(Now YAVP) Gnoll Summoner ^ Ash: Best 3rd rune?

[dolemite99]

Dump:
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... mite99.txt

I don't have much of a track record with Summoners, so I'm seeking advice on the most straight-forward 3rd rune for this guy.

Elf is fully cleared with the exception of hall of blades.
Crypt is fully cleared.
Depths cleared down through U:5.

With Ashenzari + Cloak of the Thief, I am leaning towards the Abyss and trying to stealth-nab that rune with as little fighting as possible. But I can be persuaded to think about V:5 or Slime Pits if someone sees a spell combo in my arsenal that seems suited for large crowd control.

[Vajrapani]

Shadow creatures + death channel is easily enough to do V:5. I would do vaults rather than abyss, as the layout is fixed and you have a lot more chance to snowball allies and defeat the entire floor if you're not getting randomly teleported and swarmed like in the abyss. The abyss also tends to be spaced close together so you may not be able to have enough 'surface area' of summons to be able to take advantage of them, thus causing you to fall back on a fairly middling melee.

Fight in a quadrant with a nice enclosed layout, spam shadow creatures and death channel(and use mana vipers for any dangerous casters like Elves and Titans) and you've basically got your 3rd rune in vaults.

I've done this exact strategy on a GnVM^Lugonu, maybe it's a personal aversion to the abyss(even while having Lugonu as a god!) but it just seems easier to do vaults if you have a method of generating powerful allies.

[dolemite99]

Shadow creatures + death channel is easily enough to do V:5. I would do vaults rather than abyss, as the layout is fixed and you have a lot more chance to snowball allies and defeat the entire floor if you're not getting randomly teleported and swarmed like in the abyss. The abyss also tends to be spaced close together so you may not be able to have enough 'surface area' of summons to be able to take advantage of them, thus causing you to fall back on a fairly middling melee.

Fight in a quadrant with a nice enclosed layout, spam shadow creatures and death channel(and use mana vipers for any dangerous casters like Elves and Titans) and you've basically got your 3rd rune in vaults.

I've done this exact strategy on a GnVM^Lugonu, maybe it's a personal aversion to the abyss(even while having Lugonu as a god!) but it just seems easier to do vaults if you have a method of generating powerful allies.

Thanks! With a melee brute, for V:5 I usually buff up and use an immolation scroll to wipe the welcoming committee. That won't work on this guy I think. He maxes @ 30 AC with Ozocubu's Armour active, and that spell will cancel as soon as immolation bombs start going off around me. So can you give me a suggested sequence of steps to follow when entering V:5?

[Airwolf]

Ash makes Abyss a bit easier by mapping stairs & exits, detecting items & monsters, and giving you scrying. That'd be my choice.

[nago]

Thanks! With a melee brute, for V:5 I usually buff up and use an immolation scroll to wipe the welcoming committee. That won't work on this guy I think. He maxes @ 30 AC with Ozocubu's Armour active, and that spell will cancel as soon as immolation bombs start going off around me. So can you give me a suggested sequence of steps to follow when entering V:5?

?Immo in V:5 is one of the most common and hilariously bad tactics meme in DCSS. Don't do that, Vaults Guards are the easiest enemies in the floor, what you get is to wake up everything dangerous at once and converge towards you.

Duvessa' cool guide to V:5

tl;dr: don't stairdance - at least after the first waves of vault guards. Buff with everything before going down. ?Map the floor, teleport in a good enclosed angle of a favorable quadrant. Start kill dudes.

In your case, before start kill dudes, activate death's channel, steam roll the level with ghosts and spectral creatures.

[dolemite99]

Won! Morgue:
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 222950.txt

I went with Vaults:5 and followed advice from Vajparani and Nago. Shadow Creatures + Death Channel + Mana Vipers + Staff of Energy was a legit combo. I think I only needed to teleport once or twice in V:5.

This became my first Summoner win and my first Gnoll win. I was on the lookout for Malign Gateway and Summon Horrible things, but the RNG never gave me the book(s) for those spells so I went instead with Haunt and Infestation. Haunt + Shadow Creatures was my answer to Orbs of Fire and Ancient Liches. In general I don't like casting Shadow Creatures with draconian mobs and Orb Guardians in LOS, because Shadow Creatures produces so many Moths of Wrath and those situations spiral out of control fairly quickly with zerked opponents.

[dolemite99]

As an afterthought .... I couldn't get much bang for my buck (or my 8MP) from the Infestation spell.

Is Infestation best against popcorn mobs clustered near one another? I didn't start casting it until Zot, but being primarily a Summoner I wasn't doing a lot of burst damage to quickly kill the infested mobs and get a scarab army going. I would love to hear some best-use-cases tips about that spell, for future use.

[Airwolf]

Congrats on the win!

[nago]

As an afterthought .... I couldn't get much bang for my buck (or my 8MP) from the Infestation spell.

Is Infestation best against popcorn mobs clustered near one another? I didn't start casting it until Zot, but being primarily a Summoner I wasn't doing a lot of burst damage to quickly kill the infested mobs and get a scarab army going. I would love to hear some best-use-cases tips about that spell, for future use.

Well if had already a lot of summons going probably you couldn't appreciate the scarabs - also probably because having batty movements they don't works as well if there are a lot of friendlies nearby.

The point of scarabs is that they have strong debuff, hit quite hard and last long. Best use is to kill one infested mob and then ramp up with others - you can get that easily with summons (even better than lv.6 conjuration spells or melee, only missiles could be better I'd say), you just have to position well your summons (aka not fight in a corridor) and usa 'ta' a lot.