already wrote about this in my former reply, but I make this clear:

Fugue.png (209.71 KiB) Viewed 14732 times

Fugue split is triggering after damage shields.

fugue_again.png (169.78 KiB) Viewed 14732 times

You can see again, when the enemy hits me with a Dual Strike:

1, Webs of Fate triggers (negating 467 damage)
2, Energy Decomposition triggers (negating 46 damage)
3, Damage Shield triggers (absorbing 617 damage)
4, Then Fugue triggers and splitting the damage (93 – 93 – 93 split damage)
5, Reality Smearing triggers (93 x 0.3 = 28 converted damage)
6, Then I took the remaining 93-28 = 65 physical damage into my life

Then comes the second hit from Dual Strike (the mainhand weapon attack):

1, Again Webs of Fate triggers first (negating 731 damage)
2, Energy Decomposition triggers (negating 32 damage)
3, Then I did not have any damage shield, because it was crumbled under the first hit
so Fugue damage split takes place (481 – 481 – 481 split damage)
4, Then Reality Smearing triggers (481 x 0.3 = 144 converted damage)

And when my Fugue Clones taking the Split, shared damage:
(first hit: 93 damage, second hit: 481 damage)

You can see, the damage is directly subtracted from their damage shield.
There is no Resistances, no Webs of Fate, no Energy Decomposition against this shared damage.


So, to make it clear for ToME players, the correct order is:

1, Resistances
2, Ghoul Resilience (in 1.6)
3, Webs of Fate
4, Energy Decomposition
5, Damage Shields (Displacement -> Time -> Damage)
x, (Ghoul Resilience was here in 1.5)
6, Temporal Fugue damage split
7, Reality Smearing

And when any of you are taking a SHARED damage:
1, Damage Shields
2, Reality Smearing


Your whole concept with this build was totally false.
Fugue split IS NOT triggering before damage shields.
Fugue split IS TRIGGERING AFTER damage shields.
Fugue split triggered after damage shields in 1.4 & in 1.5 too and you wrote this guide for 1.4.9.
1.4.9. code is still uploaded in ToME Tips, you can check it.
Fugue damage split is triggering under callbackOnHit.

And you wrote this Paradox Mage guide after your “legit madness win”…
Up to this point, you had complete confusion how Temporal Fugue works.
btonasse also wrote me exactly the same FALSE thing about Temporal Fugue just in his former reply.



So, what happened here?


1, Two “elitist player" started to write in this thread because they wanted to VALIDATE my Madness Paradox Mage win


2, The “elitists” wrote INSULTING THINGS about not just me, but ABOUT THE DEVELOPERS, about THE GAME and about OTHER PLAYERS TOO who are not even involved in this thread
The Moderators had to delete the messages from the “elitist players”, and other players also found your messages totally insulting


3, The “elitist players” wrote totally nonsense things about Madness, like:
there are no 10 000 damage instance in madness at all
Maybe just Freeze can trigger ghoul resilience in madness, but no other talent

“Elitist players” were not aware, in ToME, enemies can have multiple classes, therefore
the damage in late madness can be really high, even 15 000 - 23 000 with capped resistance penetration even with TOTALLY NAKED ENEMIES just with 1 or 2 classes.
If I add in GEAR and/or a third class, the damage can reach even 33 000 with capped resistance penetration.

So, “elitist players” proved, they have NO KNOWLEDGE about MADNESS.


4, “Elitist players” ADMITTED my guide & build is okay. The build/guide itself is not under question.
It is works as I described and it is capable of beating madness.

Meanwhile “elitist players” CANNOT WRITE an ACCURATE and WELL-FUNCTIONING Paradox Mage guide at all.
The Paradox Mage guide that was written by “elitist players” contains ESSENTIAL ERROR in the description of the CORE TALENT that the build using for damage reduction.

So, “elitist players” do not understand completely how Paradox Mage talents works.



Excuse me, but if you would like to VALIDATE something…
… Shouldn’t you at least HAVE PROPER and ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE about it?


How are you validating madness wins, when you have no knowledge about madness?
How are you validating Paradox Mage wins, when you have confusion about how PM talents working?


With your former example:
If I am writing a scientific paper about nuclear physics,
and I receive an e-mail from a group of ICECREAM MAKERS and they writing me, because they want to review my paper…
… how should I react?
The ice cream makers have no proper and accurate knowledge about nuclear physics!

I can ignore them
Or I can write to them: I do not care about their review.

If they ask me, why I do not care about their review, I can explain them in a detailed way.
And this is what I did.

[Phantomfrettchen]

Hey tradewind_rider, really interesting guide. Never knew that it worked this way. Learned something new.
Also - those guys in particular

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

Thank you, Phantomfrettchen!

It’s really fun to play with this “you are the bullet” strategy.

Multiple-Tethers offers you:

a, automatic 560 AoE damage to enemies per turn (with 100 spellpower & 300 paradox)
With gear & crit, Tethers can easily deal a ~1300-1800 automatic AoE damage per turn at end-game.

b, automatic 2 x AoE Random Warp (pin, stun, blind, confuse) to enemies per turn

c, continuous Out of Phase (capped resists & detrimental effect duration reduction)

d, automatic 2 x (or more) detrimental effect clear per turn

This “extra” is what you need for madness difficulty, along with a very effective damage reduction that is provided by Ghoul, Paradox Mage talents and gear.



Yeah, elitist dudes are really funny.
Saying things, because of 1.6 changes “everyone who is wise enough has already quit from the game” and meanwhile they are playing with the game…

Also, they have no knowledge about the game and their guide is also a total failure.
Too bad, when I started to play with Paradox Mage in 1.5, I believed that Temporal Fugue + Bathe in Light build that suggests madness play is a viable madness build.
Back then I had no knowledge about the code, and had way less knowledge about talents. So I just believed that at first.

If anyone is planning to play madness with a Paradox Mage, do not make the mistake that I did.
So, ignore Temporal Fugue.

Your dumb clones will kill you. You take 33% of the damage that they take (described above in details) and there is just Damage Shields and Reality Smearing against this damage. And the clones are really dumb & buggy, they go into melee with enemies and using normal attacks…
Temporal Fugue is a bad skill. It can be used on insane and lower, but on madness it is a suicide.