There are plenty of secondaries that are great for teams, but also help with soloing a lot more than Empathy does. Empathy is a team-focused set, where as a Controller is a character whose attention should be primarily on the mobs. With my Fire/ I went for Rad, the debuffs help me 1) hit the mobs more easily with control powers 2) reduce the ammount of damage coming from affected mobs drastically 3)stop me from being a buff-bot like kinetics and empathy would: the debuffs do the same thing, without having to cast powers on every team member between fights.
Also, the Rad set contains an awesome aoe hold (EM Pulse), best I've seen so far, together with choking cloud to boost crowd control options.
As far as I can see apart from giving you unlimited end, Empathy doesnt help your Controlling at all. I can imagine Fortitude and Clear Mind are great for the Imps however. By all means take Empathy if you really want to, It seems to me Kin or Rad meshes with the Fire Set a bit better.
As for build advice, I would say from the Fire set take: Fire cages, flashfire (these two together are basically a second aoe hold) cinders, char, bonfire (if you have a spare slot this can be handy as a panic button or you can just stand on it and be pretty much melee-proof) Fire Imps (of course), maybe smoke too if you have enough space.
As far as Empathy goes, Healing aura, heal other, fortitude, clear mind, recovery aura are pretty much must haves, adrenalin boost and resurrect if you have the space.
Thanks for the tips - I'm dead-set on an empath, but I decided I'd rather have holds than blasts, if you see what I mean 
I picked my primary to complement my secondary, rather than the other way round.
Levelled up my toon so far to level 5 - seems pretty good. I can kill in relative safety because the range on my hold and immob is greater than the range on hellion attacks. A quick one-two of Char and Ring of Fire will kill a blue and take down a white to a sliver of health.
I can see your point, the Controller Primaries pretty much own the Defender secondaries. Any Fire troller can solo with the best of em with well slotted Imps
You got pretty solid advice from Green_Viper already, one thing I'd add is you might want to consider taking hotfeet ; it does great damage with containment, slows enemies for a bit, and has a good sinergy with empathy : as it's a toggle, you'll still be able to deal damage even if you have to spam controls and heals everywhere. The end drain isn't too bad as emp isn't heavy on end to start with, plus since ED you can slot it 3end/3dmg and not lose anything.
If you have a slow comp though, it can kill your fps.
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There are plenty of secondaries that are great for teams, but also help with soloing a lot more than Empathy does. Empathy is a team-focused set, where as a Controller is a character whose attention should be primarily on the mobs. With my Fire/ I went for Rad, the debuffs help me 1) hit the mobs more easily with control powers 2) reduce the ammount of damage coming from affected mobs drastically 3)stop me from being a buff-bot like kinetics and empathy would: the debuffs do the same thing, without having to cast powers on every team member between fights.
Also, the Rad set contains an awesome aoe hold (EM Pulse), best I've seen so far, together with choking cloud to boost crowd control options.
As far as I can see apart from giving you unlimited end, Empathy doesnt help your Controlling at all. I can imagine Fortitude and Clear Mind are great for the Imps however. By all means take Empathy if you really want to, It seems to me Kin or Rad meshes with the Fire Set a bit better.
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As GV got the original idea for this build off me, I'll take a bit of credit. Needless to say I love this same Fire/Rad build. It allows you to focus entirely on the mobs (with the exception of your AoE Heal and AoE Accelerate Metabolism, both of which effect you).
If you go fire control then Rad is my personal secondary of choice. Also Choking Cloud is in my opinion the best hold in the game.
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Also Choking Cloud is in my opinion the best hold in the game.
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It is now, which just goes to show how badly they've mangled all the others....
P.S.
Fire/Rad is awesome, Fire/Emp is viable...
Synaesthetix:if your mum wasn't already dead I would go kill her for bringing
you into the world
Fire/Emp is just not viable, but damn fun to play, although i have to admit in the empathy side i have heal aura, heal other, Clear mind, ressurection, absorb pain recovory aura, fortitude and adrenaline boost. Didnt bother taking hot feet as when i had it (ie a few months ago) i didnt have stamina and it was a bit hard to slot up nicely. One thing you can do though now is drop the number of slots in them and still get away with a bit. Am planning out an assault build though just so i can see how much damage the imps can do then 
i like controllers they are not very powerfull at a low lvl but come lvl 20 they really are powerfull with there pets they are so cool
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i like controllers they are not very powerfull at a low lvl but come lvl 20 they really are powerfull with there pets they are so cool
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1) Have you seen a mind controller? I can out-damage most blasters at level 12, and solo better than most scrappers at level 12 too.
2) Controllers get pets at level 32, not level 20. I certainly don't rely on my pets for damage (but then I'm a gravity/empathy...), and even if I did I wouldn't say it's the be-all and end-all of being a controller.
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i like controllers they are not very powerfull at a low lvl but come lvl 20 they really are powerfull with there pets they are so cool
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1) Have you seen a mind controller? I can out-damage most blasters at level 12, and solo better than most scrappers at level 12 too.
2) Controllers get pets at level 32, not level 20. I certainly don't rely on my pets for damage (but then I'm a gravity/empathy...), and even if I did I wouldn't say it's the be-all and end-all of being a controller.
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Here here!
Being a controller is about controlling the fight more so than controlling pets (thats what Masterminds do). And if you want to do lots of damage you're probably looking at the wrong AT, thats not where a Controller's talents really lie.
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Something I'd really like to try would be a Fire Control/Empath build, so that I can solo with fire's damage
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Fire has damage? After 32, maybe it does, but before that, you'll be struggling like hell to take on two white minions at a time. Or at least I was before I5 and containment came in.
Fire does however have the oh so tasty combination of Flashfire and Fire cages
Me, I went FF on my secondary, so that I can have SR psychos when I solo 
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
Fire/Kinetics FTW
Kinetics is really good for fire primary. The 2 main reasons for this is that the heal is point blank and transference is point blank. Both of them are ideal for maxing out your pets.
My cont is sitting at 39 just now so I still have to get my epic powersets but its the best fire cont I have played. I also have a fire/emp on the US boxes (lvl 50) and he is good, but fire/kin is better imo 
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Something I'd really like to try would be a Fire Control/Empath build, so that I can solo with fire's damage
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Fire has damage? After 32, maybe it does, but before that, you'll be struggling like hell to take on two white minions at a time. Or at least I was before I5 and containment came in.
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I've been doing pretty OK with it so far... I can hold one yellow while dealing with another, and my holds recharge fast enough so that I can hold a couple at once. Added to ring of fire keeping them out of my face and hover and I'm pretty survivable right now - and that's before the empathy bonuses kick in. If anyone on Defiant is levelling a Hollows character around level 8ish at the moment - keep an eye out for Ancestor
(As an aside, thanks to those of you suggesting alternate fire/* combinations, but the way I started this toon was I wanted a */empath combination. I thought fire would be unusual, so I thought I'd try it out. Unless of course you're just de-railing the thread - that's fine too )
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Something I'd really like to try would be a Fire Control/Empath build, so that I can solo with fire's damage
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Fire has damage? After 32, maybe it does, but before that, you'll be struggling like hell to take on two white minions at a time. Or at least I was before I5 and containment came in.
Fire does however have the oh so tasty combination of Flashfire and Fire cages
Me, I went FF on my secondary, so that I can have SR psychos when I solo
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You are probably not optimizing your build. Slot hot feet and fire cages with damage. Since you can chain hold with flashfire and cinders, any big spawn of blue minions is down with no worries.
Fire is best for large groups where you can use AoE's. It costs too much for single targets.
A Paragon Defender
Post deleted by Nightbringer
A Paragon Defender
I have a couple of low Fire / Kin controllers and I have to admit that they level fast to level 8 they after level 8 they rocket, the combinaton of Fire Cages and Hot Feet means that i can lock a mob then just watch them melt the occasional use of a heal and i'm laughing as the mobs die around me, this only becomes safer at level 12 when Flashfires is available.
My advice is to 4 slot Fire cages 2 Acc 2 End red as the damage it gives is sub par and you want to be able to spam and hit with it regularly and 5 slot Hot feet 3 Dam 2 End Red, then slot up your heals appropriatly with the remaining.
CC AT's will love you for all of the AoE goodness heals, holds, and damage that you can give. Slightly off topic I once raced a fire tank in Perez street sweeping using this method and beat him throughly and with far less damage.
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You are probably not optimizing your build. Slot hot feet and fire cages with damage. Since you can chain hold with flashfire and cinders, any big spawn of blue minions is down with no worries.
Fire is best for large groups where you can use AoE's. It costs too much for single targets.
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I'm almost certainly not optimising my build, because frankly I see no need. I had a regular group, so I didn't need to be able to solo. And now that I'm far enough past 32, I don't need to do damage with my controls, that's what the imps and power blast are for
Oh and I didn't take hotfeet, because the concept of a PBAOE damage aura on a squishy sounded Soooooo appealing......
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
Something I'd really like to try would be a Fire Control/Empath build, so that I can solo with fire's damage, but still be of some use on teams. Anyone got any general advice/build pointers?