Best 50 to optimize/farm with?

Alrighty. So, I understand some folks have eleventy billion dollars. I've managed to stick around since launch and haven't even passed the 250mill mark, so I should probably get right on that.

With that in mind... for the folks that are more familiar with the #s than myself, what are opinions on which would be the best of the following characters to optimize for inf farming (I'm assuming that some combination of Architect or Ouro Merit farming is the way to go? Mix of inf & recipes to sell?):

Fire/Storm Cont
Stone/Elec Brute
Bot/Dark MM
Arach Soldier
Widow
DB/WP scrap
SS/DA brute

[Yes, I've been here since launch and I only have 7 50s. What!? I'm easily distracted.]

I also have a spines/da scrap in the 40s, in case that's a better option.

I'd go with the Brute, if you figure out a way to have high recharge and good survivability (easy) while mantaining sustainable levels of endurance management (tricky)

Roll a fire/kin

Stone/Elec is not hard to softcap and has ridiculously good mitigation in the form of Fault, which together with Tremor, can take a FF +Rech proc. So not only can you softcap, but you can easily run 150%+ recharge without really trying, and you don't need Hasten for it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

Fire/Dark Corrupter.

In my experience once fully IO'd out they are the most powerful characters in the PvE game.

There is very little that can bother me and I routinely go off and herd groups solo in 8 man missions.

Making huge piles of INF is probably not your end goal is it? It is probably get all the expensive IOs that I would love to put into your builds right?

Prior to i18 I would have said that huge piles of inf and all the good IOs are about the same, but with the new tip missions and A merits I think a major shift in the market is happening. Because you can earn 1 LOTG +rech every 2 days for each toon over level 25 for minimal work (20 tips + 2 morality missions) I expect all non PVP and Purple IOs to bottom out at around 30mil or less. (Any farming 50 can make 5-10 mil in 1 hour, so 22 missions would probably average out to 2 hours and add in 10 mil more for the wait time)

Purples and PVP IOs on the other hand are more effiecient to farm for. Which require alot of time before one drops. Which means the good purples stay at the same price they have sold for in the past (100-300mil for the good ones and <30 mil for the less needed ones). PVPIOs are always going to be off the chart because of the super low drop rate, and low PVP attendance.

So you have some choices:
Step one: What do you want?
If you want purples and or PVP ios... you have to have huge piles of inf.
If you can get by with only cheap purples and lots of regular IOs you can get A merits at -1/1 instead of needing huge piles of inf. Run 5 tips on each toon every day, given enough time you will have more LOTG +rech than you know what to do with.

Step 2 If you want the money you can...
Market/Farm/Craft hybrid (best of all worlds)
Run AE missions for tickets and bronze roll. Craft the good stuff, delete or vendor the junk. Probably not gonna get impacted by the new A merits.
Market Arbitrage only:
High risk , low playing effort. With all the changes you probably dont want to do this.
Farm only:
Get a good farm mission map, run it at -1/8 as fast as possible to kill the 6000 mobs or what ever the average is to drop a purple in the shortest amount of time. Be sure to clear 10mil or so per hour in inf alone.
Craft only:
Buy up yellow IOs for cheap and craft them for profit.

If you picked farm or AE farm then you should pick one of your 50s that can handle -1/8 and go to town. Personally I would pick the Bots/Dark. Its probably the one that can do -1/8 without too many expensive IOs. Crabs and forts are great on teams, but I find that on -1/8 its just not as fast as MMs or Brutes.

The balanced method would be to:
Pick your lvl25+ A merit toon. This is the first thing you do every day. 5 tips a day. (Try to find a Tips team to make this more fun)
If you still have more play time for the day...
Pick your 50 farm toon. Set diff to -1/8 and search for "ticket farm" in AE. Max out tickets on one map (probably only need to clear 1/2 the map) 1400 for a huge map (remember that you get 1/2 for mission complete). Roll all your tickets at 30-35 bronze rolls. Delete all the crap and then craft the rest and place them on the market. If you run out of room you can email off to a market only toon.
If you still have more play time...
Pick another A merit toon and do 5 more tips.
More play time?
repeat previous step until you run out of level 25+ toons.
Once you get more LOTG+rech than you can use start selling them on the market until the price drops to 60mil or less.

It's not just what AT/Primary/Secondary you use to farm with, but also what it is you are farming. Matching the right enemy group to farm can help when making a toon you are aiming to farm with. For example with the buff to Fire Armor it's very easy to run the Demon farm mission or in the AE over and over, probably even without IO's. Any AT can farm, some better than others, but even if you only farm a mission once or twice a day, or even just a week, it's worth it.

If your goal is to make money, your key goal is marketing, not killing.

I'd say level the spines/dark scrapper. My main farmer is spines/dark and i totally love that character, i don't think anything can go much faster though elec/shield and fire/kin can probably do a little bit better, it's not significant enough to make up for the fun of it

I don't have a vastly expensive build on my Crab but have been farming +0/x8 quite easily since he hit 50.

A buffer from your second account would probably slow you down as bosses would turn up as bosses rather than lieutenants.

If you can be patient enough. you could make a new toon, and roll a mind/stone/psi Dom like me. I have a strict plan and things will be all to easy, just doing AE and normal Ali mishes, TFs, and what not.

OP said

Wow, lots of replies since last I checked. Thanks for the input folks! Let's see:

I don't mind mixing market farming in (and in fact I plan to do some of that as well), but I don't want the focus to be there just because a) it bores me b) I'm not very good at it yet and c) I have limited capital to invest - I assume that once I hit a billion or so this becomes easier? I realize that I need to do some research into this as well, but if someone has a link to a handy market farming guide I'd appreciate that as well.

I dug around on the brute/scrap/tank forums and didn't see a softcapped elec armor build (or even a 25% one) - it sounds like you guys are pretty familiar with that, so would someone mind posting one for me?

Someone mentioned elec/shield... if that's that much stronger than stone/elec I have one @41 that would do. I enjoy playing him, but he does always feel weak on single target mop-up.