Help a noob out

Hi new player here. Just after some guidance on what AT and power set i should choose. There so many AT and power set combos it is hard to know where to start and from past experience in games I know the AT description is never right. Would appreciate if someone could give a brief rundown of what the best combos are at specific roles. I think im looking to make a dmg dealer with good grp utility, preferably buffs or debuffs or both. I was going to go with corruptor but read that they're the 2nd lowest dmg dealers in the game which isn't at all what their description says.

What would be the difference between fire/rad and fire/kin

Fire/Rad is rather safe, as your debuffs will have the mobs hitting you much less as well as you hitting them much harder, and flooring their regeneration(How quick they heal back hp) Your self buffs will help you enormously.

Fire/Kin is a little riskier as you need to be in melee to take advantage of most of your buffs/debuffs, however, once you learn to walk that line reliably in large spawns, your damage will be capped, with unlimited endurance, a great heal, and really nice reacharge. The mobs will be hitting softer, and their regeneration will be lowered as well.

Fire is really strong with aoe's, so the larger the spawn you can handle, the better you will do.

Also, with Rad a few of your best debuffs are autohit so they are reliable.

With Kinetics ALL your powers can miss. That sucks when it happens at an important moment.

For a new player, I would recommend rad for that reason alone.

As I've said before, a Fire/Rad Corruptor is arguably the best PvE character.

I love Kins; my favorite Corruptor is my Fire/Kin.

But there are several reasons why I think Fire/Rad is better for a new player:

1) Rad gets many of its best powers early. Kin is much more of a late bloomer.
2) Rad is strong for both soloing and teaming. Kin doesn't provide much in the way of mitigation and is harder to solo.
3) Rad has a team buff that only needs to be fired once every few minutes and it buffs everyone in a pretty large radius. Kin has a buff called Speed Boost that, while terrific, has a fairly short duration and has to be applied individually to each teammate. This can be annoying on a large team.

So I made a fire/rad and he is at lvl 26. Although I do enjoy him I find my toggles constantly get killed in teams and it is taking away from the fun of the game. So now I'm looking to make an alt I'd like a good dps character that also has group utility but less annoying that fire/rad with loss of toggles. I'm thinking a fire/kin controller or even a robot/forcefield mastermind. I'm a complete noob though and have no idea how these heroes would actually work.

Your debuff toggles will always be 'killed' when you are on large teams. Debuff the boss of a mob and then save your debuffs for next mob. Don't try and debuff the last minion because your debuffs recharged. I have a rad/rad def, earth/rad troller and an ice/rad corrupter. I learned to not worry about the debuffs dieing. There are other subtle ways other power sets debuff the mobs though. Without using toggles. Dark Miasma has it's heal. That heal debuffs targeted mob's regen rate along with it's healing ability. Same for kinetics's heal. I would say that after playing a few weeks on a static team with a traps defender, I think traps is a great teammate. Also, trick arrow is a great teammate. debuffs in area of affect and minor control. I have a 50 ta/a defender. Really fun on teams. Alot of players like robots/force field masterminds. /dark master mind is a good one as well. necromancy/dark mastermind is really powerful. Plant control and earth control are really good control sets. Mind is also good but it has it's issue in comparison to the other control sets. I don't care for fire control that much. Alot of players are getting into a mind/fire dominator. I have a mind/psi dom that i like alot. has a few powers i consider worthless in a team environment though. And don't get stuck on fire blast and a primary for corruptors and blasters. It is great with AoE, but there are other good sets. Ice blast is a good set. It has 2 holds and good damage and what in my opinion is the best tier 9 power:Blizzard.

My best advice is to tinker with some other sets through the lower levels on both sides. If you go melee, all 4 melee ATs are good. Depends on what your play style is. Tank is aggro management via taunt and gauntlet. Scrapper is dps. stalker is stalk your prey and attack from stealth. A brute's strength is his fury bar. Longer fights make your damage increase. Welcome to the game.

SJ

I suggest making everything that holds your interest. A little alt-idous is a good thing for a new player. Try to play them until at least level 20 and then decide which one holds your interest for the long haul to 50.

do the dark miasma debuffs work the same way as rad debuffs?

yeah well what are some strong/fun AT combinations and ill give them a whirl. I usually like dps/utility roles. Out of interest what is the highest dps AT and powerset combo.

This game is ... relatively... balanced. There are better DPS combos than a Fire/Elec blaster- but I haven't played them.

The downside is that Blasters (fire/elec especially) have a primary that's all offense and a secondary that's NEARLY all offense. The upside is that you can drop 20 enemies in less than 10 seconds if you do it right. Not grey-cons either, +1 or +2's .

To clarify what I mean by "downside", you are six times squishier than a scrapper with about 30% more damage. I'm willing to take that tradeoff, but you may not be.

(Also, as people may have said, "your debuffs drop" really means "your enemies drop". )

Dark has a bunch of effects and they all work differently.

You have a click debuff that does MOST of the work for you (That cone fear? Is actually a 400 horsepower debuff with a fear hanging off the rearview mirror.) You have an slap-it-on-the-ground AOE slow that also increases your damage by debuffing their resistance. You have a Defense/stealth pointblank AOE field (if your teammates don't have "dirty feet", they're not in the field.) Yes, you also have a toggle that you can hook onto your enemies. But it's not like Rad where those two toggles are doing most of the work.

... the entire rest of the game has trained your teammates to click glowies. It's not really their fault.