It's long been considered gimped as a blaster primary. I have an Ar/Dev blaster but I've never tried any other blaster so I can't comment, seemed ok to me. As for corruptors I've only seen one or two also.
Can't really say for sure but I beleive it is certainly one of the weakest. Having said that I've never tried it on a corr so who am I to comment :P. I geuss if your expecting to be godly you'll be let down, If your just happy with what ever it'll be fine =).
Just have to wait for a reply off someone whos tried it at a high level 
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It's undermined but can be pretty useful at times.
It is one of the weaker powersets in the primary set, but you can pull off some heavy damaging attacks with say the Flamethrower + Full Auto combo and with the Scourge factor involved with Corruptors the DoT figures really kick in.
Best thing to do is try it and make up your own mind about it
I started a AR/Traps corrupter at the weekend and actually enjoyed playing the first few lvls with him. As a set AR may not cause as much damage as the others, which is why many people probably say its gimped, but if you enjoy playing it then stick with it a bit more. One of the good things I found out about AR is that it has an incredibly long range on it. If you can hold a few enemies in place using caltrops/web grenade, you can easily back off a bit so you are just in range for you to shoot them but they can't reach you, so you wont be taking any damage. Another thing is though when people think of corrupters, generally to compare them to defenders in CoH so may be looking for you to buff them or debuff the enemy in some way which, from what I know, AR/traps doesn't really do so its not as team orientated as other sets either.
I tried it as a corruptor primary and I have to say that it is much better than on my blaster. The attacks that work best are the DoT attacks as due to scourge you can get more punch out of them. I only got up to flamethower with it before it was deleted due to lack of space (have since got a second account and will re roll it again).
It's very late blooming, easily resisted and has annoying activation time issues. On the plus side you get a disorient and a load of area effect attacks. There are a few things that will make you regret Assault Rifle. You want to be powerful early, you want to take a lot of attacks early or you want to be able to nuke.
What you do have to watch out for is what you take with it. Traps is a tempting one for the theme, the only problem is that Traps certainly is gimped, and has little synergy with Assault Rifle to boot. You can get by with Assalut Rifle/Traps but it's no Ice/Dark.
Thanks for you replies everybody!
I have been doing some research and am now pondering an Assault Rifle/Termal Radiation character now as I do not mind, and can actually enjoy being 'the healer' from time to time. Might seem like an odd combo but I figure he might just be an inventor with alot of medical trinkets with him, I suppose anything is possible 
But anyway, reading your replies I get the impression that there is an existing power difference between the assault rifle and other primaries.
So... if I do go along with my AR/Termal, would there be a noticable difference in damage power between myself and for example a fire/termal?
Yes. Fire is a higher-damage set. It's not just the initial amounts of damage that matters, though... part of the reason many people complain about the Assault Rifle is that it does mostly smashing and lethal damage types, which are the most highly resisted in both PvE and PvP. Fewer enemies will resist fire or ice damage, for instance... or energy, which is used by both the Energy Blast set and Radiation.
There are also various secondary effects to consider in each of the sets, too, so I wouldn't make a decision purely on the fact that the numbers work out to be greater for one. Radiation, for example, does -def, and I believe Assault Rifle has an inherent accuracy bonus, but I have no idea how good it is. Fire is actually the one without anything like that, which I think is because it just has higher damage instead.
Assault riffle I think has about a 10% acc bonus and also different attacks have different affects;
Burst does def debuff
Slug and buckshot do knockback
Beanbag does disorientate
As for secondaries if you go with thermal you may find putting away your weapon annoying as I believe any of the buffs and so on from that set do cause that. I personally went with /dark as there are quite a few resistance debuffs in there which meant that the disadvantage of doing smashing/leathal was overcome slightly.
in the beginning Assault R. is so much fun and u want to lvl up but later on i didn't find it so good, it also matters what 2end power u have.... 
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Assault riffle I think has about a 10% acc bonus and also different attacks have different affects;
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Hello everybody.
Or maybe I'm just paranoid, but i'd hate to regret my choice later on.
I was just curious to how you more experienced corruptors viewed assault rifle. I dont see it being discussed as much as the other sets, so I was worried it might be gimped or something.
I liked the concept so I took it for my character, but the fact that it seems so rare just got me thinking there might be a reason for that