Summoning stone

There are many types of summoning stone in Guild Wars, but only a few of them are particularly useful for SCs:

Ghastly Summoning Stone

The Dream Rider is a very powerful summon, with good damage, several interrupts, enchantment removal, and self-heal. Its greatest drawback is its tendency to scatter mobs by casting Chaos Storm unintelligently.

Mystical Summoning Stone

The Gaki is a healer; whilst other healer summons exist, they come from stones that spawn random allies, and are therefore unreliable. The Gaki also uses Recuperation, providing an extra target for Pain Inverter to deal damage. This makes it a popular stone for IaU killing tendrils in DoA.

Beware that the Gaki will sometimes run off to heal an ally. This can be avoided by not bringing the Gaki in range of any allies with missing health.

Jadeite Summoning Stone

The Siege Turtle has high armor and a huge hitbox. This makes it ideal for glitching Dhuum. Since it's tanky enough to survive 3 hits of Torment Slash, it is a popular stone for IaU killing tendrils in DoA.

Chitinous Summoning Stone

The Devourer has high armor. Since it's tanky enough to survive 3 hits of Torment Slash, it is a popular stone for IaU killing tendrils in DoA.

Legionnaire Summoning Crystal

The Legionnaire is not an especially powerful summon, but it has the unique advantage of being re-usable. As a warrior, it is also somewhat tanky.

Tengu Support Flare

Tengu Support Flares, usually just called "tengus", spawn 3 random Angchu allies, with a wide variety of possible skill bars. Many of these are powerful, and the fact that there are 3 of them makes them quite a good choice for assisting with a kill. However, there is a risk that less effective tengus will spawn, and the team can't pop a better stone until all 3 of the tengus die.

There are 2 possible tengu spawns for each profession (except dervish or paragon):

• Angchu Warrior - neither of these is very helpful; they deal little damage and tend to run into combat, grabbing extra aggro and/or getting themselves killed.
• Angchu Ranger - neither of these is useful, dealing poor damage and being hard to get killed.
• Angchu Monk - both of these are decent healers, but they offer no damage, and have the tendency to unnecessarily run off to heal an ally.
• Angchu Necromancer - both of these are useful, with respectable damage or a swarm of meat shields from the minions.
• Angchu Mesmer - the Panic is excellent, with strong damage as well as shutdown; the Fevered Dreams also provides decent damage.
• Angchu Elementalist - the air ele is fairly weak with no elite skill, and the Sandstorm creates a liability of causing foes to scatter.
• Angchu Assassin - neither of these is very helpful; they deal little damage and tend to run into combat, grabbing extra aggro and/or getting themselves killed.
• Angchu Ritualist - both of these have some decent heals, but one of them also has some good damage skills, whereas the other just has more heals, none of which are great.

Imperial Guard Reinforcement Order

Imperial Guard Reinforcement Orders, usually known as "Imperial Guards", "Canthan Guards", or just "guards", spawn 3 random Imperial Guard allies, all of which are either warriors or rangers. There are only 3 possible combo of summons (1 always captain + 2 crippling slash or 2 triple chop or 2 barrage). Some are more powerful than others, but they generally excel at killing single targets, especially when buffed by physical support skills like Barbs and Ebon Battle Standard of Honor.

Shining Blade War Horn

Shining Blade War Horns, often known as just war horns spawn 3 random Shining Blade allies. None of these are strong, with only 4 skills each, and no elite. Since they have no rupt skills, they can be used by IaU for killing tendrils in DoA.

throwaway stones

Sometimes the quickest available way to break aggro is to pop a summon and let it distract the enemies while you run away. This is known as a throwaway stone. This can be done by any summon, provided it survives for long enough for the player to break aggro, but not so long that shared aggro is retained - if it doesn't die at all, this will prevent the party from popping another stone.

Throwaway stones can also be used as HoS or Viper's targets where no other target is available.

Notes

Most of the summons have 600 base health, but the triple pops (tengus, guards, and Shining Blade) have only 480 each.