AnElfCalledMack

If you wanted to stay at range, you picked the wrong primary. Static Field + Conductive Aura and the use of chaining powers rather tan cones means Electric Control is at its best in the thick of things. Grav/energy and Mind/Energy are quite good ranged doms, though Fiery Assault is a little better than Energy at ranged attacks. Of course, Energy Assault is quite good at melee damage, and Dominators are actually slightly stronger in melee (1.05 melee damage modifier versus 0.95 ranged)

In terms of skippable powers:
The ST Immob is optional - it stops knockback, so you'll need to be careful using it, as Energy Assault gains quite a lot from knocking people around.
Between Static Field, Synaptic Overload, and Conductive Aura you've already got very good area control. Paralysing Blast isn't all that necessary, though it could be nice to stop extra spawns.
Gremlins are universally considered the worst control set pet to date, but they're still absolutely worth taking.

As far as /Energy goes, the snipe is, of course, skippable, and three of the first four attacks should be plenty. You can skip any one of them, but they each have their strengths, so look at each of them.

I don't think you can get it perfectly, but Energy Blast set to Dark Energy, primary colour set to the second option in the third row, and secondary colour set to the third option in the second row is... fairly close. Those colours on Dark (Power set of choice) should look a bit like the Dismantler beams.

Hmm... what are you planning to do with it?

You could cut Tremor - it has a three-second animation, and you do have two damage auras to keep the area damage output up.

If you're aiming at permadom, Indomitable Will isn't really necessary, since you have mez protection up constantly. Psi defense is nice, especially Power Boosted, but not necessary.

Ring of Fire isn't really necessary, of course. I like it, but a lot of others don't. I'd still reccomend Hasten over Hurl Boulder.

And I19 is going to give you three more power selections, as you don't need to take Stamina. Picking up RoF then is a perfectly good idea, though you'll need to scrounge slots from somewhere.

You've got Consume, Stamina, Health and Healing Flames. You'll be fine without PP.

It's tasty, but I passed it up for Fireball myself, and have never regretted the choice. Not all that familiar with Ice, but I'm sure there's something cool you want out of it.

You don't have Hasten, and Hurl Boulder is a glacially slow attack. Yes, it's strong, but you'd be much better off getting in their face and malleting them. Ring of Fire might be a DOT, but it's a fairly good ranged attack that animates like lightning, and as an added bonus, it'll stop you draining your blue bar dry while running two damage auras, a mez aura, and laying down Fire Cages to stop one AV from running away.

Finally, it looks like I19 is about a week away, all things going well (slated for Nov 16, but may be after Thanksgiving). That means you won't have to take Fitness, and will free up three power choices. Hasten is a must. The other two are optional - Acro if you're not perma-dom and sick of being KBed, Assault if you'd like a bit more damage, Bonfire to keep the repairmen away during a STF... whatever floats your boat.

You know, that immobile AV/Triage Beacon fight would actually be a viable use for Bonfire. Just drop it between the two of them, and watch that drone go trundle-trundle-trundle-bounce.

Also, Temperature Protection isn't completely useless. It gives 20% recharge resistance and mules the Steadfast Res/Def just fine. They might even start adding enemies that do substantial amounts of cold damage. That'd be a change.

One thing to note if you're worried about aggro auras is that the damage auras (Blazing Aura, Lightning Field, Death Shroud, and Icicles) have to pass a to-hit roll, so you always have a 5% chance of missing with a pulse. On the upside, you're doing damage as well as taunting. This is less noticeable on Ice and Dark, as they both have multiple auras - ice has an auto-hit debuff aura, while Dark has the two mez auras (which also require hit rolls, but the odds of missing for ten straight seconds plummet).

And, of course, Fire has Burn and Fiery Embrace to keep you top of the "must die" list.

WP/Stone seens like a reasonable combo. Fault lets you shut down a spawn while keeping it nearby, which gives RTTC a chance to get you back up to full. The stuns and KD in the other attacks should help with that too. And QR should let you cope with the somewhat high endurance costs of /Stone.

Only downside is that Stone Melee doesn't really shore up WP's problems with holding aggro. Tremor's terribly slow to animate, and the whole set is slow-recharging. Add that WP doesn't really benefit from +recharge, so building for a lot of it is a bit wasted, and you might find it a little hard to stay the center of attention.

One quick critique - Minitions Control can't include Trip Mine, because then Munitions/Traps Controllers (a very thematic combo) would have Trip Mine twice. While it wouldn't be as bad as letting someone have two PFFs, it's still a bad idea. Also, it, Targeting Drone and Gun Drone really aren't control powers. Three powers that don't help you control anything is a little excessive - even Gravity gets knock-up in Levitate and knockback in Propel, with Singularity flinging holds. I'm also not sure about Gun Drone as a pet, but I can't really put my finger on why.

Like everyone in the thread has said, Fiery Aura gets one of the best heals of any armor set available to brutes (Dark Regeneration being the other). This means that, while defense is (of course) a good way to build survivability, you can also make survivability gains by slotting for recharge. It means you get to use Healing Flames more often to keep yoursefl alive, hit Fiery Embrace, Burn and your Build Up more to drop enemies before they drop you, and lets Rise of the Phoenix come back in a reasonable amount of time if anything does go wrong.

You could also consider trying to get some +HP, as it will make Healing Flames heal for even more.

Kat/SR Scrapper, personally. Yes, it's been done to death, but Divine Avalanche really does make leveling easier, then you get to drop it once you get to a mature, IO'ed build.

SR gives you soft-capped defenses, high DDR and a 20% recharge buff. Pretty much every powerset is going to like that. One of the problems is that SR takes a little while to mature, so you might consider avoiding attack sets that are also a little slow, or favouring one with a little mitigation in it, like knockdown or stuns - SS/SR Brutes would be very painful to level, I imagine, while Stone/SR or Mace/SR seem fairly promising.

Each redside AT has a "plan" they want to stick to. This has a significant impact on how they play.

Brute: Keep on fighting. Brutes take a little while to get going, so they want to stop as little as possible. On scrappers, it's called scrapperlock. On brutes, it's called "playing properly". All the same, you're not invulnerable. If it's going to get you killed, stop and rest. Fury only takes a few seconds to rebuild.

Corruptor: Eliminate the weak. Scourge means you want to be hitting people while they're on 50% or less HP. On teams, try and tab around for the low-health targets and pick them off. Frankly, though, Corrs are the most similar to blueside ATs - they're a lot like a Defender, but with higher damage mods and lower buff/debuff. Still, sufficiently stacked -HP is the biggest debuff of them all.

Dominator: Keep everything under control. Dominators, like blasters, have no native survivability boosts. Unlike blasters, though, they get proactive mitigation through controls. Unlike Fury, Domination is more of an added extra - it rewards tyou for doing what you have to to survive. Remember that defeat is the ultimate form of control.

Mastermind: My minions will handle it. Masterminds have very high endurance costs, but a good set-up needs you to do little more than pick a target and send the troops at them. It takes a lot of practise to get the hang of managing six pets at once, but the rewards for pulling it off can be truly spectacular.

Stalker: He dies now. Stalkers are great for single-target burst, but lacking in a lot of other ways. You need to plan out your fights a little in advance, pick out the biggest threat and eliminate them. Most stalkers are single-target focused, but also have a number of tools to quickly bring it down to a one-on-one fight. A Stalker was the only archetype with which I was able to solo Protean for the Singular Vision badge, although it did come down to running around the lifts waiting for Placate to recharge.

So, really, it's a preference thing. Quick and dirty conversion:

Blaster -> Dominator, possibly Stalker
Controller -> MM, maybe Dominator
Defender -> Corruptor, maybe MM
Scrapper -> Brute, possibly Stalker
Tanker -> Brute

Nemesis is a bit of a one-trick pony. Vengeance makes them hard on purely Defense-based tanks, like Shield or Ice. On anyone else, especially something with Willpower's layered mitigation, try not to kill the lieutenants early and they're a total pushover. Not always fast, but an annoyance at worst. You might want to run it against one or two other groups. I find the Rikti give a good spread of different threat types, but that's just me.

A Rad or Dark is also an option. The -ToHit in DN or RI should combine with the scrapper's +def to hit the softcap quite easily, while in the late-game, these toggles still give another useful debuff effect (-Def or -Dam).

Frankly, the main thing Fire/Shield lacks is any form of debuffing. Seems to me a debuff specialist (like a Fire/Dark or Fire/Rad Corr) would complement them nicely.

@Adeon Hawkwood: There is one power that can dramatically reduce your DDR or mez protection, but it does so through a rather roundabout way. Benumb will reduce the effectiveness of your defense and mez protection powers. If they're toggles or auto-powers, they'll be lowered within about a second.

Another Fire/Fire/Pyre here, and I agree that there's no one enemy that makes you go "well, I guess I die now". The trade-off, of course, is that there are also very few mobs you can truly ignore. Sappers are a little unpleasant, but you have Consume, and can put out enough AoE hurt to drop them in a couple seconds. Just follow the blue lightning. DE aren't really all that bad either - Burn and FSC usually clears out the emanators.

The flipside is that any big fight is serious. Your mitigation doesn't scale well, so it's a question of whether you can survive the next 15-20 seconds to hit another Healing Flames. It's not like Invuln with S/L mobs, or Elec with Sappers or Super Stunners. There's not many "pure fire" mobs, and they tend to resist your damage, and thus your mitigation, almost as well as you resist theirs.

The one really unpleasant figt you have to do over and over, though, is fighting your double in the level 50 hero morality mission. It's incredibly boring, since both of you have only fire damage and 90% resistance to fire. Fortunately, you have FE and BU to get some burst damage out there.