Who IS #1 for farming

Let me first thank all of you who have commented so far, this is becomeing a good info-mercial for Farming toons. I've seen some posters write things that were answered in my original post. For instance, someone wrote that it depends on the driver or player; however, I wrote ALL things being equal, meaning map, spawn size and lvl, player ability. Also, I wanted to know who everyone thinks is the FASTEST farmer, not the funnest to play or least likely to be killed.

So. . . this time I will list some paramaters:

1.Fastest for Influence/Infamy, set to 8 man solo run at -1 to +3 spawns
a.Villagers Map or BM Map
b. Demon farm map
c. Family map
d. Dreck map that doesn' thave dreck in it
e. Lib TV run w/Nemisis and mobs on Freaks map

2.Fastest for Purples, set to 8 man solo run at -1 spawns
SAME AS ABOVE


Try these parameters now for your picks.

A friend let me borrow his account before it lapsed to try out his Masterminds, I'd put those at top tier farming. He's got a Bots/Traps/Mu and a Thugs/Traps/Mace both at 50, and spawns at +2x8 absolutely melt for both of them. Bots/Traps is especially scary, because most of its damage comes from one bot, making it alot easier to sustain DPS, an unupgraded minion is only costing you 5-10 DPS as opposed to losing an arsonist or genin.

You could farm even level for recipes for 49s or whatever easily, and farming higher for money still goes fast as hell until you start getting into +3 and +4 territory. 20-30 seconds for a +2 8 man spawn, faster if you manage to get enough people immobilized before the knockback missiles hit.

Fire/Shield enough said

I can't believe I'm the first one to be this particular type of weenie in this thread.

While it has not yet been mentioned yet, War Mace on a brute does deserve to be noted. It has two excellent 10 target AOEs (Whirling Mace and Crowd Control) and a high damage cone (Shatter). Now it doesn't have the radius of Foot Stomp on its toys, but if you have a situation in which the targets are packed in tight, it will lay out damage like nobody's business, and the attacks all recharge pretty quickly.

Of course the close packed limitation does influence where it is strong. There have been AE maps where I'd take a WM brute over anything (and I've been on the maps side by side with an Elec/SD brute and my kill rate put him to shame even though he had massive IO recharge boosts). On more open maps the WM will suffer for having to bunch the mobs to get maximum effectiveness.

Mace/fire

Personally, i've stoped playing my fire/kin for farming since I hit 50 on my plant/ta/fire. With perma carrion creepers 4 slotted with damage procs, and OsA up in less than a min, I tear through MA or Mission content set to x8+0 with bosses, faster than my firekin, and safer. about the only insp i use are breakfrees when needed.

Its fun to have people send tells after a team saying they plan to roll one up after watching me.

I think the two best, from personal experience, are:

a) Fire Control/Kinetics Controller. With just a mild investment in some set IOs, you become a near unstoppable powerhouse. I've been working on tweaking my build so I can soft-cap S/L (which I do have on my current build) AND Ranged (which I don't) in order to push him to the next level.

b) Super Strength/Shield Defense Brute. This toon takes a bigger investment to become a top toon at farming. However, my current build is under 100 mil, and I'm not even quite at soft cap and I can farm on up to +2/x8 without running into any issues. Borea missions are my current choice, because of Vanguard merits, but with Shield Charge, Ball Lightning and Foot Stomp, nothing lasts very long. His final, uber expensive build will likely handle +4/x8 with similar ease.

I'm seeing F.Kins are still at the top of most ppl's charts for farming blue side and SS/Fire brute or Fire/Psy Dom topping the charts on Red side.

Ive been playing this game on and off since Beta. Ive watched a lot of players with top skill level farm. I have a high skill level and 5 farm toons between blue and red side, and couldnt even begin to tell you how many 50's Ive purped out or how many hours Ive spent farming until I faceplanted at 5am in the morning some weekends.

Im a farming expert. Ive farmed the original family farms blue and red side, with dumpster divers in the old freak maps, the YMCA Psi farm, the Battle Maiden farm, the demon farm, the scientist cargo ship farm, the TV farm- you name it, Ive prolly done it.

Ive farmed with Scrappers, Tankers, Controllers, Corruptors, Brutes, and Dominators, so Ive pretty much run the AT gambit on what people farm with.

With all that said, I can honestly sit here and say that, after my friend spent about 4 billion the on the build red side, I havent seen anything farm level 54's as fast as his SS/SD Brute.

In fact, Im surprised no one has even brought up that combo, as its downright nasty. I wish I could take credit for his genius mids build and post it, as I always like to show my mad skills with Mids off, but I cant do it in this case (not my right to post it without consent). His slotting and cleverness in building the toon is downright flawless, and the damage he puts up is quite insane.

I have a SD/SS/Fire tank thats pretty damn good, but its nowhere close to what the SS/SD/Elly Brute build can do under the right slotting and player.

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*** If you're looking for a clear cut #1 Farmer in terms of speed and survivability, I would cast a vote towards a well built SS/SD Brute, with Fire/SD Brute right there with it and surpassing it at times depending on how Rage crashes time with your mob entry.
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Dominators/Controllers cant keep up with the speed and killing power Fury gives you, and thats not even counting that the survivability is never in question with a well built Brute, even against Bosses.

I'm not laying any claim to being a farming "expert". To me it's a filler activity. Still, I've built red and blue side farmers. Right now, I'm most pleased with the results of running Borea missions with an Elec/Elec brute. He wasn't originally created for farming and if I were to redo him, I'd use the Fire primary (due to resistances in higher rank Rikti mobs). There are some Rikti mob characteristics that may make them sub-optimal for farming (tendancy to stay at range, ability to stack Def buffs even from the same source) but some simple tactics can get around that. Now that RWZ is available from lvl 1 up, I can PL either heros or vills, should I choose to do so.

Yes, I'm nominating Elec Armor for farming.

In 99% of the situations out there, a fire/kin is going to run rampant over anything else in the game. They're the gold standard of farming for a reason.

Glad I could be of some help of looking at a build not previously discussed.

I think the mods have us in diapers a bit with all this deleting, as the stuff they deleted wasnt that bad, but oh well, they deleted the troll posts too, which is what they should of done to begin with.

Im glad others have chimed in and voiced support of the SS/SD Brute. I told you guys it was elite! The reason I went into my experience is to set a foundation of my expertise and time spent farming in this game, which is extensive. When you spend 4+ years farming with multiple AT builds, you do become a bit of an expert, and there are many, many here. I dont think I ever claimed sole territory on that merit, and it has nothing to do with blowing my own horn.

As stated already by another in this thread, it helps some players to know what someone who farms like me, Mac, or some of the other farming avids on their respective servers think is the best build, or what builds are the fastest we've seen. If Macskull, Ra, Toy, BZ, Con, etc. etc., give you advice and tell you that a specific build is the fastest they have seen, and you just so happen to want a speed farming toon, it would probably be wise to listen.

Anyways, glad I could point out the SS/SD, and to whoever is planning to purp one out- you're going to have one hell of a good time.

And just FYI- theres a reason why a lot of us arent going to hand you a Mids build on here, or post our specific respective builds we use on our toons.

I know there are some that love builds handed to them *cough* , but a lot of us have worked very hard on very unorthodox builds that are min/maxed to the brink of existence, and there are many, many reasons (Not going to list them all) why we're not handing out builds like candy.

Id rather make suggestions and help a person to learn how to slot their toons better, and go the route of teaching a man to fish, etc., etc., that kind of stuff.

I post builds every now and then, and I exchange builds a lot over PM's, but I dont think its fair for some of us to work hours on perfecting a build where we want it to have someone grab it as a handout for free. A lot of it also depends on the person too.