Late/end game society - pitch me GoS vs Voln

[audioserf]

Lol at nobody ever posting here.

My halfling monk is about to make 50, he's been a GoS master since 10. GoS is sweet. He has no problems hunting and crushing whatever he hunts. I do, however, sometimes think I want him in Voln later on for when he's dealing with mixed living/undead hunting grounds. Right now he's at a prime level spot to make the switch, since he can mow through Bonespear/Wind Wraiths/Citadel to do it without a whole ton of effort.

In terms of Pros/Cons

GoS
Pros
Mending (3 second RT for any herb is just amazing, plus additional HP regen as a halfling is rad)
Determination (getting some injuries and still being able to pop off a 1219 or something? yes please)
Focus (the most TD you can get out of a society)
Major Protection (who doesn't like +10 points of crit padding)
Escape (nice ripcord for those bad situations)
Warcamps - fun, but you can always get a GoS alt to open a camp for you if you're not in Sunfist
Power is good for spelling up since monks tend not to have huge durations per cast

Cons
Mana/Stamina Costs. I'm at .5x HP for now and I can manage to maintain Minor Bane, Offense, Mending, Concentration, Focus (or Major Protection, but not both), Minor Protection (if not using Major) if my hunt doesn't run too long. I would like to be able to use all that extra stamina on focus mstrikes during recovery!
Major Bane kind of useless late in the game since unless you warcamp there's 0 hated enemies

Voln
Pros
Self Bless/non-bless UAC - I really hate relying on someone else being around to give me a bless in order to hunt, and this is my main motivation for considering this switch ahead of late/end game. This can be counter-acted by stockpiling a bunch of blessed hand/foot wraps in a locker, but you still ultimately need a cleric to make that happen
Seeking - instantly being in the Rift or Nelemar would be amazing
Transcendence - in some ways this seems better than Escape since at most it gets a 10 minute timer instead of 24 hours
Return - if I don't decide to get 130, this would be handy
Dreams - get back in action quick if you die
+3 phantom levels vs sheer fear seems handy for the Scatter later
Recall - handy to have some spells going when you're back up
Sleep - this seems hilariously OP and I keep waiting for posts about a nerf

Cons
Favor - I haven't had a Voln character since GS3, so I don't know how much of an issue this is, but I don't like the idea of being forced to hunt undead. The 60-90 range to me is krags/minos/ducts/OTF, being forced to do the Rift would kind of annoy me since it doesn't seem like a wonderful monk area with all the non-corp things.

That's all I can think of. What am I missing? For people with a capped monk, what society are you in and why and do you ever think of making a switch?

(COL is not part of this convo because it's trash from the dump unless you're a low level pure lolz)

[Methais]

Voln

It's better.

And fogging.

And stuff.

[Sinistra]

Sleep is by far the most OP society ability, at like level it almost always works and has no RT, casting RT. Can be spammed.
However, it eats up enormous amounts of favor. But for a profession without a decent multi-op disabler it’s a godsend.

[wetsand]

My monk has been Voln since level 3. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like in GoS or CoL but then I seek somewhere and dismiss the idea.

[Maerit]

For a monk, Voln is probably going to be great. You don't need symbol of mana, which is the primary reason pures struggle with favor in the 60s and 70s (lack of undead hunting), and you will have all the undead benefits to avoid having to get blesses. Plus, you get a bonus to TD vs undead (Protection also adds a TD boost of 1/2 total ranks. (Max bonus +13) and disruption - Any noncorporeal undead struck will sustain penalties to AS/DS,CS/TD,UDF, CMAN. Duration: 10 seconds per rank - (stackable).) which is the primary Monk weakness.

If you switch to Voln, hunt from 50-60ish in the Citadel on RR. Don't leave. Just farm the crap out of the citadel. That should give you enough favor to make through your 60s and make halfway through 70s if you don't prefer to hunt in EN for the undead options.

My bard, who was Voln, is switching to GoS for the same reason my warmage switched - the favor runs out when you use symbol of mana every hunt even though they both farmed Citadel non-stop. I don't want to spend hours farming favor (and reim access/groups is limited pre-cap if you're not premium).

[wetsand]

Self Bless/non-bless UAC - I really hate relying on someone else being around to give me a bless in order to hunt, and this is my main motivation for considering this switch ahead of late/end game. This can be counter-acted by stockpiling a bunch of blessed hand/foot wraps in a locker, but you still ultimately need a cleric to make that happen
Seeking - instantly being in the Rift or Nelemar would be amazing
Transcendence - in some ways this seems better than Escape since at most it gets a 10 minute

But in all seriousness, the perma-blessed hand/feet with Voln is the bees knees. Never waste a mstrike again.

FYI seeking does not drop you into the Rift but at the Sands. Still really nice time saving advantage. Of course you can ring but I hate managing them.

Transcendence has saved me dozens of times.

Cons
Favor - I haven't had a Voln character since GS3, so I don't know how much of an issue this is, but I don't like the idea of being forced to hunt undead. The 60-90 range to me is krags/minos/ducts/OTF, being forced to do the Rift would kind of annoy me since it doesn't seem like a wonderful monk area with all the non-corp things.

Sure, it can be sort of a pain to stockpile favor but if you are smart about hunting grounds before the gap, you will rarely have trouble with favor. Don't discount the Rift so quickly. I have been hunting the Rift almost exclusively since level 66.

[Stumplicker]

I did both with Flimbo. Started out GoS, switched to Voln. They're both spectacularly well geared for monk neeeds (My current monk is GoS). The main pros and cons you're going to see at cap really depend on your hunting ground.

Favor's not an issue because you can just go with HoTA once every two months with a single orb and hunt whatever.

If you hunt the rift, seeking will take you right there and save you about 2 minutes on your round trip. Symbol recall is underrated and awesome. It's marginally useful if you're more physical than casty. Problem is, if you have 100 mana (this is what Flimbo had at cap), you're only getting one cast back of your self cast spells, and a lot of what you spell yourself up with costs 15-20 mana each cast, so you're there for a while spelling back up to 4 regardless. Still great for recalling outside spells after a death. In the end, sigil power is better for mana than symbol mana unless you're willing to spend deeds. You'll end up with somewhere around 200 stamina. That's a lot of mana, and you will go through it self spelling. Symbol mana is more useful in the field, because you're usually using your stamina for mstrike. At cap, if you're popping things with 1219 and 1207 regularly, you'll want the extra little boost.

Step 8 means if you're brawling, you'll never lose half an mstrike to a dying bless (in fact, in the end I just didn't bother blessing anymore. Didn't need the enchant bonus).

I liked the ability in Voln to just pump up 15 minutes worth of protection and courage at the beginning of the hunt and not have to worry about anything else. You can accomplish hands free upkeep with a script for GoS, but it's a minor annoyance in my book still, since it's 3-7 skills instead of 2 and you're talking about every 90 seconds, contingent on the fact that you have enough stamina, which you may not because mstrike is your bread and butter.

On the flipside of the coin, warcamps are fun and easy to solo. the weighting pushes you over that hump where you're almost guaranteed to crit kill with any hit to a vital area at excellent tier. The padding is great because even if you go all-in on on 1202, your robes still only count as hauberk.

1213 makes GoS extra appealing as well. 20-40% discount on all your society skill costs is awesome.


Anyway, if you hunt the rift and/or like less upkeep, Voln. If you don't mind the upkeep/scripting/having to hold back on using a little bit of your stamina, GoS. They're both awesome for monks.

[khorpulent]

Sunfist 4 lyfe. Free HCP. Enough said.


Although yeah, symbol of sleep is OP and should be nerfed. But 1219 is better anyhow because it keeps going and going.

[Donquix]

Sunfist 4 lyfe. Free HCP. Enough said.


Although yeah, symbol of sleep is OP and should be nerfed. But 1219 is better anyhow because it keeps going and going.

Rofl. no. Da fuq are you doing that you need things disabled for a minute? Need time to do like a full Bond villain monologue to the giant rat about your plan for vengeance against rodent-kind? Sleep is, also, especially good for Monks compared to other classes because (most) people tank inf (many monks still do) and have meh disc. With perfect self you have 20 extra stats worth of SSRS it almost certainly wasn't balanced around.

I sleep, open mstrike, start firing off quickstrikes and/or aimed shots. They're stunned, otherwise disabled, or dead before they get back up. If they aren't, i just cast it again as its essentially free if you aren't in the (still pathetically a thing) undead gap. The amount of times the hilariously long lasting effects of 1219 have made a difference are few and far between. And almost certainly counteracted by being able to attack immediately after sleep (no cast rt) or even by the times that you cast 1219 and things still have a few seconds to act before the first round of ill effects triggers. Which is really stupid, even if it requires a decent endroll it really should also cause instant RT. It's pretty stupid warding a bandit by 200+ and then it immediately open roll groin kicks you into next week. then you both just stand there vomiting on each other for 30 seconds.

A minute+ acting disable is something that SOUNDS super great but in practice, does nothing. That isn't to say that 1219 isn't still a great, useful (especially, obviously, for non-voln monks) spell but sleep is just better. In practice 1219 is a shitty, less reliable, with typically worse effects ewave that costs 2x as much.

[khorpulent]

Lol, what I'm doing is taking on 20-30 creatures at a time in SoS. For whatever reason, I find it fun to take on stupidly large swarms when someone like Jahmilli is running around the Sanctum. Sleep is great if you're taking on a handful of creatures a time, but if I'm taking on more creatures than I can mstrike at once, I can't afford to have a couple of them wake up and start tackling or spitting acid at me. A couple shots of 1219 keeps the whole room locked down for more than enough time to clear a room without getting maneuver locked. It's true that you could just spam sym sleep between every mstrike, but you're still waking six or seven of them up every time you strike, and it burns a shitton of favor. Though if you do Reim with HoA every now and then, you can pretty much spam sleep all you want.


I'm also fairly sure that 1219 does immediate RT in some cases. Or at least, when I've accidentally cast it against my alts, I have seen that to be the case. I don't know if it's an endroll thing, or if it's just a random chance or what.

Honestly, I wouldn’t trade 1219 for 410 if I could. I did find it a bit underwhelming until my CS got somewhere in the ballpark of 410 (I think it’s at 417 now), but with higher warding margins it can totally lock down a room full of creatures in a way that 410 can’t. Plus, most capped players have enough TD to ward a stray cast, whereas 410 is considerably less player friendly (yeah yeah, and sleep is totally player friendly, I know). And if you’re Sunfist, the cost of 19 mana isn’t a big deal because sigil of power makes mana a non-issue.