This section of the guide discusses specific builds for farming effectively in City of Heroes and City of Villains.
What Archetypes and Builds Are Good for Farming
In general, you want a build that has good Area of Effect (AE) damage (and particularly PBAE - Point Blank Area of Effect). The build must also be able to sustain the “Alpha Strike” (the initial attack of the 10+ mobs in each spawn) as well as any subsequent damage.
Tanker Farming
Tankers can easily survive the alpha and sustained damage. The problem is damage. Super Strength provides a permanent 80% damage boost from rage, and you can time the crash between spawns. Footstomp is a 15’ radius PBAE that also knocks the mobs down to prevent scattering. If you couple this with an armor set that possesses a damage aura (fire, ice, or dark) and you can farm pretty well.
If you plan on farming in a duo team, grouping with a kinetics support character will increase damage enormously. The second team member definitely needs to be someone who can either deal a lot of AE damage, buff AE damage, or both.
Scrapper Farming
The alpha strike is a bit rough, but survivable. The Spines set is really the only offensive set with enough AE damage to farm well. If you couple this with fire or dark armor, you add a second damage aura and a good heal.
For a long while, the spines/dark armor scrapper was considered the best scrapper farming build. With I12, spines/fire has also become popular. Fire Armor has the advantage of an endurance recovery ability, whereas Dark Armor has a more powerful heal. In the end it mostly comes down to preference or what kind of scrapper you already have leveled up.
Controller Farming
The king of farming is the fire/kin controller. Kinetics gives you enormous damage. Your control powers make surviving the damage possible. Containment adds to your damage. Spamming your transfusion and transference means you never have downtime.
Brute Farming
Since they are like a cross between tankers and scrappers, it is easy to see why they can farm pretty well. The same set choices apply. Electric Armor is a particularly good farming set as it has an endurance return power (to avoid downtime) and lightning reflexes increases recharge time (AEs often have longer recharges) and run speed. Run speed is a grossly underrated ability in CoX as over time a faster base run speed will significantly add to your inf earned per hour.
Dominator Farming
Many believe the fire/psi dominator is even better at farming that the fire/kinetics controller. This is largely due to the extreme power of Psychic Shockwave - a 25’ radius PBAE. With perma-domination, the fire/psi dominator has amazingly good control (to reduce damage taken) and very high damage. The problem is, villain side of the game has become so vacant and unpopular that few people have the patience to level up a dominator from 1 to 50.
This post is part of the series: City of Heroes Farming Guide
This guide to farming will help you earn massive amounts of influence or infamy in City of Heroes and City of Villains.
