StrykerX

Archery / Energy is a lot of fun and plays very well as a pure ranged set. Put Boost Range on auto and you can easily make it permanent (3 recharge SOs or two recharge plus modest global recharge bonuses). It's also easy to get a good single target attack chain out of Snap Shot -> Aimed Shot -> Snap Shot -> Blazing Arrow, and since all of those attacks have an 80 foot base range you'll be able to do so from up to 127 feet away with just Boost Range.

If you slot two Damage / Range HOs per power that leaves four slots for set bonuses and gives you 160 foot range attacks plus a 100 foot range cone. And for maximum goofiness, slot three Damage / Range HOs in your snipe... with Boost Range that gives you a 323 foot snipe. You'd pretty much need a spotter to target through just to see something that far away, and could probably outrange every enemy in the game except Hamidon and maybe the Mitos.

-Defense does help with veteran attacks, but that generally only matters at lower levels. Once you have a decent build and access to epic / patron pools you're not likely to use veteran attacks often. I suppose some Masterminds might keep using them but Controllers get some nice single target attacks in their epic pools that benefit from Containment and can be slotted. Maybe a really low damage Controller like Earth / Empathy or something would.

My Archery / Energy is my favorite Blaster... he's built as a long range hover blaster and it works out very well. Assuming you also want to go the perma-Boost Range route (which is pretty much the reason to take Energy), my suggestions are:

Archery
Take everything except Ranged Shot and Stunning Shot for sure. Some people skip either Explosive Arrow or Fistful of Arrows but I find they are both quite handy. Fistful's cone is long enough that you can use it from 80+ feet away with Boost Range and a bit of +range in it (like a Dam/Range IO). Explosive's damage is a bit weak, but it can hit lots of targets and makes a good followup to Rain of Arrows or Fistful.

Stunning Shot is very handy, but some builds can skip it (like if you are going for softcapped ranged defense and can't spare a power pick). I'd strongly recommend taking it unless you have a specific reason not to though.

Ranged Shot is... a snipe. Unless this is your first Blaster, you probably already know whether you like snipes or not. Boost Range + a snipe = insane range, but Boost Range + Rain of Arrows = everything in the whole spawn that a snipe could kill is dead before they know what hit them, so I personally find it skippable.

Energy Manipulation
You have to take Power Thrust, and it's actually a handy power for getting things out of your face. If you can spare the slots, toss a full Kinetic Crash set in it for KB resist and a nice recharge bonus.

Pretty much all the other melee attacks are easily skippable if you want to stay at range. Total Focus is a really hard hitting stun and Bonesmasher is just a really good attack, but if you are going to be 100 feet away from the enemy they won't do you any good. The only melee attack I took was Stun, so I could stack it with Stunning Shot to quickly neutralize bosses... but I almost never use it. Still, Stupefy has nice set bonuses so if you have room in your build it's not a bad idea and it does occasionally come in handy.

As far as the other Energy powers go, Boost Range is obviously a must have and no Blaster should skip Build Up (at least not without a darn good reason).

Conserve Power is either nice or completely worthless, depending on your build... if you have enough recovery to fully offset your endurance use then Conserve Power is not going to be of any use, but if your blue bar starts running low in long fights CP can help a lot. It really comes down to slotting and how many toggles you run... my archer is fully endurance neutral so he skipped CP, but he only runs Hover (I went Munitions so my armor is an auto power) and has good endurance slotting. If you want to run multiple toggles and don't have extra recovery from IOs I'd grab CP if you have room, then respec out of it when / if your build reaches a point where you no longer need it. The biggest reason to use it (fighting better after nuking and popping a blue) doesn't apply since Rain of Arrows is crashless.

Power Boost is handy but easy to skip. If you take Stunning Shot it helps keep annoying Lts out of action longer, and if you also have Stun it keeps bosses stunned longer. One other use is that it makes Hover significantly faster for a few seconds, which occasionally comes in handy. But it's still easy to skip... I find I use it less than once an hour on average, but I keep it because nothing else I could replace it with would be any more useful with only one slot.

Actually, Executioner's Shot's DPA isn't really bad, it just isn't great. ES's DPA is about halfway between Dual Wield and Pistols, so if you use Dual Wield your total DPS will go up by adding Executioner's to your attack chain. I can see skipping ES on some builds to avoid having to get that close to the enemy, but don't skip it for DPA reasons.

-Defense as a secondary effect is a lot more useful for Defenders than Blasters... Defender Rad Blast has fast recharging attacks and huge debuff values. Blaster Rad Blast has slower recharge, and only about 60% as much debuff. It's still nice in the rare occasions you need it, but you aren't going to be stacking 60% defense debuff on things and negating Chill of the night or Hurricane on a Rad Blaster.

Powers that reduce defense as a primary effect, like Freezing Rain, Radiation Infection, or Quicksand are a lot more useful since they tend to be autohit and therefore reliable to use on the things you actually need them for. And yes, -defense plus Confuse is a fun mix... I love using Freezing Rain + Seeds of Confusion + Roots (to negate KD) on my Plant / Storm and watching the enemies absolutely shred each other. Of course the -resist in Freezing Rain doesn't hurt either.

I always dismiss MM pets before leaving a mission and resummon once I'm on the next one. That prevents a lot of the goofy AI behavior like running away randomly, freaking out at elevators, and becoming uncontrollable until hit or buffed after a mission.

I think they're talking about the common Smash/Lethal defense builds that use Weave plus one of the defense-based epic armors (Ice or Stone). Weave + Earth Armor or Ice Armor gives 30% S/L defense when slotted, which is 2/3 of the way to the softcap and quite useful even without adding more... if the enemy uses S/L attacks. Some people believe that S/L defense really only helps farm builds where you know you will be fighting only S/L users, while others think S/L defense is worth going for on a generalist build. (I personally consider it useful since many exotic damage attacks have some S/L component to them, but not vital since Controllers have a ton of ways to deal with aggro.)

Personally, I'd take Maneuvers instead of Weave on a non-farming build since it's only 3% lower defense and it helps the whole team (plus it doesn't cost a "wasted" power slot). Weave is very nice for farmers though... 4 Kinetic Crash in Boxing, a 3% defense IO in Tough, and three SOs worth of defense in Weave gives almost 14% S/L defense. I just hate giving up two power picks and three slots that could be used for more team-oriented powers unless it's a pure solo build.

I guess I'm pretty much undecided since my two favorite ATs are Blasters and Masterminds, and my next favorites are Scrappers and Brutes.

I like solo-capable characters so redside would normally have an edge since all their ATs can solo pretty well, but as it happens I'm not a big fan of Defenders or Tankers (or Stalkers for that matter) anyway for other reasons so all the ATs I actually play solo pretty well. And I've never seen any redside character I enjoy funning in teams with as much as my Plant/Storm Controller.

So really, I consider both to have a lot of fun ATs and both to have some I just don't enjoy much.

The real benefit from -defense is when you can't reliably hit the enemy. Good accuracy slotting means you'll generally hit +0 or +1 enemies 95% of the time, but that's not true of +3s and +4s or high defense enemies. Unless you have a lot of +to-hit, you will run into enemies you have a less than capped chance of hitting and -defense helps in those cases.

That said, -defense is pretty much the least useful secondary effect since in the vast majority of cases a well-built character will have no problem hitting.

My two favorite characters are my Archery / Energy Blaster (built for perma-Boost Range, Hover, and some Ranged defense) and my Plant / Storm Controller. Since you already have a Plant / Rad I'd suggest an Archery / Energy... the amount of range you can get is amazing and it's a fun, effective blast set.

There are a lot of good Controllers, depending on what playstyle you want. If you are used to Doms, almost any Controller will seem weak as far as damage goes until the 40s, but they can be a lot safer and add more to teams. My personal favorite is Plant/Storm... Seeds of Confusion is one of the best AoE controls, Plant has good damage (for a control set), and Storm is just a lot of fun (and it boosts damage output significantly).

If you want a lot of control, try Earth... but don't expect any damage with no Assault set to go with it. An Earth / Rad would probably be the ultimate team support Controller but you'd solo at a snail's pace... on the other extreme, Fire / Kins solo very well (especially post-32) but don't really help a team as much as other builds (though Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift are always handy). And Illusion/Rad can pretty much solo anything with an expensive enough build, though it may take an hour or two (or five, in the case of Lusca) to win the fight.

You probably can't find guides because Psychic Blast is considered an underperforming set. It's heavily single target based and the damage is massively resisted by certain enemies, so most people who care about performance enough to write a guide are probably going to go Ice / Mental instead since Ice Blast pretty much does everything Psychic Blast does, only better (except kill Clockwork).

I'd say the major part of the learning curve is learning how to avoid robots, since they pretty much laugh at psi damage and that's basically all you have. I'd suggest getting both Telekinetic Blast and Telekinetic Thrust for situations like that since those are half Smashing. Other than that, I can't give a lot of advice since I've not played Psychic Blast out of the very low levels.

Definitely take Storm Summing. As far as the other power set goes, I'd suggest:

Defenders
Storm / Ice (probably the best fit)
Storm / Sonic (close second)
Storm / Electric (very thematic even if it Elec has no wind powers)
Storm / Dark (you can recolor the blasts to look like clouds, but several powers would need to be skipped to stay on theme)

Controllers
Gravity / Storm
Ice / Storm

Corruptors
same combination as Defenders

Masterminds
Anything / Storm, since the fact that your powers are wind based doesn't affect what kind of henchmen you choose to recruit.