Is Elec/SD the best scrapper farmer?

I just returned and been enjoying my newish DB/Elec so it isn't a pressing question, but I'll eventually want a 'lazy' farmer, because I find clicking transfusion, transference, siphon speed etc is tiresome since farms are already boring. And with the new prices I'll eventually need one, I have a fire/kin but as I said, I get tired, even with his 35% s/l def - only when farming, teaming with him isn't a big deal for me because it's usually challenging and all.

So by 'best' I mean 'fast and lazy', because in my head I think I could just bind some key to BU, shift+lclick to LRod and ctrl+lclick to SC, kinda like I do on my Fire/Traps corr on normal PvE play (Aim, Caltrops, Rain of Fire respectively bound to those - no I don't use Aim before Caltrops ). And then I guess I'd just use Thundestrike and Fireball while the telenukes recharge.

Is this the best route for a scrapper farmer? Or maybe Fire/SD/Blaze? I have a spines/fire on the 30s so if speed is comparable to elec/sd I might just level the spiny one eventually, although having to line the Throw Spines cone is a bit counterproductive to my 'lazy farmer' wish.

I'm asking because I've never seen a scrapper farm very fast (I've admittedly seen only 2 or 3 doing it). I've seen a Warshade farm at a very good rate but you know, WSs are one of the busiest ATs to play even on +0 difficulty radio missions.

Thanks for any responses!

If I remember correctly from a top end raw + vendored influence per hour thread on the market forum, both Fire/Shield and Electric/Shield were completely competitive with the big boys.

Thanks Werner, nice to know FM/SD is competitive, because, y'know, farming a lot is hella boring and my experience with ELM was not that good in pve on a 50 brute because of the slow killing speed on hard mobs. Maybe I'll giv it a try later and farm a bit on my ELM/Stone to see how he performs now that we can set for 'no bosses' (although I don't even know if +2/x8 no bosses is the best setting, don't bosses drop rares recipes now?), he's only partially IO'ed so I'll have to get a kin or two.

I haven't heard about bosses dropping rare recipes, but that I haven't heard of it doesn't mean anything, since I don't keep my ear on the rumor mill, and almost never read the patch notes.

I believe the technique on both Fire/Shield and Electric/Shield is nuke and move. With Fire, I think you Shield Charge + Fire Sword Circle, move to next group, Fireball + Fire Sword Circle, move to next group, repeat, but you'd probably need a ton of recharge for that. With Electric, I think you Shield Charge + Fireball, move to the next group, Lightning Rod + Fireball, move to the next group, repeat. Again, lots of recharge. I could be wrong about the specifics, but I'm pretty sure what you DON'T want to do is get stuck fighting single targets.

So I'd guess that +Nx8 no bosses is best, where N is the highest level that you can still nuke the entire spawn to death and then move on without needing to play single-target clean up and without endangering yourself.

Someone who actually farms on one of these could probably give a much better answer, though.

Spine/Fire is nice and doest take much inf to set up

Thanks for the info Prey! I remember seeing something like that right after I left (I read the forums for awhile because I still liked them even though I couldn't post ). Seems bosses would be the way to go then, well maybe depending on how often they drop the good stuff. So FM/SD would be better than Spines/DA, Spines/Fire or Elec/SD (I think). Damage and s/l def-capped Fire/kins can deal well with bosses with the fast recharging hold and Seismic Smash.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terror1 Spine/Fire is nice and doest take much inf to set up

Well Terror1 I think the almost perma-hasten elec/sd build I made without going nuts on the IOs except for some Lotgs and the two health uniques (the build is not very suitable for normal play below 45-50, capped melee and ranged def tho) might be cheaper than the Spines/Fire with 33% melee def and 50ish recharge... And I couldn't find the slots for Fireball and blast on the spines one. Although I have a Spines/Dark in the 20s on Virtue, I primarily play on Freedumb (well in i17 we're supposed to be able to mail influence to other toons right?), and once a friend asked my 50 dm/da to help with the bosses on a demon farm... Dark armor made the farm so freakin' easy for my buddy because almost everybody was mezzed due to OG, of course I didn't have any decent AoE to try to farm alone on my DM/DA, but I killed the bosses for him, easy enough before the S. Life buff.

This is the elec/sd, ended up with two panic buttons (L.Clap and OwtS, the stupefy set bonuses are amazing imo). Leveling I'd certainly pick J.Ladder and Chain Induction and ignore L.Clap, I'll see what I can do with Fire/SD later.

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EDIT: Hmmm my attempt at a fire/sd farmer actually seems more interesting, similar budget, less rech but a build that could be used for all PvE content (ranged is at 42.6, I could cap it by 6-slotting boxing with stupefy but then I'd trade cremate for OwtS which would not be good for bosses and normal teaming, or putting a Mako set in Cremate but I'd lose 5% rech)

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I have an electric/shield/mu brute and a fire/shield/blaze scrapper, both nicely IO'ed.

Electric/Shield is faster at taking down minions/Lts faster. The scrapper version would be even better.

Fire/Shield/Blaze is only slightly slower owing the smaller radius of FSC.

For purple farming though, I think Electric/Shield wins because it can simply mow down minions/Lts by just alternating nukes. For PL'ing where you have more than just yourself, the slight edge goes to Fire/Shield because of its ability to take down bosses.

Both are competitive as farmers.

With regards to both Elec/SD and Fire/SD, (Fire/SD in my case currently) would you see Aid Self as necessary?

Thanks Fury Flechette, it's just I can't fit in Fireball if I want to include Aid Self, I do high level TFs quite often too but I think I'd just prefer all the damage and make the hard times a little more interesting

Thanks for the answers! Only one question remains

Is it more profitable to farm with bosses because they drop rare recipes? Or is it better to chew thru minions and lts as fast as possible (and with the bonus of 'lazy farming' because of the double telenukes).

That's the only thing to make me decide between fire and elec, since I'm not gonna PL anyone as I don't have dual accounts and I can't stand farming for long periods of time, so PLing isn't a concern.

I wouldn't bother with the boss-drops... The chance is really really small.

With my fire/shield/blaze I farm with bosses, but I only got 1 drop in about 500 complete BM runs.

Thanks again for the responses. I'll go with Silas' advice because of his posting history, he usually knows what he's talking about and also because I was disheartened with my 50 semi-IOed ELM Brute at 85% fury taking down hard guys. Plus a pool C drop every 2 runs sounds tasty.

So Fire/SD it is. I went thru my old toons and I have a spines/fire at 30 (AE baby, I actually left right after i14 but went on some Hami Pling lol) and a spines/dark at 24, might give them a try sometime, but I've played /Fire and /DA in other toons so I'll try shields for now.

WOW is this thing powerful. Got her to level 25 so far, and with SOs I'm melting mobs so damn fast... this aura REALLY makes a difference, I can hold aggro like a tauntless Tanker (I actually 'tanked' for her whole career till now when I didn't solo because for some reason we never found tankers in Freedom) and take down pink bosses on teams with little support even before incinerate (of course using insps liberally). I don't even have Incinerate yet, but the difference from my 36 fire/invul in killing speed is big. And I still have Incin, GFS, S. Charge and Fireball to look forward to. And at 22 I made 3 quick trips to Dark Astoria and got 20 million with Pangean Soils and stuff.

Btw I couldn't notice, does Sand of Mu benefit from AAO?

I wish we could retain our IOs in the alternate build, because my planned 'farmer' build has insignificant regen and no slotted Tough (plus ranged only at 42.5%), sacrificed for more recharge:

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Glad you're liking it so far.

Re: Sands of Mu, nah it's not affected by AAO. The vet temp powers are unaffected by damage buffs or debuffs, which is what makes them great for SS characters because you can still do damage during the Rage crash.

Afraid I can't look into the build in-depth atm, but just scanning it there's a few things I noticed:

It looks like your end use might be pretty bad, 1 end/sec although it does go down to .7/sec not running Tough. At that level of recharge though, especially with Fireball costing 13 end you might have some issues. I'd swap the recharge IO in Fireball for an endurance reducer. You only lose 2s of recharge but it'll cost 3 end less.

For the Membranes in AD, isn't that getting changed/fixed/nerfed/whatever? I thought Castle posted something to that effect but I could be mistaken. Regardless, if its a farm build you don't really need to enhance its def debuff res. I'd chuck 2 endurance reducers in it since it'll be perma anyway at your level of recharge.

Edit: bear in mind the Pool C every 2 runs is an average and it's also using a very big map. I'm using the Liberate Television map, which has the huge ruined city (like Boomtown but with water) map. It's got 4 extra bosses on it, which is also a factor, albeit a relatively minor one.

The same map is available heroside but it's either Freakshow who suck for money at 50 or Nemesis who will be nasty to farm as a /SD.

Running something like Council Earth or Battle Maiden you'd probably be getting a Pool C every 4-5 runs on average. That's a really rough estimate though.

Don't forget fire/fire/fire! It's pretty fantastic in enclosed spaces.

Thanks Silas for the advice! I'm not good at knowing how much end cost is 'too much' because I'm used to squishies, mostly trollers, corrs and doms . The only melees I have at 50 are an IO'ed out DM/DA (which I got lucky on her 30s with fast Katies because I got a Numina and a Miracle in the same day, no PP, Performance Shifters or Theft of Esssence existed but after the uniques I never had end problems with her then again I didn't solo her much, although I remember once in a 8-man team the Clockwork King as an AV wiped everyone but me, he was at half health and I only died because I ran out of end even shutting of Death Shroud, got him to 5% health :/ so yeah, not to good with end management lol), an EM/Nin Stalk that never gave me end issues and an ELM/Stone brute that I barely played (got to Granite in a DXP weekend and ITF'd him later to 50, stopped playing him because ELM's ST damage drove me nuts when solo even outta Granite.. And I made an ELM/Stone because I wanted a redside 'tanker' that did good damage, but yeah... ELM lol).

And I know the Liberate map, really huge, I got some PL'ing there in the past. But hey, I got my fm/shield to 25 in one night because I was PL'ed to 14 (Brazilian friend was happy I came back and called me when I was looking for a sewer team), he did 3 runs at+4/x8/bosses in the Battle Maiden map with his BEASTLY human Warshade and in one of them he got a BoTZ -KB from a boss and a Hecatomb 5 minutes later.

Didn't read about AD HO nerf, but well if it happens I'll change it. I want some decent DDR because I'm having so much fun with this toon that I think I'll end up playing regular content with her too after she's 50.

And well at least SoM is affected by BU right, the tohit part? I'm good with this power (especially since the range now is 7') because I leveled up my DM/DA with Shadow Maul in i9/i10, you know, when it took you 2/3 months to get to 50 so I have a lot of practice.

@Psara: I always run out of slots when planning fire/fire builds lol. Plus I have a SS/Fire Brute at 30 and I always found him a bit squishy, and I love the taunt aura with +dmg in /Shields, /Fire scrappers don't have taunt in B. Aura. And well if I resume playing my SS/Fire he'll have Footstomp for mitigation at least, I'm avoiding redside for now because the last 9-10 months I played before I left were all on villains except for the occasional MoSTF only because my Brazilian coalition at the time loved my Mind/Emp, I don't even like the STF . Although I do have a 33 spines/fire but I didn't really play her (AE baby, I left like a week after i14), she might turn out well to farm without bosses since I planned her for 34% melee def but idk if I'll level her, I have a 24 spines/dark on Virtue that I actually leveled the 'right way' and I like /DA so much more than /FA. And well, it's not like I need a lot of farm toons lol, the reason I'm making a farming scrapper is because I get tired with all the clicking with my fire/kin (in farms, teaming challenging stuff I'm okay with being busy), I considered elec/shield at first because I could bind a key to BU, shift-click to LR and ctrl+click to SC, lazy farming FTW but I teamed with elec/shields from lvls 15 to 25 and they were only minion munchers, with the fm/sd I'm having so much fun (rare for someone who doesn't really like melee toons), I don't even want to pl her anymore.

Not that my fm/shields is very tough now but I did tank a lot after SOs, b/c of the aura and after a small purp I'm at 33/34% def to all IIRC, haven't played yesterday or today to check, but it's already enough to take out purple bosses, and in 2 levels with Incinerate slotted up a bit it'll be even better.

I run radios on my friend's fire/fire/body tank to PL chars of mine past the boring levels, +2/x8, and I've gotten at least 4 purple drops doing this so far.

I'm not an intense farmer, so I'd say that's a pretty solid drop rate for purples.

Thanks for the details guys.

I got a purple drop today on a closed book arc so confirms what you said.