Does Darkness have any use anymore?

[Maul]

I've been doing some Ironman runs with drakish wizards, and I have had several opportunities to use Darkness. However, I must say, it was not impressed. Darkness was king in 1.1.1, more so than it should have been, but it seems that 1.2.0 and the later releases have veered off in the opposite direction, for better or worse. For example, I have noticed that vortices can explode in darkness even after I have moved a few squares away. But even a mundane monster like a dwarven chaos knight that, according to the wiki, can't see in the darkness, was able to follow me perfectly in the dark - eventually killing me in that instance. Invisibility also doesn't prevent monsters from being ridiculously good at following me despite the zig-zaggy paths I take, but at least monsters don't seem to hit me as often when they're actually next to me (provided I don't strike at them and just move around). Darkness, however, seems almost useless now since monsters are almost as good (if not as good) at tracking and hitting me in the dark as in the light. Am I missing something? What use is there for Darkness nowadays? I can only think of 'preventing monsters from using ranged attacks', but that is a very situational use really. Or am I doing something wrong when using the spell?

[Shinae]

I haven't used it much. It's not as effective anymore. It still works and saved me in animated forest tho. So that's one useful place to use it.

[JellySlayer]

I'm not sure on precisely how the mechanics of darkness work anymore. I don't use it that much either. I believe that monsters will be able to follow you once you attack them, so it's mostly useful for escaping rather than killing things I think.

[hapro]

I use it to escape from cats, which is pretty useful

[Jarinex]

I have used it to get past the Snow Golems in the Ice Queens's Domain, as well as when I needed to escape. I find it a rather useful spell when it's needed.