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Static Shield gives 103.8% End and Recovery debuff resistance, Grounded gives 69.2% just on End, and Power Surge gives 138.4 on both, all according to Mids. You'll generally have just the first two for 173% End Drain resistance and 103.8% Recovery debuff resistance. Those are the values for level 50. Logging in one of my many Claws/Elec Brutes, Static Shield indeed shows 103.8% in the Combat Attributes under Recovery Resistance, but the total value is 95% and it's blue, meaning that's the cap. At level 50, Recovery debuffs are only 1/20 effective. Checking on my level 38 Electric Brute, Static Shield shows 89.4% Recovery Debuff Resistance, with a capped total of 80.68%. Recovery debuffs work about 1/5 as well, and that's definitely enough to be felt when enough mobs are doing it. At level 30, things are probably even worse. Were you and the mobs still 30, or were you bumped up to 50 in the farm? If 50, you should have gotten the level 50 better resistance.

END Drain resistance isn't in the combat attributes, so I can't tell how it works. If it is similar, then enough little attacks will add up at lower levels. It's something I'll be testing when I work on a level 50 PL oriented farm for Claws/Electric Brutes. But I have a few more to level up first.

But in general, you want capped Defense so they rarely hit you with those attacks.

Oh come on Snow, tell us how you REALLY feel. Don't hold back.

I'm going to look at a level 1-50 CEBR oriented map for PLing, where the mobs do energy damage. But don't let that stop you. It'll probably take me a little while to finish leveling up all of my brutes so I have a 50 on every server.

Integration is actually twice as much Regen as Fast Healing. That's not a big deal on Minions, but on Lts and Bosses it means more. Hand Grenade has an 80% chance to Knockback, which means most of the time. But yes, Integration should stop that completely. I don't want to use it for pulling as the ambushes are triggered by Alpha and Beta taking damage, 25%, 50%, and 75%. I've tried Striking the first boss on the way to the second, and ended up with several Ambush spawns heading to the first boss area and stopping.

Now that you mention it, I think a better start might be to Spin the first boss, then use the Vet power Blackwand to pull the second boss to the first. In the current map the ambushes spawn near the entrance, so fighting them closer to that means they waste less time running to you. You don't need to sit around the first boss waiting for Lightning Field to tic on him, that Spin will immediately trigger 3 ambushes. And you don't need to run to the second boss at all. Blackwand will do under 25% of the bosses HP, so the second boss ambushes won't trigger till he gets near you and you attack him. The Nemesis Staff would do Knockback (assuming no Integration) which would delay things. I'll play around with that and see if it works. If so I'll add Integration to Alpha and Beta, just in case people have already chosen the Nemesis Staff as their vet power.

You're a bit off on END though. One issue I forgot to mention earlier is the significant END usage of these things; they both cost about 15 END. You will DEFINITELY need to pop blues if you're using these things, and that means fewer Inspirations to combine into reds. Fortunately the increased kill speed probably makes up for it.

At high level I can run through a complete 5 mission arc in a little over 10 minutes. That's just farming for 7500 tickets, so I leave as early as possible. It probably takes 2 minutes to select the Crafter's Cafe mission, talk to contact, zone in, click computer to complete mission, run to the back for the Invention table, craft, add powers to trays, zone out, and finish the mission. But I don't think the extra damage will shave 2 minutes off my time. I think I only spend about 60-80 seconds fighting per mission when ticket farming, and I don't think the temp powers could shave off more than 25 seconds. I may be wrong, so I'll probably give it a try on my very well slotted Brute.

Also, doing this requires that you keep Recipes and Salvage on you, or you have access to /auctionhouse or /vault. Using an SG for crafting means you can grab Salvage from storage there, but you still need to keep a stock of Recipes. The SG method is moderately faster, but still probably takes a minute or so. The damage is significant enough that it probably could shave at least a minute off. But is it worth the added complexity when it saves maybe 5 seconds per mission?

All that said, I think the temp powers are useful for runs where Hasten is down. In those cases you run the risk of killing too slowly to keep up the Inspirations necessary to keep the farm going. These will definitely provide a boost, and you should have enough time to manage Inspirations between AoEs. The temp powers are probably VERY useful on the very first run where you don't even have Spin, unfortunately you need a pre-existing SG base for that. Even after that, an extra couple AoEs now and then when you're running low on Inspirations may be just the thing to keep people alive. And if you only use a couple charges every other mission or so, they'll last for several arcs. Maybe that's how I'll use them when I finish leveling up my Brute on Guardian.

Just read my words and ignore everyone else, and you'll do fine.

I thought I'd take a look at temp powers. For farm purposes there are worthwhile 2 attack powers, Hand Grenade and Plasmatic Taser. Worthwhile means they do decent AoE damage and they're fairly easy to get (Common recipes with 2 pieces of Common Salvage).

Hand Grenade, "Ranged (Targeted AoE), Moderate DMG (Lethal/Smashing), Foe Knockback", 18 charges, 10 foot radius, 16 targets max, 1.37s Act, 16s Recharge, 10 base damage.

Plasmatic Taser, "Ranged Cone, Moderate DMG(Energy/Smash), Foe Knockback", 24 charges, 40 foot cone at 45 degrees, 10 targets max, 1.07s Act, 12s Recharge, 9.6 base damage.

These powers are affected by damage buffs, so damage capped the Hand Grenade will do 77.5 damage while the Plasmatic Taser will do 74.4. Against +1 mobs, that's 69.75 and 66.96. That will easily kill Minions, almost kill Lts (one Lightning Field tic away), and do a big chunk of damage to Bosses. It will likely kill post-rez Lts, and come close on post-rez bosses.

I have /auctionhouse, so it's fairly easy to bid on 10 of each of the recipes and Salvage, and grab them as needed when I want to craft them. A Crafting Table for a SG base costs 25k Prestige and doesn't require any Power or Energy, and I can get there when needed with my Vet power base Teleport. People without these Vet powers will have to spend time running between AE, the Market, and a crafting place. That's a fairly big time investment. You can use 4-6 charges per mission, which means you run out of Hand Grenade charges in 3-4 missions. I tried to keep them somewhat in sync by crafting both about every 5 missions.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be worth it. I'm leveling up a new Brute on Guardian, and I'm slightly behind the schedule from my run on Defiant. I'm just under level 34 at 2 hours. Granted I made a few mistakes, like not turning on SG mode till level 24 or so. Basically the temp powers added complexity without significantly speeding up the process.

One issue with using the temp powers is that your Inspiration tray fills too fast at low levels. Before level 25, I had to eat every Inspiration that came in, and I still got behind. After level 25, I had to be careful to mash macro buttons between each AoE.

Despite killing mobs faster the first time, the Knockback scattered them all over the place. Knockback attacks that defeat Minions tend to send them extra far, so they ended up rezzing all over the place. This is a place where Integration on the mobs might be worthwhile, if it's strong enough to prevent the Knockback. The scattered mobs meant it was harder to keep Lightning Field and even Spin target capped later in the mission. I'm going to continue using the temp powers till I run out of my initial 10 purchase, but I have a feeling it isn't going to improve my time.

Hmm, I normally don't slot any Enhancements at all while leveling up, and I just did another 5.5 hour run on Defiant. Yes running at +0 rather than +1 will make you take longer. You still kill Minions in 2 tics of Lightning Field, and Spin still kills 10 mobs around you, you just get less XP for them. A lot less. Going up to +1 would probably let you finish in 9 hours if it didn't affect your death rate. I use the macros and I don't keep any Inspirations "just in case" in my tray. The entire tray is for holding Inspirations that I'm going to use or combine into reds. I do use the Empowerment buff, just because it's a decent buff for very little time. I bought 10 of the Salvage needed, and I only used 4 of them this time. I used Sands of Mu once this last run, and decided it wasn't worth the time.

Here's my starting strategy. From levels 10 to 24, you have 10 Inspiration slots. I buy 1 yellow and 5 oranges, and put them on one side of my tray. Then I buy and use reds like mad till I cap. Then I buy 4 Lucks and run to the mission. Level 25+ is similar but I can buy the Lucks before the reds thus saving a couple of seconds. After zoning in, I use the mouse to steer and my other hand to use all the Inspirations. I've just changed the map to use a Warehouse one as suggested by Diesel Punk, and I barely finish using the Inspirations before I reach the mobs. Because I use them so late, they last till I'm half done. And by then I've earned more Inspirations. I've switched my attacks to keys 1 and 2, and the I1-3 macros on 3-5. I spend most of my time hitting 34343434113422343434113434(pause for Spin)343434343434112234343434. Because I combine Inspirations so fast, there's a bug that makes me use some of them on the side. Or maybe the extra damage from combining Respites is just enough on average to kill faster and not need so many Respites.

I regularly use Strike and Slash, but I can do that because spamming the macros makes Inspiration usage quick and easy.

I had that happen about 4 different times on my recent 1-50 run on Defiant. The game obviously saves the recharge state of powers when you zone. I'm guessing the bug has something to do with different servers not having their clocks synched. I try to avoid using Spin before zoning out now. And the fifth one is even easier than the second.

I'll try something like this in a few days.

I would suggest a combination. I like softcapped def, but it's hard to get on a character with no def powers. Energize is nice, but after Hasten and Lightning Reflexes those Recharge set bonuses aren't adding a whole lot. So I often aim for 32.5% Def, so that a single Luck will cap me at 45%. That leaves room for a few Recharge sets, and I tend to use purples. When softcapping I tend to go for a single thing. Melee or Smashing/Lethal for melee characters, and Range for ranged characters. AoE damage tends to be low so I don't bother with it.

Don't tell my wife that second part.

Combat had a long post that started with Brute versus Scrapper damage caps, and I wanted to end the night addressing that point.

You are right in some cases, but not when it comes to this farm. At level 1, Brutes do slightly less base damage than Scrappers, but WAY more damage capped. Plus Spin for brutes has a higher damage scale than for Scrappers. A level 50 Scrapper Spin at 98.85 base damage beats a Brute with 78.83 damage. But a level 1 Brute Spin at 17.96 damage beats a Scrapper at 16.2. When both are capped at level 1, Brutes do 139.19 while Scrappers do 50.22. And while it may be hard for Brutes to maintain that damage cap, they already start out ahead, and they have Fury as well. Scrappers just don't compare at level 1.

Continuing (on Defiant), I was level 34 at 2 hours and level 40 at 3 hours. Infernus_Hades, I don't see how you could be only level 22 in that same amount of time, unless you take a couple minutes to zone or something. Time for a break. Let's take a look at Scrappers.

At level 1 a Scrapper Spin does 16.2 damage unenhanced. That's 50.2 damage at the damage cap of +210%, and 45.2 against +1 mobs. It takes 2 Spins to defeat a Lt, and 3 for a boss. However Scrapper Spin recharges in 9.2 seconds while Brute Spin recharges in 14 seconds, so Scrappers can Spin more often. But it's no where near enough to make up the difference in damage. Spine Burst is significantly worse in most regards. Spine Burst takes longer to animate (3 seconds rather than 2.5) and recharge (16 seconds rather than 14). Spine Burst averages 12.5 damage unenhanced, 38.8 at the damage cap, and 34.9 against +1 mobs. Spine Burst does have a 15 foot radius while Spin is only 8, but the mobs are fairly tightly packed. Scrapper Lightning Field tics for a base 2.05 damage, or 6.4 when capped, and 5.7 again +1 mobs. It takes 5 tics to defeat a Minion. You're likely to hit more Minions with Spin or Spine Burst since they stay around so long, and that's wasted overkill. Scrappers get critical hits, but that only increases their damage by 10% on average against Lts and Bosses. So it looks like Scrappers take 2 to 3 times as long to defeat mobs in this farm as a Brute. It takes fewer reds for a Scrapper to stay at the damage cap, but there are a lot fewer Inspirations coming in. I don't know if it'll be fast enough to maintain the farm at low levels. Scrappers have a 75% Resistance cap while Brutes are 90%, but it's probably not a big deal.

As I just mentioned, I took a completely new character up to level 26 in one hour. That's one hour of actual playing; I stopped the timer a few times for kid agro. It was a total of 11 mission, or 2.2 arcs worth. Check the video posted earlier in the thread, that's basically what you should be doing. You only defeat the 2 spawns at the ramp plus the ambushes, then exit. Rinse, repeat, till 50 (or whenever you want to stop). I'll run the numbers for Scrappers at their damage cap, but I don't think they'll be nearly as good.

I copied my arc and switched maps, and it looks like the warehouse one is reasonable. In one hour I went from completely new character to level 26, so it seems to be about the same as the other map. But there only appears to be 2 spawn points, plus it's nice and flat, so it's a bit easier to manage. I'll probably switch my original arc to use it after I hit 50, assuming I don't see any other issues.

As to adding Recon and Integration, it would only be appropriate on the bosses. The Minions and Lts are already worth 100% XP despite their few attacks because they're so low level. The bosses are only worth 83% or so, but I don't think Integration or Recon will add much. It's probably not worth the change, given that I frequently get bosses low in HP when I'm running without Hasten.

I made 3B on Monday alone AFK PvP IO farming due to some lucky drops (Glad Shield proc and 3 decent others). Why would I waste my time flipping Salvage for such a small return?

Actually I'm going to wait till after Double XP Weekend. Double XP doesn't work in AE, so I suspect a lot of people will be working on their non-AE oriented chars. I know I will. While I have a LOT of level 50 chars, I still have MANY powersets that I've never played.

When you and a friend are running away from a bear, you don't need to run faster than the bear, you just need to run faster than your friend.

When selling things on the Market, you don't need to list for less than the bidders, you need to list for less than the lowest seller.

Yes, it really is as easy as made out to be. As others have said, you need to follow the instructions. The instructions clearly state to set your difficulty to +1/x8 with bosses enabled. No, I am not crazy, I know exactly what I'm doing. Your low difficulty is exactly why you are failing. You pop Inspirations and enter, pull one boss to the other, and then your Inspirations start expiring. But there are only a few mobs in the initial 2 spawns. You waste most of your damage potential by having Spin and Lighning Field hit only a few mobs. You don't build up much Fury. You get very few Inspirations. Then the ambushes show up and your damage bonus is pitiful. You survive only as long as your Lucks last.

With the difficulty set as instructed, you're hitting the target cap with every Spin and tic of Lightning Field. Your Fury gets near max and stays there till the very end. You get top tier Inspirations from each frequent level gain, which help damage as well as survival. And because of your high Damage bonus and massive number of nearby targets, you are defeating mobs quickly and gettings lots of Inspiration drops that continue to fuel the process. At low level, you need those level-up Inspirations to make up for the small Inspiration tray and your inability to combine Inspirations to make more reds.

If you're scared of riding a bike, you want to go REAL slow. But anyone who has learned to ride a bike knows that it is almost impossible to ride a bike REAL slow. You need speed to stay upright. It's the same thing in this farm. If you go slow, you're going to fall down. EVERY TIME!

Yes you will die from time to time, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Levels 20-25 tend to be hard because level-ups are less frequent and you still have a small Inspiration tray. Push through and it's smooth sailing.

Thanks for that, I've never tried recording video on my new machine. It's fast enough to do so, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I like how you attacked the first boss. Macro? I'll have to try that.

Try what I recommended in my OP. Buy and use reds as fast as possible. Then load up on lucks and oranges, run into the mish, and use them as you're running to the first mobs. Turn on Ninja Run as it'll save a couple of seconds. The faster you start attacking, the more time you benefit from the reds, and the sooner you start getting incoming inspirations. But remember, things get easier at 25 when you go up to 15 Inspiration slots.

That should work just fine. Blazing Aura does a bit more damage, but you don't get Energize or Power Surge.

As Rinanir said it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. With Hasten and the Increase Attack Speed Empowerment buff, I could hit 750 tickets I think in around 90 seconds. That's from level 8 through 50. Actually that was probably with a higher level Brute with a larger Inspiration tray, so a level 8 through 24 Brute would be somewhat slower. But generally below level 50 I'm in there to earn XP, so I clear most of the original 2 spawns plus ambushes. That takes over 2 minutes but under 3, at least at higher levels. As I mentioned in the OP, if you're still farming when Power Surge crashes you'll probably die, and that doesn't happen to me anymore. As to comparing it to DB, it looks like you can still get good results with Typhoon's Edge. It does a lot less damage, but still enough to one-shot Lts. You make up a bit because it cycles faster. Play what you enjoy.

I'd say you can probably get 90 seconds for 750 tickets with a moderately expensive (under 350M) DB build. But you won't be clearing all the mobs while leveling up that fast, even with Claws.

Hmm, I'll have to test the temp powers. I just did the Vet powers and assumed the others were similar. But I think they might actually be worthwhile. The AoEs should be able to one-shot Minions if they get the full damage bonus. And I like your idea about level locking at 10 to take advantage of the Praetorian Enhancements. Maybe I'll try that.

As others have said, it depends on the powersets. Any brute with a decent PBAoE and damage aura by level 6 should work. SS/Inv would suck, lacking both.

Badly due to the significantly lower damage cap. It'll probably take you at least 3 times as long to defeat mobs, which means you probably won't be able to maintain the Defense and Resistance you need to survive.

Is it good for the game if only a small number of people know about some incredibly overpowered thing? Personally I think not. Those people can dominate the Market and get all the really rare things for themselves. I want to make everyone rich. Because when everyone is rich, no one is rich. (I learned that from Syndrome.)

MUA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Yep, 20-25 is a bit of a dry spell. You may not have the Empowerment buff yet if you haven't earned enough Prestige. The big Inspirations from level dings have slowed down. And you don't yet have enough Inspiration slots to do much combining when you only have 10. But at 25 you should have enough Prestige to get an Empowerment Station in a small Workshop, the 15 slot Inspiration tray gives you enough room to combine most Inspiration drops into reds, and you're less likely to lose Inspirations from the tray being full.