Crystal Ball vs Wucad Mu

[snow]

Normally I use Wucad Mu for zigs but I'm starting to think that crystal balls might be better.

From what I understand with a crystal ball, as long as your MP isn't in the red you have a success rate of roughly 90% at max evocations, right? And you can always recover from failure with a staff of energy. I'm trying to figure out on average (including the time spent getting your MP into the yellow with a crystal ball and staff of energy) which has the better MP per evocation. Also there's the fact that Wucad Mu isn't guaranteed (though in practice I tend to find it eventually while grinding zigs). Are there any other factors that might make a difference in picking one or the other? If you find both, should you always use the staff, or a combination of the two?

[Octopode-monk-of-XOM]

crystal ball can easily give u 25+ MP with one use at max evo. usually u cast 3 or 4 lvl 9 spells then use ball and are "almost" full Ä(depending on max mp). i dont know wucad mu in comparison, but if u have clarity, and enough restore pots / intelligence not at the edge i think its quite usable and the best option i know of

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crystal_ball

comparing the wiki articles, ball seems superior, if that info is correct

[Nemora]

I do love using the ball, but it takes a lot of prep-work to make it worthwhile. (Clarity, high evocations, probably sustain abilities)

There's also a couple major things to consider when using it.

1) You shouldn't use it when the possibility of having your mana drained to 0 would screw you.
2) Always have a backup plan.
3) Don't wait until your mana is actually low to use it.

I'd want a staff of energy (that's the right one nowadays right? I still keep thinking it's the staff of channeling since that's what it was when I first started playing... >.>), Sif channeling, or, I would say, Wucad Mu.

...now, whether I'd prefer using one or the other, I can't really say since I haven't gotten Wucad Mu on a caster yet. Hah. >.>

[crate]

cboe is better if you already have decent mp, the point of wucad mu is it works at 0 mp