Adeon Hawkwood

Well as others have mentioned at 6 years you must be pretty close to having an IO license permanently so if you aren't it might be worth spending the cash to get the last few reward tokens.

Before making an IO build I find there are two questions you need to answer. First what is your goal with the build? Secondly what is your budget?

In terms of goals most Blasters focus on two things: Recharge and Defense (either Ranged Defense or Smashing and Lethal Defense). There are other options but those are the most popular (and generally the most efficient). It sounds like you could also use some Recovery bonuses but you can easily pick them up as well.

In terms of Defense picking either Ranged or S/L is your best bet. If you prefer to focus solely on your blasts with your melee attacks being for emergencies then go for Ranged. If you prefer to be in the thick of it using your melee attacks (a Blapper) then S/L defense is generally better.

You can find a full set of IO sets along with bonuses here:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/IO_Sets

Some good sets for you to look at are:

Thunderstrike: 3.75% Ranged Defense for each set, goes in single target ranged attacks.
Decimation: A decent alternative to Thunderstrike, this provides a strong recharge bonus. Be careful though since Positron's Blast has the same bonus and you're limited to 5 of them.
Positrons Blast: A nice Recharge bonus for your AoEs, you only need five pieces so skip the Damage/Range one since you have Boost Range and Positorn's is overlsotted for Damage).
Kinetic Combat: The Smashing/Lethal Defense equivalent to Thunderstike, goes in Melee sets. Somewhat weak in terms of enhancement so I recommend 4 slotting it without the proc and then adding a Crushing Impact: Accuracy/Damage or Crushing Impact: Damage/Endurance in the fifth slot depending on preferences.
Mako's Bite: A Ranged Defense set for your melee attacks.
Crushing Impact: A recharge set for your Melee attacks.
Stupefy: This is a stun set which boosts Recharge and Ranged Defense.

Anyway that should get you started. In any case I would recommend getting a copy of Mids and working out your build there before spending inf on it.

Yeah Crabs are awesome. I've got all of the pet powers perma on mine so I have a small army of mechanical spiders following me around .

My Elementalist toon was originally an Earth/Storm/Fire Controller but I ended up rerolling him as an Earth/Fire/Ice Dominator since I found the combo more enjoyable to play (I would have actually preferred Ice/Fire/Stone Dominator but they don't get Stone Mastery).

Now I was going more off of the classical descriptions of the elements rather than the Avatar series but I felt that the general combos I had fit the nature of the elements well. Fire is aggression and destruction so my primary attack powers use it (Fiery Assault and Fire Mastery). Earth is solid, reliable and tough which is why I would have preferred Stone Mastery on my Dominator (Rock Armor and Earth's Embrace) but I find Earth Control represents it thematically as using your connection to the earth to disrupt your opponents. Water represented by powers like Sleet and Ice Storm which represent the power of cold Water to sap an enemies strength and morale while Quicksand (Earth + Water) represents its ability to prevent movement through an area. Air is a little tricky, the Controller had powers like Gale and Tornado which represent Air's ability to move things while the Dominator mostly uses Air as a secondary element to control his other abilities (thematically his Fire blasts are a mix of Air and Fire while Sleet and Ice Storm are a mix of Air and Water).

I also took advantage of power customization to make powers look like they mix elements a bit. For example with Earth Control using the lava setting with either a Red or Blue secondary color makes it look like he's mixing either Fire or Water into his Earth castings.

A slightly off-kilter option you may like is a Time/Electric Defender. It's not going to win any awards for damage but it makes for an extremely tough character that can provide a lot of protection for a team simply by debuffing, holding and draining everything within reach. It works pretty well on just SOs although it is a bit endurance heavy (plus I'd strongly recommend a knockback protection IO). But even on SOs you get a tough character that cna protect a team and even fill in for a tank to some extent (at least against enemies without to much mez abilities).

Plants has three things really going for it. First Seeds of Confusion, compared to the AoE stuns in most Control sets (which this effectively replaces) Seeds is available sooner, recharges faster, lasts longer and increases your damage. Secondly Roots, this does twice the damage of the AoE immobilize in other control sets; it's not a great AoE damage power but it's not bad, especially since Seeds allows you to avoid most of the aggro it would normally generate. Finally Carrion Creepers, this come later than the other two but also adds quite a bit of damage. So overall Plants has very good damage for a control set and gets some very nice control early on.

As for Fire it has damage, damage, damage. Fire attacks deal more damage than other attacks anyway and then Embrace of Fire enhances that further; compared to Build Up it has a higher damage bonus and three times the duration but only twice the recharge. Fiery Assault does have some drawbacks, Ignite and Combustion are a bit meh (not bad but not great either) and Blazing Bolt is a snipe but you can do pretty well just using Fire Breath, the three single target attacks and Embrace of Fire.

Just as a general comment and observation. A lot of the time around here when people say a set/combo is awesome they frequently mean it's awesome at level 50 with at least some IO investment. In this case Plant/Fire is pretty awesome at any level but it's especially awesome at level 50 .