Hero-aided farming

What are you guys doing for true hero-aided farming? Not just taking heros and/or henchies to get you near a boss, flagging them out of the way, and killing the boss, but rather taking them with you on the whole run?

I've done about 2 + 2/2 runs of the Consulate Docks mission with a team of four. My take included a gold rune, two gold scrolls, a good gold weapon, a bad gold weapon, 3 purple runes, a bunch of blue runes and insignias, and not much else. I didn't time it, but there's a good chance this beats soloing ettins, and certainly it's a welcome change after having done ettins a gazillion times. Anti-farming code also seems like much less of a threat.

My team concepts are as follows:

1. I want to do the vast majority of my farming with my elementalist, as he needs the XP to work towards the elite skills title.

2. I'm using three multi-target damage dealers and a healer. I haven't yet tried to optimize by cutting the team size below that.

3. I'm using an MM as one of the damage dealers, so as to have a squadron of tanks.

4. I'm using the two Inspiration energy gainers/interrupts on two of my three caster heroes; the third has too crowded a skillbar.

5. The exact list of heroes I'm using is Olias, Sousuke, and Jin. Searing Flames is a nice bright new toy for me.

6. With all that burning, I gave Olias Virulence as his elite.

7. I'm making Olias and his minions as survivable as possible -- mix of melee and Fiend minions, vampirics for the meleers, Dark Bond, Verata's Sacrfice along with BoTM. So he needs energy gain. Buffed GoLE is another shiny "new" toy for me.

Your mileage may vary, of course. For example, it's possible that Barrage rangers could follow this strategy at least as well.

I suspect that this may now be at least as profitable as solo-farming a zone, even where you can. For example, I'm looking forward to taking this group outside of Drok's to hunt Avicara, trolls, Stone Summit, etc. (I suffer from a considerable rune shortage ...)

Speaking of the rune shortage, those heroes are not optimized yet, although they certainly are Level 20s and have good weapons.

By the way -- I don't have Zhed yet, but when I do I'd like to introduce the trolls to a build type that I will call "Three Nuketeers" Properly time triple meteor showers -- with or without Glyph of Sacrifice can be pretty hard to -- well, they could be pretty hard to stand up against. Even triple Searing Flames may do the job, if one throws in a Mark of Rodgort and a snare and/or Arcane Echo. E.g., are 6 Fireball-equivalents plus burning enough to kill a troll?

well, i hav my very own B/P team ^^

my team
me: B/P ranger
acolyte jin: B/P ranger
margrid the sly: B/P ranger
olias: mm
alesia

i dont need any tanks since minions and pets do the job
adding khim, gehraz and that paragon hench helped me through almost all of the NF missions... (and im proud to see how "big" my team is bigger than normal ^^)

tip: acolyte jin is wielding an icy flatbow and margrid the sly is wielding a fiery flatbow
reason...
- u can make olias a ss and put on spinal shivers so every attack of acolyte jin would interrupt target foe
- or u can replace acoliet jin with nuker hero + Mark of Rodgort so that every attack of margrid wud cause burning... (MoR + barrage pwns!)

as for the eyes, my pet is a lion and the 2 other pets are lionesses ^^ (my own safari zoo hahaha)

You've got a regular Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom going there!!

And unless you're old enough to be father of most of the people who post here, and maybe not even then, you don't know what I just referred to, at least not from memory ...

Anyhow, I took my squad of four out into troll/avicara country. It didn't seem all that efficient. I didn't do much to tweak the builds, however, I must admit -- just Mantra of Resolve for the nukers and Physical Resistance for the healer.

And by the way, if you want a team of five barragers, you can do it in parts of Factions. Aurora the henchie barrages, and Assassins (Zenmai) make decent barragers ...

But if you want an MM, you'd down to four.

Oh yeah -- if you don't have two necros around, I think a dervish could make an OK Orders necro. Not quite as good as the real thing, but she can keep Orders up close to non-stop.

Quote:

Team of four farming Consulate Docks hasn't been all that lucrative. It's OK, however; I get a couple of golds per run, a couple of purples, and a bunch of blues, and half the colored things are runes.

If one could get a team that maintained its speed while only having 2-3 members, that could be pretty interesting. I have an idea that may make the healer unnecessary, although I think it really would thrive with Jagged Bones, and I don't have that skill yet ...