Flaminatrix - Fire! Fire! Fire! blaster
Roentgen Bull - SS/Rad brute
Goldbar - Kin/Inv scrapper
Teardrops - SS/Inv brute
Savior Machine - Titan Weapons/Energy Aura brute
Triple-N - Ninja/Ninj stalker
Heartbeat of America - Elec/Elec scrapper
Seahawk - Water/Willpower sentinel
I got Hellfury up to 34 last night - hoping to gear her up for fire farms soon.
So, just why are the farms fire? Is there some easy way to get strong protection against fire damage?
And has anyone ever made a “fire farm” where all of the enemies are just Flambeaux, and you get to kill her repeatedly, over and over?
I would not do that for experience or influence or any other reward aside from the pleasure of permanently shutting her up over and over again.
I believe it has to do with a combination of factors, but basically… yeah. Fire damage resistance is trivial to cap for Fiery Armor, plus you have AoE attacks built into the defensive set. Pair it with an AoE heavy offense set (Rad, Spines… or Fire), and you’re generally good to go. Fiery Armor also has a self-heal, an endurance restoration power, and a self-Rez.
I’ve heard some of the AE designers may be tinkering with a Smash/Lethal farm, which is easy to cap for Invulnerability, but Invuln doesn’t have some of Fiery Armor’s other advantages.
Right. Burn is a great attack built into Fiery Aura.
But also, and of particular note, Fiery Aura has a damage “aura” toggle that will constantly damage foes around you. Darrk Armor has one as well, and Spines, along with maybe a few of the newer sets. While such damage auras are useful to attract and retain aggro, they appear to do little damage to foes.
That appearance is deceiving.
Over the course of a long continuous fight against many foes – a condition seldom achieved in regular play but absolutely dirt common in farming – these auras do a huge amount of damage and greatly speed up farming. All the time your other AoEs are on cooldown, auras are damaging foes. All the time you’re actively attacking, auras are ALSO damaging foes at the same time. It’s not especially awesome on regular mission with a team, because everyone else will be outkilling your aura substantially. But alone in a farm it’s huge.
Note that Spines, mentioned above, is an offensive set – you can combine it with Fiery Aura or Dark Armor and get TWO damage auras.
That’s probably the main reason Spines/Fiery Aura Brutes are the most popular farming characters by an order of magnitude.
Couple that amazing damage with the ease of getting to the 90% resist cap for Fire damage type on Tankers* and Brutes and you have the Fire Farm.
*Despite much lower damage potential than Brutes, Fiery Aura tankers turn out to be adequate farmers, albeit a step below Brutes. Burn plus Blazing Aura, coupled with a couple of cones or PBAoEs in the secondary, can do pretty well even at Tanker damage if you’re farming at +0/+1 and not +4.
Ah, so fire farms only work for specific character builds, and everyone else has to get to 50 the hard way. Or at least, a harder way.
Friday, Armoury joined a pickup team. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to do that.
I think that this is the best game I’m ever done a PUG in. This isn’t like WoW where you have yet another tank and a priest and a rogue. The vast variety of appearances, abilities, and so on, you have no idea who you’ll be with. I love dropping into a group of randos and seeing what cool stuff people have come up with, then fighting side-by-side with them. It just feels special to me, like being in a Marvel team-up issue.
Plus, it seems like people in general are cooler and more friendly/helpful than most MMOs. Probably because people playing CoH are doing it because they love it and not because it’s the hit new thing being advertised on web sites that their friends are playing.
Yep. I will add that Radiation Melee has a damage Aura as well, so it works pretty well. (I really, really hate Spines.)
Or team up with a Fire Farmer. 
There are other farm methods that are less popular… I have seen mostly Brutes/Scrapper/Tanker builds, and I think there are a few Controller/Dom options, though with more risk.
Though honestly, the DFB and DIB trials will get you through the low levels damn quick for any character.
Agreed. I was doing Posi last night when my son showed up because he had just remembered that he needed to print off an assignment for his history class. The team ws cool with me being AFK for the ten minutes to help him set up. He kept apologizing due to his experiences with ESO and WOW. I told him COH was different. The players are just cooler.
I have a character now whom I don’t play in anything but pickup teams. He’s a Defender, and I anticipated how hard it would be to solo anything with him, so he just hangs out in LFG and joins whatever’s level-appropriate. So far, I’ve done three DFBs and most of a Posi 1 (it glitched near the end, and we never got credit for beating the ambush) with him, which has already propelled him to (IIRC) 20.
Side note, people in pickup games really seem to appreciate the presence of a forcefield defender.
I would, you’d be my bestie. Especially if I was on my fire/fire Blaster. He’s so stinking fragile.
Shadow Stranger is very popular for that reason. Everybody loves bubbles!
I recently forced myself to drag my baby Invulnerability/Super Strength Tanker up to level 22 (at which point one can slot SOs or equivalent and finally start to be effective). Built for durability, with only 2 weakish attacks before 20 (Jab and Haymaker, both without the benefit of Rage) it was an exercise in patience and prestige power abuse.
But zowie, as soon as I slapped lvl 25 common IOs in my powers, the world changed. I invited random people into mission teams and gathered impressively large crowds around me for them to melt. I got lots of compliments and we motored through missions like nobody’s business. I’d forgotten how much fun it could be to be the unshakable pillar in a sea of enemies.
Looks like possible Tanker changes are contemplated on Homecoming, so it might be a good time to level a tanker.
My main at 50 is my tanker. Let it be known I am very pleased. Especially this change:
Holy moly, I will be unstoppable now.
I’ve been enjoying the Incarnate arcs in Dark Astoria. I don’t think the whole incarnate system was in place last time I played this game.
So, the Homecoming folks have just reinstated the policy of squishing ip-infringing costumes and names. As a precaution, I have renamed Shadow Stranger to Shadow Samaritan, just to get that extra inch away from corporate-owned property…
So much for my idea of making a Frank Oz character, with both Yoda and Grover costumes.