You can spot the Technomancer with a Matrix Perception test. If the Technomancer can see you, I assume you can see the Technomancer if you can beat his running silent. If weird stuff starts happening to you, you'd probably try a Matrix Perception test to see what's happening.
Which would just waste a complex action, because only technomancers can see Resonance, and there's nothing on the Matrix Perception table that suggests it lets you notice Resonance actions.
I totally forgot about the Touch range of Decrease Attribute. It's actually pretty fair for Firewall. The others are either really amazing or really bad.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
They're both dice penalties. Instant is better than Sustained, but Chaos reduces defense tests while noise doesn't.
So?
Obviously range is an issue, but Control Thoughts can in fact do anything Puppeteer can do. It's obviously not as good for Matrix actions since you'd have to see the spider. You can have the target of Control Thoughts use Invite Mark, reformat their decks, jack themselves out of the matrix, go into VR.
If you could see the spider, why the hell would you bother with any of that? The only one that even remotely applies to is forcing them to switch to VR, and while A: there are far better uses for Control Thoughts, B: You're still contending with the issue of noticeability. Anybody you mind rape, and anybody witnessing it, gets to roll to notice you did that. Puppeteer is completely invisible and untraceable unless you're a technomancer.
Puppeteer is also faster. Complex to use it, they do on their next turn. Control Thoughts is Complex to use it, they resist it on their next turn. Then you use a Simple to make them do it, and then they resist it again on their next turn, before finally performing the action.
Right, Manabolt sucks in the face of counterspelling, and even then the drain is F-3. Counterspelling won't always be available for the opponent (especially since it's limited per combat turn), and if nothing else forces your opponent to take -5 Initiative. Resonance Spike automatically has to overcome 2 attributes and has drain L+0. The technomancer could very likely be taking damage faster than he deals with Resonance Spike against reasonably challenging targets.
The better comparison is to Data Spike, not Manabolt. Rolling against Intuition + Firewall, and then resisted by Device rating + Firewall. Resonance Spike only deals net hits in damage, but they don't get to soak the damage.
They're both "you no longer see me" abilities.
That function completely differently, because seeing in the matrix works differently. Using Static Bomb means everybody that had seen you needs to waste a pass doing Matrix Perception to be able to do anything at you again. That's not a requirement for Invisibility, which not only doesn't work if you manage to resist the illusion, but autofails against ultrasound and the like and clever security can still smoke you with blind fire or AOEs.
How did you determine fading being balanced? If the book was printed with fading reduced by 3 across the board, would you honestly have noticed? If the book was printed with fading increased by 2 across the board, would you still say fading is balanced? Spells let mages do things that other people can't do, with much lower drain values. Is that balanced?
I determined fading was balanced by considering if I would risk that fading for that effect, and deciding 'yeah, that's worth it, but only if there's no better options.' If Fading was decreased by 3 across the board I would have thought that was unbalanced, because I would have compared those actions to compariable Matrix Actions and gone with the Complex Form every time. Increasing by 2 also would be unbalanced because then I'd never use any complex forms.
Same applies to Mages. I think all the values are plenty balanced.