AnElfCalledMack

Theft of Essence: Chance for +Endurance in Dark Regeneration.

Beyond that, try building for defense. There's not a huge amount in the set itself, but depending on budget, you can get S/L, melee, S/L/E/N, or even S/L/E/N/F/C or all three positions up to 45%. At that point, you have something ridiculously sturdy - capped defense, solid resistances, and a truly massive heal.

Another option is to take more recharge, recovery and AoEs. If you're in a big spawn, the Theft of Essence proc can make Dark Regeneration return more endurance than it costs. Throw in Dark's ability to mitigate through mezzes, and you can cut through a spawn in a very short time with little loss of Endurance.

I've played Fire/Earth. It does indeed have a lot of AoE yumminess, though you need to be a little careful with Fire Cages, since knockup/knockdown is a huge part of /Earth's survivability. Char animates stupidly fast, though, so it's very possible to keep two guys held and a third on their back indefinitely from a very low level. And while the PBAoEs all have different ranges, "Immobilise everything then get as many things as you can in Mud Pots range" is a pretty good guide.

Power Boost is fantastic - Power Boost + Domination + Flashfire will leave an entire spawn reeling for almost a minute from level 20, while a Power Boosted hold on a boss is a beautiful thing. Add in Seismic Smash, and you have truly amazing levels of safety without really sacrificing damage potential.

As far as Earth/Fire synergy goes, Earth is probably the safest control set. It sacrifices damage for debuffs and extra control. It's great at keeping enemies out of range and unable to hurt you, while vulnerable to counterattack. Fiery Assault complements that fantastically, giving you heavy-hitting ranged attacks that don't provide much mitigation. Even /Fire's lack of a ToHit debuff is made up for by Quicksand, an autohit defense debuff. Rather than power combos, Earth/Fire is just a matter of the two sets meshing really well, playing to strengths and covering weaknesses.

Frankly, either is good. Fire Control and Earth Assault are mainly melee sets, and so work very well together. Earth Control and Fiery Assault are mostly ranged sets, and work very well together. On the other hand, Earth/Earth has most of its damage in slow-recharging attacks, while Fire/Fire could probably use another heavy hitter, and both of them will be bouncing around the battlefield, with some powers best at range, and others right in someone's face.

I know that there's a lot of things to test before anyone pegs it as the cause of the short Slashes in that test, but if it does turn out that it's dependant on position in chaisn, it seems that the powers are being considered in pairs, which would suggest that a three-attack chain would see a lot more variation - about 50% of the time, it should be one of the longer, second attacks followed by a pair, and the other 50% a pair followed by a short attack. That should produce a rather characteristic beat in, say, a Slash/Swipe/Strike attack chain.

It'd also produce a rather odd result for attack chains: Four- and six-attack chains can finesse the recharge on their attacks, but three- and five-attack chains have to slot them all for worst-case scenarios in all powers, as any gap would show up on alternate chains.

One thing to remember is that a lot of things that get called "team-unfriendly" around here, like heavy knockback, can actually be great in dedicated duos - the two of you can learn to work together, whereas a PUG is only for a night, so by the time you adapt to the quirks of the others, you're almost finished.

For example, Energy Blast and Storm Summoning have heavy knockback. If there's a melee archetype, especially one with AoE, they're not going to appreciate the scatter you're causing. But in a duo, you can move to opposite sides of a mob and start playing tennis. Or just pick out a handy corner and drive them all into it. Frequent use of sleeps is another mechanic that few people enjoy on teams, but combine a Mind Controller and a Sonic Attack Defender (with, say, Kin and FF split between them as you want), and you can very, very safely incapacitate large numbers of mobs, then take them out one by one.

As a number of others have said, pretty much anything works. Find what's fun for you.

Well, it would be nice to have Fire Imps called Snap, Crackle and Pop, but I've never gotten a Dom or Controller to 32, so I can't really comment.