A/E or E/A

which would be better for farming?

At the current state of the game, A/E is more flexible, i.e., can farm more areas.

If only for farming, A/E. I have both, and i farm with both. A/E is more flexible when it comes to killing skills.
E/x however is more interesting to use and more usefull in general gameplay

i have both and use both for farming, A/E is def. more practical, although ele's do have their uses.

i use both, a/e mainly for chaos planes and green farming etc.

but i use e/x cos that can do loads, glacial stones, raptors etc.

both have there uses and perks.

Trying to run the perma SF with an Elementalist is risky. At 12 stat Shadow the longest length you'll get is 25 seconds (30s with 20% Ench mod), your recharge allows for 53% (a tiny bit under 30s). You have less than a second between SF ending, and the next cast completion to survive...with 47 life after the SF ends...those odds are extremely low.

With the Assassin, you have full invulnerability (aside from touch/AoE) at all times because of the 2 second overlap (at 16 stat Shadow; 32 seconds duration/38.4s with +20% Ench mod, with a tiny bit under 30s recharge), so have ample time to make your next cast sequence before SF runs out.

This is just Shadow Form stats though. E/A is capable of farming a lot of areas as well. But if you're going for ecto...stick with the A/E.

Ele for sliver armor obs. flesh stuff, Sin for perma shadow form stuff.

A/E will get you the most money farming chaos plains, but is mind numingly boring.

ok wait your all like A/E for farming, but sin's don't get much Energy, so the reson i wanted E/A was for the energy.....no?
I was thinking, more energy, more use of sin attacks, because using a combo of dual->lead->off hand. takes all the sins mana (but does a majour attack if done right), and thus the sin cant do it again right off the bat, so my theory is, more energy more attack oppertunitys

Mmm ... no. This is a fairly common misconception. A high maximal amount of energy does not equal energy management. Assassins have a fairly good built-in passive energy management system in Critical Strikes, just add zealous daggers and you're golden. Granted, elementalists have a large pool of initial energy but if they use more than they regenerate (both eles and sins have 4 pips of natural regen) they will run dry just like everybody else. Thus, elementalists need specific energy management skills in their bars whereas a sin can usually do without.

It is all down to personal preference, as ele can get 16 fire magic they can do more damage but can't get an infinite SF (without cons).
Sins can keep it up indefinately and still do enough damage to kill things quite quickly, to start with i would go with a sin as it is easier.

It depends on where you're farming and what build.

If you are hoping to use Perma-[[Shadow form], then remember that Perma-SF Dagger sins are slow no matter what, because every 30 seconds, you have 10 seconds of auto-attack because of [[Dark Paradox].

Also, as mentioned, E/A cannot use Shadow Arts runes, so are very time-tight. They also do not have critical strikes, which can add a LOT of energy for a normally low-energy Sin. Zealous Daggers + 13 CS + [[Critical Eye] == +5 energy per critical. Bring along [[Critical Strike] as your dual (I know, the mantra is [[Death Blossom] == god, but hear me out), then every 2-3 attacks (depending on your chain) gets you +14e. Also, depending on what you're fighting, AoE damage can be bad (Getting hit with one [[Fear me!] is not nearly as bad as getting hit with 5).

Also, given the downtime from DP, you want your chain to be as fast as possible, IMO. I've found that [[Repeating Strike] is underrated in situations like these, especially if you're using Critical strike as it has a higher recharge. You can keep spamming RS until Critical is recharged (shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 strikes, and then get all of the energy back by hitting with CS). If you are coming up on your SF recharge, of course, you can just use one Repeating and autoattack until CS is up, since you'll likely need the energy for your SF chain.

YMMV, of course. My mantra is that success > speed when it comes to farming (within reason). I'll take the 10 minute run over the 7 minute run if I have more survival chance.

I've been working on this build in tombs. Still a little rough (haven't gotten the attrib spread perfect yet, but it's a WIP) but it might give you some ideas.

[Glyph of Swiftness][Deadly Paradox][Shadow Form][Critical Eye][Unsuspecting Strike][Repeating Strike][Critical Strike][Critical Agility]

I like to apply Critical Eye right after Shadow form so it gets covered by DP and makes it usually up. Crit Agility, of course, takes care of itself.

these are all good points especially about the runes for sin's i never took that into account, right now i have a sin/ranger mostly so i can posion my blades and have my kitty, but i wanted to do farming and the last time i had a sin/ele i found it hard to play, but that was because i just bought factions back then. now that i have a more stable approach on the game...well...you get the idea.

now in the skill build above should it not go, dual, offhand lead? (i may have the order wrong for the combo) for effective damage?

It depends on the skills your using, but in that build, the offhand must follow the lead, and the duals must follow the offhand. So I put them on the bar in order of execution. If you try to reverse it (in execution. You can put them in the bar however you like), everything but the lead will Miss.

A/E definitely, perma[shadow form] ftw.
Very dull, but can pull in over 40k in an hour.

Hmm true. I might have it wrong. probably do. LOL

Repeating Strike requires there to have been an off hand attack beforehand, and you don't have one in that build, lol.

Doh!

#include facepalm.jpg

Thus the danger of Theorycraft.

[Unsuspecting Strike][Wild Strike][Repeating Strike][Critical Strike]

Might lose DB, but as I mentioned, there are reasons I dont like it for farming.

I'd love a better opener than Unsuspecting, honestly. 10e is a bit much. Only one that is faster, though is [[Jagged Strike], which ranges from barely useful to utterly worthless. at 5e 1r, though, might be worth it just to launch the chain...

thats exsactly what i was speaking about

Yep, I goofed on that one.

Hey, it was free advice, and worth every penny of it.