[Ferrosol]

I always tend to skip over the crone in favour of a Master Lich or Great Enchantress for a rainbow pretender. The Enchantress provides extra astral pearls (which is nice in this post-clam world) is ethereal and starts with E and S two of the paths I usually want anyway. While the Master Lich has excellent survivability and almost as good path access as the crone as well as higher dominon and the always useful D access. So its not that the crone is bad exactly just that there are others that outclass it.