Temporal Chains

Looks like this gem has been removed from quest rewards.

The quality bonus has old-style text description, so we get the confusing "-X% reduced movement speed".

The listed duration is not affected by temporal chains; namely a 5s duration only lasts 5s and not 10s as expected. I don't remember it being like this, and I think the duration description change is more confusing than helpful.

Must have just imagined that it read differently in the past. I find it much more confusing that it does the wrong thing if you read it as-written, surely the text can be changed to "doubles the duration of all buffs and debuffs except for Temporal Chains" so that it both makes sense when reading it and allows the duration to be easily viewable.

I think this curse is by far overpowered on both monsters and players.

Movement slow is already pretty big. It's much better escape spell than phase run (run is better to skip content but it's not something important for balance I think). It allows to outrun any enemy. Attacks and cast speed lower damage about as much as enfeeble. It also makes easier to avoid attack - leap slams, charges, special attacks of vaal oversoul, exploding monsters, all should not be able to hit you if you care.

When I got to Hex Master all boss fights became stupid easy. Boring, but easy (it's partly because of faulty boss design, especially oversoul, super one-shotting abilities but easy to dodge, after slowing impossible to not dodge)

On players it is incredibly annoying. I can't imagine anyone doing map with temporal chains. I tried and left without intention of coming back. Only 2 builds I can imagine doing this are summoners and firestormers. Still, entering lower level on crematorium or some boss rooms means getting surrounded quickly and it's almost sure death for vast majority of characters - you have to act quickly and can't with chains.

Marveil's Adiutants (or whatever they're called) with temp chains on hit, chilling and good defense (regen, ES) are incredibly painful to fight. It boils down to not getting hit at all or skipping them.

In PvP infinite temporal chains on both players will probably look like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y

On default league most people will rather use projectile/elemental/vulnerability curses simply because they allow for faster killing. Well, if you don't die anyway and want to be as effective in farming then obviously you will go for more damage. This doesn't change the fact, that this one will make any fight easy, even if long.

My main usage is on ranged witch and allows me to kite any enemy, even with quick aura and I have negative speed bonus. I can run away from any enemy if I feel endangered. I have also used it on melee ranger - enemies don't do anything if I spam whirling blades, I can kite with lightning strike, I can stand and attack with frenzy gaining life and stunning opponent. I have seen Kripp (the streamer guy) use it on heavy defense marauder and have no problem on level 69 maps largely because of this curse.

I think effect of this curse should be about 3 times weaker. Maybe less but then something should be done about multiple speed debuffs - for example chill should have much lower effect on someone under chains. Freeze is supposed to stop any actions, chill is supposed to slow. Chill+chains slow so much and lasts so long that it could as well be freeze. While it makes sense, it has to be changed for balance. League of Legends is good example - if 2 slows are stacked, only 35% of the weaker one works. Otherwise stunlocks would be too easy. At least this should be like this on rares/uniques and players. Extreme stunlocking of minions and white monsters is kinda OK.

My new advice to any player who thinks a fight / the game is difficult would be: Just cast Temporal Chains.

I have found this to be by far the best curse in most dangerous situations.

How would this effect Viper Strike? I understand that it will last longer on the mob because debuffs expire slower but the wording to me sounds like it might also make the damage ticks happen less often since its expiring slower and overall not changing the damage overall, so really what I want to know are the charges from viper strike going to last longer with regular 1 second damage ticks or last longer with more time between ticks?

On my ranger I have tried using both projectile weakness and temporal chains when I finally found one. I have to say that the lower mana cost of temporal chains made it far preferable to projectile weakness.

Also If you have decent increase movement speed then temporal chains maps aren't too bad, (I've even done them without!)