Goon Doomed Guide 1.1.5

What If Akira Was Jackie Estacado: The Doomed and You

The Doomed is a caster class that excels at three things: dealing damage, field control and taking hits. The downside to the Doomed is that their mobility and range is awful, and requires a lot of management, especially in the early-to-mid game before you have so many offensive options and defences that you don't have to care anymore. They start with 4 unlocked talent trees, which can easily carry you through the game, and by the end of the game you're guaranteed to have at least a few points in all of them.

I must confess, I've never invested in Fears, so I can't really say much about them apart from that I've heard that they're great debuff attacks and can make bossfights - even the final boss - a complete joke. I've also not had a chance to play with the new One with the Shadows tree either, so I'll have to report back on that later.

Class Talents

Force of Will: A vital tree, Force Of Will gives you a great balance of offence, defence and control. All of the talents apart from Unseen Force are absolutely necessary, and you'll want to max at least Deflection and Blast. Also, each point in Force of Will increases the damage your crits do, which is fantastic considering you'll be critting like a madman in the mid to late game.

• Willful Strike is a push which along with Reproach forms your level 1 attack arsenal.It isn't 100% necessary to boost it past 1 once you have other attacks, the damage scales well and it can just be used as a 'get out of my face' button.
• Deflection is your key defense, get a point in it ASAP. Even at 1/5 it'll shave off quite a bit of damage, which is great because you're not going to be good at avoiding hits. Max it out once you've got your attack powers sorted, and remember that it has to recharge.
• Blast is technically the longest-ranged attack you can have because the radius increases so you can catch enemies at the edge of the blast. Combined with the great damage and dazing this is a high-priority 5/5.
• Unseen Force starts out as just a button you press when you get a lone boss or unique to get some extra hits in, but with a few points invested it becomes a maelstrom which does a hell of a job disrupting groups of enemies. Optional, but certainly useful for a bit of an offensive edge.

Darkness: One of the two trees you'll need to invest in to compensate for your terrible mobility and range, Darkness is a great tree for field control; the basic talent is a bit unreliable at first, but once you've invested enough in the tree you'll turn into Scary Psychic Batman, putting down a cloak of blackness which you'll zip through, disintegrating anything stupid enough to challenge you in the dark thanks to the massive damage bonus you'll get. BECOME THE NIGHT

• Creeping Darkness is the talent you're getting into Darkness for. Either 5/5 or don't touch at all. With full investment the talent will drop a field of darkness which will spread out, dealing damage and obscuring the vision of everyone that enters it. It'll block your vision too, but that's why you take...
• Dark Vision will let you see through your own darkness, as well as giving you a huge speed bonus when you walk in it. Maxed out it's like a movement infusion and will let you run rings around enemies in the darkness. 1/5 at first just to be able to see in the dark and give you a slight mobility edge, 5/5 later to turn into Shadow Flash.
• Dark Torrent is a fairly standard attack beam and is an optional addition to your standard offensive toolkit. Darkness damage can be handy and it can leave tiles of darkness, which is useful for blocking LOS. 5/5'd, it's on par damage-wise with Reproach and Willful Strike.
• Dark Tendrils is generally considered a pretty bad talent. The tendrils sent out move at a snail's pace and don't do much damage. However, they leave a trail of darkness, which basically means you can target an enemy then use the dark trail to zip straight to them. Has good synergy with Dark Vision, but the low speed makes it low-priority at best.

Shadows: The other talent tree for surviving ranged enemies, Shadows does less to augment your mobility than to give the bad guys something else on which to focus their attention. While pretty unimpressive early on, you'll eventually get a hitsquad of ADHD superbeasts that will slaughter anything that catches their attention. Shadows is binary in terms of investment: you either 5/5 the first three talents - as well as a category point, if you can spare it - or you don't touch it. My last Doomed was completely shadowless until I ran out of places to put my points, so it really is optional, albeit powerful and definitely worthwhile.

• Call Shadows is your core talent for the tree. Every few turns a shadow will pop into existence at a small Hate cost and wander around near you. Shadows start with acess to Phase Door, Blindside and Arcane Reconstruction, which means they can be surprisingly durable and if an enemy actually catches their attention they'll swarm it instantly.
• Shadow Warriors is necessary to give your shadows offensive capability. Until you get this your shadows are a well-meaning meatshield, with it they'll become terrifyingly effective killers, especially when an enemy draws the ire of all 4 shadows. Dominate will wreck enemy defences and Fade will increase their tankiness by a huge margin.
• Shadow Mages gives even more offensive options to your shadows, but the big thing is Reform - Reconstruction, Fade and Reform together will mean that shadows will be incredibly difficult to put down outside of a sustained offensive.
• Focus Shadows is a 1-pointer that makes Shadows actually useful as an offensive tool, rather than just as supremely dangerous meatshields. It can also be used to protect NPCs, which is nice when you get one of the more brain-damaged escorts.

Punishments: The other offensive Doomed talent tree, Punishments is all about damage and debuffs. In the early game only the first couple of talents are really useful, but once you hit Dreadfell you'll suddenly find very good reasons to be investing in the final two talents.

• Reproach is a solid attack power throughout the game. It'll hit everything around you, albeit losing some damage in the process, but not enough to really be meaningful. 5/5 as soon as you can.
• Hateful Whisper is a bit strange and requires careful targeting, but when used right it will decimate crowds. It does good damage to a single target, then starts spreading for a few turns - assuming the target is still alive. That's the important bit: you really want to use it on an enemy at full health, because it gives the whisper a better chance of propagating. it'll always spread to at least one other target though, and will give you a smidge of Hate for each enemy affected.
• Agony is a pretty good DoT talent but at the point in the game it's available you'll have higher priorities. It goes off cooldown faster than the effect wears off, so you can keep hitting an enemy with it. It doesn't come into its own until you unlock...
• Madness is basically the keystone of the Doomed mid-to-late game for one major reason: the Mental Tyranny prodigy. Without it, it gives a bit of oomph to your Punishments and melee attacks, but with it you're basically stunning, confusing or slowing everything, every turn, forever. Once you've got it 5/5 you can go to town with Agony on individual enemies, cackling as they fall apart in front of your eyes.

Generic Talents

In terms of Generics, the Doomed is pretty thin on the ground. They don't start with Combat Training and Survival starts - and will likely remain - locked. Most of the Doomed's baked-in generic options are optional and not necessarily crucial to survival, so you'll have plenty of generic points to spare. This combined with being a Mindpower class makes Doomed excellent candidates for Antimagic and Fungus, two talent trees that augment the basic Doomed strengths and can make you near-invincible. Additionally, the Cursed Aura tree is now actually powerful and can give you a massive boost on top of that

Dark Sustenance: Unlike the Cursed, you can't get along just recovering Hate from murder. you'll use it faster than you can get it back, so you need to siphon that shit off of dudes before you put them in the ground. The core talent lets you recover hate, everything else is just icing on the cake.

• Feed needs to at least be 1/5 and can stay that way depending on how good you are at managing your Hate. If you're using Shadows you'll probably want to get more in, though, as they eat up hate as they spawn. Always use it on the toughest / furthest back enemy to get the most mileage.
• Devour Life doesn't heal much but has a very low cooldown, so it could potentially be useful. Personally I've only ever used it as a stepping stone to the next talents.
• Feed Power is a great one-pointer that'll give you a little extra edge. Last time I checked the returns above 1/5 aren't great, though.
• Feed Strengths is basically Feed Power but with resistances. Once again, works perfectly well with just one point.

Gestures: this tree gives a sustain that boosts pretty much everything: a surprisingly potent melee attack with a good debuff, Mindpower and crit bonuses and another form of damage mitigation. Unless you're going for a gimmick run, the main things to look out for are the last two talents, which are fairly crucial. Your HP doesn't really support melee in the early game, but it might become useful in the late game when you've got excellent defences.

• Gesture of Pain is useful in a pinch since you don't need to expend Hate to cause damage, but as long as you're being smart with Feed that'll never be an issue. Leave it at 1/5 unless you're going for some kind of melee gimmick.
• Gesture of Malice augments the Pain attack to include a fairly nasty debuff. If you're not using Pain then just 1/5, and even then you've probably still got better places for generics.
• Gesture of Power is hugely useful. The mindpower and crit chances scale with the quality of your mindstars so it'll give that extre edge all the way through the game. 5/5 ASAP.
• Gesture of Guarding has been changed since I last played, when it was just a flat % reduction in enemy melee damage. Now, it seems to deflect a flat amount of damage based on your attack damage. Used to be a great 1/5, now I'm not so sure.

Cursed Form: The basic Afflicted generic tree, it gives decent healing, some excellent immunities and buffs when you take hits. The Doomed doesn't find it quite as useful overall, simply because they spend more time slinging ranged powers, so healing and debuffs like stunning and pinning aren't quite as much of a life-or-death matter.

• Unnatural Body is the same double-edged sword as for the Cursed. Doomed technically get more mileage out of this due to their focus on Willpower but don't tend to require it quite as much. You can just leave it at 1/5.
• Relentless has been nerfed a little, but it's still a no-brainer 5/5, since it gives you immunity to a bunch of debilitating effects.
• Seethe is totally optional, you can get a little extra edge from it but you'll be fine without.
• Grim Resolve is in the same boat as Seethe, only less so since Strength/Willpower boosts aren't as useful as a flat damage bonus.

Cursed Aura: This used to be a hugely unreliable pointsink, but recent changes have made the scaling and effects of the curses actually a meaningful bonus to the class. However, if you're getting it it does require immediate investment for the full benefits. Once you've maxed the first two talents you'll get ridiculous bonuses from your gear. The second two talents are very useful, but optional.

• Defiling Touch will come at 1/5. It's nothing but a debuff at first, so don't touch this until level 4, when you can get...
• Dark Gifts is what makes this whole curse business worthwhile. You'll want to alternate this with Defiling Touch to reap the best rewards for your curses. 5/5 this first, since the Defiling Touch 5/5 is useless unless you've already unlocked the curse effects through this talent.
• Ruined Earth can be helpful in a pinch since it's a massive damage debuff, but be warned it'll affect you as well, so use it to escape.
• Cursed Sentry didn't used to be up to much, but since the talent tree was rebalanced the sentry is actually terrifying, as it's incredibly tough and attacks like a blender at high talent levels.

Talent Priorities

Where your points go first depends on whether you're going for Shadows or not. If you're not, get Reproach, Hateful Whisper and Blast maxed ASAP with 1/5 in Deflection at least. When that's done get 5/5 in Creeping Darkness and 1/5 Dark Vision. After that you're in a good position to expand how you like - increase your offensive options with more points in Willful Strike, Unseen Force or Dark Torrent, or get Deflection and Dark Vision at 5/5 first for better defences and field control.

If you're using shadows prioritise them for 5/5/5/1, putting 1 point in offensive talents as they become available so you're not totally weak alone. You'll be much less effective at murder than your Shadowless cousin but your go-getting team of formless monsters will make up for that. Just make sure to know when to retreat, because if your shadows get wrecked and you don't have the Hate to spawn more you're dead meat.

The best advice I can give RE: early game survival is to have a movement infusion at the very least. Try to get an extra infusion with either your level 1 Cornac cat point or your level 10 cat point so you can have 1 movement, 2 regen and a Physical/(magic or mental, preferably magic) wild. You'll get decent mobility, good healing and an OH SHIT button for when you get stunned or blinded etc.