Boku's "El Cheapo" (a-farm-build-for-the-masses)

[Krazie Ivan]

yep, yet another Spine/Fire/Mu Brute Fire-Farmin build thread ...sorry!

there are loads of "top end" builds out there ...for myself, i just didn't see the point in billion+ builds that net 4-4.5min active-farming times when you can clear in well under 5min with this particularly cheap build. most peeps don't have funds for those builds early-on anyway unless you've got a bunch of amazing friends who've been playing a while & will toss inf at you. plus i'm lazy, don't enjoy farming actively, and much prefer gettin stuff done around the house in 15min intervals between mission resets. so, how much?... over the last several months i've done up a few for under 60m (it's slightly more if less patient), and i expect cost to rise some if many people adopt this build, but it's still all very common Enh with a large supply & refresh rates on the market.

my build hits all the necessary markers of softcap Fire Def & hardcap Fire Res, has a good amount of ToHit + Acc for optimal (anti-whiff) efficiency, makes some effort in End Ratio, and has a decent array of Procs to help mitigate the sub-par +Rech. the used attacks (all the AoEs & Cone) are fully built-out & will chain w/o gaps. there's no fat (travel powers, etc) and zero consideration for normal content (no KB protection, etc)... Fire-Farming 100%... a true min/max value build on the cheap.

a few notes:
---right from the start, you can AFK farm +4x8 100% zero issue with H.Flames set auto.
---you'll need Agility Alpha to hit 45% softcap Def.
---you'll need T3 Ageless to cure End issues 100%, & will wheeze till then if active (like all /Fire farmers). after that, you'll never touch Consume again.
---use Assault Core if AFK, Radial if active & at dmg cap.

give back to others in-game, & give credit/thx when you use builds by others... it's only polite. hope you all enjoy it!

[*i said under 5min active-farming, but that's w/o using even a single Insp... i honestly don't know how much faster it could be with combine/use macros, cause i've never tried em. i just don't care that much...rather be speeding a TF or creating a build or working on any one of the million things i need to do around the house. performance does matter to me tho, and i am a curious dude ...so maybe report back here for the giggles of it?]
 

Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer

Click this DataLink to open the build!

 

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Too Boku ; Spine-Fire-Mu (cheap fire farming) - Brute.mxd

[FourSpeed]

You might also want to take a look at the Guide on Fire Farming in my signature for a fully self-funded, lower-end build as well.

 

Cheers,

4

[Krazie Ivan]

On 4/1/2020 at 12:10 PM, FourSpeed said:

take a look at the Guide on Fire Farming in my signature

absolutely - you did a great job on that & i'm sure it's helped people quite a bit.

just to clarify: i added my build to the Fire Farming thread only because i saw the OP actively asking for people to contribute, thought about your thread, & decided not too divert from your strategy by confusing readers with my entirely different one. i see yours as a method to get started & full explanation of farming, all from absolute zero. it does that amazingly well. 👍

this build thread is more about helping someone who already has a good grasp of the game, maybe a bit of inf spread through various alts, but a desire to bring in serious inf for more advanced content char builds. maybe they don't like farming, & maybe they don't want to sink a ton of inf into a char they don't really enjoy (i see those "i want to do content on my farmer" threads constantly, & figure much of it is the perceived hassle of building a separate char that costs a boatload). they can have an optimal build that is capped & AFK-able, with the easiest/cheapest Enh possible, while still being nearly as fast as the 1b+ builds. 

[Digirium]

I read the build, thanks for sharing - some feedback:

• Spines/Fire always a good choice - my preference after that is Pyre Mastery it simplifies the build and does the job
• No Brute ATO procs? I think these are needed to build fury, regen, endurance discount - they certainly help
• Burn is usually the power on auto - If Healing Flames is needed, then something is not right
• Two more slots on any of the powers with Aegis in them and you have 45% fire defence
• The insp macros don't matter for AFK farm on active farms night/day difference
• Global recharge is really low, even a budget build could squeeze in 4xLoTGs

 

I can share an alternative budget build, if you'd like to see (meaning: it has no Winter or Purple sets in it but has other IOs > 2M inf)?

Edited April 10, 2020 by Digirium

[Krazie Ivan]

thx for taking the time Digi, let me see if i can make sense of some of my choices for ya...

--  Fences & Ball are not my fav picks either, esp with how loud Ball can be, but they do more dmg than just Fireball. leaving quite a bit of cheap/effective dmg off the build w/o Mu, and lose a -Res proc for softening. i like Pyronic Judgement for it's instant activation over Ion pause, but it's the go-to. if active, i open with Fences/Ball on 2 adjoining mobs, so Judgement gets a free dmg boost on all of em.
--  a single set of ATOs is more costly than 90% of the total spent on the build, despite the benefits they do offer. luckily with farming solo, building Fury instantly is never an issue.
--  H.Flames set to auto for AFK farming, as you're more likely to end up with 16 bosses on aggro than if farming actively & managing multiple mobs to keep them close, "funneling" them. a few +Regen/+HoT uniques/procs would allow AFK with Burn set auto, but again...they cost quite a bit. it's def worth considering, and i'd like to try building for enough +Regen at some point if i get a bug. to clarify: you do not need H.Flames at all if farming active (after T3 Alpha lvl bump).
--  T3 Alpha slot brings 43.7 Fire Def up to 45.13, but honestly it's so close the +1 lvl bump makes far more difference than Agility. are there 2 slots you'd recommend pulling/moving to add a 4th on Aegis? and what Alpha with +End would you then use instead of Agility for active farming?
--  dunno if i'll bother with macros, but i'm sure i could fill a tray with reds at some point to hit the dmg cap & actively farm to see that difference. it's not that i'm unconvinced, it's more "meh" to my priorities.
--  absolutely, the +Rech is quite low. every adjustment for "squeezing in" good stuff adds up, & suddenly you're not El Cheapo anymore! it's so easy to fall into "just-a-lil-more...", esp for me cause aside from this, i never build with ANY budget in-mind. best or bust.

had to force myself to avoid all the good stuff to keep the costs down... no LotG, no +Def/+Res uniques, no +HP/+End/+Heal/+Regen uniques, no ATO/WO/Purps, none of the best "normal" sets ...the R.Fortunes & Aegis are the splurge at just under 2m/ea, lol. logging-in to check sets i thought were cheap, only to realize unexpected popularity & high costs on the AH, was deflating. hitting caps w/o the build-staples wasn't easy, and doing it for so lil inf was a challenge (but fun to me). love lookin at other's builds to find moments of genius, and it'd be fine to share on this thread if ya like. 😊

the thing i had to continually ask myself was, "will spending X% more, make this X% faster?" ...usually it was "nope". double-proc'g Burn was a "yep", for example.

[Digirium]

Alright, rebuttal:

• Looking at the stats in Mids (they might be wrong) to calculate DPCC (damage per cast cycle) I'm coming up with 1.57 for Electric Fences and 1.84 for Ball Lightning. Fire Ball comes up as 6.72. It appears FB out does EF+BL combined. They both appear to have very long cast cycles compared with FB.
• A single proc from each ATO set is what I am talking about, not the whole set. Five IOs from Multi-Strike or Scirocco's Dervish + Brute ATO proc. For 8M + catalysts gain an 18-19% endurance discount, fury and health regen. It's a part of the reason Healing Flames never needs to be used - health bar is on fast enough regen not to worry any more.
• If I AFK farmed a map with Elite Bosses they would all be defeated - I would not return to find my character surrounded by the undefeated because Burn is firing. In your case, the regen on the NPCs is greater than your damage output ever is because your build does not survive without HF.
• Take all the slots out of Healing Flames and you'd have two slots for the extra Aegis and meet the 45% fire defence soft cap.

Bottom line is, you compromised too far on not fitting IOs that cost less than the influence from one room in a farm e.g.

• Panacea: + Hit Points/Endurance
• Power Transfer: Chance to Self Heal
• Miralce: +Recovery
• Numina's Convalesence: +Regeneration/+Recovery

With Healing Flames not slotted at all, you have the slots for Health and Stamina to make your build survivable without Healing Flames. With the confidence to commit to this, Healing Flames might be needed (with 1-slot containing a health IO) rarely until Alpha is level shifted and/or enough rooms have been cleared to afford the IOs listed above.

 

And that's still a cheap build compared with the maximum farmer build (several hundred million more) for 70-80% of the clearance speed.

[Outrider_01]

To many slots in defense toggles doing nothing but making them recharge faster and reducing the endurance toggle by .11 endurance combined.  It is dirt cheap, but you can drop 2 slots in both weave/manuevers with spending inf for the +3 defense resist Steadfast/Gladiators you can easily tweak around the 4 slots you don't need from the Red fortune giving you 2 slots to move to resist toggles (you loose 10% recharge though) and probably come out ahead with 2 freebie + a couple more tweaking it again.  Not a huge more expensive, you could probably invest a 100m or less easily to improve it.

[macskull]

16 hours ago, Digirium said:

• Looking at the stats in Mids (they might be wrong) to calculate DPCC (damage per cast cycle) I'm coming up with 1.57 for Electric Fences and 1.84 for Ball Lightning. Fire Ball comes up as 6.72. It appears FB out does EF+BL combined. They both appear to have very long cast cycles compared with FB.

You're looking at the DPCC for Fire Blast. Fireball's is lower than Elec Fences.

[Digirium]

5 hours ago, macskull said:

You're looking at the DPCC for Fire Blast. Fireball's is lower than Elec Fences.

Yes and no. I was looking at Fire Blast, Fire Ball is 2.41 which is still greater than either Electric Fences (1.57) or Ball Lightning (1.84).

[Troo]

Spoiler

 

This is great and what I wish we would see more of.  It is a excellent starting point someone could then make adjustments to.

 

I'm gonna take it a play around a little with the slotting.

 

It is hard to not right away think, "oh I'll swap one of the pool defenses for the two 3% uniques and free up some slots and a power." I get that that was what you are trying to avoid and it is impressive what you were able to put together without high cost items.

[macskull]

16 hours ago, Digirium said:

Yes and no. I was looking at Fire Blast, Fire Ball is 2.41 which is still greater than either Electric Fences (1.57) or Ball Lightning (1.84).

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from - Elec Fences is 1.58, Ball Lightning is 1.27, and Fireball is 1.38. So yes, Fireball is marginally better than Ball Lightning but Elec Fences is better than either and the combination of Elec Fences and Ball Lightning is far superior to Fireball plus with Mu Mastery it's two picks for two AoEs versus three picks for one AoE to get Fireball.

[Outrider_01]

You don't need Mu sets, I just rolled my first Spines after Super Strength.  I can't even fit Fence or Ball into the attack rotation, primary attacks and burn recharge so fast or the auras ticking off.  Just something to consider, will being looking at something else when I get around to respecing out of Mu.

Edited April 13, 2020 by Outrider_01

[Digirium]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from - Elec Fences is 1.58, Ball Lightning is 1.27, and Fireball is 1.38. So yes, Fireball is marginally better than Ball Lightning but Elec Fences is better than either and the combination of Elec Fences and Ball Lightning is far superior to Fireball plus with Mu Mastery it's two picks for two AoEs versus three picks for one AoE to get Fireball.

As said above - Mids. Did you get the numbers from in game? DPCC = (total damage) / (recharge + cast). Neither epic pool matters in an AFK farm except for the set bonuses and it sometimes works out better having the variety in that respect Pyre over Mu. With higher global recharge it feels one extra AoE is better than two in the attack chain - two of them work better in low recharge.

[macskull]

1 minute ago, Digirium said:

As said above - Mids. Did you get the numbers from in game? DPCC = (total damage) / (recharge + cast). Neither epic pool matters in an AFK farm except for the set bonuses and it sometimes works out better having the variety in that respect Pyre over Mu. With higher global recharge it feels one extra AoE is better than two in the attack chain - two of them work better in low recharge.

I also got my numbers from Mids (2.6.0.7). Regardless... if you're chasing specific set bonuses TAoE does pretty well with a hefty 3.13% F/C defense for 6-slotting Annihilation (plus the -res procs are huge for farming). If you're primarily AFKing of course none of this matters but in an active scenario more AoE is never a bad thing especially if they put out decent damage with respect to their cast times. On my Rad/Fire my chain is Atom Smasher -> Elec Fences -> Ball Lightning -> Burn -> repeat with no downtime and between that and my damage auras I have no problem taking anything down. On a Spines/Fire less recharge means you have to start using Spine Burst more often which has a pretty crappy cast time.

[Digirium]

2 hours ago, macskull said:

I also got my numbers from Mids (2.6.0.7). Regardless... if you're chasing specific set bonuses TAoE does pretty well with a hefty 3.13% F/C defense for 6-slotting Annihilation (plus the -res procs are huge for farming). If you're primarily AFKing of course none of this matters but in an active scenario more AoE is never a bad thing especially if they put out decent damage with respect to their cast times. On my Rad/Fire my chain is Atom Smasher -> Elec Fences -> Ball Lightning -> Burn -> repeat with no downtime and between that and my damage auras I have no problem taking anything down. On a Spines/Fire less recharge means you have to start using Spine Burst more often which has a pretty crappy cast time.

Yes I was not looking at it right in Mids for Fire Ball ... sigh, again. The numbers and operands are so tiny on a 4K screen and I can't see them well. Concur, 1.3845. I guess for doing the patron arc the reward is slightly better powers than the standard epics. My farming builds might get a small rethink now. Spine Burst seems ok to me with DPCC = 2.494 (if I read the numbers right!).

[macskull]

7 hours ago, Digirium said:

Yes I was not looking at it right in Mids for Fire Ball ... sigh, again. The numbers and operands are so tiny on a 4K screen and I can't see them well. Concur, 1.3845. I guess for doing the patron arc the reward is slightly better powers than the standard epics. My farming builds might get a small rethink now. Spine Burst seems ok to me with DPCC = 2.494 (if I read the numbers right!).

Patron arcs are easy - BS's takes 30 minutes tops. Autocomplete the defeat-all, bring along a different character to actually run the missions, or find a friend who is about to complete the last mission since all you actually need is the badge.

 

More on-topic though: Damage per cast cycle isn't the be-all-end-all for farming. You also have to take into account cast time so while Spine Burst looks good on paper its activation time is 3 seconds which is a long time where you could be doing something else.

[Krazie Ivan]

On 4/11/2020 at 5:45 AM, Digirium said:

• Looking at the stats in Mids (they might be wrong) to calculate DPCC (damage per cast cycle) I'm coming up with 1.57 for Electric Fences and 1.84 for Ball Lightning. Fire Ball comes up as 6.72. It appears FB out does EF+BL combined. They both appear to have very long cast cycles compared with FB.

On 4/12/2020 at 8:10 PM, macskull said:

Elec Fences is 1.58, Ball Lightning is 1.27, and Fireball is 1.38 ... Damage per cast cycle isn't the be-all-end-all for farming. You also have to take into account cast time

thx @macskull for addressing this. Mu it is.

On 4/11/2020 at 5:45 AM, Digirium said:

• A single proc from each ATO set... ...18-19% endurance discount, fury and health regen. It's a part of the reason Healing Flames never needs to be used - health bar is on fast enough regen not to worry any more.

On 4/11/2020 at 5:45 AM, Digirium said:

• Take all the slots out of Healing Flames and you'd have two slots for the extra Aegis and meet the 45% fire defence soft cap. 
• Panacea: + Hit Points/Endurance
• Power Transfer: Chance to Self Heal
• Miralce: +Recovery
• Numina's Convalesence: +Regeneration/+Recovery

(ATOs)... 8m + 8m + 2m + 2m  = 33% of my total build cost for 2 Enh, which don't alter Active times. (Heal/End Uniques)... 10m + 2m + 4m + 3m = an additional 30% of my build's total cost again ...all $39m of which would cut down on AFK times for sure, but then we're not looking at a really cheap build anymore. hard to judge what % of time gained AFK when much of it depends on mob movement, but likely worth it if you're constantly eyeballing your farm on a 2nd monitor while working on the other monitor. 

On 4/11/2020 at 5:45 AM, Digirium said:

...a map with Elite Bosses...

you could be right...i've not tested my build AFK vs EBs (have you? cause you definitively say it can't out-dmg their regen)... but EBs are worse XP/Inf per hr anyway, no? and not the farm/scenario this build is for, as all i've mentioned is 5min runs (asteroid, obviously not carnival or atta cave).

 

[Krazie Ivan]

On 4/11/2020 at 11:34 AM, Outrider_01 said:

*moves stuff around & swaps things* ... you could probably invest a 100m or less easily to improve it.

so, i ran through all your changes on Mids/Pine and tried to make the best use of extra slots as i could. unfortunately, although the Def/Res stats did stay capped with fewer slots... the cost went up considerably, the +Rech dropped, the End Ratio got worse, and nothing increased AFK or Active kill-speed. spent more to do the same, effectively.
thx for the ideas & taking the time to check it out tho, Outrider.

[Krazie Ivan]

On 4/12/2020 at 9:26 AM, Troo said:

This is great and what I wish we would see more of.  It is a excellent starting point someone could then make adjustments to.

 

I'm gonna take it a play around a little with the slotting.

 

It is hard to not right away think, "oh I'll swap one of the pool defenses for the two 3% uniques and free up some slots and a power." I get that that was what you are trying to avoid and it is impressive what you were able to put together without high cost items.

thx Troo. if you find some good improvements through playing around, i'd love to learn from it. was def hard to limit myself to such an absurd cost, when i never limit my builds or work on builds people post here who have inf constraints... whole new world for me in that way.

[Gunzwei]

Been using this for a week or two in addition to a cheapo fire/rad. Great build.

Edited April 15, 2021 by Gunzwei

[Krazie Ivan]

On 4/14/2021 at 7:21 PM, Gunzwei said:

Been using this for a week or two in addition to a cheapo fire/rad. Great build.

right-on, man. appreciate the feedback.
🙂
 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Krazie Ivan