Supermax

Compared to a fire/kin, a fire/time controller will definitely have less damage, but it will be much safer to play. Time has been called the Willpower of buff/debuff sets, because it doesn't focus on one specific thing (like kin with damage), but rather does a bit of everything.

I'd suggest the fire/time corr. I have a lowbie one, and it already looks promising. Can't say whether it will be quite as great as the common staples such as fire/dark or fire/traps, but it probably will. Time keeps you alive, while rain of fire scourges everything to death.

Between the controller and corr, I'd pick the corr. It may seem like it's basically just a reverse defender, but scourge really puts it on a totally different level damage wise. If you've never played a corr, you should really try it.

You can softcap your defense (45%) to ranged attacks OR to smashing/lethal damage by taking a defense based epic shield, some pool powers, and spending a lot on IO's. Some choose ranged, some choose S/L. It comes down to preference. Overall most probably choose ranged, since most blasters tend to play at range, and that covers all damage types.

Other than the defense, your survivability will come from killing everything before it kills you.

It sounds like SJ is more similar to claws than it is to SS. At least in terms of AoE, but that's all that matters for farming. Claws also has a stronger AoE attack than SS, but with a smaller radius. And while claws is great at AoE, it's not considered to be on the same level as SS.

Therefore no, I don't think SJ will overtake SS as the #1 set. When farming, the extra size of the AoE tends to be more important than the extra damage with a smaller size.

So it sounds like 3 SO's in hover, 1 in fly, and 2 in afterburner.

What about hover? Does it need to be slotted for flight speed at all to reach its cap?

Most to least disappointing to me...

1. Inv/EM tank: I ended up getting him to 50 many years ago, but basically haven't played since. Even getting to 50 was a chore. I'm a huge fan of AoE damage, and a pure ST set, which ended up being nerfed, has really ruined the guy for me. And he's one of my only two tanks. The other is my main though.

2. EM/regen stalker and spines/nin stalker: Both were PL'd purely for PvP and did great in it, but since I've given up on PvP in this game, I just can't get into them in PvE. Totally not my playstyle.

3. thugs/dark MM: Been around 40 for about 6 years. Every once in a while I play him, thinking about how powerful he should be in theory, and I always end up logging in disgust 10 mins later. Again, not my playstyle. Too much reliance on stupidly broken AI.

4. Sonic/devices blaster: Also PL'd for PvP to around level 38. As much as I tried over the last couple years, I think I was able to add like 1 level to him since. My "second best" toon is a blaster, and after playing him, this guy is so bad, it's laughable. How people play devices other than for pure theme, I don't know.

I'll also vote for SS/fire brute. To me, "doing everything" means not only being able to completely carry a team, but also keep that team alive. While solo, a MM or something else may keep pace with the brute, but on a team, they would have a much harder time holding aggro and keeping everybody else safe.

I don't have one myself, but my main is a fire/SS tank. He's much more powerful than any of my other toons, and I can only imagine how godlike he'd be as a brute with infinite influence.

In a duo, an emp is probably the best support. He can make one person literally invincible with amazing buffs and timely healing. But if that person is already invincible, an emp won't do as much as a kin would.

As far as pure offense goes, nothing beats a kin. The ability to keep an entire team at the damage cap and speed boosted for an entire mission just can't be beat by anything else.

If you're making a team of random AT's, and you only get to have one buff/debuff set on the whole team, I'm pretty sure most people would pick kin......unless it's a weak team that needs a lot of support just to stay alive. But these days those are rare, and the biggest value comes from those who can help the team steamroll faster.

I've finally gotten to doing some trials on my fire/rad, after outfitting 5 other toons. So far I have only the cardiac tier 1, so it'll be some time before I get to destiny, but I'm already wondering about it.

I think I've narrowed it down to clarion or ageless. On this guy, I normally carry a full tray of BF's, since any mez can completely destroy him by dropping the debuff toggles. With clarion, I can forget about mezzing altogether and bring a full tray of other insps.

But ageless sounds appealing too. Since I already have cardiac, the +end might be overkill, so it would be mainly for the +rech. Then again, I don't find myself having problems with recharge.

Technically mezzing isn't a huge problem either, since BF's are easy to use, but I don't know. I guess I'm leaning towards clarion.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions?

P.S. My other powers will be reactive, ion, and some random pet that I haven't decided on.

In case you may be wondering about the other incarnate powers, I just got done outfitting my BS/regen last night, so I figured I'd share my thoughts.

Alpha: Spiritual, of course.

Judgement: Went with the Void with the -50% damage debuff. The damage debuff really helps regen by cutting the incoming damage in half for 30 secs.

Interface: Reactive. I love finally having some extra DoT on my attacks, so I don't have to waste attacks on mobs with like 1% health left...the DoT takes care of them.

Lore: Doesn't really matter, but I chose storm elementals, since I had never picked them before.

Destiny: Barrier all the way. The def and res on top of your regen makes a world of difference.

Kin definitely add more offensive ability to a team, but it doesn't protect the team too much. Cold is more well-rounded. But a kin keeping a whole team speed boosted and at the damage cap for an entire mission is a big deal. For steamrolling in cases where extra protection isn't needed (like 99% of trials), nothing beats kin.

Fire most definitely has more AoE than any set besides archery. While RoA is amazing, the set is a joke all the way until level 32 when you get it. Meanwhile fire is dominant all the way from level 1.

I can give some advice on the powers. You definitely want a fully slotted Scare. That's one of the only reasons to be /mental in PvP. You actually can probably skip bitter ice blast. It's crazy, I know, but even Subdual does more damage than BiB. You can just chain bolt, blast, and subdual.

You also want to take acrobatics, and you need a lot more kb protection. That's the main thing. Right now it looks like you have only 16 points or protection. You want it to be somewhere in the 40's....I don't remember the exact number anymore....maybe over 41 (including acro)?

Other than kb protection, like I mentioned earlier, +HP is the main thing you want. Add some +dmg where you can. All PvP is these days is damage spam vs bags of HP. So you want to be able to spam as much damage as you can, while having the biggest possible bag of HP. Literally nothing else in PvP matters anymore.

I would definitely go with fire blast for the primary.

For secondary, /fire, /mental, /energy, or /elec are all good. /Fire has the most AoE damage, but you may not need it because you already have a ton of it in the primary. /mental has some damage and an excellent self buff in drain psyche. /energy has a bunch of great utility powers and good single target melee damage. And /elec has the most single target melee damage, so it's probably most fitting for a pure blapper (blaster that's played like a scrapper) type.

Most definitely brute over scrapper. Claws has been numerically proven to be better on brutes. And I'd suggest elec. Dark is known for huge end problems, while elec is known for completely UNLIMITED end. Even though end isn't as big of a deal now as it used to be (since you can get a lot of it from IO's), never having to worry about it is very nice.