Psiphon

Endurance allowing - which is the big issue with Dark/

I've got in combat permanent PA on my Ill/Kin on a relative budget.

3 LotG +recharge
Purple set in Decieve
All the rest are relatively inexpensive sets offering 5 or 6.25%

Haste 70%
Global 89%
Siphon Speed upto 60%

Any Tank will solo that level spawns at L30 or so it's really a matter of how quickly.

A Shield/ would be a better option because of Shield Charge and the damage buff but a WP/Fire could do it at a good rate also.

Personally I'd go Dark/Mace for the stacked stuns with OG.

Fire/Ice ;-)

My first question to you is - what level are you?

My Shield/SS is level 35 and I've been running on that setting without any real difficulty for the past couple of levels, a Shield/Fire could do the same.

If you haven't got Shield Charge yet wait till you do before you decide to give up on the set - it always puts a smile on my face.

If you do decide to go with something else I'd say the big question is whether you want the character to be great against some mobs and weak against others or do you want to be good but not great against all.

Personally I prefer to be able to go into a mission and be able to take the mob down irrespective of what they are and their damage type -psi etc.
Shields with it's positional defence does this.

My Ice/EM is great against all but Psi and to a lesser degree fire which I find incredibly annoying. I'm currently buiding for ranged defence to help negate this as most psi is ranged.

As I said something to bear in mind if you look elsewhere.

Also as a footnote if you only want to solo at the setting specified and are prepared to wait a bit longer a Scrapper could also do this but at a quicker rate.

My DM/SR Scrapper is soft capped with only one IO set and the +def unique and would have no issue soloing at a higher level than this.

Given the benefits that Rage offers I've got no issues with this, a little bit of End managent is all that's required.

My Defence crashing from 45% to 25% however...............

From a Scrapper perspective I'd agree with this - my DM/SR has few issues.

My best Carnie killer though is my Illusion/Kinetic/Stone Controller.

With the pets pulling the aggro - 5 with the Phantasm decoy - the damage type is irrelevant.

I play in melee stealthed/invis via Group Invisibilty while dealing damage through the Stone Epic:
Fissure for AoE and Siesmic Smash for Single Target, both do good damage already but once you augment them with Siphon Speed, Siphon Power and Fulcram Shift it's amazing.

Even with the pets taking most of the aggro you still take damage but Transfusion allows me to heal back over 400 HP every few seconds and with Transferance I can refill my End bar every 10 or so.

The playstyle is very active - you move from mob to mob trying to stay at the damage cap using the buffs much like a Brute maintaing Fury.

I've soloed large spawns of most mob types with this build including Carnies.

I've got both a Fire/Rad and Fire/FF in the late 30's / early 40's and personally find the Fire/FF combo the better soloer.

With the Fire/Rad your survival and damage is based around debuffing the mobs which can take a while to setup, you can also lose an imp if they run off and attack undebuffed mobs.
The Fire/FF on the other hand just keeps rolling with the bubbles providng good defence and survivabilty while Fire provides nice damage.

In regards to Standing Around - that's pretty much how Fire does it's damage whether your a Kin, Rad or FF it's quite a passive set - Hotfeet and Cages doing most of the personal damage.

If you want to be a bit more active go for the Stone Epic, you still get defence based armour but you also get a relatively quick charging AoE attack (this also has knockdown and a 50% chance of stun for stacking with Flashfire.
The Single target attack - Siesmic Smash is a Mag 4 hold that does incredible damage, also there's a self heal in the set.

I thnk the Stone Epic will suit your more active style and add some additional survivability with the extra control.

Mind/Kin does good Single target damage but I believe the requirement is AoE damage for low level farming.

Out of the Controller I'd say it's between Fire/Rad and Plant/Kin, having levelled both I'd say the Fire/Rad but it was a while ago so could be wrong.

Yep, I agree with this!

I've tried various alts and combos includung Spines Scrappers and Fire Tanks - at L10 the FRad was the most damaging.

For me the hate preceeds the recent AE farms; my disllike is because of:

The people it attracts generally - they tend to run around saying "look at me I'm the uber" and other such drivel. Obvioulsy there are exceptions but that's the general crowd that I associate with the set.

Non Controllers keep trying to nerf Controllers because of this combo and it's damage potential.
The number of people flocking to the combo means that there are loads of Contollers at the high end often multi box farming - this distorts the Controller population and then appears to back up the perception that Controllers are over powered because everyone is playing them.

Oh and did I mention the type of person that it attracts..........?

Your Stone/Fire tank outperforms your Fire/Ice tank?????

I can understand how a Shield/Fire or Fire/Fire tank could/would but a Stone/Fire, with the debuffs to Granite - or are you talking about out of Granite?

I've always found my Fire/Ice to be very good in the damage department - with the Ice patch/Burn combo supplementing the click attacks.

Taunt is needed though to keep pulling the mobs onto the Ice patch/Burn.

I've never timed missions but playing alongside various Tank combos I havent't found the damage to be anemic - it clears maps quicker than some of my scrappers.

Single target damage is c*** though.