Amy_Amp

For defenders, Storm/sonic since you can stack -res which helps Tornado and LS do even more damage. Storm/ice for the AoEs, Storm/fire if you can hold off until Freedom.

For corrs, Ice/storm and Fire/storm for all the reasons you would with a defender, but you get scourge as well and rain powers love scourge.

For controllers, Ice/storm for the theme. Fire/storm can be a beast only matched by Fire/kin, or Fire/cold. Plant/storm because it was one of the funnest trips to 50 I have done. Earth/storm. It has more control at 18 than a number of builds will get at 50. Of the 100+ characters I have rolled, it's only one that had teammates chant it's name. I still think it's the most fun to 50 I had even if others are really close.

EDIT: Add in Grav/storm and Ill/storm for more chaos based controllers.

Fire, Ice, and Elec controllers are the ideal for for Time since all three play well in melee.

CEBR and Lowbie Farming Maps

If Fire doesn't win for damage, then something needs to get nerfed. The only point of Fire is damage. Also one factor that helps Fire is the fact that it's less resisted than say Archery.

If I read the diff setting correctly then any brute will really work for it. /wp helps with little downtime, and /regen will work when it officially gets here. Dark is forgiving. Claws blooms early and is light on end, but really just about anything works. I can see something like /sr, or /shield taking time to develop to where you would like it.

My Dark/shield level 27 scrapper is doing +1x2 and it's touch and go, but I'm surviving to where I'm leaving the diff setting there. /shield is a trade off with /sr as it's less durable at the benefit of being more offensive. My level 33 Dark/elec brute runs on +0x3. I die a number of times, but I'm also pushing the build and eating inspirs like candy and it's fun. I did a Carnie mission last night and outside of the boss spawns I was virtually running from one mob to another with little down time. I did one arc that had two EB in it. You faced one twice and it was a Freakshow EB so it rezzed during one of the missions. In other words, I basically downed four EBs in one arc. Preaton(sp?) I basically soloed without inspirs. I currently have SOs and common level 35 IOs in the build outside of Energize which is frankenslotted with heal/recharge. I also have a SS/fire, SS/elec, and a Stone/wp. Really, it's tough to pick a bad brute.

In terms of currency issues, friends don't let friends slot TOs. It's just not worth it if you are buying them. I hardly think it's worth selling them no matter how poor you might be. Two quick and dirty tricks. Run some AE missions to get a little stash of tickets going. Here and here are actual decently done arcs. Either do some reward rolls with them, or even roll for random common salvage. I would aim for the middle level arcane and tech salvage. Each roll for salvage is 8 tickets. A number of salvage depending on the market can go for 40k-150K easy. Put 1 currency bids on level 50 common recipes that aren't desirable, Taunt, Confuse, etc. People will dump these for 1 currency to get whatever. Grab a stack of 10 of these and sell them at a store. Even if the crappy ones sell for little, each still sells of +30K. Just on the recipes alone, I had a level 3 character sitting with 1 million and you need just under that for SOs at 22.

Outside of specific mobs, you really shouldn't have any issues. Darkest Night and Fearsome Stare alone mitigate a ton of incoming damage for your pets. Bodyguard Mode means it's rather hard for you to die as well. My Bots/traps uses common IOs so there's nothing special about the build and it's the first build I felt like EBs were mere speed bumps in the game. Again, there are mobs out there that can tear an MM apart, but those are few and certainly not enough to make one not play an MM because of it.

/sonic unless you want something more AoE based. Leadership is worth taking on defenders since they get the biggest numbers from them.

Scrapper, brute, or MM. Bots/dark is one of the best MM sets so I would look there first. If you want to look at a scrapper, or brute, I would go for an AoE based one so you can use the diff setting for a higher mob sizes for better exp. You need something that can survive the larger mobs, so I would lean towards a brute.

For lack of funds, run some AE missions and build up tickets and use those for reward rolls and sell on the market what's good and sell at stores what isn't. The market forum has guides to give you ideas on what to roll for in terms of recipes. You can also do tips missions and get a-merits to use and buy high priced recipes that can be used to sell on the market as well. Case in point, look up what a crafted Luck of the Gambler: Def/+recharge sells for. You can get one of those recipes every four days.

Virtue. Has close enough to Freedom's population to call it even, but it's without the Freedumb part. Virtue LFG Beta is a good channel to use to help get on teams. VU2011 can be decent, but the first one seems more active.

Here is a good place for info. Search for what you are looking for and it should answer your question. If you need help beyond that, ask away.

SOs can be gotten in Talos, or RWZ for blue side. I would say use Talos since you'll likely be there anyway.

EDIT: The better answer to your SO question is looking at this list. This is the order in which any store will have them.