Sprucery wrote:Slay+2 is nothing compared to MR-. The best part of that ring is +Inv, and it would have been better to use it as a swap for when you want to go invisible, for example when dealing with draconian packs or ghost moths. Personally, I would have worn even something like +3 EV or AC ring as a default, if available.
Surviving in Crawl is mostly about managing the worst-case* scenarios. There's no need to make yourself more likely to be paralyzed or banished. Of course you could swap the ring off when necessary, but you could also be paralyzed or banished immediately when the alich comes into view.
*Meaning scenarios that have a reasonable chance of happening.
Once you play enough games, "reasonable" chance starts feeling like a pretty low number.
I learned that lesson the hard way. Had an ancient lich summon a fiend. Tabbed once, got 100 --> 0'd with 170 health. Torment then a high damage crystal spear through 20 EV and a +5 shield with shields at 15, dead. The odds of that exact sequence going off were low, but it was something I knew could happen and there were ways to prevent it.
At some point you have to ask yourself "is there a chance I can get killed or put in a situation where I depend on RNG to survive in future turns before I make another move?". If the answer to that question is "yes", you have a problem. Crawl has many tens of thousands of turns, and any time you take a 0.5% chance of dying, it adds up. Do this 50 times a game and you'll lose 22% of the time just to this one type of mistake (disregarding very low odds of death in any one instance).