Getting Doomed off the ground

[uightpt]

I'm trying to get a Doomed character off the ground, and I am noticing a couple of things.
a) Darkness is useless for shoring up your lack of range/mobility. After 5/5ing both Creeping Darkness and Dark Vision, dropping darkness all over everything still doesn't effectively block enemy's LoS, eg. I still get hit by ranged attacks constantly, and melee enemies follow me through it from 4 or 5 tiles away without care.
b) Doomed have REALLY HARD early games. (although i had a better time starting as a Yeek, for some reason)

Due to thing (b) above, I've been making a lot of Yeek Doomed. I'm trying out Doomelf (and shadows) because DOOM, but I am running into the same difficulties--I have no mobility, but I have to be close to use anything, and the talents I take to compensate do not. How are others getting around that lack of range/mobility?

[Brent Not Broken]

Doomed have a really rough early game. I tend to check Zigur and the elftown for torques, which I don't do for most other classes. Mindblast torques are really useful, because you need ways to do damage early, and Psychoportation torques are useful throughout the game.

Mobility is a serious problem for doomed. You have to be fairly close-range to do damage, and you have no real good escapes. I like to try to betray a Temporal Explorer escort to unlock Psionic/Dreaming, which'll get you Dream Walk as a teleport, plus Sleep for crowd control. If you don't care about antimagic (or about betraying escorts for stuff like Dream Walk) you'll want a teleport rune as early as possible.

Your talents have a multiplicative effect on each other, so you do pick up steam eventually, but the first 20 levels or so are rough. When you get to the point where you're using Hateful Whispers to splash debuffs all over crowds, and your Unseen Force and whatever the other AoE damage talent is called, when they are blowing things up and doing mind damage and Punishment debuffs because Mental Tyranny makes all your attacks do mind damage... you'll be in a good place. It's really tough to get to that point, though.

[Endovior]

I recently had a fairly solid start with Cornac, which seems like a good way to begin a Doomed build (first time I've survived past the early stages, at least). Drop your category point into Shadows, an investment which allows a fourth shadow, and otherwise makes your shadows super-awesome. Proceed to go all-in on Shadows; max the first three talents before you think about spending class points elsewhere. You'll begin by kiting desperately while your shadows whittle your enemies down to something approximately killable; once you start putting points into Shadow Mages, your shadows will start to murder basically everything before you get a chance, and things will become much easier.

I'll second the mobility problem; you are squishy and weak, and have a serious need for escape options. Collect as many as you can, because you aren't personally threatening like a more conventional Cursed would be, and you want be able to GTFO when you're suddenly confronted with scary things.

Beware; investing your levelling points banishes your shadows. Take care to do this only when safe.

[jaumito]

Proceed to go all-in on Shadows; max the first three talents before you think about spending class points elsewhere.

Except you should always spend a point on Focus Shadows as soon as you hit level 12, as this one is a real lifesaver. Don't be too eager to target enemies with Focus Shadows, unless all your shadows have a clear LoS to them. Rather use the talent on one of your own shadows that's already in contact with the enemy, it's much more effective. Or use the talent on yourself if you need defensive support. You can also improve your escorts' life expectancy this way.