ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I am not sure if I can say this is a bug or just an oversight, but I will post it here.

I have noticed a very interesting thing. For a while now, a major problem with Adv. Shadowmancy (AS), in my opinion, has been that the source of damage comes from the shadows themselves. While this does have some rare advantages, such as reflection shields, or other retorts, effecting the shadow and not the Doomed, it has other disadvantages, such as not working with Mental Tyranny. Additionally, I am unsure if it uses any of your damage penetrations or not, but I would assume not since it doesn't use any of your damage bonuses.

Which leads me to the problem. Basically, your only means of increasing the damage is via the Shadow Warriors Bonus damage, which effects all shadow abilities, but also the tier 2-3 AS abilities too. While, with Adept, you can get this pretty high, around 88%, you can get it much higher with high tier items in the late game. Additionally, Madness doesn't trigger from the mind damage from Cursed Bolt as the source is from the shadows, and not yourself. Also, again because the damage source is shadows and not yourself, none of the damaging abilities from AS are supported by Mental Tyranny.

I am unsure if any of this was intended or not, but I still find it strange.

I have similar issues with this talent tree. Specifically:
1) The fact that the talents originate from the shadows implies that the prodigies Endless Woes and Elemental Surge
are not triggered my them, which is a shame.
2) You've already mentioned the fact that it does not work with Mental Tyranny, which is double shame.
3) On the flip side, it seems to crit a lot and makes me wonder: whose crit rate/crit power do the talents actually use? The player's or the shadows?
4) The last talent in the tree (Cursed Bolt) is quite terrible, especially since: you get it after Shadow's Path, it does generally less damage than Shadow's Path and finally, unlike Shadow's Path, has no utility (since it doesn't activate Madness). It should be reworked.

On the flip side, the first three talents in the tree are so good for any shadows focused Doomed (a.k.a. >95% of them) that it sort of doesn't matter.

I can confirm it does use your mental crit chance, but everything else is based on the shadows attributes.

Cursed Bolt by itself is rather lackluster, but when you combine it with Madness and Gesture of Malice, which can easily get an enemy to -100% Mind Resistance in 1-3 turns, it can really shine. However, that requires the Doomed to get into mid range, for just Madness, or melee range for both, with the hope that you still have your max shadows around to make use of the Cursed Bolt. To be blunt, if I am in that range I am more likely to use some other ability than Cursed Bolt.

Dunno, I remmeber one hit of my char's Cursed Bolt fro 2K on crit - if all 4 do that, that's not bad
But usualy there are no 4 shadows fro that.