As Seraphim quoted you have to be on guard and aware that some of the older AE fire farms have a defense debuff with fire swords. I personally experienced this myself and learned very quickly to avoid them. I just power leveled my first rad/fire brute and you are correct, that your head will spin with all the guides. I finally took Briggs fire farmer he has on you tube and I tweaked a few things with it and it worked out great. First and foremost you need to get those wintersets on the AH, because they will give you a 5% fire and cold resist, that is the superior sets. You have ranged, melee, melee AOE, ranged AOE, and hold winter sets and I advise you to build your farmer around those sets. That is what I did and I took the fire mastery epic for the range, Hold, and ranged AOE. That alone is worth 25% fire defense which according to your numbers will put you over the defense soft cap. I run a total of 58% fire defense and some may say that's a waste, but to me it certainly is not at all. I do not have to eat inspiration of any sort with this farmer. I will suggest to start at a lower setting and work your way up when you get those sets and the difference is night and day. They are expensive 20-25 million a pop, but its already paid off 3 fold lol. If I can help in any way else let me know.