Are there any guides or sites that help with sets?

I'm a three year vet of City Of... and even now I still have a difficult time figured out what sets to give my characters. The lists on Paragon Wiki just seem to overwhelm me when I look at them, and I suspect I am short changing my characters as a result.

Currently playing a Blaster Archery/Mental, but my main is a Corr Sonics/Thermal.

The best way to figure out sets is to use a hero/villain builder, such as Mids. It automaically knows what sets go into what powers, and you can see what bonuses they offer just by mousing over them.

Any guides will likely overwhelm you just as much as paragon wiki... it's a lot of info to digest.

Best advice I can give you is download MIDS planner and play around with it a bit, and look at builds for similar sets posted to the forums, and then decide what you really want to accomplish with your sets. That makes it easier to figure out what sets to use.

For example, you might just be building for good damage/accuracy/recharge in each attack and lots of global recharge... or you might be building for good or softcapped Range Defense (softcap is 45%). Those two goals might lead to very different builds.

Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate it.

To help you, I need to interrogate you. This shouldn't hurt much.

... do you know how to craft? Do you know how to frankenslot? Do you know how to figure out which sets are going to be cheap and which aren't?

Frankenslotting is , as mentioned, ignoring the set bonuses and just treating them like miniature HO's. It's possible that you've played for three years and only just last week decided to look at this IO thing ... I know people who would do that. I'm not trying to cut you down, just trying to figure out where to start my monologue.

OK, Frankenslotting is "a good start" but you're probably past that. If you're trying to get the hang of what to do how, you could frankenslot one power, spend a million or so and get the power working better than it was.

When you're dealing with set IO's, usually you pick something, or a couple things, that you want to maximize. Regardless of what you do, I recommend that one or two of your set bonuses be Accuracy; you shouldn't need more than a couple of Acc bonuses, but you probably will get them anyway on the way to something else.

Some things people build for, set bonuswise :

DEFENSE- softcapped defense to one or more categories makes a huge difference in play. 45% Defense is twice as good as 40% Defense almost all the time; build appropriately.

HIT POINTS/REGEN- this doesn't work as well as Defense but it can provide a solid boost to a character. Blasters and Stalkers may max out on HP; be careful about that.

RECHARGE- Very very popular with a wide variety of builds. Demand -> expense, of course.

DAMAGE- doesn't work as well as anyone hopes, but you can get the equivalent of another DO or so, above the ED limit.

"UTILITIES"- Knockback protection, if you don't have it, and stealth can be game-changers. Almost all my blasters have both. That's a very minor investment in slots, but can be significant investments in cash.

I know how to do medium-expensive builds; purpled out, PVP'd out, damn-the-expense builds are beyond my realm of expertise because I have no wish to spend four billion inf on anything, ever. I'm cheap.

So tell me what sounds good and I'll tell you where to find it.
Wait... here's some starting places.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...Ranged_Defense
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...ashing_Defense
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...e_Regeneration
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...improve_Damage
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...prove_Recharge