The Spatial Tether Paradox Mage

[slowclapman]

Thanks for this great and very detailed guide, it really helped me to understand the mechanics of the class better:
How paradox works, what you can do with tethers, dimensional anchor + time skip combo etc.
There's just something really funny about beating monsters while zipping around the map.

Definitely still works in 1.7.2, there's just a few skills that need an extra point or so to reach the "old" breakpoint.

I made a few (admittedly sometimes very frustrating) tries while trying out slightly different point distributions, prodigies etc.
but always took your guide as a, well, guideline. I kept slowly getting the hang of it and made slight adjustments to fit my own playstyle.
However, after one particularly "unlucky" death I almost gave up. But a few days later I went full Thomas the Tank Engine and saw it through until the end. And I'm glad I did.

I finally found success with your primary recommendation of hidden resources (it may seem unexciting but it really helps) + cauterize,
however I'm unsure whether cauterize triggered once lol. I also got lucky and found Aetherwalk and other nice artifacts later on.
Although I had to use BoL after a botched fight with a - would you have guessed it - PM randboss in Dreadfell.
For reference: https://www.te4.org/characters/253753/t ... f6257e933f

PM can do incredible things... if you have the patience for it. You won't be killing anything with one button and tethers require quite a bit of set-up so make sure your real-life stamina is up to snuff.
The only real weak spot PM has imho is to get caught off-guard, so I learned the hard way that autoexplore = autoexplode and to precog a lot. And that paradox going out of control can easily kill you.
Especially when you create an "evil" clone without realizing it and you decided you wanted to try out Meteoric Crash on this run.
Also I've come to hate stealth with a burning passion becasue a. it can really screw you over despite scouting and b. it is spaghetti code and stealth mobs randomly "flicker" in and out of "view" in "real-time"...

Edit: I liked that in high peak (among other options ofc.) I could sometimes just time skip the stair boss to bypass him lol.

[Velorien]

This looks like a really interesting build, but there's one thing I don't understand. Since Spatial Tether's max duration is the same as its cooldown, how do you set up so many simultaneous tethers?

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hi!

Thank you slowclapman, i am glad you enjoyed the build!


As for Velorien's question:

a, Paradox Mage has Spellbinding category and Extension in that tree.
As i descibed there, i bound Tether into Extension, this way i had a 11 turn long Tether.

b, Spell cooldown reduction also helps you, if you reach 20% (shoe + pickaxe), it will reduce the
cooldown of Tethers to 7 or even to 6 if you found Zemekkys' (or a double ego item).
But this is insignificant and unreliable.

c, All chronomancy effects' duration is affected by paradox modifier and that means, you
can reach a 12 turn long Tether even without Extension if your paradox is high enough.
With high paradox + Extension, you can even reach 16 turn long Tethers.

In most cases a ~10-11 turn long Tether is reliable & enough, but there are e.g.
Cultists who have Nihil and shortens your effects' duration by a %, so it is nice to
have a higher Tether duration if you can handle that.

Of course, you should use Precognition and alpha-strike CoEs with silence/stone
in order to completely negate them, before they mess things up.
You can extend debuff duartion to infinite with Seal Fate.

Another, more broken negation is simply Time Skip them to death.

Hope it helped, just ask if you have more questions.

[Delmuir]

I don't think the Dimensional Anchor + Time Skip combo works anymore. I don't have a ton of experience with it but I keep trying to use it and it never works so... I assume it was changed in a patch.

[Tradewind_Rider]

I don't think the Dimensional Anchor + Time Skip combo works anymore. I don't have a ton of experience with it but I keep trying to use it and it never works so... I assume it was changed in a patch.

As i see, nothing was changed so it functions as i described.

You cannot apply Time Skip on enemies at all?

How are you doing this?

[Delmuir]

I can apply it easily to normal enemies but against some tougher enemies, I tried applying Dimensional Anchor first and then Time Skip but it didn't land.

Am I doing something in error or are some tougher bosses just immune regardless?

[Tradewind_Rider]

Dimensional Anchor is making a paradoxspellpower vs spellsave check.
So in order to apply the Anchor effect on an enemy, you have to beat its spellsave.

You should build up a high spellpower as a paradox mage, but two things can help you:

a. tune up your paradox

Paradox Modifier is a multiplier for your effective spellpower for chronomancy spells.
You can "negate" anomaly chance with Hidden Resources or Static History.

b, unlock Spellbinding and bind Dimensional Anchor into Empower

Empower is additive with Paradox Modifier, so it is also a multiplier for your effective
spellpower for that chronomancy spell.

[Delmuir]

I see now. Thank you. I was operating under the assumption that Dimensional Anchor couldn't be resisted (not sure why I made that assumption).