Defender farming builds?

[StridingWind]

Hey all!

 

So, I have a spines/fire brute and have been farming the crap out of him to where I have made many alts and plenty of infamy. I'm at that point where I'm very bored with him and have looked at other archetypes for farming. I do have an ice/fire blaster that's pretty fun on fire farms and was thinking about making a fire/time corruptor (shout out to Auroxis for the build).

 

Then I realized that I wanted to make a defender for farming/solo and thought it would be pretty fun. I know it won't be as quick and efficient as brutes, but I don't really care. I'm doing it to have fun and just say that I can farm with a freaking defender. 

 

That's where I need your guys' help. What is a good combo in order to make this possible? For secondaries, I have a feeling it'll be /fire or /ice. As for as primary goes, would time be the best choice? I've even tried looking at storm summoning and maybe it's possible with a storm/fire?

 

Help this newbie out please! It could either be for fire or S/L farms.

[Bopper]

You should head over to the "Storm Summoning/" thread. Lots of good discussion on defenders using Storm Summoning (lots of AoE) with procs for good damage. Someone mentioned being able to farm the Briggs AE moon mission in about 5-6 minutes, which is decent. The main downside is not having taunt, the dps is there. Personally, I build a Time/DP/Soul defender that farmed it in under 8 minutes, probably could improve on it if I focused, but it was mostly a test to see my DPS and survivability. I have no interest in optimizing for farming. 

[StridingWind]

Ooh, I will check it out! And as far as DP goes, did you find your DPS up to par with /ice or /fire or was it lacking?

 

[Hjarki]

18 minutes ago, StridingWind said:

Ooh, I will check it out! And as far as DP goes, did you find your DPS up to par with /ice or /fire or was it lacking?

Ice isn't really strong in this sort of AE. Ice is dependent on long cooldown times between fights, rather than a constant fight. Fire is ordinarily considered a strong AE set, but it lacks the ability to slot procs effectively. Most importantly, it can't use Force Feedback in an AE knockdown power. With such powers, you can get near-constant +100% recharge.

 

The sets that can do this are Archery, Assault Rifle, Dark, Dual Pistols, Energy, Psychic and Water. Archery, Energy and Psychic have very limited slotting opportunities beyond the Force Feedback proc in a single attack. So I'd argue the best 'farming sets' would be Assault Rifle, Dark, Dual Pistols and Water.

 

In terms of primary sets, the first consideration is survival. The two sets mentioned previously - Time and Storm - both provide considerable defensive benefits (a massive +defense boost and a +defense/+fire resist toggle).

 

Most other sets can be compared to Time and Storm - and come up short. Traps is a possibility, but it's not a set I've looked at very carefully.

 

 

 

 

[KelvinKole]

I was thinking about this exact thing last night and am going to try nature/fire. Nature provides plenty of survivability with +res from wild growth, absorbs, heals, and has the -tohit/-dmg toggle if needed. More importantly though, overgrowth is something like an 80% damage boost that can be made perma, though I need to figure out the build. Toss in soul drain and you've got a pretty potent tool set for farming, I think. 

Edited July 31, 2019 by KelvinKole

[Bopper]

This is nothing special, but I attempted to record myself once using my Time/DP/Soul Proc Monster build. My technique is not optimized, it was mostly done to show how survivable I could be on the +4/x8 S/L Farm (Briggs) and also highlight how often my procs fire while somewhat managing my endurance. I managed to clear it in 8 minutes. Decent, but nothing to brag about either. Anyways, feel free to watch:

 

 

Edit: To be clear, this is not a farming build, just my "Offender" build that just so happened to be ok at farming. If I only wanted to farm, there are optimizations I could squeeze out...but I don't think it would be much more gain.

Edited August 1, 2019 by Bopper

[KelvinKole]

Pretty good looking performance, but what are the three sea shells for?

[Bopper]

2 hours ago, KelvinKole said:

Pretty good looking performance, but what are the three sea shells for?

Still haven't figured it out. All I know is don't eat them. 

[StridingWind]

I appreciate the information! I think I'm going to try a Storm/DP and see how it fairs!

 

[Bopper]

6 minutes ago, StridingWind said:

I appreciate the information! I think I'm going to try a Storm/DP and see how it fairs!

 

Should be an AoE monster, you might want to go /dark mastery for perma soul drain and dark consumption for the endurance hog of storm/

[Hjarki]

49 minutes ago, StridingWind said:

I appreciate the information! I think I'm going to try a Storm/DP and see how it fairs!

 

There's probably some information on the long Storm Summoning thread about what I did with Storm/DP.

 

What I can tell you is that I eventually abandoned it for Storm/Water.

 

The reasons:

• Weak ultimate. Having a PBAoE ultimate puts you at enormous risk. It's one thing if you're Time/DP and can soft-cap all positionals. It's quite another as Storm/DP, where you've only got a minor boost to defense before you have to rely on pools and set bonuses. I did Ranged/AoE on Storm/Water, but getting Melee as well would have been a bridge too far.
• Clunky attack chain. You really need Fire rounds for the AE (to suppress knockback without consuming a slot) but you need Lethal rounds for the -resist debuff. This creates a situation where you're constantly switching back and forth between Fire and Lethal - and this imposes a 'tax' on your attack chain.
• Cone rather than Rain. While Rains are weaker over-time in an ideal situation, neither part of that statement reflects 99% of the game. In most cases, the 25 yard radius and positioning freedom absolutely trumps the need for both yourself and your target to be in exactly the right spot and you don't gain much benefit from the higher cyclic rate of the Cone. Farming is one of the few situations where this can be the case, but I suspect even there the Rain would be better simply based on QoL issues.
• No Aim/Build Up. Since this comes up as often as your ultimate, it's a massive boost to your overall dps. Not having it is going to severely limit your ability to maximize farming speed.

[Bopper]

36 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

I did Ranged/AoE on Storm/Water, 

To tack on to this and the cone topics, in a farm you can fly above the crowd and know they can't fly up to you (if you pick the right farm. What's nice about that, they will still try to get as close to you as possible which means they will typically group up into a nice tight area for your cones to hit. And finally, since you're above the crowd shooting down, the cones will effectively turn into a PBAoE on the ground. For example, I think a 40 foot ranged cone with 30 degreen arc turns into roughly a 10 foot PBAoE on the ground.

 

On the other hand, I'll say this about DP, Hail of Bullets cycles pretty fast (~25 seconds) and you can slot it with the -res FotG proc, which mitigates some of the lost -res you get from Piercing Rounds (which I rarely used, since I typically cycled Empty Clips and Bullet Rain with Explosive shot thrown in).

 

I recommend try both on Justin test server and see what you like

 

Edit: I was close, it is a 10.7 foot maximum AoE radius. Simple math to calculate that: Max AoE Radius = MaxRange x tan( Arc / 2 ). So boost that range and you can effectively keep your self safer and hit a larger area on the ground.

Edited August 2, 2019 by Bopper

[Redlynne]

Back on Virtue, I ran a Storm/Dual Pistols Defender who was incredibly fun to play ... once I got the hang of how to use a well slotted HERDICANE.

 

 

 

A story that I've told before was how I was invited to a Moonfire TF and showed up with my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender and people were kind of surprised.  Didn't take long before there were some snide comments from the melee monsters about how they'd need to "carry" me through TF since I couldn't be counted on to produce much damage ... yaddee yaddah ... you know the drill.  I just let them build up their smug overconfidence, because I knew better what I could do than they did.

 

So we get rolling on the Moonfire TF eventually, and we start crunching wannabe Nazis ... and the front line fighters are having a "little bit of trouble" handling everything.  They were leaking aggro and it was threatening the squishies and it was being a little borderline (see above: overconfidence).  Point being, it wasn't exactly smooth sailing, and people were starting to point fingers (never a good sign) and lay blame (you know how THAT goes) and I just simply asked if they'd mind if I started ... "helping" ... in the next mission.  Overconfident melee monsters scoffed (naturally), but everyone else welcomed any relief they might get from the near constant close calls they were having with Debt, so they took me up on my offer.

 

Next mission, I enter the mission door ... toggle on HERDICANE ... and just started PWNING everything in sight.

It wasn't even a contest at that point.

I was debuffing stuff SO HARD with my HERDICANE that it sent them to the ToHit floor, effectively giving everyone around me the power of NO GET HITSU!! and the squishies finally had a "safe" place to attack out of.

 

So I gave everyone a mission or two to get used to the idea that I could "cloth tank" using HERDICANE for them ... and then I started getting RUDE™ (to my $Targets).

Because it's not the "size" of the HERDICANE you bring to the team ... but how you "use it" that makes ALL the difference.

Scatter.

Clump.

Pin into the corners.

Keep 'em off balance (and not attacking).

Debuff 'em into the ground and just keep on pushing.

Sometimes you're a "pillbox" holding a choke point.

Other times you're a PBAoE Torrent shoving everything out of your way as you advance and "break" the enemy formation.

Pay attention to your surroundings and stay aware of the situation and set out to systematically Ruin The Day for every $Target you come across.

 

I switched from DEFender mode into OFFender mode and started REALLY bringing the HERDICANE to bear on almost every fight where I was actively diving in to herd Nazi wannabes around while the melee monsters got relegated to Mop Up Duty.  My $Targets were already defeated when I got close to them ... they just hadn't gotten the memo yet.

 

Meanwhile, I'm gunning down almost everything in sight, and I'm effectively CONTROLLING THE FLOW OF BATTLE the entire time, and everyone else is just riding on the coattails of what I'm doing, exploiting the opportunities I was creating left, right and center on every mission.  The squishies on the team LOVED what I was doing, since it made their lives so much easier!  The melee monsters grumbled, since they weren't the stars of the show anymore simply owing to the fact that they weren't "leading the pack" around by the nose at their own pace anymore.  But everything I did was EXTREMELY VISIBLE thanks to Herdicane and Dual Pistols visuals and sound FX, so pretty much everyone on the team knew it every time I "kicked it up another notch" and got even more aggressive with what I was doing than I had been just moments ago.

 

Suffice it to say ... it was glorious. 😎

 

By about the time we were 2/3rds of the way through the TF ... people were in AWE of the build that I was playing, since it was such a literal game changer for how the TF was playing out.  They'd never seen anything like it(!), or even considered the strategies and tactics they were seeing me use in all those Council Bases.  Some people openly mentioned it in team chat how impressed they were.  A couple others didn't want to let on in front of the team how much of an impression I was making on them, so they sent me tells saying that now they were going to have to try playing a Storm/Dual Pistols Defender too!

 

Best part was how once the Moonfire TF was over, NO ONE was making snide remarks about needing to "carry" me through the TF because I was playing weak damage powersets that couldn't do much.  If anything, I was getting thanks for saving them from Debt multiple times during the run after I started "helping" by bringing my OFFender game to bear with my build.  If memory serves I had like 3-4 people on the TF nominating me for MVP before we got to the end of the TF.

 

 

 

And then I ran another Moonfire TF the next day, with a different group of people ... and the same thing basically happened again ... including more "converts" who wanted to know more about my build, and who wanted try out the combination themselves since the results it produced were so dramatic and impressive.  Again, I had like 3 of the other 7 people on the team saying they wanted a piece of my action for themselves and that they were going to have to try playing a Storm/Dual Pistols Defender themselves.

 

 

 

The funny thing is that I created my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender like month or so before Time Manipulation was announced, and by the time the new powerset came out, I was already "too committed" to my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender to reroll as a Time/Dual Pistols Defender.  So I made do with what I had (and had made) and made the best of it.  It was fun to play (and surprise entire teams with what I could do to keep them alive and steamrolling).

 

Good Times™.

[Hjarki]

5 hours ago, Bopper said:

To tack on to this and the cone topics, in a farm you can fly above the crowd and know they can't fly up to you (if you pick the right farm. What's nice about that, they will still try to get as close to you as possible which means they will typically group up into a nice tight area for your cones to hit. And finally, since you're above the crowd shooting down, the cones will effectively turn into a PBAoE on the ground. For example, I think a 40 foot ranged cone with 30 degreen arc turns into roughly a 10 foot PBAoE on the ground.

I'm not sure this is the case. It's hard to tell, but my experience is that 'cone' is a bit a misnomer - it's more like 'triangle'. The same is true of other AE. While they may have spherical graphics, they don't have spherical effects - you don't have to be that far above the ground to fly right through a Tar Patch like it wasn't even there or avoid damage from a Rain.

 

With a conventional AE, you end up with a slightly thick circle of effect parallel with the ground. With a cone what seems to happen is that you end up with a slightly thick triangle of effect. The problem with launching cones in the air is that one of those ends is anchored to you, so the cone inclines up to you. If you're hovering right above your targets, you don't get a circle on the ground so much as a rectangle of effect with a length equal to the expected radius and a width of maybe 5 feet or so.

Edited August 2, 2019 by Hjarki

[Bopper]

52 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

I'm not sure this is the case. It's hard to tell, but my experience is that 'cone' is a bit a misnomer - it's more like 'triangle'.

Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by triangle? When I'm in the air looking down, my cones seem to hit in a circle (maybe square?). So I'm having a hard time trying to visualize a 2D triangle in my 3D experience. When you say thick triangle (or circle for pbaoe), how thick are we talking? 10 feet? 1 foot?

Edited August 2, 2019 by Bopper

[Ankhammon]

On 8/1/2019 at 10:25 PM, Redlynne said:

Back on Virtue, I ran a Storm/Dual Pistols Defender who was incredibly fun to play ... once I got the hang of how to use a well slotted HERDICANE.

 

 

 

A story that I've told before was how I was invited to a Moonfire TF and showed up with my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender and people were kind of surprised.  Didn't take long before there were some snide comments from the melee monsters about how they'd need to "carry" me through TF since I couldn't be counted on to produce much damage ... yaddee yaddah ... you know the drill.  I just let them build up their smug overconfidence, because I knew better what I could do than they did.

 

So we get rolling on the Moonfire TF eventually, and we start crunching wannabe Nazis ... and the front line fighters are having a "little bit of trouble" handling everything.  They were leaking aggro and it was threatening the squishies and it was being a little borderline (see above: overconfidence).  Point being, it wasn't exactly smooth sailing, and people were starting to point fingers (never a good sign) and lay blame (you know how THAT goes) and I just simply asked if they'd mind if I started ... "helping" ... in the next mission.  Overconfident melee monsters scoffed (naturally), but everyone else welcomed any relief they might get from the near constant close calls they were having with Debt, so they took me up on my offer.

 

Next mission, I enter the mission door ... toggle on HERDICANE ... and just started PWNING everything in sight.

It wasn't even a contest at that point.

I was debuffing stuff SO HARD with my HERDICANE that it sent them to the ToHit floor, effectively giving everyone around me the power of NO GET HITSU!! and the squishies finally had a "safe" place to attack out of.

 

So I gave everyone a mission or two to get used to the idea that I could "cloth tank" using HERDICANE for them ... and then I started getting RUDE™ (to my $Targets).

Because it's not the "size" of the HERDICANE you bring to the team ... but how you "use it" that makes ALL the difference.

Scatter.

Clump.

Pin into the corners.

Keep 'em off balance (and not attacking).

Debuff 'em into the ground and just keep on pushing.

Sometimes you're a "pillbox" holding a choke point.

Other times you're a PBAoE Torrent shoving everything out of your way as you advance and "break" the enemy formation.

Pay attention to your surroundings and stay aware of the situation and set out to systematically Ruin The Day for every $Target you come across.

 

I switched from DEFender mode into OFFender mode and started REALLY bringing the HERDICANE to bear on almost every fight where I was actively diving in to herd Nazi wannabes around while the melee monsters got relegated to Mop Up Duty.  My $Targets were already defeated when I got close to them ... they just hadn't gotten the memo yet.

 

Meanwhile, I'm gunning down almost everything in sight, and I'm effectively CONTROLLING THE FLOW OF BATTLE the entire time, and everyone else is just riding on the coattails of what I'm doing, exploiting the opportunities I was creating left, right and center on every mission.  The squishies on the team LOVED what I was doing, since it made their lives so much easier!  The melee monsters grumbled, since they weren't the stars of the show anymore simply owing to the fact that they weren't "leading the pack" around by the nose at their own pace anymore.  But everything I did was EXTREMELY VISIBLE thanks to Herdicane and Dual Pistols visuals and sound FX, so pretty much everyone on the team knew it every time I "kicked it up another notch" and got even more aggressive with what I was doing than I had been just moments ago.

 

Suffice it to say ... it was glorious. 😎

 

By about the time we were 2/3rds of the way through the TF ... people were in AWE of the build that I was playing, since it was such a literal game changer for how the TF was playing out.  They'd never seen anything like it(!), or even considered the strategies and tactics they were seeing me use in all those Council Bases.  Some people openly mentioned it in team chat how impressed they were.  A couple others didn't want to let on in front of the team how much of an impression I was making on them, so they sent me tells saying that now they were going to have to try playing a Storm/Dual Pistols Defender too!

 

Best part was how once the Moonfire TF was over, NO ONE was making snide remarks about needing to "carry" me through the TF because I was playing weak damage powersets that couldn't do much.  If anything, I was getting thanks for saving them from Debt multiple times during the run after I started "helping" by bringing my OFFender game to bear with my build.  If memory serves I had like 3-4 people on the TF nominating me for MVP before we got to the end of the TF.

 

 

 

And then I ran another Moonfire TF the next day, with a different group of people ... and the same thing basically happened again ... including more "converts" who wanted to know more about my build, and who wanted try out the combination themselves since the results it produced were so dramatic and impressive.  Again, I had like 3 of the other 7 people on the team saying they wanted a piece of my action for themselves and that they were going to have to try playing a Storm/Dual Pistols Defender themselves.

 

 

 

The funny thing is that I created my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender like month or so before Time Manipulation was announced, and by the time the new powerset came out, I was already "too committed" to my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender to reroll as a Time/Dual Pistols Defender.  So I made do with what I had (and had made) and made the best of it.  It was fun to play (and surprise entire teams with what I could do to keep them alive and steamrolling).

 

Good Times™.

I had a very similar experience on Moonfire once but in my case our tank quit at the end of the first mish. 

The team was talking about restarting or just walking away and I said gimme a 3 second head start and I'll tank. 

 

Several scoffed but they let me try. Let's just say they never expected a TA/Ice to be a competent ranged tank but with all the debuff/slow magic we sailed through to the end. 

 

 

And to the farm build concept, I'm currently running on 0/+8 on my Time/Elec and have been since level 10. Only level 17 right now but still not too shabby for a lowbie.