Our Favo(u)rite units: Farmer/Rancher/Harvester class by Yersinia

These units are ways to generate more drones for your horde.  As such, they are often compared to Infector/Reanimator/Crowdsourcer.  There are a few differences, however.  The Reanimator class also adds drones to your overall supply, not just what is on the map, so they are available to place at other spawn points.  The Farmer class only generates drones on the map itself, no increased reserves are made.  However, since the Farmer class moves along with the horde, instead of lagging behind at the dead survivors, drones are made in the mass of the horde itself, so readily available to mutate as other units become available.  The Farmer class also moves just slightly slower than the main horde, so they are not running out in front (looking at you, Runners and Delinquents) and easily picked off.  Occasionally, a Reanimator will get stuck next to a wall, trying to get to a dead survivor behind the wall, and never be able to get there (no attack to break the wall), so becomes useless for the rest of the fight unless distracted with a flare.  This does not happy with the Farmer family as they are not drawn to dead Survivors (now there’s an oxymoron…).

A river of drones, as created by Yersinia's ranchers

Farmer (Epic level unit)

Here's my contribution to the
Guild potluck dinner

Base level, has cooldown of 40 seconds, creates 3 drones in 6 seconds with action time of 0.7 seconds
Level 3 perk (Fertilizer):  Decreases spawn time to 5 seconds
Level 10 perk (Micronutrients):  Decreases spawn time to 4 seconds.
Level 10 perk (Crop Yield):  Increases drones spawned to 4
Level 20 perk (Decreased Deployment I):  Decreases deployment cooldown to 35 seconds
Level 30 perk (Fertile soil): Increases spawned drone health by 100%
Level 30 perk (Compost):  Increases spawned drone damage by 100%
Level 40 perk (Decreased Deployment II):  Decreases deployment cooldown, I’m not sure how much since mine not to that level and probably never will be. (Note from Octavia: should be to 30 seconds (another 5 seconds)
Level 50 perk (Pesticide):  Adds a damaging area of effect (130 damage)
Level 50 Perk (Crop Rotation):  Randomly spawns a unit from your team

Which perks to choose?
Level 10 perk:  choose Crop Yield.  No question here.  If you do the math, Crop Yield generates you 4 drones every 5.7 seconds, or 0.70 drones/second.  Micronutrients generates you 3 drones in 4.7 seconds, or 0.64 drones/second.  Crop Yield is better.
Level 30 perk:  I would presume that Compost would be the better perk here.  Each drone still has only small life, so doubling small health is still small health, and likely still to be killed easily.  However, if each drone does double the (small) damage, there is actual benefit against the survivors
Level 50 perk:  Based on the Forums, generated units may not have any perks associated with them.  Just something to keep in mind.  I will probably never have to choose which perk to use here.


Rancher (Legendary level unit)

Five heads are better than one!

Base level, has cooldown of 40 seconds, creates 4 drones in 6 seconds with action time of 0.7 seconds
Level 3 perk (Fertilizer):  Decreases spawn time to 5 seconds
Level 10 perk (Micronutrients):  Decreases spawn time to 3 seconds.
Level 10 perk (Crop Yield):  Increases drones spawned to 5
Level 20 perk (Decreased Deployment I):  Decreases deployment cooldown to 35 seconds
Level 30 perk (Fertile soil): Increases spawned drone health by 100%
Level 30 perk (Compost):  Increases spawned drone damage by 100%
Level 40 perk (Decreased Deployment II):  Decreases deployment cooldown, I’m not sure how much since mine not to that level and probably never will be. (Note from Octavia: should be to 30 seconds (another 5 seconds)
Level 50 perk (Pesticide):  Adds a damaging area of effect (156  damage)
Level 50 Perk (Crop Rotation):  Randomly spawns a unit from your team

Fear the awesome power of Yersinia's Rancher!

Which perks to choose?

Level 10 perk:  choose Micronutrients.  No question here.  Note that this is different from Farmer.  If you do the math, Crop Yield generates you 5 drones every 5.7 seconds, or 0.88 drones/second.  Micronutrients generates you 4 drones in 3.7 seconds, or 1.08 drones/second.  Micronutrients is better.
Level 30 perk:  I would presume that Compost would be the better perk here.  Each drone still has only small life, so doubling small health is still small health, and likely still to be killed easily.  However, if each drone does double the (small) damage, there is actual benefit against the survivors.
Level 50 perk:  Based on the Forums, generated units may not have any perks associated with them.  Just something to keep in mind.  I will probably never have to choose which perk to use here.


Harvester
I don’t have any statistics on this class other than what I pulled from the forum.  My only Mythic at this point is a level-10 Glutton.  Yay me.  However, at level 50, the radiant damage effect if that perk is chosen is 203

Note from Octavia:
I do have a Harvester, thanks to the WZ birthday pack.

"Alas; Poor Yorick! I knew him Horatio"

Here's his stats:
Base level, has cooldown of 36 seconds, creates 5 drones in 6 seconds with action time of 0.7 seconds
Level 3 perk (Fertilizer):  Decreases spawn time to 5 seconds
Level 10 perk (Micronutrients):  Decreases spawn time to 2 seconds.
Level 10 perk (Crop Yield):  Increases drones spawned to 6
Level 20 perk (Decreased Deployment I):  Decreases deployment cooldown
Level 30 perk (Fertile soil): Increases spawned drone health by 100%
Level 30 perk (Compost):  Increases spawned drone damage by 100%
Level 40 perk (Decreased Deployment II):  Decreases deployment cooldown,
Level 50 perk (Pesticide):  Adds a damaging area of effect (203 damage)
Level 50 Perk (Crop Rotation):  Randomly spawns a unit from your team

Which perks to choose?

Level 10 perk:  choose Micronutrients.  No question here again.  Crop Yield generates you 6 drones every 5.7 seconds, or 1.05 drones/second.  Micronutrients generates you 5 drones in 2.7 seconds, or 1.85 drones/second.  Micronutrients is better.
Level 30 perk: Again, probably Compost for double damage.
Level 50 perk:  Based on the Forums, generated units may not have any perks associated with them. The other perk, Pesticide, basically makes him into a biohazard type unit that spews out drones and is considered very highly (on the forums at least ;-)!