It depends on what you want. Conveniently, unlike Scrappers, the epic pools don't suck. Not a one of them.
I've never seriously thought about capping the S/L of a blaster, but with some melee and ice ancillary and lots of inf, you can.
Force, and there is a thread on this now, has PFF which rocks. All have a shield, but I find Munitions to be weak. I don't care if it's auto.
If you solo, I highly recommend grabbing a hold (like Char), which rules out Force Mastery.
On the other hand, PFF is very nice to have especially if you have Aid Self, and Force of Nature allows you to cap your S/L resistance with temp Invulnerability.
Hibernate is an instant panic button. If you have aid self PFF may be the better pick. Or you could go fire for char and the self rez.
Overall I'd say Force and Ice are the strongest blaster epics in terms of actually adding suvivability. Fire has a decent hold and Bonfire is useful as a defensive positioning tool (at least solo, on a team it's a power you have to be careful with). Electricity is mostly useful if you want more AoE damage alongside a hold and two panic buttons (I'm not a big fan of Surge of Power but EM Pulse is pretty cool for a Blaster power). Munitions I would say is the weakest, Body Armor has less than half the resistance of the other shields and while both Suviallance and LRM are very cool they aren't really game changing, in fact the power I like best is Sleep Grenade, if you're soloing and have good single target damage then an AoE sleep is actually quite useful.
Thanks for the input! I figured I'd share what I chose, and why. I went with ice - not for the hibernate panic button - to be honest, unless you're teaming with someone who is safely away and has tp ally, it is only a short term solution to a longer term problem.
I picked for the added defense. With a purple inspiration, just the small one, I can handle most aggro from 3 or 4 bad guys for a short time - and with a fire blaster, that's usually all I need.
The other reason was the Flash freeze. An entire mob, held in their little bunch? I can just dash in, hit build up at my leisure? Pop a red? then a purple? then cumbustion? Fire sword circle, then inferno if needed? or fireball, depending on mob level.
Not to mention, the purple sets for sleep are far cheaper with the same bonuses as ranged damage or targeted AoE.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase
I've dinged 41 and 7 bars in on my way to 42, and haven't trained 41 yet, as I can't decide what's best for my fire/fire blaster.
Defense - the Frozen armor is defense based.
The other pools offer resistance.
Body Armor doesn't cost any endurance and is available earlier than the others.
What's recommended - and why?
Thanks for your time!
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase