Archery/Devices: Good
Energy/Energy : Very Good
Elect/Elect : Matter of taste
Fire/Fire : Matter of taste. Those that like it love it.
Psychic/Ment: NO
Archery/Devices:
one of my favorite blaster sets, has great accuracy and blazing arrow is an awesome attack as is Rain of arrows (and unlike other top tier blaster skills it's not a nuke so you can use as much as you want.). Caltropes are good mitigation early on and helpful throughout and trip mines rock but take a bit of patiece to use. great survivability, not the best teaming combo but it works well enough.
Assault Rife/Devices
Same as above, never played it but it's similar to the above/
Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation
A fun Blapper build, overrated but good. TAke care when teaming since nothing's more annoying than one of these played poorly.
Electrical Blast/Electricity Manipulation
This one is pretty good as well, decent damage and later you can bottom out the enemies endurance to offer some control.
Fire Blast/Fire Manipulation
Great AOE damage, kill them first.
Ice Blast/Ice Manipulation
Awesome single target damage with some controls and blapping abilities but not bad.
Psychic Blast/Mental Manipulation
Haven't played it so I won't comment.
Judging by your criteria as to solo/group, I would go Ice/Ice.
It offers good ST damage to eliminate foes quickly, and also some good soft and hard control powers to add safety. Ice as a primary is very potent at ST, with OK, but easy to use AoE, and later on Blizzard is magnificent to use on teams.
Ice as a secondary is ranked towards the top as far as utility. the slows, ice patch- it is a neat bag of tricks. Note: frozen fists isnt too hot for a blap, but ice sword is an awsome one.
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Another option is the build I'm currently playing: Archery/Energy played as a pure ranged attacker. Skip the attacks in Energy (other than Power Thrust, which you'll rarely use but which is a great place to slot a Kinetic Crash set for cheap KB protection and recharge) and take Boost Range and Hover. You'll have great AoE and a good single target chain, and you'll be able to keep Boost Range going full time. It's a very fun build and since the buffs from Energy don't give you the pink glowy hands it fits thematically.
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I'll add in my 2 cents on this.
Devices can be a decent set, but it's a very different playstyle than a lot of the other blaster secondaries. It also kind of seems to be a love it or hate it type of thing, I don't see too many people in the middle on it. Personally I'm not fond of it.
Fire/Fire will be the same way. Lots of people love the massive damage, others hate the utter lack of mitigation.
If you take energy blast, people WILL complain about the knockback frequently when you're on a team. Some will be quite rude about it. If this will bother you, might want to skip energy.
My recommendation to you would probably be to go ice/ice for the best combo of damage/control and solo/team utility.
Ice/ice. It has control and safety in the secondary. The ice primary does fast and hard single target damage, and can freeze foes in place, even bosses.
I've not been in game since CoV's release so I'm quite out of the know. I'm reading up on inventions and the other issue changes, but I'd appreciate a little input on a blaster power set combination. As a moderate role player, I'd like to keep to a same/same (or same/similar) power set. I'm not overly concerned about the ancillary powers matching, but that would be a nice bonus.
My goal is to be efficient as solo but also a benefit to a group. I'm not looking for godly abilities in AoE, mostly focused on damage, secondarily on crowd control.
So I solicit your opinion and input. Of these, which sounds most or more effective?
Archery/Devices
Assault Rife/Devices
Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation
Electrical Blast/Electricity Manipulation
Fire Blast/Fire Manipulation
Ice Blast/Ice Manipulation
Psychic Blast/Mental Manipulation
I appreciate your time and input, thank you!