What Archtype to make?

Eh, I don't have any expensive stuff in my Thugs/Dark and I kill nearly any AVs without issue. Soloed Ghost Widow as an AV in the patron arc, and I don't bother with IOs before level 50 so this was on SOs. You get a pocket Brute and Fluffy, and the rest of the gang does some lovely, steady damage. With your own Dark powers, debuffing is no problem (you have one of the 'hard' regen debuffs, -res in Tar Patch, and more than one source of -damage) and keeping the pets alive is easy. Later on, your immobilization becomes a little more reliable thanks to patron pools, but earlier on Fluffy can handle this if you slot him for it.

Well, alright, I had the Achilles Heel proc in my Enforcers, but it's not like that IO is particularly rare. I find at least one on every single new villain I level.

Some good places to start:

You want to be self-sufficient, but with powers that will 'happen' to benefit the team as well.

Kinda Teamish:

Tankers can survive just about anything solo. They just take a little longer alone to defeat this. Everything they do grabs enemy attention, so they are helpful on teams where delicate folks want someone tough to hide behind. The high toughness becomes more valuable (or needed) in situations with more/tougher enemies, which happens a lot on teams. For soloing, shield/ and fire/ have ways of making your ability to defeat foes go faster. It tried something damagish on a Shield/axe, but it never compares to scraps/brutes.

Controllers are odd in that some primaries/secondaries solo well, while others really are best in a group. Things like illusion/ or fire/ or plant/ can do crazy stuff solo as they have some more offense in them, and I've seen some good ones at work. While fire/kin is a favorite, I'm ambivalent about it, though this from seeing some less experience handlers of that FoTM.

Defenders are underated solo. Sure they are best at strengthening/weakening, and have lower starting damage. Solo strong debuffing abilities to make your damage higher very fast, as do damage boosts. Radiation/, dark/, and traps/ are very survivable and good at weakening foes. Kinetics/ can boost its damage, but is a bit more vulnerable. Cold/ thermal/ and sonic/ have good debuffs, but after a bunch of team buffs. Forcefield/ and empathy/ shine mostly on a team. For secondaries: /sonic, /ice and /dark offer good survivability and debuffs, and radiation and /energy have some mitigation as well. pistols/ assault rifle/ and archery/ have damage, but a bit less mitigation for a soloist. Electric blast is awesome with anything that drains endurance, *cough*Kinetics*cough* a bit less so else-wise. I'm having fun on my kin/electric sapper, rad/rad is good as ever. My traps/archery is fun, though not Uber. Dark/Dark is pretty much a debuffy dominator with a heal.

Good at both:

Masterminds do this by always carrying a team, and they can add more and help those as well. They team the entire game, really. They just have minions that they can't control and take bio breaks once in awhile at times, but you have to use the 'invite' or 'accept invite' buttons to get them. I like my bots/ff, but it's so safe it's silly at times. Like when I got drowsy killing black scorpion as an AV.

Brutes are the more teamish scrappers: They gain aggro to help them with fury, and since this pulls attention from team members, it's helpful to both. Please don't use the word 'tank' on these guys. They just wanna have fun punching things.

Dominators have good damage and can stop foes from attacking them. Consequently, the foes they stop from attacking also won't attack team members. This helps them and teams. Mind/ has crazy lockdown, but my Fire/fire has the wildest AoE, paired with damage and control. Tis fun to be a safe pyro.

Corruptors: these guys have a lot of the same tools as defenders, but have more damage and less buff/debuffs. They get fire blast, but other than that have a lot of the same defender advice to go by. You can do what a defenders does, but stuff dies faster. Oh, no empathy, /pain instead. It's a bit more debuffy, and helps you more than empathy does. I like my rad/kin, as well as my sonic/sonic and rad/rad. My bro's sonic/dark is crazy good.

Blasters live by killing most everything else. Consequently, when they kill lots of things on teams, that saves other from being hurt by said dead things. They are a bit squishy, so having team members to help them survive things made angry by getting blasted away can help them as well. Still..solo /mental heals you and gives endurance and AoE's. I like it. /Em is still nice on its stuns/kb/damage. Arch/EM is devastating at range, fire/mental is fun for AoE AND some good single target. AR/Em has a lot of good tricks too.

Kinda soloish:

Scrappers still kill bosses very well, and can survive a lot. They aren't so good at helping team members directly, except by killing stuff- particularly tough stuff. for the whole soft-caping thang, /sr is pretty easy. You know about /shield....I'v ehear the fun that spines/dark and spines fire can bring, AoE wise. Electric/ the same, but more burst-ish, and fire/ more 'over-time' ish.

Stalkers are like a more focused scrapper, with the ability to kill stuff before it can hit back. They can also spread fear and debuff accuracy with assassin strikes. They gain extra critical for nearby allies, so they function best on melee teams when teaming. Not much I can say here...these I've played less. I had a bad time with /dark in some respects, though.

Thanks much Seldom!

Leaning heavily toward a MM, likely Bots/Traps (I just can't get into thugs). Shield scrappers/brutes look tempting as well. An electric/shield one could be quite a bit of fun... they have two 'teleport to target' type moves right? Would that be better as a brute or scrapper?

Keeping an eye on the demon summoning and hoping it is a fairly useful powerset. Perhaps somewhere along the lines of Thugs. Demon/Dark would be fun and thematic.

The only real drawback to Bots is that they have no AoE whatsoever before level 26 and only a small amount before 32. They are very sturdy and safe, but you won't tear through lower level missions as fast as some sets like Thugs do. Once you hit 32 though, they suddenly turn into massive AoE death machines and you can start mowing down pretty much anything.

Oh, and they clank when they walk. Some people find that annoying... I personally like it.

So if I wanted a nice cross-section of gameplay... the following three mgiht be good starts?

Bots/Traps MM
/shield Bruiser or Scrapper (With either electric, fire, SS, or dark as the main)
Ill/Rad Controller

Any thoughts on Bruiser vs Scrapper and the different options? I understand that Bruiser's effect works on dots (so excels with fire) and that they do dark nicely as well. But scrapper would be better with electric (Doesn't have many DoTs does it?). And would obviously be bruiser if SS.

Really curious how electric, SS, Fire, and Dark compare now. What are their upsides and downsides?

Fire/Shield Scrapper. It's pure win.

You can fantastic AoE damage with Fire Sword Circle and Shield Charge, plus you get top of the line single target damage. Seriously it is the best of both worlds. Plus you don't have to worry about the damn fury bar, so you high damage is a constant.

Worst case, fire/sd is second best AoE(behind elec melee) and second best single target(behind Dark Melee). That is worst case. And the sets it falls behind in each category are really really really bad at the other category(DM bad AoE, Elec bad ST).