The animation time on Suppression will keep you from putting out the kind of AOE that blasters can BUT of course you'll be able to survive much more than any blaster, so who cares, right?
Actually, when debating Crab vs Corruptor with a friend, I worked out what you can do for AoE. Using Venom Grenade -> Arctic Breath -> Bile Spray -> Suppression, I had to go to a Fire Blaster to get more AoE in the ~10 second time frame it takes to use those. And the Crab, unlike the Fire Blaster, can just chain those four AoEs endlessly with perma-Hasten running (yes, I realize this is an expensive build, but having the free+20% recharge from Mental Training helps). Plus run double Assault, and boost all the OTHER AoE damage on the team by 35% thanks to the resistance debuffs.
A Fire blaster will certainly mow down -1 or even con minions and maybe lieutenants faster, because of faster animations, but for anything much tougher you tend to need more than fireball/firebreath/Rain of Fire. And there are a fair number of blaster sets that don't have much "every spawn" AoE, such as Sonic and Ice.
A Fire blaster will certainly mow down -1 or even con minions and maybe lieutenants faster, because of faster animations, but for anything much tougher you tend to need more than fireball/firebreath/Rain of Fire. And there are a fair number of blaster sets that don't have much "every spawn" AoE, such as Sonic and Ice.