Character Template - Chronoplex

[OmniscientQ]

When the Talos Island Hustlers, a small unpowered gang led by Harvey Klein, attempted to steal the Mobius Braid, it blew up in their faces. They were thrown out of the timestream, frozen in that horrifying moment between disintegration and death. For the last fifty years, they have phased in and out of reality at random, sometimes in multiple places at once as they hurtle through infinity.

 

Harvey, now known as Chronoplex, maintains the strongest hold on the timestream and can temporarily pull the others back into sync with him. However, even he seems to shift back and forth from being frozen in a single moment to screaming across the city in mere seconds.

 

Chronoplex is stronger in those times and places where his own timeline crosses itself, and stronger still when it crosses again. If Chronoplex can get enough instances of himself in one spot, he may even be able to unmake Time itself...

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TL/DR: Please copy this character and team up with other copies.

 

Chronoplex is a Thugs / Time Manipulation mastermind brought into being for a singular purpose: To team up with himself. So I'm here to invite anyone and everyone to make their own Chronoplex, by l33t-sp43king up his name or however you wish. I like the idea of seeing multiple copies running around the servers to really sell that "he's everywhere and nowhere" angle, even if they don't team up.

 

A while back, I was trying to think of an entertaining Theme Team idea, and came across this post describing a MM who managed to get the cooldown on Gang War to match its duration: Permanent Gang War. There's a lot of discussion on there about what kinds of hoops and sacrifices he had to go through to get his global cooldown that high, and I thought to myself, "That's because you're trying to do it alone!" It's so much easier to hit the global recharge cap of +400% if you spread the work around. If enough /Time masterminds get together in one spot, the stream of Thugs would be never-ending. And potentially server-crashing, maybe, which is why I included a line up there about unmaking Time itself.

 

So what happens if Chronoplex can team up with himself? It all starts with the last power from the archetype: Chrono Shift. It adds +50% recharge to the team, and it stacks with every copy. With that alone, a team of eight Chronoplexes can hit the recharge cap, making the Hasten and recharge enhancements superfluous. I included them anyway to make it possible for Chronoplex to hit critical mass with fewer copies. Once you have that, the other tools in the /Time arsenal start to turn ridiculous. Easily capped defenses and to-hit, thanks to multiple layers of permanent Farsight. Constant AoE healing from Temporal Mending. Distortion Fields dropped every 12 seconds (and they last 45!). The endurance recovery from Chrono Shift makes it possible to spam all the powers. Power Boost can get 62% uptime (stupid recharge cap), and boosts the effectiveness of the powers even more - 20% defense from every layer of boosted Farsight!

 

And then, of course, there is the Gang War. The whole point of the exercise. The cooldown and the duration match exactly, meaning you can cast it again every time it fades, giving a full team of Chronoplexes an army 128 minions strong. Hope you're not running a cave mission. And your computer doesn't explode. Oh, and if that isn't enough, and you need to put the hurt on a Rikti Mothership or something, you can hit Burnout to add a second Gang War to the first, resulting in 208 potential minions at once.

 

There are downsides to this plan, of course, and I'd love to hear thoughts on them. The first terrible blow to my concept was learning that pets don't benefit from recharge reduction at all, meaning all that recharge won't actually do anything to enhance the damage output of a team of Chronoplex, aside from allowing them to stack Slowed Response on more targets. The second was realizing that Kinetics could do the same thing with Recharge Reduction. In fact, Kinetics may be flatly superior to Time in this case. Speed Boost lasts longer, has a larger radius, provides more endurance recovery (and that recovery lasts the full duration of the buff) and has a two-second cooldown which means if you miss a teammate because they were behind a crate, you don't have to wait over a minute to try again. Kinetics also has the ever-popular Fulcrum Shift, which DOES improve the damage output of the minions. and is easily made permanent. Kinetics also brings Increase Density for some resists and hold immunity, and a heal that is more powerful, on a shorter cooldown, and costs far less endurance. What Kinetics lacks is any defense buffs or to-hit debuffs, both of which Time has in spades.

 

Regardless of the problems, I think it'd be fun to have Chronoplex team up with himself - along with multiple instances of Johnny, Jimmy, Kenny, Devin, Kevin, and Shaun - for some Strike Forces or Mothership raids. And fun is what it's all about, right?

 

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I had intended to include a hypothetical cheap IO build for him here, but apparently Mid's crashes every time I try to export in Wine. So use your imaginations, folks! With enough of himself on a team, Chronoplex doesn't need optimal slotting!

 

--Edit: Power Boost, not Power Shift.

Edited October 4, 2020 by OmniscientQ

[Shocktacular]

Which server are you on?

[OmniscientQ]

I play on Everlasting, and most of my character are members of the (primarily villainous) Masterminds, Inc. I run all-MM teams fairly regularly, and it's always great to open a door and see the looks on the mooks faces when they see that they're outnumbered for once.

[Nyghtmaire]

Great idea for a theme team! You may want to cross-post this on the Everlasting subforum.

 

All-MMs teams are some of the most fun I’ve had in-game. One in particular, the team leader (a merc/ff) focused on selecting office maps. (If I recall, there was also a demon/cold, ninja/time, thug/kin, demons/dark, and me on my Necro/Sonic) Felt like a team of sped-up locusts rolling through everything. That team was also on Everlasting, and the Teamleader was posting about Masterminds, Inc. (I think ... it was late on a Friday night — and I may have been drinking —- so the name is fuzzy 😂). 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Nyghtmaire

[OmniscientQ]

1 hour ago, Nyghtmaire said:

Great idea for a theme team! You may want to cross-post this on the Everlasting subforum.

 

All-MMs teams are some of the most fun I’ve had in-game. One in particular, the team leader (a merc/ff) focused on selecting office maps. (If I recall, there was also a demon/cold, ninja/time, thug/kin, demons/dark, and me on my Necro/Sonic) Felt like a team of sped-up locusts rolling through everything. That team was also on Everlasting, and the Teamleader was posting about Masterminds, Inc. (I think ... it was late on a Friday night — and I may have been drinking —- so the name is fuzzy 😂). 

That Mercs/FF Was probably General Bob... Which is me!

[Nyghtmaire]

IT WAS!! Best team ever, for real. 🎉 

[Force Redux]

I love everything about this idea!