Itty bitty farming question

Hi guys
Over 6 years playing and never had a tank past lvl 30 till now , usually prefer the Defender/Controller AT's

I have a Fire/Fire tank at 39 just now and while i don't feel comfortable in my Tanking ability in teams i do like this one solo so far.

I'm not a big one for IO sets i usually use SO's till 50 then roll a new toon but i am keen on trying this farming malarky and see if i can build up enough inf to get into the crafting aspect of the game.

I have around 600 mill i can spend and wondering could someone suggest a build that would make a acceptable farming toon for just myself. I've no experience with Tank sets and sets that would best to use.

I've checked a lot of threads and of course depending on play styles a lot of different opinions on the go as to what IO sets are best to use and most seem to involve obsene amounts of inf i just don't have. I guess i want to sacrifice some Def/Res for damage if i want to kill a lot as quickly as poss? but of course surviving the mobs would help in the long run.
Showing my ignorance of the Fire /fire sets i don't have Burn at the moment as i thought that chased the mobs away , seems that has been reversed in an update?
I think my build as it stands probably sucks but i have loads of Vet respecs available so can respec to my hearts content with your advice


I'll probably get told 600 mill is not enough and that's fair enough , that being the case i'll just continue with my SO's and hope for the best

600 million should be able to get you a decent build, depending on the sets. That being said, using merits can go a long way to saving you some cash, if you can use them to get some of the more expensive IOs.

That being said, for farming (I'm assuming solo farming?), I'd say any primary would work except for Stone. Stone is great for survivability, but gives you a few penalties that will hurt your farming ability.

That being said, here are a few of the better farming options:

Fire/SS: Once you start slotting for some +Def set bonuses, this can really take off. The combination of Rage and a Primary that is focused more on damage than survival, and you get a great pairing for farming. Your basic strategy will be to kill things before they can even hurt you. Healing Flames should keep you topped off for health, and if you need to, Consume can refill your endurance. /SS isn't so great on AoE damage by itself (although Foot Stomp + Rage is nasty), which Fire/ helps to make up for.

Fire/Elec, Fire/Fire or Fire/KM: Same as above, except you lose Rage. However, you gain some more AoE ability, which can help if you've got a lot of minions/lieutenants around.

Shield/SS, /Elec, /Fire, or /KM: You can probably see a trend in the secondaries, here. Shield is a good farming set because it gives you protection to mostly every attack in the game with its positional defenses. Also, the aggro aura, Against All Odds, will boost your damage for each foe in melee range (which, if you're farming, will be a lot). This can help out the damage for your secondary's AoE powers. Shield/Elec also gives you two teleport attacks, which is just fun.


I would say start with one of those, but I'm sure you'll get other opinions (insert call for Dechs and his recommendation for a Dark Armor Tanker here). I'd say there's only a few sets that you need to stay away from if you're going a farming route:

1) Energy Melee: too focused on single-target damage, with a weak AoE attack.

2) Stone Armor: Rooted will slow you down going from spawn to spawn. Weaker defenses until you get to Granite, but Granite gives you -Recharge and -Damage, which isn't that helpful if you're farming.

3) Stone Melee: great single-target damage and mitigation, but again, a little weak on the AoE.


Everything else should be able to farm decently, but I think the ones I highlighted above are ahead of the curve.

Fire or Shield primary, Fire or SS secondary. Elec is also okay for conventional map farming, not as good for AE farming. KM is pretty mediocre for farming because Burst has a slow animation and a small radius. Combustion has a longer animation but wider radius and you get access to FSC.

If you've got the Fire/Fire at 39 I'd stick with that. As Aett said you can get some decent sets for your money and earn the big ticket stuff with merits (alignment or normal).

I don't have Mids' available at the moment, but what you want can be built pretty easily.

The secret is that you can face mobs in AE or in some missions that do either smashing and lethal damage or pure fire damage, or both, and you can get 70% smashing and lethal resistance and 90% fire resistance, and your excellent self-heal can generally keep up with the s/l damage (you won't even need it for the fire damage). So it's not strictly necessary to have defense if you're picking your battles.

You'll want to get and 4-slot Tough and Weave, take Combat Jumping, grab at least one -knockback IO (in a pinch, these can be gambled with Architect tickets, choose the 10-14 range Bronze rolls), and probably go with Pyre Mastery for Fireball. And for God's sake take Burn.

Grab Hasten too. You'll have a sort-of chain of Fire Sword Circle, Combustion, Burn, and Fireball (along with your Blazing Aura toggle) that will melt away those unsightly mobs in minutes a day! When things are recharging, you can throw in Sands of Mu if you've got it, or pound the bosses and LTs with your single-target attacks.

If you want sets, Smashing Haymaker in your attacks is vastly cheaper than the high-end Kinetic Combat set, and fill in the last 2 slots with other multi-aspect set IOs to get better enhancement values. Consider six-slotting Taunt with either Perfect Zinger or Mocking Beratement.

Then I'd mostly just cheaply frankenslot the rest of the build (including Healing Flames; some heal/recharge and heal/recharge/endurance pieces may be pricey, but shop around for odd levels of them, as HF will benefit nicely from good frankenslotting).

Pay attention to your life and use Healing Flames liberally, drop Burn liberally, collect phat lewtz.

edit: don't forget to change your diff to x1 for tip missions and run those for alignment merits as often as you can, then switch back to +0x8 for the bulk farming.

Cheers guys , much appreciated. I will stick with the Fire/Fire and do a quick respec tonight and see what IO's are up for sale.

I like the sound of Frankenslotting Healing Flames so thanks for that Sailboat

At level 50, for finished builds, lots of people like to 5-slot level 50 Doctored Wounds pieces, which will get you allllmost-capped healing and recharge values (assuming you count the 5% global recharge bonus) while also leaving that 5% global recharge bonus available for all your OTHER powers. That's very sound slotting -- assuming you're 47+ and you have lots of money.

For now, you can get the same enhancement values for frankenslotting 5 carefully-chosen dual and triple pieces in the mid-30s level range. It'll be much cheaper, although still cost some millions, and you won't get that 5% global recharge bonus.

Furthermore, it will use the same number of slots (5), which not only saves you a slot now, if you get more money, at 50 you could just dump in the expensive level 50 DW sets right over the frankenslotted stuff without worrying about losing expensive IOs or needing to respec. So you can have the best of both worlds.