Goon Paradox Mage Guide 1.3.3
Contents
Paradox Mage in 1.3.3
Gravity is really good and easy to use. You have huge AoEs, physical immunes are pretty rare, and you branch out into any other damage spells you want once you invest in Gravity Locus because it turns half of all damage you deal physical.
Beyond that, you've just got an incredible grab bag of utility skills that synergize with each other in all kinds of ways, but it's helpful to think of them in small groups. The Speed Control tree interacts extremely well with the Gravity tree; Gravity Well slows enemies down while Speed Control makes you go faster, which has a multiplicative effect on how many actions you get compared to your enemies.
Stasis and Flux is probably meant to be an either / or choice. Both trees give you defensive abilities and ways to mitigate Paradox; every Paradox mage needs those things but unless you're a Cornac you probably don't have enough category points to get each. (Although I suppose in theory you could max one tree and then x/5/0/0 the other if you wanted to prioritize being nigh-unkillable over offense.)
Temporal Reprieve and Time Stop serve the same function but I like Time Stop much better, it has more overall utility while Temporal Reprieve is stronger defensively. You can drop Gravity Well with Time Stop up and still get the full duration, the damage penalty just means you can't nuke stuff down for free. Contingency combined with either spell is crazy good, and will save you from yourself if you're like me and tend to play too fast.
Matter Weaving, Energy Decomposition, the Fate Weaving Tree, and Precognition + Foresight all give you slightly different kinds of passive damage mitigation. Take as many of these as you need to feel safe.
Disintegration, Energy Absorption, and Entropy all give you anti-caster/boss/sustain tech. Same deal, if you're afraid you can't brute force your way through a boss fight, pick one or two and invest as needed.
Redux, Energy Absorption (again), Temporal Bolt, (and Timeless, if you go Shalore, which you should) used to be the single strongest feature of the class, now the interaction is merely Really Good (tm). Nowadays I would probably focus on the speed differential first and leave this till mid-late game, though.
Timeline Threading is for people who don't go Gravity. Spellbinding is probably broken but I'm not confident enough in my math skills to figure out how to get the most out of it, so I ignored it.
Spacetime Folding seems incredibly goofy and I was never even tempted to put points into it.
For a more concrete answer, here's my winner: http://te4.org/characters/38764/tom...3f-1b55553a4bdb
This was pre-nerf but I wouldn't change much, except that the prodigies I took were stupid because I was already unkillable at that point and didn't care, and without Redux allowing me to recast all my nukes over and over again I would probably drop Matter Weaving (or only take 1 point) and maybe take a point out of Celerity and max an additional damage spell instead.
Class Talents: - Max Gravity nukes + Dust to Dust, one point each in Temporal Bolt and Time Skip - Unlock Stasis at level 10, max Time Shield ASAP (or Flux + Reality Smearing if that's your bag) - Get a point in Gravity Locus + Gravity Well, then split points between maxing those and 1/5/5/4+ the Speed Control tree. (I can't remember for sure where the +1 turn breakpoints for Time Stop are.) - Whatever you want. More nukes to round out your rotation (I like Stop), more Paradox mitigation (pick up Static History / Twist Fate if you haven't already), general utility stuff (Matter Weaving, Disintegration.) It probably makes more sense to spend your 36 category point on an infusion slot but you could experiment with one of the other locked trees if you want.
Generic Talents: - Max Dimensional Step ASAP (I originally had Dimensional Shift here too, but that nerf was pretty harsh, so maybe not) - If you're Shalore Timeless > all else - Get the Combat Training tree in Last Hope and put points into Thick Skin as gear / heroism / your willingness to put stat points in CON allows. - Unlock Chronomancy / Energy at level 20, put points into Energy Decomposition and Redux where available. - Fill out your racial skills, pick up Contingency if you want it.
Stat-wise keep Magic maxed at all times. Personally I think Willpower and sustainable casting in general are more important for Paradox Mages than other spellcasters, so that was my second priority. Cunning is probably viable (especially with Shalore) but honestly the class isn't super crit-reliant; your damage comes from being able to cast 5 spells in the time it takes your enemies to cast one, not in casting one spell for five times the damage, plus the Paradox mechanics mean that your Willpower doubles as a way to increase effective damage. I took Constitution on my winner and didn't really regret it.
Tips for old versions
Tips 1
Raise your Willpower a bit to mitigate backfire effects and gamble on higher Paradox. The damage bonus from high Paradox is quite noticeable; on my Gravity guy I've had 80-90 damage spells go up to like 150-160 at dangerously high Paradox levels (we're talking 15% failure rate and up). I've heard of builds that somehow fart around with 6,000 Paradox, but for that you'll want a shitload of Willpower and a massive investment in the paradox mastery skill and the various paradox reducing talents.
Paradox Mage is mostly just a giant bag of tricks, though. Remember that Dust to Dust is a beam that can hit multiple targets, and use your movement speed and variety of AoEs and status effects to blast groups and cripple strong opponents. You'll definitely want to pick a single tree to focus on for dealing damage, but it's okay to diversify a little for all the fun effects you get from other abilities.
As far as your abilities interacting, there's nothing immediate and dramatic like Reaver disease spreading or Cursed damage multipliers (lol Cursed), but you can stack up a ton of insanely debilitating debuffs on one guy in a pretty short time, making it a lot easier to melt his face. You can also accidentally haste and heal him because of your Paradox
Tips 2
Paradox Mages are really neat and a lot of people really like them but they're hardly what I'd call a heavy hitting top tier class. The "gotta go fast" aspect of the class is really mostly intended for Temporal Wardens. It's there as an option for PMs but it's not really the focus because super fast movement speed doesn't have much utility for a stand-and-nuke caster with a perfect accuracy phase door like it does for a melee/ranged hybrid like TW. Haste is always good for getting more spells off but you will find yourself choked on Paradox in long fights if you're spamming hard with global speed increases. It's an inherent weakness of the resource mechanic, unfortunately.
You have two real routes for damage; Gravity primary or Beamspam(Dust to Dust/Rethread). Gravity really demands a whole hog investment to be good but has a ton of inherent crowd control. Beamspam with Turn Back the Clock/Quantum Spike support is easier to manage. Neither of them are really outstanding killers; Paradox Mages suffer from comparatively really bad damage bases on their spells which means they get poor returns from % damage compared to any other pure caster, so the problem never really goes away. They have other problems too like a laughably terrible base HP growth(was the worst in the game before Solipsists came out!) that is only compensated so far by their powerful defensive generics.
Paradox Mages are certainly not a weakling class. They have okay damage output, very powerful defensive generics, and a lot of funky ass gimmicks like the ability to literally cheat with See the Threads. If you're looking for a straight up blaster caster that does a ton of damage quickly and easily you want to run far away and go for an Archmage, Alchemist, or Corruptor.
Tips 3
The tree with stop/slow/haste is one of the best sets of abilities for anyone of any class. 1/5/5/5 it for sure. You're right that matter v. gravity is basically a choice without much synergy. Most of your spells have fairly low base damage, but that's not so bad because you never run 'out' of paradox, and all of your spells will get much stronger as your failure% starts to pick up.
To keep a big room full of enemies mostly incapacitated, start off with Haste (instant cast) then Slow on them. You will now have something like three turns for each of theirs. Slow does enough damage, and lasts long enough, that most swarming chaff enemies will die before it wears off and before they can make it outside the spell area. If there's a heavy contingent of casters, throw a Stop at them. Max out your generic sustain that slows projectiles - if you see an incoming death ball, use your dimension step (also instant cast) to move aside by like one tile.
If there is ever a singular big scary enemy, use the last two talens in the Matter tree. First haste yourself, then Destabilize them, then use your generic talent Redux (instant cast) followed by your final matter-disruption spell twice in a row. It's your hardest hitting spell, it hits for 150% before any crits against destabilized, and it automatically kills anything that you get below 20%. At 5 points, double-casting it with Redux can kill almost anything, and with Haste/slow you can do all that while they have the chance to go once.
At that point, you've sucked down a big load of paradox and maybe not everything is dead. If you fear for your life, use Wormhole (only needs 1 point) to throw up a portal behind you and GTFO for spell cools down and healing. If you do not fear for your life, maybe blast away the leftovers with Dust-To-Dust and keep using a stop or slow whenever one of them is ready - alternate between them to keep someone incapacitated most of the time. Once all of your good spells have been used and are on cooldown is a good time to use your generic Energy Drain - probably one of them will come back to usable.
Other fun talents - remove from timeline does a decent chunk of damage, and if there are two threatening targets (uniques, spellcasters) within range, you can basically call a time-out on one while you deal with the other - they are also destabilized when they come back, and disruption will get its damage bonus.
The 'rethread' beam in its locked tree is excellent. It randomly throws on almost any status effect (including stuns, confusions, and silence), hits in a beam, and does okay damage, all on a very short cooldown. One point gets you the full status effect benefit. This is something you can use while waiting for your power spells to cool down.
In the other locked tree (use your second cat point for it), the ability that gives you a % to resist backfailures is a huge effective boost in your usable px pool. The one that lets you pick out a target to remove from the timeline is great if there are multiple threats nearby, since you can just go all-out kamikaze on one guy and then get all your resources back. Summoning your paradox clone ("you from the future!") is almost as good as it sounds and should be your first step in any difficult encounter. When he summons you back later, you can just run away and wait for it to time out.
Ease of use suggestions - right click Static History and have it auto-cast when no enemies are nearby. This makes it much less tedious to wait and keep your px low out of combat. Right click Haste and do automatically use when enemies are visible, because it takes no time and will be the first thing you use in virtually any encounter.
Good races to use - Halfling, for its good HP, and the fact that you can activate your Lucky Crits (instant cast) right before your destabilize-Redux-disruptx2 combo to get nigh-guaranteed crits from it and guarantee a kill even harder. Shalore, because you can double up on stacking instant-cast Haste abilities and then use your instant-cast Timeless thing a few rounds later to both get rid of any bad status and practically double your 2xHaste duration, plus the passive invisibility can save anyone's life. But get some extra con if you pick that guy, and save the passive crit bonus for last because, while nice, it won't save your life ever.
Gravity Nuke Build Guide
I am too lazy to do all the precognition and timeline splitting/peeking into the future crap, so I just build PM's like straightforward nukers.
- 5/5 Dust to Dust, ignore the rest of that tree
- Max all the stuff in Gravity, max the first one first
- 5/5 in Stop, just use it as one of your leading nukes
- Rethread if you want, but it's damage type is not the one you want, it's damage is low, however it can pin which is big for your gravity spells
Change your staff to physical damage, find physical damage % items, and just run around nuke stuff.
Max Dimensional Step, use it to re-position without taking a turn, every 5 turns (once you are 5/1/1/5).
I don't even get the Chronomancy tree.
Works well enough for me, simplifies the class, makes it so you can play faster and don't have to do all this precognition crap and preparation for fights.
