Rad rad brute farmer

[Frosty15]

How is rad rad brute for +4×8 farming? Does it compare to /fire brutes?

[Frosty15]

Im researching and it seems rad/fire is the top farmer

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Frosty15 said:

Im researching and it seems rad/fire is the top farmer

It isn't.

 

It's important to qualify if you mean ACTIVE FARMING (when you stay behind the wheel and activate powers/clicky defenses) or PASSIVE "AFK" FARMING (when you just enter the mission, stick one PBAoE attack on autofire + then come back 5-10mins later)?

Those two goals each need very different types of builds to be effective.

Active farmers don't need much regeneration and can get away with uncapped defense/resistance; because you'll be there to pop inspirations. They also often don't bother with multiple damage auras; but they do want lots of AoE powers; all crammed full of -res and damage procs.
Passive farmers absolutely require 90% Resistance and 45% Defense and >35 HP/Sec regeneration. And they'll generally want two damage auras and one decent high-radius and high-target-cap PBAoE that can be procbombed and set to Autofire. After that it's a case of cramming in as much global +Damage and +Recharge as you can.

Depending on what form of farming you're after (Active or Passive) Brute killspeed may not be too far off that of a Tanker. But only a few Brute setups can actually survive Passive Farming on +4x8 nowadays without making large build concessions (in terms of trading damage output for survivability)... it's basically a shortlist of one secondary: non-Granite /Stone. Stone Armor Brutes also have a major advantage over Stone Armor Tankers as the additional "damage procs" granted via Brimstone Armor benefit from Fury.
 

Edited Monday at 05:05 PM by Maelwys

[evetsleep]

13 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

It isn't.

 

It's important to qualify if you mean ACTIVE FARMING (when you stay behind the wheel and activate powers/clicky defenses) or PASSIVE "AFK" FARMING (when you just enter the mission, stick one PBAoE attack on autofire + then come back 5-10mins later)?

Those two goals each need very different types of builds to be effective.

Active farmers don't need much regeneration and can get away with uncapped defense/resistance; because you'll be there to pop inspirations. They also often don't bother with multiple damage auras; but they do want lots of AoE powers; all crammed full of -res and damage procs.
Passive farmers absolutely require 90% Resistance and 45% Defense and >35 HP/Sec regeneration. And they'll generally want two damage auras and one decent high-radius and high-target-cap PBAoE that can be procbombed and set to Autofire. After that it's a case of cramming in as much global +Damage and +Recharge as you can.

Depending on what form of farming you're after (Active or Passive) Brute killspeed may not be too far off that of a Tanker. But only a few Brute setups can actually survive Passive Farming on +4x8 nowadays without making large build concessions (in terms of trading damage output for survivability)... it's basically a shortlist of one secondary: non-Granite /Stone. Stone Armor Brutes also have a major advantage over Stone Armor Tankers as the additional "damage procs" granted via Brimstone Armor benefit from Fury.
 

I do fairly decent with my active claws/fire brute (think my old-school rad/fire probably does better, but that's a specialized build) when I feel like farming, but I pine for the day when I make a claws/stone brute.  It'll probably never happen, but super jealous of scrappers/stalkers that they can make one.

 

 

 

[Camel]

Everything Maelwys said. However, one thing I might add is that you can make a hybrid build that can cover both active and AFK farming builds if you are using 2-3 farmers. I have 3 that I currently AFK farm with, a Spines/Fire Brute, Rad/Fire Brute and a Fire/Rad Tanker. 
 

I focused on a mix of procs, recharge and fire defense. They all run Maneuvers and Tactics, which completely shores up my accuracy and defense needs. When all 3 are in an AFK farm, nothing can kill them, and when in an active farm, nothing can kill them. I do the 10 minute AFK farm and the map is clear in 7 minutes. I only stand in the middle of the map with Healing Flames set to auto and two farmers set to follow on my “lead farmer”. I’ve  done over 100 runs and none of them have died.

Edited Thursday at 04:56 AM by Camel

[Maelwys]

The thing about using multiple accounts for farming is that for "maximum efficiency" it's best to throw two independent AFK farming toons into separate 10min AFK asteroid maps whilst you simultaneously active farm with a third toon. That way the three toons are not having to split the gains and you have much better chances for decent recipe and salvage drops; and your average inf/hour skyrockets.

 

However if you're after safety (or amusement!) over speed then by all means combo whatever toons you want together. Even a few VEATs and/or Masterminds can layer up and obliterate a single farming map together pretty quickly in complete safety if that's what you're into ( @Neiska 's thread below is a good read, although these days the introduction of Marine Affinity has shifted MM powerset rankings around a bit!)

 

 

And obviously the disclaimer applies about only using multiple accounts on servers that are not under heavy load 😉

[Camel]

I'm not the biggest fan of using multi-builds so I typically go for a hybrid build. Even my Tank farmer struggles to AFK farm against +4s without Healing Flames set to auto. It also doesn't have accolades and I typically don't spend inf on the Survival Amplifier. Can it do it? Yes.. but even then, it can't clear the 10 minute asteroid farm in less than 10 minutes solo.. Which irks me lol.

So, my compromise was to make a hybrid build that can survive with at least one other AFK farmer and get pretty respectable clear times while driving them. So I typically have an AFK duo and an active farmer going but then I get lonely and inevitably open my farms up or join someone else's. It's pretty fun for me to be triple boxing and grabbing aggro in someone else's farm. I was on a team the other night and we cleared the carnie map in 11 minutes with only two other farmers and their door sitters. Chaos for sure.

Anyways, here's one of my hybrid farm builds. It's not the best at anything but it can drive pretty well. I'm never lacking for AoE and the FF +recharge is practically permanent. The AoE chain is interesting, I'll pick and choose when to use Spine Burst or Throw Spines, typically opting to use Throw Spines when I can be lazy with lining up my cone attacks. Ripper, Burn and Fireball take priority though.

Generic Farmer (Spines - Fiery Aura).mbd

[Maelwys]

Yeah the changes to how enemies beyond your aggro limit behave (e.g. start shooting at you rather than just standing there oblivious) really ramped up the amount of incoming damage that a solo AE farmer has to mitigate. The resulting minimum ~35 HP/Sec regeneration requirement on top of 90% Resists and softcapped Defense cripples most non-tanker AFK-farming builds (and it's really a bare minimum - my Stone Armor Brute still faceplants occasionally with 40 HP/Sec regeneration + 5x Power Transfer/Panacea Procs!)

I'm actually also not a big fan of using builds that are "fully optimized" for AFK farming. Assuming that a character is always going to be sitting in a +4x8 Fire Farm (for example) does let you build some very niche and powerful setups; but the result tends to be largely useless at running regular content. And whilst keeping a dedicated alternative build to swap to just for AE farming is also possible... to me that feels a bit too much like cheating and it's also quite jarringly immersion breaking. So personally I'd much rather have a "Hybrid" build (in this case meaning a build that can solo AFK AE farm and also run regular content) that is a smidge slower than a fully optimized setup; but can still whomp its way through a 10-minute Asteroid Farm at a decent rate of knots.
"Active" Farmers have it a bit easier; as all they really care about is maximum AoE damage + they can go a lot lighter on the passive-mitigation side. Many Active Farming builds do pretty decently in regular "kill most" PVE teams.

Aside from the obvious glut of Tankers; I currently have two Brutes that I still enjoy farming on (the aforementioned AFK-farming RadM/Stone; plus an Active-Farming BA/Fire) and occasionally I'll break out silly setups like Masterminds or Crabberminds or Dominators or even an EM/RadArmor Scrapper (which is capable of Active Farming at a decent pace as well as being one of my favourite all-rounder melee toons!). 
 

Edited Thursday at 12:46 PM by Maelwys

[Maelwys]

4 hours ago, Camel said:

Anyways, here's one of my hybrid farm builds. It's not the best at anything but it can drive pretty well. I'm never lacking for AoE and the FF +recharge is practically permanent. The AoE chain is interesting, I'll pick and choose when to use Spine Burst or Throw Spines, typically opting to use Throw Spines when I can be lazy with lining up my cone attacks. Ripper, Burn and Fireball take priority though.

Generic Farmer (Spines - Fiery Aura).mbd 42.77 kB · 1 download

I can't see a FF rech; but I assume it's slotted in Ripper? 

Should be perfectly fine for most PVE content and Active Farming (if a bit on the slower side with Burn's small Target Cap and Spine Burst and Ripper's comparatively low DPA!). Fireball and Melt Armor will be pulling a lot of weight.

For AFK farming; being ~7.5% short of the F/C defense softcap is probably what's hurting you the most there so I can see why you'd want to team it up with something else (even if it's just for an additional copy or two of Maneuvers etc.) but passive Health Regeneration is a bit low too unless you're behind the wheel to push the buttons for Consume and Healing Flames (with Consume up its MaxHP becomes 2530 which in turn raises its' passive regen to a smidge over 32 HP/Sec).

- - - - - - - - - -

Here's a setup that performs similarly but was constructed a bit different:
Brute - Battle Axe - Fiery Aura (+Recovery).mbd





This one's built for Softcapped Melee Defense + hardcapped S/L resists and spammable AoE. A FF proc in Axe Cyclone (which draws things into range of Burn + Pendulum + Blazing Aura) keeps things ticking along; with Cleave and Swoop there to tag runners and whittle down EBs a bit quicker. However unlike the above build their Epic pool choices aren't adding any extra AoE damage but instead survivability and sustain (whilst consuming no additional enhancement slots). With Consume up its MaxHP becomes 2209; which raises its Passive Regeneration to a bit over 27 HP/Sec and the three Power Transfer IOs bring it up to about ~38.5 before Panacea procs. Their high net recovery plus Consume also allows them to cycle Barrier or Rebirth instead of Ageless (even as a BattleAxe) which increases that sustain even more and helps counteract their lack of DDR when PVE-ing.

The result can run and Tank regular PvE content and "Active" AE farm just fine - they're tough enough to survive unaided in the bulk of content and they're very quick (although not quite as quick as an optimized Tanker) at whittling down hordes of mooks whilst also performing decently versus AVs and Pylons. However their focus on MELEE POSITIONAL defense rather than Fire or S/L Typed Defense means that whilst they perform better against a variety of enemy types, they also take substantially more damage from ranged attacks and AoEs. So AFK farming with them becomes very tricky because any enemies beyond the regular aggro cap start ranged attacking them; which hurts more. They can technically just about AFK farm on S/L-damage AE maps; but not on Fire-damage ones.

- - - - - - - - - -

And because I'm on a roll and it's relevant to the discussion... here's my "PVE/AFK farming Hybrid" RadM/Stone Brute:
Brute - Rad Melee - Stone Armor (Fold Space).mbd





Note that "Atom Smasher" (which gets set to Auto on AFK maps) is not fully procbombed; and there are power choices that are "useless" for AFK farming (such as taking additional attacks and Fold Space instead of the Leadership Pool)... however the result has Softcapped S/L/E/N defense and a decent chunk of S/L resistance, rather than purely being focused on mitigating Fire damage. And the superfluous attacks combine to make a seamless attack chain (with substantial AoE) with Fold Space to bunch stuff up plus Taunt and a few ranged attacks to tag runners.

I couldn't quite fit Hasten into the build; although this is one of the few toons where I can headcanon the character having an alternative power setup (in their case a "max mitigation" Granite Armor build) which takes Hasten and a substantially different set of attacks and can incidentally also AFK-farm - albeit at a substantially slower rate! 
Brute - Rad Melee - Stone Armor (Ejected).mbd





(Admittedly these numbers are inflated due to Unleashed Potential and Earth's Embrace both running! Without Unleashed Potential their typed defenses sits at 45.2%; and their Regeneration will be ~59.4 HP/Sec with Earth's Embrace active and ~42 HP/Sec without; which is still plenty for AFK-farming. Also in this 'form' the toon purposely avoids taking Power Transfer or Panacea procs for thematic reasons - otherwise Health and Stamina would have a few slots shuffled around...)

So yeah, there are lots of methods + it all really depends on what you want from your toon and if you're comfortable having multiple hyper-specialized builds.
That said; whenever someone asks for "the best farmer" I'll generally assume they're talking about "the fastest/most efficient inf-earner"; beit Passive or Active.

(And it goes without saying that the quickest way to earn influence is to just play the market; and maybe farm a bit between sales...) 😛
 

Edited Thursday at 02:47 PM by Maelwys

[WuTang]

Mind if I hop in here and throw in my limited experience advice... OK cool thanks!

 

For active farming I prefer S/L farms. This way the toon isn't just pigeonholed as an AE farmer but can still be good or even great at general content. Mine is a Brute Rad/Fire/Fire and I can take him right out of a farm and into a Tinpex or ITF and even exempts as far down as Synapse very well. And I bet a Tanker could even be better.

[Camel]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

I can't see a FF rech; but I assume it's slotted in Ripper? 

Should be perfectly fine for most PVE content and Active Farming (if a bit on the slower side with Burn's small Target Cap and Spine Burst and Ripper's comparatively low DPA!). Fireball and Melt Armor will be pulling a lot of weight.

For AFK farming; being ~7.5% short of the F/C defense softcap is probably what's hurting you the most there so I can see why you'd want to team it up with something else (even if it's just for an additional copy or two of Maneuvers etc.) but passive Health Regeneration is a bit low too unless you're behind the wheel to push the buttons for Consume and Healing Flames (with Consume up its MaxHP becomes 2530 which in turn raises its' passive regen to a smidge over 32 HP/Sec).

- - - - - - - - - -

Here's a setup that performs similarly but was constructed a bit different:
Brute - Battle Axe - Fiery Aura (+Recovery).mbd





This one's built for Softcapped Melee Defense + hardcapped S/L resists and spammable AoE. A FF proc in Axe Cyclone (which draws things into range of Burn + Pendulum + Blazing Aura) keeps things ticking along; with Cleave and Swoop there to tag runners and whittle down EBs a bit quicker. However unlike the above build their Epic pool choices aren't adding any extra AoE damage but instead survivability and sustain (whilst consuming no additional enhancement slots). With Consume up its MaxHP becomes 2209; which raises its Passive Regeneration to a bit over 27 HP/Sec and the three Power Transfer IOs bring it up to about ~38.5 before Panacea procs. Their high net recovery plus Consume also allows them to cycle Barrier or Rebirth instead of Ageless (even as a BattleAxe) which increases that sustain even more and helps counteract their lack of DDR when PVE-ing.

The result can run and Tank regular PvE content and "Active" AE farm just fine - they're tough enough to survive unaided in the bulk of content and they're very quick (although not quite as quick as an optimized Tanker) at whittling down hordes of mooks whilst also performing decently versus AVs and Pylons. However their focus on MELEE POSITIONAL defense rather than Fire or S/L Typed Defense means that whilst they perform better against a variety of enemy types, they also take substantially more damage from ranged attacks and AoEs. So AFK farming with them becomes very tricky because any enemies beyond the regular aggro cap start ranged attacking them; which hurts more. They can technically just about AFK farm on S/L-damage AE maps; but not on Fire-damage ones.

- - - - - - - - - -

And because I'm on a roll and it's relevant to the discussion... here's my "PVE/AFK farming Hybrid" RadM/Stone Brute:
Brute - Rad Melee - Stone Armor (Fold Space).mbd





Note that "Atom Smasher" (which gets set to Auto on AFK maps) is not fully procbombed; and there are power choices that are "useless" for AFK farming (such as taking additional attacks and Fold Space instead of the Leadership Pool)... however the result has Softcapped S/L/E/N defense and a decent chunk of S/L resistance, rather than purely being focused on mitigating Fire damage. And the superfluous attacks combine to make a seamless attack chain (with substantial AoE) with Fold Space to bunch stuff up plus Taunt and a few ranged attacks to tag runners.

I couldn't quite fit Hasten into the build; although this is one of the few toons where I can headcanon the character having an alternative power setup (in their case a "max mitigation" Granite Armor build) which takes Hasten and a substantially different set of attacks and can incidentally also AFK-farm - albeit at a substantially slower rate! 
Brute - Rad Melee - Stone Armor (Ejected).mbd





(Admittedly these numbers are inflated due to Unleashed Potential and Earth's Embrace both running! Without Unleashed Potential their typed defenses sits at 45.2%; and their Regeneration will be ~59.4 HP/Sec with Earth's Embrace active and ~42 HP/Sec without; which is still plenty for AFK-farming. Also in this 'form' the toon purposely avoids taking Power Transfer or Panacea procs for thematic reasons - otherwise Health and Stamina would have a few slots shuffled around...)

So yeah, there are lots of methods + it all really depends on what you want from your toon and if you're comfortable having multiple hyper-specialized builds.
That said; whenever someone asks for "the best farmer" I'll generally assume they're talking about "the fastest/most efficient inf-earner"; beit Passive or Active.

(And it goes without saying that the quickest way to earn influence is to just play the market; and maybe farm a bit between sales...) 😛
 

Yeah, it's slotted in Ripper. It actually does the bulk of my "damage" because of mob saturation and an almost guaranteed Force Feedback proc activation, Fireball -> Ripper -> Burn -> Ripper -> Thrown Spines is my typical starting AoE Chain, or at least some semblance of it. I change my AoE attack chain when I have the BU proc activated, trying to squeeze in as many attacks as possible. After that, Burn is close to recharged and Ripper always is, so depending what's not on recharge, I'll throw in Burn, Fireball or Throw Spines. Spine Burst is thrown into rotation every few cycles, but something is almost always recharged so it doesn't get much use. I'm not sure how quick it is, but when I'm driving solo, no Lore, I can clear the asteroid map on average in about 3:50. I can get a bit lower if the Illusion spawner is in a prime location and if I get lucky with all my procs and inspiration drops. I don't use the macros to combine and pop red inspirations, I do it all manually, so oftentimes I'm not anywhere near the damage cap.

Those are some pretty nice builds! It's inspired me to maybe shuffle some things around or spend 500 mill + on an alternate build. Mine only live in AE at the moment. I named them Generic Farmer, Less Generic Farmer and -Less Generic Farmer lol. They all have the basic "Insectoid" base costume and are ugly as all get out. Maybe one day they will leave the confines of AE, but I made them specifically for this purpose and are the only characters I have that will probably never get accolades. But they have funded 30+ fully IOd, fully accoladed and mostly T4 Incarnates characters over the years. It wasn't until recently that I got the farming bug, made a third farmer and started trolling the Forums about farming. Little did I know AFK builds were so precise, my workaround was putting Healing Flames on auto and dual/triple boxing. Which works surprisingly well! I don't mind not clearing as fast as someone with a PBAoE attack on auto. The very nature of AFK farming (for me) is that you sort of... "don't care". Oftentimes I'll get caught up in real life and that '10 minute' asteroid farm really turns into a '20 minute' asteroid farm. But at the end of the day, I'm making millions of influence that I otherwise would not have by hardly playing the game.

That being said, assuming an Elec/Rad Tank is still the best AFK farmer, I might have to check that out. But who knows!