New Class - Tech-based (Technomage/Technomancer)

I would like to suggest a winion subclass under mage, the new paradox class, or a new class for a Technomage.

  • New Class Justification

    • There could be subclasses of new technology like a Frankenstein type class that makes you as big as a boss and you use makeshift tech gadgets (like powerarmor for fisticuffs to punch your way through enemies or a huge battery infused cleaver) to chop your way through enemies.

    • Maybe another subclass could be something with a flamethrow with the ability to change fire to poison, cold, or necrotic damage.

However, the one that I truly want to propose is a Technomage or Technomancer subclass that uses autonomous bots to do the user’s bidding. Male or female, I couldn’t care less.

What are components to the subclass?

  • Power Armour

    • Element infused power armor that provides more focus on elemental resistances than physical armor.
  • Mini Tanks

    • 4 - 6 mini tanks that terminate the enemy based on drone response to enemy detection.

    • The mini tanks would move towards the drones to eliminate the target while you sit back and watch.

    • The tanks keep you safe, have armor upgrades, dmg upgrades, and additional percentage dmg to boss nodes (wishful thinking :-)).

  • Drones

    • 2-4 drones scout ahead for enemy, which on the skill tree you would be able to increase their enemy detection speed, scan radius, and control abilities that apply an elemental `effect on hit from the skill tree like cold pellets for freezing enemies, etc.
  • Health Bot

    • A little health bot that keeps a beam of healing and shielding on you that you can enhance from maybe item sets and/or just the skill tree itself to boost the healing and/or shield affect (separately or combined) and also allows for elemental resistance/protection, to where this subclass is not squishy like the necromancer.
  • Tradeoffs

    • The major tradeoff could be that this is a slower class to play. I don’t mind it being a bit slower for girthiness, I’m not a speed demon.

    • However, it could be speed-demon viable if they just spec into speed and dmg nodes, which would make you extremely squishy.

      • Personally, I like to feel safe, feel like my bots are super tough and strong, and be able to tinker with gadgets to be make them do cool things while still being able to push all content.

What are your thoughts?

Edits:

  • Updated first sentence to include the paradox class as a place to test the technomage or Technomancer subclass. :slight_smile:

  • Created bullet points and cleaned up some of the grammatical mistakes for an easier read.

Please no techno themed classes ever… it wouldn’t fit the theme of the game.

2 Likes

The theme of the game is time travel. There is no reason not to have a technomancer class.
Especially because you already have techno-mobs, like the lozenge that shoots a lightning AoE 2 screens away or the golems. Those are mechanical contraptions that are already in the game.

2 Likes

We have the forge guard who creates a Manifested Armour as what was the state of magic/tech of the time.

That’s where the traveller originates from, and from what we see at the end of time (as future as it can get), there’s no quantum leap in technology afterwards as the world goes to shit, pretty much.

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All that was suggested can fall on the same category, though. You can have tanks and drones (or similar contraptions) that are powered by magic/tech. You already have an auto-deployable ballista that is sentient enough to seek targets.

I’m not saying I want a techno-based class in the game. I’m just saying that you can do one that still fits with the theme of the game.

Also, there is an interval of time between the most ā€œfuturisticā€ of eras currently in the game and the end of time. Maybe the end of time was brought on by techo-magic?

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We don’t have the lore completed yet afaik but isn’t everything going down the drain once the void was free and roaming? So it should be hard to have any kind of progress when everything is voided back into the stone age.

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The idea of advanced technology classes/masteries is always an interesting one, and you are correct - with infinite timelines and time travel, it’s certainly possible to exist.

There are some existing uses of technology in LE - the Rogue! This is a class that fills a bit of this theme with things like explosive flasks (grenades), explosive traps (landmines), ballista (automated turrets), etc. I don’t think we’d ever implement ā€œrealisticā€ future tech like modern firearms and machines, but more biotech,/magitech like Architect Liath.

One thing we have to keep in mind with these classes though, is that while they ā€œcouldā€ exist, the lore doesn’t currently support them. So for one of these classes to exist, we would either need to before, or at the same time add a considerable amount of lore to the universe to support it.

A class or even mastery is already a very significant undertaking, so the extra lore requirements on top of it makes it a very large scope. The community desire or drive for such a class would then need to justify the use of resources for this. Alternative to using resources for making a class/mastery that already fits into lore, and using the extra resources that would have been used for the extra lore required to instead add more game systems, mechanics, items, or other.

This certainly isn’t to shut down future tech ideas - I just commonly see these suggestions come up, but never really see mention of the requirement of ā€œsupportingā€ content that would add to the project’s scope.

4 Likes

this is why i see LE as a game with a huge amount of potential. theres many ways to expand the game.

if i ever made a game with LE’s premise, i would discard the monoliths and instead make alternate timeline/campaigns that players can explore. maybe even ditch the entire premise of seasonal content and make it DLC based. make it a more fleshed out expansion. each expansion having exclusive loot such as tech based loot or steam powered based loot etc. and even new classes that are exclusive to the dlc.

also i would prefer if dlc content added on content horizontally. unlike wow where new expansions add content vertically. each wow expansion made all older gear irrelevant. a lot of fan lovers quit because they got tired of the never ending grind, where they finally got their ā€œbestest everestest gearest everā€ only to have them outclassed by some basic gear in the next expansion.

this would go into an interesting discussion. what constitutes as classes supported by the current lore? is there a ā€œsacred time lineā€?

back in the original/older roadmaps, EHG teased the possibility of alternate skill passives.

perhaps this can be expanded. take a page from TLI. perhaps introduce timeshifted masteries for example ā€œnecroclasterā€. it has all the same passives and skills as a necromancer, but due to the shift in the timeline, all the skill passives are changed so that the summons are more temporary in nature where instead of a necromancer who summons long term pets. a necroclaster summons are hyper aggressive but last a short period before needing to be resummoned again. this is reflected in the skill’s passives. for example for summon skeleton, their passives near the starting point are replaced such as ā€œskeleton lasts 10 seconds but lunges at enemiesā€ or ā€œskeletons are replaced by skeleton dogs that lunges at the enemy and latches on to them for 4 seconds before dyingā€

LE has the best setting to allow for tons of timeshifted/alternate classes/masteries. do not squander the goldmine you are sitting on!

Well, that is what monoliths are, basically. They’re alternate timelines of the same areas in the campaign where different stuff happens (like you sparing Liath, etc).
They’re just set up with unrelated echoes for farming, so you only see that in the quests, which you never do again once you reach empowered.

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yeah but i was thinking something more indepth. where players could rerun the entire campaign so the devs can actually reuse their campaign map. and the campaign itself could be adjusted to the characters level and even have corruption applied on top. tq2 does something like this where you can raise an area’s level or even overlevel it so its 5 levels higher than yours.

this would also mean the monolith reward system would not be applied but perhaps baked into the new campaigns.

theres a lot of ways the devs can play around with this idea. i have more ideas but i m not too invested to think too much on EHGs behalf.

2 Likes

I dinnae agree. We are going through time travel here. But unfortunately, Mike said already that the space age is unlikely, although no impossible.

As far as I remember, the term techno-magic meaneth a hybrid/fusion of magic and technology. But biotechnology is different, and a mixture of magic and biotechnology is generally extremely rare in science fiction.

No it’s not. We don’t use the Epoch. That thing is crap and we only do so little damage control. We can’t go back in time and kill Hitler so to speak. So no matter what our ā€œheroā€ is doing everything went down the drain and as it seems there is noting we can do about it because we can’t travel where we want to.

Sure a lot of this comes from plot armor. Just go back and stop the Void from ever beeind a thing and everyone lives happiely isn’t possible. So there is only the potential the devs offer you and they offered you a one way story where everything is in ruins. If I was the hero with that Epoch thing I would use it to travel to a nice timeline and then throw that useless piece of crap into the ocean.

The game offers you no options and that’s my biggest gripe with all those time travel storys. They are crap. They are the worst. They are so shit I have no words for it. Time travel in LE is just a way to reuse maps, change them and change the biom you are in. Heck to me LE is kind of the first game that reuses it’s own assets to save time :smiley: .

So as long as the devs don’t offer all the freedom players want for whatever reason there is 0 potential for something outside of the box. We got a fantasy game with swords and magic and that’s it.

On top of it they even said they don’t want to add MTX that brakes emersion. So pistols, lasers, tactical nukes and ironman suites would be a tad bit emerison breaking… but fear not!

Why don’t we makea different golemancer? He isn’t building a golem he he is building a golem suit that helps in different ways like an exoskeleton and now the mage can live a melee smash or shoot balistas life while beeing rock solid. There are ways to twist and turn ideas to fit the plot if you don’t look at it from ā€œBut me wants lazoors and LMGs and flying arround in a space suit!ā€ only… just throw in an example.

Tech based class would be nice… I love steampunk and played Arcanum for far to many hours and i would love to see steampunk elements but that’s just silly me and that’s why I don’t suggest a steampunk themed class for LE because it would make no sense at all… sadly.

Oh BTW I don’t want to say the ide is bad or the stuff mention for the class is ass. It’s quite nice. All I want to say is: It’s not fitting at all and only because there is a very narrow and limited ammount of time travel in the game it’s not fitting I guess.

i said the game has a lot of potential with it’s premises.

you mention we dont use the epoch. i cant remember if we do or dont, but the premise of the game is time travel, and to that extent we do time travel. time travel is the main premise of the game, the epoch is a means of time travel. whether or not we use the epoch or if our character can actually affect the course of history meaningfully all depends on the devs.

you could be right about the players not being able to affect the timeline for all i care. but it doesnt negate the fact that the premise of the game has a lot of potential that its all up to the devs to explore. the devs COULD let you ā€œkill hitlerā€ and affect the future per se. if they wanted to, they just need to find a proper lore reason to enable the player to do so.

and even then they dont necessarily need that to happen for them to bring more content to the player. they could introduce alternate timeline elements that leaked into our timeline. in fact we already see the devs utilizing time travel via the way we slap affixes on legendary/unique items where we put the items in the past and get them in the future.

even tho you say the devs dont offer freedom (i assume lorewise), that is something that really depends on the devs to make interesting.

theres one popular media out there that has a ton of seasons. if you didn’t know it’s doctor who. in that show certain events can never be changed. disregarding the aliens. whenever he time travels on earth to different timepoints on earth theres still a ton of interesting things that can happen.

its all up to the writer and devs. i will agree very partially with you disliking media that uses time travel. to me time media with time travel can never be taken seriously. its why i stopped caring about MCU. when they snapped half the galaxy away, i told all my friends and anyone who cared to listen. if they went back in time to reverse it. i m done with the mcu. nothing matters. you can always turn back time to fix things. and thats exactly what they did. i still can enjoy marvel movies but i go there with the expectation its just for pure entertainment. nothing is to be taken seriously after the avengers pulled that stunt. there no longer is any stakes.

if you dont like time travel as a premise so much then why are you still playing LE. i m pretty sure you’re purposely turning a blind eye to it.

as for your comment on LE being the first to reuse its assets by using time travel as a convenient excuse. POE did that. the devs unashamedly admitted it too. they literally reused maps but make the maps be in different time environments such as daytime/night time/snowy/rainy etc. heck theyre sharing assets in between poe1/2 too.

i really find your opinion on the game having 0 potential as really dishonest and i would consider as arguing in bad faith. you are being overly negative over something that can be changed. heck our dinosaur league revolves around time travel somewhat.

Yeah with that thingy that brings us from now to back then and the other way arround. Still we don’t change anything and everything goes down they drain. As I said we can’t choose where we go and we a re a pinball for some time travel jerk agency that throws us arround.

As I said ā€œwe can’t go back and kill Hitlerā€. All time travel storys are crap in this way. We don’t have choice or the power to do anything in LE. The devs have a plot and lore and they want us to follow a set path without any options. We are just puppets without any impact or the possibility to do something meaningfull or something we want. the devs will never let us ā€œkill Hitlerā€ because after this they had to rewrite the whole plot and add some time paradox or whatever to set us back on track.
it’s like this almighty mutant Dr X kept in check and when he died the mutant broke loose and on of the X-Men traveled back in time to try to convince Dr X to undo said super OP mutant. That’s nothing we could ever do in LE by choice because time travel has no impact on the game. We can’t choose when we will be at what point. Stupid emperor? Court his mom have some snusnu so she never thinks about doing the deed to concive him… emporer problem solved.

We kicked Uberroths behind? Go back and tell the gods if they don’t stay in line you’ll end them or smack them arround untill they get your point of view.

All such stupid crap isn’t going to happen in LE because there is no potential and no premise. Time Travel is written on the box but it has no impact on the game and changes nothing. We follow a set in stone path and nothing will change. We can’t even say ā€œWait a minute! Let’s dial this thing back another 100 years before shit hits the fan and solve everything.ā€. LE has not the potential for this kind of stuff.

Yes the devs could whatever but they will not. Maybe we get a story conclusion and everything becoms rainbows and shunshine but I doubt it.

They were never intrested in this. This conversation was already done years ago and they had no intrest back then and we already got a political correct answer here that without any substance outside of ā€œNah!ā€.

Yeah and with everything you’ve seen so far you should see that everything is set in one track without an option to move sideways. It’s to much to make up a time travel scenario that covers everything possible with time travel.

As I said… go back into a nice time, build a house, hunt some dinos, bring a nice male/female/whoever back with you to have a good time and throw the epoch away because in your livetime everything is fine and you did all the chors already and you know you can’t change shit because that piece of crap isn’t working right.

I’m not playing LE and I see time travel in LE as a medium that allows EHG to recycle assats and layouts so people run down the same maps again and again and one is green, the other is rotten and purple and the next is crumbling. The old questline with the academy where you need to find the sigil and travel back and forth and open the door so it’s still opens hundrets of years later ( it is later right? ) was kind of fun and the only thing that was kind of meaningfull.
Right now you are always to late or you still mess up and even when you did everything you can’t go back and solve it. We smacked arround gods and uberroth we have the power to change everything we want to and we can travel in time… the only conclusion would be to go back and wreck havoc on every bady you know and rince and repeate untill everything turns out well.

No I simply say we will get no good meaningfull timetraveling. We will have a set track with no way to stroll left or right or do our own stuff because EHG will not develop it. They’ll develop what they want and what suites their lore and vision of the game. There is no bad faith. That’s just what is happening because if they start to open up the time travel scenarion for reason A people aren’t happy with the little finger and want the whole arm.

I’m relaistic. That’s nothing to do on a whimp or something a sane person would do just to make one class fantasy happen. I would bet everything I have… okay that’s mostly debt so noone want it anyway… that we see no change and everything will be done like EHG planned it long ago give or take some changes that made it better for them like runing the quest with the academy because it’s easier the epoch all of the sudden can create portals as well to save a loading screen or two.

This is my oppinion. I’m not mad. I’m not negative. I simply say the time travel setup in LE is BS and just a medium to reuse assets and to revisit places formaly known differently so you get the optics that things took a turn to the worse. LE is fine as it is but I would’ve made it crystal clear that we have no power over the time travel stuff and we are just a ball that is smashed through time and space to fight our little meaningless fight that will end in the end of times no matter what we do because itseems like the end can’t be changed at all.

Back in the day I said it would be fun if the final conclusion would be that our hero is the reason everything went down the drain because with everything we did we messed everything up. That would be fun in book ^^.

Am I the only one who pictured a mage fighting Abby with a couple of glow sticks and a huge doof doof music aura when I read Technomage?

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So something like a Barbarian (not a teaser) would be supported by the current lore as their actions, behavior, weapons, and ā€œmagicā€ already exists in the story or other mechanics. Where as something like a robot could theoretically exist because of infinite timelines, but there’s nothing currently in the lore mentioning or hinting at their existence.

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But the lore does already support mechanical contraptions that are powered by magic, right? We have a few examples already in the game for enemies (like the golems or Liath’s lightning thingies) and even in the form of skills like Ballista and Manifest Armor.

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