Technomage is awful.

[ElOhTeeBee]

Why does he have so many Engineering weapons, when Engineering is a complete non-starter on him due to having no scaling for it?

Why does he not start with Sausage, when everything about his ability set screams 'this character requires Sausage to do damage'? Why do I have to gamble on getting a sausage in dozens of rerolls in order to have a chance at seeing the back half of Crash Site?

And why, oh why, does his awful ability set include a -75% XP PENALTY? There's nothing there that merits him having such a massive drawback when he's already hard locked into the damage type with the worst survivability.

Needs buffs, or a rework. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tato.

[Nirvash]

I haven't messed with him yet, but I would assume it has to do with alot of the engineering weapons being upgraded to have elemental damages like fire on the laser turrets. So maybe the idea is you're doing no damage with the turrets themselves, but they are spreading mass ticks of burning everywhere.

[Jeanean]

Ehhmmm, the Technomage is pretty damn OP? Though I guess the 2 Elemental per structure is a bit misleading/useless. (You CAN get some use out of it, but only once you win with him once and get the Particle accelerator.)
What you wanna do, is to go for a pure turret build and split your Stats mostly between Engineering for damage, and Elemental for the increased turret attack speed.
I beat Danger 5 on my second or third try that way, and I didn't even get the Strange Book until after I was in Endless. If you do get it though, you are basically playing easy mode and can go all in on Elemental.

[Advm]

Technomage is cool and very good character, I won D5 first try

[GeminiEclipse]

I don't find him too bad. I've won with icicles, wrenches and tasers. Don't need sausage.

[Wadowicki Goblin]

New characters are suuuuuuper gimmicky with one viable build, it's kinda lame overall. Literally the only downside I actually agree with about this DLC.

[<color=#CD3210>Lunatic]

Only use wrench.
+1 elemental damage per elemental damage item.
Structures can crit item.
Buy all the turrets. Buy all the gardens. Buy all the mines.
Go afk.

[Germaine's Bra]

One thing to note, for whatever reason the Technomage makes mine spawn alot faster (not from the screwdriver I didn't test that one.)

[ElOhTeeBee]

Okay, I've cooled off a little after finally getting my win. I still think -75% XP is way too much, though.

Originally posted by Germaine's Bra:

One thing to note, for whatever reason the Technomage makes mine spawn alot faster (not from the screwdriver I didn't test that one.)

Increassed structure attack speed (from any source, not just Technomage) also applies to the spawn rate of mines and how quickly gardens produce fruit.

[sinjinblade]

Agreed. Synergies are pretty awful with this tato. He's not designed well and needs a buff or rework.

[R3sistance]

Another issue with Technomage is that his structure bonus to Elemental does not count as "permanent" Elemental damage, meaning that it doesn't feed back into an Engineering bonus. If you get the item that gives you 1 engineering for every point of elemental, then it becomes feasible but having a character reliant on getting a particular item seems a bit of a cumbersome design, given there is no guarantee it'll ever come up in a run.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by R3sistance:

Another issue with Technomage is that his structure bonus to Elemental does not count as "permanent" Elemental damage, meaning that it doesn't feed back into an Engineering bonus. If you get the item that gives you 1 engineering for every point of elemental, then it becomes feasible but having a character reliant on getting a particular item seems a bit of a cumbersome design, given there is no guarantee it'll ever come up in a run.

This is how all such bonuses work, because otherwise a couple of them would end up with infinite stats.

[Ric]

Haven't touched Technomage since the beta-update of him, but since I'm cruising through every character on D5 Abyss, here's what first-time run through Abyss looks like with him: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3358426595

I mention this to folks a lot, but early investment in luck/harvesting on any character who is not penalized by those stats should heavily consider investment in those stats early in order to fill your inventory with strong purples and reds mid-way. Technomage is pretty powerful if you primarly play him as a mage and simply snag structure items as they come for added elemental boosting. It's even more potent if you land a Lighthouse, since you'll still profit big in engineering to match your thick elemental stat.

Overall, despite weak armor/dodge, everything was insta-gibbing with this class. The Technomage bro is very strong.

[GaviJa]

Did a run with full wrench, got the book and the structure can crit item.
35 elem, 40 inge. the turret still do 0 damage. Like they hit for 50.
Give the same investment to any weapons and it hits for 200.
Absolutely unnecessary -75% xp debuff.

I don't know why devs chose to do gimmick chars and give them the worst penalties. When you look at vanilla chars, they were fun. Imagine putting -75% xp on Cyborg...

[R3sistance]

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

Originally posted by R3sistance:

Another issue with Technomage is that his structure bonus to Elemental does not count as "permanent" Elemental damage, meaning that it doesn't feed back into an Engineering bonus. If you get the item that gives you 1 engineering for every point of elemental, then it becomes feasible but having a character reliant on getting a particular item seems a bit of a cumbersome design, given there is no guarantee it'll ever come up in a run.

This is how all such bonuses work, because otherwise a couple of them would end up with infinite stats.

I was tired, I didn't mean engineering, I meant the bonus to structure attack speed, which wouldn't be infinite from such an exchange.

[B the Self]

He felt pretty bad with the Exp nerf, it wasn't there at first but I think the devs did that so you spend more money on buying items and not rerolling on level ups.
I'm not spamming the guide it's just where I post the runs I do to help players.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018964960
There you can see Elemental Technomage before nerf , after nerf and after nerf only turrets (easier to win is turrets only)