StrykerX

This depends a lot on what sort of pets you use and your secondary. A Bots/FF or Bots/Traps with near-softcapped pets or a Demons/Thermal whose pets have Tanker-like resists won't lose nearly as many pets as, say, a Mercs/TA or Ninja/Poison would. It also depends on how you use your pets... parking them out of AoE splash range (and frequently sending them back when they decide to run in to melee anyway ) helps a lot on ranged pets... melee pets, on the other hand, do tend to die a lot to AVs with PBAoEs or melee cones.

Do you really notice 15% psi resist making much difference?

I'm guessing he's making a Cyclops style character, one who just uses regular hand to hand attacks when he isn't shooting lazers out of his eyes. Personally I'd make a Martial Arts Scrapper and take Laser Beam Eyes from Body Mastery, but that would require waiting until level 43 for the lazers...

Don't forget Fearsome Stare. It has the same to-hit debuff as Darkest Night and it doesn't rely on an anchor. I find I don't even bother with Darkest Night unless there's a boss or higher once I have Fearsome Stare up every spawn.

As far as Dark vs Traps, Bots/Traps is better in my opinion. Your Protector Bots will give you about 10% defense to all positions and your Force Field Generator adds another 15%... that leaves you only 20% away from the softcap and your non-Protector bots only 10% away. Add in Maneuvers and a 5% defense aura and you have SR Scrapper bots and very high defense yourself, no matter what you are fighting. Dark's to-hit debuff is good but AVs will shrug most of it off while real softcapped defense (or close to it) still works. And most importantly, FFG gives you hold and stun protection so you are less likely to get mezzed and have to stand there and watch your bots get trashed (not that they're easy to kill even without your help if they're in FFG range).

Explosive Arrow is an almost exact clone of Explosive Blast from Energy. The only differences are that it's Smashing/Lethal damage instead Smashing/Energy and it only takes one second to animate (same as Fireball). The KB is only mag 3.3 so it doesn't really scatter things that far, though the fact that it's a 50% chance does mean some get knocked back and some don't. I really like it though because it's very fast and does decent damage, plus it adds a bit of mitigation. Fistful + Explosive makes a good dent in a spawn if RoA isn't up, and RoA plus explosive is enough to finish off Lethal resistant minions that survive RoA alone with a sliver of health (think Malta or Longbow)... provided you learn to time it so you don't knock things out of the rain.

Really, Archery is a lot more than just Rain of Arrows. It has a full 80 foot attack chain (including a very powerful tier 3 attack), a larger than average cone, and a decent stun too. In fact, Archery is pretty much the absolute best set for pure ranged blasting because you never have to get closer than 50 feet to use any of your powers and you can pair it with Energy for Boost Range and never get closer than 80. RoA is a great power, but you have plenty of tools to use while it's recharging so anyone who just spams RoA in groups is missing out.

Rain of Arrows does significantly more total damage than HoB, but HoB does more to a given foe a lot of times. Remember that you get to use RoA twice for every use of HoB, so it does more damage over time. It's also possible to get RoA up every spawn with high recharge, but you can't get HoB up every spawn without external buffs (or really tough spawns of course).

Actually, you can keep it on all the time even if you hover. Running both at once gives you the defense bonus from both, so if you can spare the power pick you can get a tad more defense and another LotG on a flier by grabbing Combat Jumping (or another Red Fortune set if you can spare the slots).

I like Psychic Scream because of the extra range. I can fire it off from outside normal cone range, then by the time my primary set cone activates things have moved up into its range. Then by the time the enemies are actually reaching me my targeted AoE goes off and hopefully most of the minions drop... or else I back off quick to avoid getting dogpiled. The -recharge helps too, since many enemies only have one ranged attack it delays their second shot... hopefully long enough to kill them.

Empty Clips is marginally lower damage than Psychic Scream using normal ammo and a bit stronger with incendiary. However, Psychic Scream has a longer range. My advice would be to use Psychic Scream -> Empty Clips -> Bullet Rain as your AoE chain, then either moving away or hitting Psychic Shockwave depending on your health. I would also avoid Subdual in your single target chain... redraw after an AoE is no big deal since you get a lot of damage out of it, but DP's redraw animation is kind of long so adding in a low damage filler attack probably isn't worth it unless you just need something immobilized. You'd be better off using Piercing Rounds when it's up and Bullet Rain when it's not (Bullet Rain does the same base damage as Subdual, but to an area).

Yes it is (though at the recharge cap you'd only be 0.012 seconds off). With 300% recharge counting enhancements (a truly massive amount) Dual Wield recharges in 1.5 seconds, leaving a 0.32 second gap. With a more sane 200% recharge you're looking at a 0.82 second gap. So with a perma-PA level recharge build you can have only a small gap, but that still knocks your DPS down a few percent below what adding in Executioner's would (around 10% less). On the bright side, such a build would get Hail of Bullets back up every 30 seconds.

For optimum ST DPS every Blaster set must take a third attack, period. Dual Pistols gets closer to optimum than most with only the two basic shots, but it still performs better with Executioner's than without it... provided you don't mind getting close. But at least you only give up a few percent damage to stay at long range with a high recharge build, most sets give up more.

It's certainly outside the realm of how most people play, and it's far outside of what the game is actually balanced around (SOs).

I personally believe all Blasters (except possibly pure TF builds) need a solid single target attack chain. You need your tier 1 and tier 2 blasts because you will be mezzed frequently (again, unless you are only teaming) and you need something else with good DPA to fill out a chain because AVs, EBs, bosses, and so on are targets that need high DPS. Executioner's Shot is actually about on par with Power Burst if using Incendiary ammo, and I can't imagine not using Power Burst on my Energy/Energy Blaster.

After all, you'll never have an AoE-only attack chain so you need to be doing something while waiting for Empty Clips and Bullet Rain to recharge, and Piercing Rounds isn't going to fill that gap by itself. You'll pretty much have to be using at least Dual Wield unless you want to run in and punch stuff...