I've avoided Emomancy in the past like the plague, since at a glance nothing in the skill tree appealed to me. I decided today to force myself to play with it, using the following skills: Emomancy Blood Magic Magical Training Ley Walker Tourist Archeology Burglary So basically, I had to go Emo or go home. I was underwhelmed with My Chemical Explosion, as I was any other time I toyed with Emo. This time, however, I decided to test out Sigil of Whatever extensively....and wow, was I surprised. You can cast it directly under hostiles. It persists for many turns, it doesn't "detonate" when touched. It "pulses" at the start of every enemy turn, so they get re-pacified even if you damage them *unless* they resist. It puts Ennui on every turn, which can stack to crazy amounts. So basically, you can cast this underneath something standing next to you and proceed to whack it to death without any resistance whatsoever (except on the turns where it resists). Pretty awesome.
I've actually been playing with it myself in an experimental pure mage build. I found the acid ball deliciously potent. My build, by the way, is a non-gish Necro build: Necronomiconomics (the center of the build) Magical Law (Rune of Objection handles debuffs) Emomancy (Cure for big debuffs, heal and non-necro damage output) Leyline Walker Magic Training Astrology Vampirism (early +, makes me a little gishier, and why not) I spam the hell out of Deathly Hex while rushing for Rune, so I can load up unsuspecting enemies with Lingering Weaknesses. Early on I walk around with 7 HP unless I wait it out, but Hex is so stupidly cheap. Emomancy gives me an anti-gap closer, and Astrology gives me + for range. I just have to be extremely careful about traps. Mind you, this build is totally not very viable and hard to play. But it's fun. I have fun while playing it. I played a hard-to-kill warrior-gish and it was so boring that I was practically flinging myself into danger hoping I'd die. With this build I feel compelled to survive, simply because it's hard. Oh, and sorry. I keep forgetting to boycott the word "gish" because as someone has pointed out it's an awful awful term (and it is, it's unintuitive and obscure at the same time). It's too bad the next best terms are "spellsword" or "battlemage."
Do you lead targets with it and lay down mines for them to walk over? I do find trying to directly hit stuff with the missile leads to underwhelming results. Emomancy in general is basically a skill tree about spell mines. The three most potent attacks are all mines (my chemical explosion, sigil of whatever, dampening field of angst).
I do either or. I generally have enough mana for two consecutive casts, so they're constantly corroding. Maybe it could use some better scaling. Anyway, I think the spell mines bit is incidental. I find it's actually a tree about debuffing, namely pacifying, and utility. But I don't go farther than My Chemical Explosion in the build, so it's just utility and AoE for me.
It definately felt like it needed better scaling. I took MCE off my skill bar after like....floor 3. I suppose I might bust it out for Dredmor since he's not acid resistant.
According to Dredmorpedia, Chemical Explosion has a scaling of 0.3 on the DoT, which is better than a lot of offensive spells, especially ones on the third skill of a tree. It won't be your go-to spell if you have Promethean or Necro, but it's still pretty good in its own right.
The problem is the damage is split amongst 3 types on the DoT, so resistance often double/triple dips on it. The Fleshsmithing capstone suffers from the same problem, but the scaling is better on that as is the base damage. I got great mileage out of the Fleshsmithing capstone any game I tried it, but really didn't find MCE had much legs late game.
Hmm. This is a good point. Perhaps the devs never considered this fact. Or perhaps it's intentional, to weaken MCE. It is only two points in.
Randomly teleporting and pacifying enemies both help keep them running into Sigils of Whatever rather than attacking you.
Another use with Sigil of Whatever and Magical Law: Stand on it yourself and spam the Ennui debuff at enemies with Rune of Objection(since it keeps reapplying itself as you stand on it). Kinda funny how that works.
