Optimal mission level for Purple Drops

I was wondering how much of an impact mission level had on purple drops. I am working on completing my SS/FA Brute and I am looking for Armageddon drops. My favorite board to clear when I want to burn mobs to the ground is the axis america mission from Unai Keman. I can solo it all the way up to +4/8 (no bosses) and still get it cleared relatively quickly. Should I keep the level at 4/8 (no bosses) or would a drop to 2/8 (bosses) for a speed increase be more helpful. Thanks for the feedback.

I have been playing a while, coming up on my 42 month vet badge. Maybe 25% of that time has been in 50th level stuff. I alt a lot. I have gotten maybe 2-3 purp recipes in that time. It is seriously stupid how little these things drop, and how much they are on the BM. I do not even want to start with PvP recipes. i just wrote a new build for my main over the weekend, logged in to the BM, and realized it would cost about 10 billion to make it happen. seriously, 10 billion MORE. This on top of the few billion I already have invested in this one character. The devs need to figure out how to solve this, or they are seriously gonna lose gamers. No one wants to play a game so obviously rigged to favor one particular type of player.

But to this point, you don't need any of it to play the game start to finish. Sure, you can't solo TF's without a tricked out build, but that's not really part of the design intent. SOs are fine for just about anything you want to do within reason.

Soloing AVs and TFs, while fun are not necessarily what the devs think of by completing content

You shouldn't ever solo +4 spawns, it's just not optimal. As far as purple drops go, your only concern is to kill as many enemies as you can as quickly as you can. So, for that I set my difficulty to 0/x8 with no bosses.

No joke, I've gotten most of my purples running up and down the area in front of Portal Corp killing the CoT and the possessed scientists.

Recently I just started solo-farmin a little bit with my Elec/Elec/Mu Brute on the Banished Pantheon Glowie Map in Dark Astoria and I was wondering the same thing too
I started doing it at -1 x8 and rarely got anything dropped of significance.
Then at +0 x8 I started seeing a little better results with drops. (Heck..... can't remember the last time I got a purple or something like that in a long time)
But yeah... I was wondering if there were "optimal" settings for the best drops possible myself

With hero merits it becomes kind of moot I think. I'm just doing endless Hero Merit loops, picking up prime recipes every 2 or 4 days (some cost 1 hero merit, others 2). If I still have time to kill after hitting the daily alignment mission cap I either do something to earn normal merits (ouro is good for this, or a fast TF) or log a different character for a while.

I tend to buy the recipes that only require 125 normal merits or so with normal merits and the more unreasonable expenditures I get with hero merits. If I need some fillers to complete a set and they are cheap on the market, I'll pick them up with influence.

I'm most of the way thru a very expensive build doing this. Other than the monotony of doing the same missions over and over its painless.

Also consider that you get a range of levels rather than all mobs being the exact same level

For whatever reasons, lvl 47,48,&49 recipes can sell for significantly less than lvl 50 ones. So, upping the lvl to +1 or +2 can increase your income from non-purple drops. The main question being if the extra time needed to defeat the same number of enemies is worth the extra income. I expect that varies by toon

If you are only shooting for purple drops then -1x8 with bosses. If you care about selling other recipies that drop for more than vendor fodder then +0x8 with bosses.

Anyone know if bosses have an increased drop rate for better recipes?