Looking for advice for picking a ranged character

I'm trying to find a ranged class that's not too hard to play.

The things I'm looking for:
-can solo well
-Blaster, Corruptor, Defender, or Dominator
-thematic set, like: ice/ice, fire/fire, etc.
-something that could defeat an EB at most levels
-nothing real expensive
-something with a decent mix of single & aoe attacks

I just started a fire/dark corrupter and I'm having a blast with it. I went with a fire and smoke theme when I colored the powers. Unfortunately, there are no post-IO guides for it, but here's AG's 2006 guide.

Sounds like your looking for a RAD-RAD Defender or Corruptor.

You get good Single Target damage (especially after Cosmic Burst)
several AoE attacks, and a huge AoE Hold
excellent debuffs of -regen, -dmg, -res, -acc, -def
one of the best buffs in the game (Acc Metabolism)
AoE Heal

Radiation emission by itself is very good at solo-ing and also decent on a team.
Lingering Radiation is a very useful AV/EB weapon

Downsides:

Teams will kill your toggles, something that is unavoidable
Mezz effects are resisted only, not protected against, so if you get Held, Slept or Stunned solo, bad things can happen fairly quickly.
Some folks (like myself) are not really crazy about Neutron Blast. It recharges fast, but does very small damage, so you can feel like it takes forever to whittle down enemies.
Rad plays best in melee range, which is not always the safest place to be (This is not really a downside to myself, but every person has their preferred style).

Good suggestions, thanks! Sometimes I get overwhelmed with so many things to choose from.

Ice/cold corr would be a good pick. I know Silverado(?) was using one to solo AVs. Although not a themed pairing(I even changed the colors of the powers to match), but my Ice/mm blaster has been my favorite blaster to play. It's a great balance of ST, AoE, and controls. That, or a Ice/ice blaster really shouldn't have an issue with a EB. EBs to me tend to be inspir fodder so any of those would be cheap to build in order for them to handle EBs.

Other options would be a Rad/sonic defender, or the corr version. Sonic works great for a blaster as well. The stacked -res with -regen does wonders on EBs. My Rad/sonic held it's own as a soloist even before the defender inherit change.

Blasters solo amazingly well up to the late 20's because they get all their best attacks early on, have the highest ranged damage modifier of any AT and get the added boost of defiance which generally provides a 20%-30% damage boost most of the time. In the late 20's the mob HP start to catch up to blaster damage and soloing becomes a lot more difficult unless you play one of the more defensive secondaries, go with a hover blaster or can get into a do or die mentality - i.e. you have to be willing to get in, unload all your best attacks and hope you don't die/take too much damage before you kill things. If you want to play a defensive blaster do one of the following:

- Take ice or devices as your secondary. Between ice patch and shiver you can get a lot of damage mitigation. Devices gives you caltrops, cloaking device and trip mine. Use cloaking device to get into decent strike range for all your best attacks (plus it gives you a decent base to start stacking def), caltrops to keep mobs out of melee range and trip mine at your feet so that if they DO close to melee range they get blowed up.
- Go with a more defensive primary like sonic, the sleep you get at 18 was made for a cautious blaster.

Corruptors start out a lot more slowly as they need to leverage their secondary to stay alive and increase their damage, which means that they will tend to burn more end at lower levels than blasters and so level slower, at least outside a group. However, when a blaster starts to slow down a corruptor will finally have a good array of offense + defense and be ready to go to town plus they add more to a group then a blaster. If you want a good solo corruptor though you probably want to stick to one of secondaries that helps you out as much as a group, which means that the best ones are dark and rad, with traps and storm right behind them. The other secondaries are not going to be as much help solo - while many people love to push certain secondaries because they allow you to solo AV's or GMs, keep in mind that this is like 1% of the game and usually the sets that do well at this are late bloomers, like cold, which doesn't help you out much solo until you have benumb, sleet and heat loss - which means you are not a good soloer until L35 at least. Thermal and pain have similar problems - you get nothing but heals and shields until 28 or later on both sets.

For primaries, you want one that puts out a large amount of damage - fire and sonic are the best here. Archery is nice once you get RoA and decent until then and ice blast starts out slow but picks up once you get bitter ice blast (plus it has two of the best AE attacks for corruptors - ice storm and blizzard, which do awesome damage provided you can keep the mobs inside the area of the rains). Dual pistols, energy blast and rad blast are all good, middle of the road sets with nice gimmicks (multiple damage types for DP, huge amounts of knockback for EB and -def and lots of AE for rad blast). Dark and electric blast are kind of the outliers - dark has great controls and debuffs but its damage is kind of anemic, electric blast is probably bottom of the barrel for primaries.

My recommendations for the best soloing corruptors would be: Fire, Sonic or Archery / dark, rad or traps.

A defender is going to be roughly similar to a corruptor but start out a little more slowly solo, until the full damage buff from vigilance kicks in at 20. At that point I expect the two to be very similar except the defender will add a little more to groups and the corruptor will be better at killing hard targets where scourge can really kick in. The same powerset combinations will work for both.

I have a fire/ice blaster, and I never had a problem soloing him. Ice as a secondary is a very good powerset. Chillblain is an excellent power. Besides doing damage, it roots enemies, grounds them, and debuffs their attack rate. Add in Shiver and Ice Patch, and it's quite a lot of mitigation.

Hover is a great power for blasters. When you add in Defiance, you have access to up to three attacks even while mezzed, and you stay hovered unless someone hits you with a -fly power, which doesn't happen often. You can be totally held or stunned, and still hovering out of melee range of that pesky boss, blasting him with your Tier 1 and Tier 2 powers.

I even have Chilling Embrace on my blaster. It mitigates a LOT of damage. Besides debuffing the enemies' attack rate, it debuffs their damage by about 15%. That's like having a 15% resistance applied to you. Enemies attack more weakly and much less often.

I never had fun soloing with a defender. Dominators are my recommendation.

They are awesome aoe and single-target and I've rarely had as easy a time with EBs as I do on my dominators. Also, my Plant/Ice was the fastest road to 50 I've ever done. Although to be fair a good bit of that was pugging it.

All your safety comes in the form of hurting your enemy. I love that.

I'd prefer a rad/sonic defender to a rad/rad. A sonic/rad corr would probably be even better. Rad gives you a LOT of safety and a few "oh spit" buttons; sonic gives you scaling damage (team or solo) and Siren's Song (for soloing). You've got a part-time self buff to end recovery and damage. There's a reason Jock Tamson's Rad/Sonic guide was called "Best at Everything."

(as far as "teams will kill your anchors" - I consider it a win if the anchor lives to the second half of the fight. Set thy expectations low.)

Fire/Rad Corruptor.

Color your fire green, there's your thematic pairing.

This is an easy one for me. I think the easiest to solo and cheap is my fire/dark corr. Fire is good hands down, but the survivability is in the secondary 'dark'.
You get +def, stealth, mag 3 hold, amazing wide cone fear, tar patch is great slow and debuff, and aurguably the best heal in the game. And a pet that holds/heals.
I solo very well and at 50 with sets, you will amaze yourself solo or on a team.
I set papers at +2/x4 or +1/x6 most of the time for the challenge factor and usually survive just fine.
The key is the fear. Put the tar patch between you and the mob, make most of the mob tremble with fear, hold the boss, fireball the mob, throw out a heal, ... you get the idea.

Fire/Dark corrupter, it's quite good solo and a team of them makes for a steamroller. Fire/Rad corrupter would also be a good choice.

Actually I think there is a place for melee for a dom. I like to hold a boss then run up and hit him in the face. I do like to do this more as a finishing move rather than try to stand toe to toe, but doms have a lot of mitigation to allow for this.
I will say that one of the funniest things I see is a lowbie fire/fire blaster run melee style waving his fire sword around and get spanked by the first boss in his path. Melee is more situational for a blaster, however you do find an enemy in your face from time to time and it is nice to have a very powerful melee attack to dish out.
Your point is made and brings a smile to my face.

It is the way to go.

You know how people keep talking about how great Fire/Dark Corruptors are? Fire/Rad can do everything they do better

Radiation Emission and Dark Miasma are both so good.

That's why I have one of each