I think it's well worth pointing out that this spell is extremely powerful, and probably needs to meet the nerf bat. A tier 6 ability should be powerful, but this scales like crazy. If the wiki is correct on it's numbers, it does a total of 5+0.6x magic power up front, and then 2+0.5x magic power each turn for 10 turns (including the initial turn, with a minor debuff attached). That means over 10 turns you do 25+5.6xMP damage to a single target. Considering that a full mage character should be able to get up to 50mp or so, and Zenzen boosts another +18, you are doing in the region of 400 damage to a single target, as long as you can spare the 1 turn to cast, and then just walk away (or teleport! same tree after all).
The wiki may well not be accurate. I know my Golden Ratio curse is costing me 20 mana when it should be (per the wiki) costing only 9, for example.
Well, it definitely kills whatever I cast it on. Current stats: Dungeon level 6, Character level 17, Mana 155 (without SS/Zen3), Mana Regen 9 Magic Power 47 (unbuffed): Cast cost 15, Initial Damage 17, tick 22 Magic Power 49 (Stolen Soul: Cast cost 14, Initial Damage 19, tick 23 Magic Power 67 (ZenZenZen+Stolen Soul): Cast cost 6, Initial Damage 23, tick 30 You can see that especially the scaling, both in cast cost and damage, just goes through the roof. Part of it is the stats of Zen3, but how many monsters can even beat the unbuffed version (Total damage ~250hp)?
Hm, well, having gotten my mage to that spell, yes, so far it's killed everything I've cast it on with one casting, even without the rather expensive ZenZenZen buff. It's also pretty mana-efficient compared to my other options; Narcosomatic Induction's at 9 damage/1MP and uses 14-15 casts to kill monsters on dlvl 5; Recursive Curse costs 20MP and is much faster, never mind the debuff. However, I've been running into mana problems; I can only cast it six times before refuelling if I have max mana to start out. Mana regen's been thin on the ground even with dual starry orbs. (build is math/psionics/necro/mage school/blood mage/burglar/alchemy; if he dies I might just swap out mage school for ley walker to see how it flies) EDIT: once Zenzizenzizenzic got cheap enough to spam (i.e. magic power of 40 or so), this build really took off, and it's mostly due to Recursive Curse. The damage from that thing is faintly ridiculous; I skipped basically all of dungeon levels 8 and 9 and took down Dredmor himself without too much difficulty. So yeah, the spell could stand to be toned down a bit.
