Looking to build a Fire Farm tank

[RASAL0M]

I'm looking at building a fire farm tank, and I'm thinking of Fire Aura/ Dark Melee as it seems that Dark has some sustain built in and has some AoE to help with the farming.  I'm not married to either, just want something that works well and can get up and running quickly.  

 

I'd love for some input on what powers/ slotting to take early, what pool powers to pick up.  I don't really plan on doing anything other then using this dude for farming, so I'm not sure how much that would play into the choices.

 

If anyone has a template build that works for this early game, (with cheap enhancements) that would be amazing.  I'd love it if there were any reasons for the choices.  

 

Any advise would be helpful while I wade through the forums.

[Maelwys]

 

 

 

[RASAL0M]

Here's my current proposed build.  I'd love some input.  I've never done a tank, so I don't know how to build them to not suck.

Rasalom Tanker (Fiery Aura - Dark Melee).mbd

[Warshades]

Don't use dark melee, it's not good for farming. To get sustainability, you just need to hit 45% fire defense which you can do with set bonuses. Tanks can hit 90% fire resist without trying. 

[bigmarty]

Most people use spines but I also really enjoy super strength.

[Maelwys]

10 hours ago, RASAL0M said:

Here's my current proposed build.  I'd love some input.  I've never done a tank, so I don't know how to build them to not suck.

Rasalom Tanker (Fiery Aura - Dark Melee).mbd 40.53 kB · 0 downloads

You have Burn; I guess. That's a start.
Lose the current Epic Pool and take Mu Mastery instead.

Slot Burn, Ball Lightning and Electrifying Fences like this:

Acc/Dam HO, Acc/Dam HO, Damage Proc, Damage Proc, Damage Proc.

In the 6th currently-empty slot, Burn should have Fury of the Gladiator: Chance for -Res.
Ball Lightning should have an Annihilation: Chance for -Res.
Elec Fences should have a Trap of the Hunter (Immobilize set) damage proc.

That's your baseline AoE attacks. Add Hasten and a Musculature Core Alpha Slot, a Reactive Radial Interface slot, an Assault Radial Hybrid slot.
Use the Inspiration-combination keybind from the above farming thread and spam it so that you convert inspiration drops to Reds and chug them as you go.

The ideal would be to use a different offensive powerset than Dark Melee as it has no viable AoE attacks. Battle Axe, Martial Arts and Super Strength all have at least one proccable PBAoE ability that can be slotted like the above whilst leveraging a Force Feedback +Rech proc. Bonus points if you take Corrosive Vial (for an Achilles Heel -res).

All that assumes you want to "active" farm, not "passive" farm though - the latter has much higher survivability requirements. Have a read through the above linked thread.
 

Edited yesterday at 12:53 PM by Maelwys

[RASAL0M]

8 hours ago, Maelwys said:

You have Burn; I guess. That's a start.
Lose the current Epic Pool and take Mu Mastery instead.

Slot Burn, Ball Lightning and Electrifying Fences like this:

Acc/Dam HO, Acc/Dam HO, Damage Proc, Damage Proc, Damage Proc.

In the 6th currently-empty slot, Burn should have Fury of the Gladiator: Chance for -Res.
Ball Lightning should have an Annihilation: Chance for -Res.
Elec Fences should have a Trap of the Hunter (Immobilize set) damage proc.

That's your baseline AoE attacks. Add Hasten and a Musculature Core Alpha Slot, a Reactive Radial Interface slot, an Assault Radial Hybrid slot.
Use the Inspiration-combination keybind from the above farming thread and spam it so that you convert inspiration drops to Reds and chug them as you go.

The ideal would be to use a different offensive powerset than Dark Melee as it has no viable AoE attacks. Battle Axe, Martial Arts and Super Strength all have at least one proccable PBAoE ability that can be slotted like the above whilst leveraging a Force Feedback +Rech proc. Bonus points if you take Corrosive Vial (for an Achilles Heel -res).

All that assumes you want to "active" farm, not "passive" farm though - the latter has much higher survivability requirements. Have a read through the above linked thread.
 

I currently have the Chance for - Res slotted in my Blazing aura does slotting it here make more sense?  

 

Why are Soul Drain and Dark consumption not viable AoEs?

[Maelwys]

  

12 minutes ago, RASAL0M said:

I currently have the Chance for - Res slotted in my Blazing aura does slotting it here make more sense?  

In Blazing Aura the proc would have a 30.7% chance to activate once every 10 seconds; against up to 10 targets.
In Burn it would have a 83.0% chance to activate every time you cast it against up to 5 targets.



In Electrifying Fences a similar proc would have a 37.3% chance per casting against up to 10 targets.
In Ball Lightning a similar proc would have a 71.8% chance per casting against up  to 16 targets.

 (all assuming no LOCAL recharge slotting; but you can have all the GLOBAL recharge you want!)

  

12 minutes ago, RASAL0M said:

Why are Soul Drain and Dark consumption not viable AoEs?

Primarily it's due to the base recharge time measured in Ice Ages (120s recharge time for Soul Drain and 180s recharge time for Dark Consumption).
But the poor base damage, low radius and decidedly average target cap limits don't help either.
And the fact that none of them have any worthwhile secondary effect (-ToHit pales in comparison to Slow, -Def and Knock whenever it comes to Procs; and ideally for "active" farming you want at least one good regular AoE that inflicts Knockdown so that you can put a Force Feedback +rech proc in it and speed up the rest of your AoE attack cycle)
 

[RASAL0M]

So what would a rebuilt tank look like from a full build look?  Please keep in mind I have zero idea how to tank.

[Warshades]

54 minutes ago, RASAL0M said:

So what would a rebuilt tank look like from a full build look?  Please keep in mind I have zero idea how to tank.

 

You're not really building a tank, you're building a farm char. There is a very distinct difference. The goal on a farm char is just to have sufficient survival and maximize damage output, not to take alpha strikes and tank a variety of damage types since you'll only be facing fire typed attacks.

 

This is a very quick sample build of what you could do. There are likely ways and places to optimize it to make it faster at clearing, but it should work without major issues. I do highly suggest that you work on building Ageless Core destiny slot to T4 first and then work on the others like Musculature Core, Reactive Radial, and BP, and Pyronic. Farm builds tend to be very endurance hungry and Ageless Core destiny will help significantly to eliminate any endurance issues. This sample build is fire/axe, axe has several AoE attacks and places to slot FF +rech procs.

Tanker (Fiery Aura - Battle Axe).mbd

[Maelwys]

  

13 hours ago, Warshades said:

You're not really building a tank, you're building a farm char.

 

This 100%.

It is possible to build a Tanker who can do both; but for completing regular content you generally want to focus on boosting your all-round survivability... and for farming you generally only focus on withstanding the attacks of one set of very specific foes with very specific abilities within very specific Architect Entertainment "farming" maps.

So as an example... a farming toon doesn't need mez protection (beyond perhaps a few points of knockback protection). And they don't need S/L/C/E/N/P/T Resistance or Defence if they're only going to be fighting foes that deal fire-typed damage. And they don't need to take Taunt (the ability) or a travel power. And "Active Farmers" don't need to worry about recovery or endurance reduction because they'll be running Ageless Destiny constantly.

The build @Warshades posted above is an extremely good starting point to illustrate this - they've gone for maximum damage in each attack plus capped (95%) Hit Rate vs foes that are 3 levels above you (as you'll typically be a Level 50+1 character fighting level 54 foes); 90% Fire Resistance and 45% Fire defense; plus lots of Global Recharge. That's the typical goals on an average farmer. Personally I'd not even bother getting all they way to the 45% defense cap on an Active farming toon (as you'll be behind the wheel to press buttons and activate heals and insps) but if you can reach it without much offensive sacrifice then it makes things considerably easier.

As an example in tweaking... below is the same build but with the Concealment pool instead of the Leadership pool.
It has an additional LotG +7.5% recharge and a smidge more passive healing; at the expense of additional endurance consumption.
 Tanker (Fiery Aura - Battle Axe) B.mbd

And here's a version of the build if you ever plan on fighting foes that are 4 levels above you instead of 3.
Tanker (Fiery Aura - Battle Axe) C.mbd


- - - - - - - - - -

Now... if on the other hand you fancy a Tanker that's designed for regular content and is also capable of active farming (but not the most efficient at it!)... then rather than boosting just Fire Resistance and Defence, IMO you'd want to look at other forms of Resistance (particularly Smashing/Lethal) and boost your MaxHP and Healing Flames numbers; then maybe pursue melee positional Defence instead of fire typed defence. Note that a lot of players nay-say stacking defence on a Tanker that has no native Defence Debuff Resistance; but IMO it's still useful in a lot of content and can help you if/when you ever decide to step into a farm.

I have a BattleAxe/FieryAura Brute that is built like that.
Brute - Battle Axe - Fiery Aura (+Recovery).mbd

If we compare it to the above Tanker...
  

  

Note that they have exactly the same Global Recharge and roughly the same Passive Regeneration Rate (despite the former being a Brute!). However the former's Healing Flames is much more powerful (plus they've more "Chance for Heal" procs) and they have capped S/L Resistance and softcapped Melee Positional rather than Fire Typed defence. They could probably still do with a bit more Recharge Debuff protection (e.g. Winter Set IOs in Chop + Axe Cyclone and a Winters Gift in the Travel Power) but I purposely leaned in favour of more Global Recharge and Regeneration and as-is running Ageless Radial + the Time Lord day job + a Base Empowerment Buff can get it to North of 80%.

The difference is that the Brute didn't take the Mu Patron pool (not enough enhancement slots left to do it justice!) and only Axe Cyclone and Burn are really "Procbombed". It does however have a fairly solid (although not procced-up!) Single Target attack chain and a Travel Power and Taunt. It's an all-rounder; not a dedicated farmer.

Since a Brute can strike this sort of balance; a Tanker should be able to reach similar survivability numbers with much more wiggle room given their higher resistance + defence base scalars and the considerably-more-powerful-than-anything-Brutes-get Superior Might of Tanker ATO proc!
 

Edited 7 hours ago by Maelwys