Not understanding the Doomed class, looking for guidance

[sepik121]

So, I'm not a great player by any means, having only won with a Temporal Warden (which i absolutely loved playing) on normal/adventure. So I'm trying out some other classes and trying to figure a few of them out that I had never tried before. I'm currently playing a gunslinger and have a yeek summoner (which hit a bug with the save file, so that's on hold) and feel like I grasped a few others decently like Anorithil and Corruptor.

Then I played the Doomed after reading a few things (a lot of old guides from before 1.4), but it doesn't seem to be a great class. I know people have won with it on much harder difficulties and made it work, but it's just not clicking for me.

Again, I know I'm not great, but I want to understand what makes a Doomed "function"? Right now, most of the builds pump shadows, but the shadows are incredibly fickle and do lots of teleporting around. After having Temporal Hounds and playing a summoner, the shadows seem like more unreliable versions of those.

Others talked about fears being really powerful, but undead are immune to them entirely, so doesn't that make that tree less than amazing? Can't corrupters already spread lots of AoE debuffs via the plague tree? Sure, there's a creature or two immune to blight, but not an entire group of them. This seems like it'd work really well with shadows did mind damage and could trigger the effects, but they hit for physical it looks like.

Their direct damage spells seem a bit weak on the whole (at least a lot of guides said that at the time, so i never maxed them out) as well. Low CD, but not powerful either. Why not just play a class like Archmage or TW, drop a handful of spells of AoE and pick off the rest and kite them? Doomed seem like they don't have quite as powerful stuff for that.

So something seems off about them, and I think it's just me not understanding how they're supposed to function overall. Any help here would be great because they seem interesting, but I'm just not grasping or understanding how to actually make them function well at all.

[HousePet]

The class is a bit off, its not just you.
I suggest focussing in Gestures and Shadows, however it won't play like Temporal Warden if that is what you are after.
If you make progress with that, consider Fears but also pick up Deflection from Force of Will and the Insanity/Madness (can't remember name) from Punishments.

[bpat]

I love this class but it's pretty weird. Something like 60% of its talents are worse versions of talents that other classes have. The one thing Doomed has that's really good is Shadows, which is among the most powerful standalone categories in the game. You can literally get to the East on Insane with just 1/3/0/0 Force of Will and 5/5/5/1 Shadows because Shadows are just that good. You can boost it with a category point for a fourth Shadow which is actually really good. Advanced Shadowmancy is a very underrated category and probably worth 5/1/5/5 late game. One with Shadows is sadly pretty bad though. Shadows take some getting used to but they are not to be underestimated. Other than Shadows, Force of Will is pretty good aside from Willful Strike which is better for the knockback than the damage. Punishments and Fears are both alright but nothing amazing. I have no experience with Darkness but it seems like a go big or go home category.

[sepik121]

I love this class but it's pretty weird. Something like 60% of its talents are worse versions of talents that other classes have. The one thing Doomed has that's really good is Shadows, which is among the most powerful standalone categories in the game. You can literally get to the East on Insane with just 1/3/0/0 Force of Will and 5/5/5/1 Shadows because Shadows are just that good. You can boost it with a category point for a fourth Shadow which is actually really good. Advanced Shadowmancy is a very underrated category and probably worth 5/1/5/5 late game. One with Shadows is sadly pretty bad though. Shadows take some getting used to but they are not to be underestimated. Other than Shadows, Force of Will is pretty good aside from Willful Strike which is better for the knockback than the damage. Punishments and Fears are both alright but nothing amazing. I have no experience with Darkness but it seems like a go big or go home category.

So how does one play using shadows then? Because in my experience, they were incredibly "finicky" and hard to get to do anything. I never got that far into the game with them (I gave up on them after clearing out all the t1 dungeons, and had moved onto the t2 ones), but they were rather unreliable to ever use. When they were around me and close by, they'd be fine. But often times they were floating around and not close enough, taking multiple turns to get to any target. This became even worse if there were multiple ones and even with the 4th talent in the shadow tree, still took them time to get there. Compare that to the TW where on their 2nd talent for temporal hounds immediately warps all the hounds onto 1 target.

[HousePet]

Shadows are random, but can deal out some nice damage and soak up a bit. You just need to get yourself something to deal with the stuff that gets past the Shadows.

[cksiu]

I agree with the above about shadows being the most powerful tree, but that doesn't mean it should be +cat and 5/5/5/1. The marginal gains after 5/1/1/1 with no cat point to the all in build is really small, and the enemies that clear 3 shadows will also have no problems clearing 4.

That is to say, you are bolstering what you are already good at, with very small marginal gains and not covering your weaknesses.

It is true that all his other talents are mediocre, but they still scale on extra talent points more than heavily investing in shadows.

The main thing doomed lack is a really good utility skill for scouting or survival/mobility, or a set of many small talents for the same purpose

[Frensswa]

I personally never had much luck with Shadows, but i did manage to win the game on Normal without dying, by completely ignoring the Shadow trees. I completely maxed both punishements and force of will, using creeping darkness to hide.

Deflection is an absolute necessity early game and Willful strike can be mostly ignored until late game, where you take it only for the crit damage

Agony might seem bad, but it has very low cooldown and is good at trigerring Madness

If not going shadows, it is imperative to unlock an inscription slot at level 10, because you'll need the bonus infusion

As for races, Cornac and Yeek (if you can surviv the very early game) are optimal, because the class benifits greatly from leveling fast. If going Shadows, Cornac is particularly good, because by dumping a category point in the Shadows skill tree, Call Shadows will give an additional shadow at 5 points.

here is a link to the character in question:
http://te4.org/characters/129642/tome/3 ... 617acc5b40

[maanur]

There's a decent alternative to Shadows or Darkness builds - "Fears", wich in conjunction with "Cursed Aura" (especially Curse of Nightmares) makes you feel more comfortible in long fights.

Anyways, for me Doomed means maxed out Cursed Aura and some sort of damage dealing on top of that.

[pizdabol]

Speaking of, has Darkness been fixed. Last time I checked Darkvision did nothing and I'm pretty sure Creeping Dark didn't do much as well. Though maybe I didn't know how to utilize it properly, any tips? Also would you recommend Gestures or Psiblades, if any (I know they don't stack, but which is better?), or just stay away from melee? It's really weird how he's like that close range sawn-off shotgun caster, but so squishy.