Am I Judging Blasters Unfairly?

Blasters for me "don't work" without a couple of things that should, ideally, be optional.

One is a goodly selection of inspirations. The other is a Knockback IO or IO bonus [Karma and Steadfast being the most common; Blessing of the Zephyr is a single-slot KB, and I think 4-slotting Kinetic Crash gives slightly less KB.]

Having said that, there are tactics and tactics. You are having trouble playing Blasters, so you have room for improvement. I don't know what you DO know and what you DON'T, so I'm going to shotgun out some ideas that may be helpful.

1. Build Up and Aim. If you're on AR/Dev this is not a choice, but otherwise Build Up and/or Aim often make the difference between "Every minion in this spawn has a handful of HP left, and is shooting you" and "Every minion in this spawn is dead, and not shooting you."
2. Your job as a Blaster is to drop them to zero HP. Not "almost zero". Zero. Solo, this means open up with a firestorm of biblical proportions. It's not like anyone else is going to have the aggro. Teamed, this means open up with, for instance, several singletarget attacks, killing one enemy. By this time the rest of your team has probably succeeded in doing some slight injury to every badguy there. THEN you open up with the firestorm. Then you finish off the surviving lieutenant or two.
3. Homework. I'm giving you homework- a lab, specifically. Find a large spawn about your level or a little higher. I like the big bunches in Founders' or Brickstown. Put on protective equipment [several purples]. Apply your AOE's, seeing who you hit and what it takes to kill them. Try this with combos of Build Up and Aim [as available] on zeros, +1s and +2s. MAKE SURE YOU ARE WEARING YOUR PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT. Once you are secure in your ability to alpha-strike the vast majority minions to death, you can try it for real, without the protective equipment.
4. In an ideal world, Blasters wouldn't need lots of inspirations or special IO's. You've noticed this isn't an ideal world for Blasters. I wouldn't play a Blaster without KB protection [usually a Karma IO, but there are other options] and I've gotten very used to having Stealth in a travel power. I heard a line about barfights, something like "The first punch is worth 20 pounds." It is good advice.

So that's my "General blaster advice." Shoot them until they die, faster than they can shoot you until you die. It's deep.

Ah, yes, the old "how can my squishie survive the beatings" question...
Blasters are sometimes a bit difficult to keep alive, because the one thing they excel at is damage which can be a pain in the posteriour when you meet mobs that are resistant to your damage type(s). Because of that the best thing you can do for survivability is know your enemy (and choose your missions wisely).
The next best thing is play to your strengths and go all out whenever you can without getting yourself killed instantly.
Less than a month ago Banestalker, my AR/NRG blaster dinged 50 and I soloed him most of the time. I got lucky and had many outdoor Nemesis missions during the last levels which made for some quick and easy xp on CL 4. With Boost Range and Build Up most spawns went down with a simple combination of Sniper Rifle or LRM Rocket and Full Auto before they even came into range for any significant return fire. Anything that survived including bosses was often affected by that panic effect that happens when you do lots of damage in short time and even bosses are not really dangerous when they run in circles. And then there was still Beanbag and Power Thrust...
So, all you have to do is find that "sweet combination" for your blaster that kills/panics/mezzes a good portion of your enemies before they can do too much harm. And do not give up on them too easily. Many blasters are late bloomers, mainly because they get some nice high-level powers and desperately need those massive enhancement slots from level 31+.

Myself I got a Fire/Fire/Fire blaster.
I see alot of good advices given (know when to melee and when not too. Blasters give great damage but are frail as glass, use inspirations (they are there to be used).
And then with invention sets... plan a little and get a few extra bonuses to what helps your build.
In my heart I'm whats called a blapper. Fire/Fire has a lot of melee attacks and thus I am destined to fight close up.. alot. So its not for everyone.
Blasters best friend is and will always be Mr Debt pool. So don't be afraid to die. (After all you don't loose anything, like in some other games).

Atm with the high damage, the nice enchantment sets etc, the knowledge of when and when not to use inpirations, using Char (Epic pool is a GREAT help) for hold (and holding the important ones).. I have no problems staying alive.. or even soloing those nasty EB's.

It is a hard road (and when a friend told me to try a tanker.. just for survivability (and I did) I was.. "oooo thats a difference") and you will meet mr. Floor and mr Debtman. No need to be angry with them, but use the time you meet them to ask yourself... Why did I fall now.
Worst thing... could have been pure unluck

I agree with:
Know who to hold, immob etc. Take out the weak ones first or if you got the power, take out the dangerous one. (Any npc that can hold or put you to sleep).
Use Inspirations (on any char). They are free and they are there to be used.
Take a look at Mids, build a few chars in there or just take some time in the character creation. Look closely on Primary and Secondary and see what would be the most fun.

To the OP:

You have a problem because Blasters are a High Damage AT, and with low defenses. You are seeing the effects of "unmitigated" low defenses, and your response to their problem is to gravitate to the secondary (and primary) sets that offer the most defense.

Not unreasonable, but let's understand the problem first:
1) Blasters do the most burst damage, especially AE, thus Blasters draw the most aggro at the beginning of a fight.
2) In PUGs, you cannot depend on the Controller, Defender, and/or Tanker to save you. You can hope for it, generally you will get some help, but you cannot depend on it.

Thus, what you're seeing is that you're drawing lots of aggro with high damage, and don't have the defenses to handle it. Now, not even /Dev has high enough defenses to handle it, if you're drawing much AE aggro on large teams. /Traps might, if we ever get it, but not what we have.

So don't look to the secondary for help. Instead, look to your tactics, and let me paraphrase an old MMORGP dictum for CoH:
It is not the Blaster's job to do the first damage on the enemy. It is the Blaster's job to do the last damage on the enemy.

That means, if your AoE salvo does 240 damage, and you open up on minions with 500 HPs... you're going to piss them all off, all will be alive and angry at you (less the few that are aggroed on the Tanker, or Controlled), and you will die. If, instead, you let someone else do 100-200 damage first (usually the rest of the team's AEs won't be that strong unless it has more Blasters), and THEN you fire your AoE salvo, you will finish off the minions, who will already have fired their first shots at someone else, and you're drawing the aggro of corpses.

Remember: wait for the debuffers to throw down their debuffs. -Acc will save you, -Def/-Res will also save you because it means you'll kill more when you fire. Rushing to fire first before mobs are Controlled/Debuffed will actually LOWER your damage in the fight even though it comes earlier. Let the Tank draw aggro, let the others control/debuff. Doesn't take long, you don't have to sit on the sidelines wasting time for 6 seconds... 2-3 seconds is usually enough. That's enough time to fire two single blasts at a minion, which will help raise Defiance for the AE attacks.

Then you deliver your damage, and deliver the kills that you are on the team for. Timed right, a Blaster's damage will be impressive, and the minions will all fall down and you will be relatively safe. When the spawn is reduced to just a boss or two plus LTs, the Controllers have an easy time Holding them, and the Tank has an easy time holding aggro, and you will likewise be safe from the higher-tier mobs, just as you're safe from the dead minions.

Blast in safety, just by waiting a couple of seconds. Timing is everything.

Funny you should say that. I played my level 42 Ice/NRG Blaster Widdershins last night for a bit (was an embarrassing contribution to a Claws Scrapper duo, but I feel I did provide good lockdown by cycling freezerays), then jumped onto my NRG/Cold Corruptor Shadegrown (anyone see a pattern?), just to see the difference in playstyle. Not a fair comparison because my Corruptor is still only level 10, but he was good fun.

I'd like to hear more about how an Ice/NRG Blaster might max out ranged defense with IOs. Anyone?

I have a 50 ice/ice/Force blaster. Needless to say, she was a pain to level, but the most satisfying. On a decent PuG, she's pushing 500-1000 damage per hit and I tend to dodge and weave in melee with her since some of her attacks are melee (like ice sword and freezing touch) But most of all, what saved me while leveling were, indeed, the holds. That and I got acrobatics so I didn't have to suffer from knockback.

Knockback can break a blaster in seconds if it happens while solo, especially on KB heavy villain groups.

Also, laying down an ice patch then dashing away helps too, let the enemies slip on that for a while. But overall, I find that with the damage output I have, takes about 2-3 hits to kill most LTs. And Blizzard? Wow, my favourite blaster boom of all. Dot summon, DoT attack that is extremely devastating. Summon from around a corner and watch the enemies crawl around and fall over for a while!

i have 6 or 7 level 50 blasters and 2 more in the 30s and 40s.... I love em!
Soloing, yeah i die some on invinc... on teams with a good tank, troller, defender... not a probelm at all...