Looking for Recommendations for a fun Farming Tank

Well Ive been on Freedom for a couple months now, and most of my farmers are on Guardian.

I figured I'd save some cash and not do another transfer and just take up this opportunity to roll up another toon to feed my altitis. For redside I already have a couple farmers. SS/Wp brute io'ed to the gills, and a dm/shield for a nice mix of single target and aoe's.

So, for doing +0/+8's, What would you guys recommend as killing the fastest? I'd love the ability to do +4/+8's for pl'in friends if they ever come back to the game. I have tossed the idea around about a Spines/wp scrapper, so if you know of another scrapper combo, I'd even consider that.

First I thought of Ice/Fire. Nice dmg aura, good aoe's from fire, decent end management, decent survivability.

Shield/fire seemed it would be decent also. SC, Good aoe's still, still survivable, but would have to keep an eye on the end bar.

Shield/elec and Shield/Ice seemed to be interesting too, but i havent played /Elec or /Ice. I've read that AAO helps ice's low dmg and single target attacks and /ice still seems to have an aoe or 2, but not sure if they get the job done.

/Elec seems to have tons o'aoe's, but what If i decide to add boss's to the map, for pool C & D drop chances.

I havent even considered taking Epic PP into consideration for these builds, so I'm all up for suggestions.

Fire/SS/Pyre or Shield/SS/Pyre both make great farming builds. I run my Fire/SS all the time and have a blast.

Shield/Elec may work well too. Mine is too low to really tell, but in the right situation it can tear groups of minions apart.

um the best farmer for tanks is a fire/fire/pyre

b.a./combustion/burn/consume/fire sword circle/f.e./b.u./fireball = win!

i can say some of the other guys posts are right..they can do ok. better then ok but their not the king of farming.

they might not be the "funniest" farming tanks( funniest is to your personal preference) but its the best hands down

Nakoa, my main tank, has the best farming tank build I've seen. He's fire/stone/fire. It's very end heavy, but once slotted with IO sets to mitigate it, he can keep up with a fire/kin troller on a good run. The reason stone is a better secondary than, say, fire is because of -essentially- Seismic Smash. It's huge single target damage, bigger than anything else a tanker can get.

Jump into the mob with Blazing Aura on. Hit Tremor and knock it all down, hit Burn while they are still getting up, hit Fireball while they are starting to scatter. Find the boss or lt. Use Seismic Smash and take him out. By the time you take the boss, everything else is dead from AoE and splash.

Honestly, the build is useless before IO sets, and good ones. If you are just using standard IOs or SOs, then fire/fire/fire is probably the best. I've IOed for damage, accuracy, and recovery and he can keep it up all day with an occasional hit of Consume.

Is there anything where +4s are better per hour? Seems to me that if you can kill +4s rapidly you'd kill lower-level foes even more rapidly, so for farming and probably even PLing, +4 wouldn't be where it's at.

I thought people did +4 because it was challenging or fun, not to do anything "fast."

My vote would be (in no particular order):
Shield/Fire/Pyre
Ice/Fire/Pyre (or Energy Mastery)
Fire/Fire/Pyre (or Energy Mastery, in case you need to keep them on their backsides in and Burn longer, also a great opener.)

Gonna put my two cents in here...I've been farming with fire/ss/earth for awhile and really like it, for a few reasons:

-Quick sand keeps enemies in burn patches
-Stalagmites gives you one more AoE to throw around
-Salt Crystals is a good "oh ****" power if you get overwhelmed and everything else is on cooldown.

I can handle BM farm +2/+5 solo without breaking a sweat, and have done BM +2 8-man spawns solo successfully, just a bit slower. Other upside is that it's a cheap build...mine uses mostly old Hammie-Os and a few cheap IO sets (doctored wounds, efficacy adapter, stuff around that price) for some recharge, and runs quite well.

I enjoy farming with my Shield / SS / Pyre. Shield Charge and Footstomp take care of the minions and Lt.'s and KO Blow (and other single-targe attacks) take care of the Bosses. Is it the fastest? I don't know, but it's effective, enjoyable and it's as fast as I need it to be.

I have a Shield/SS/Pyre and a Shield/Fire/Pyre - I'd say they're both fun and both effective. Of course...there are differences in the two, but for overall effectiveness they're pretty even. The one thing that SS has going for it is Rage. Sure the crash is annoying but can be managed - and that leaves you with a big damage boost the rest of the time. My SD/SS has Stamina and both Numina/Miracle uniques but still has End issues from time to time too.

For farming purposes, I can't imagine anything being much better than Shield/ (and I've played almost every other tank Pri/Sec in my 5 years) simply because the offensive nature of AAO and Shiled Charge. In a high recharge build you can use it every spawn and if you pick up the AAO buff in the middle of the group, you can easily down the minions in one shot and clean up the rest with other AoE's. No other primary set has a mini-nuke like that.

By the way, I run two farms (BM and Freaks) at +2 / 8 man / no bosses. Sometimes I'll even throw bosses in. They take a little longer but the extra inf/xp/drops come in handy sometimes. I can handle this difficulty with no real problems at all and it goes fast.

One thing that nobody has really entered so far is that the Fire/Fire/Pyre is going to have more trouble surviving than the Shield/Fire/Pyre on any content that isn't specifically minion/lt farming. Having had both IOed out to a fair degree, nothing can approach the survivability of my softcapped Shield/Fire. The other benefit I have found to SD over FA is that immob>Burn takes too much time to line up and do the damage compared to one large-radius smash from SC.

Now, Shield/SS/Pyre compares more closely to Shield/Fire/Pyre, however I dislike the Rage crash. It just breaks the flow too much. YMMV.

I agree, Shield/Fire/Pyre is a devastating combo. Mine's mostly IO'd, I still have some tweaks to do here and there, but even in it's current modest state the thing's a beast. If you can boost recharge and/or run Hasten ( without draining your blue bar) the combo is especially dangerous.


I have a Shield/SS/Energy and it's a decent combo but that Rage crash is a total drag. I'm trying to figure out how to get his recharge up so I can stack it, hopefully getting rid of the -20% Defense which is a total killer at times.