Fire/Dark Corr or Earth/Fire Dom

Question for you, Forumgoers:

I've been wanting to make a character on redside who is good solo, is great in teams, and has good single target and AOE damage of an often unresisted type, and who is great to have on SFs and endgame content.

I do not want to play a brute, stalker, or mastermind.

I've narrowed down my choices to a Fire/Dark corrupter or an Earth/Fire dominator. Here are my questions:

How much damage does the animated stone do? Is his seismic smash the same as the /earth assault version?

What are the debuff numbers on the Dark Servant?

For those who play fire/dark, how much of an issue is being Mezzed? Do you usually avoid it with your tohit debuffs?

For those who play earth/fire, how is your survivability if, for example, you have few buffs/debuffs on a team.

Are the defense debuffs in earth control great enough to overcome, say, Paragon Protector MoG or multiple Chill of the Nights from Spectral Demons?

Thanks for any input.

hey there Brosser! lvl 50 fire/dark here.

The trick is to mezz them before they mezz you, because there's no mezz protection in either set. However, your fear power/stun/holds won't cause it to be an issue if you nail them first. and once you get Fluffy he'll be spamming holds as well. Might have to carry some breakfrees in the lower levels, but it pumps out a lot of damage so you won't be spending too much time in the low levels anyway.

Ah right, my bad. Will correct my post, ty for the info

One thing to note is, if you really hate getting mezzed, if you IO out the Dom and get permadom you've got full mez protection (along with all the other awesome stuff permadom bringss).

You could, of course, make both

Sorry to use a sports metaphor, but it's like asking who's better between Kobe and Lebron.

First of all, I want to note I have NOT played /Dark on a Corr. I do have a 50 MM and Def so I think I pretty much can translate it to the Corr experience. Earth/Fire is a current leveling effort of mine (43 now).

Let me get to specific questions first.

I can't really add to the suggestions already given in the thread, the previous posters have covered most any point I would have - however as far as numbers for dark servant you can check them in game fairly easily. Just start character creation, select villain (or praetorian) and start creating a corruptor. Select any primary so you can get to the secondary screen, then select dark miasma and click on the show details button. Scroll down to dark servant and the real numbers display on the right will list all the dark servant powers with a "+" next to them - click on the + to drop down the power description. This will give you the base, unenhanced numbers for all powers.

I'll comment on the Earth/Fire Dom as I have greater experience with the combination. I think others have covered most of your specific questions though.

Before IOs:

You will likely face some early leveling woes if you recklessly spam the wonderful AOE soft-controls in Earth Assualt, especially if you make the classic error of opening with an AOE Immob. With that said, Earth Control promotes careful consideration and breaking line-of-sight to lay down Earthquakes and Quicksand on groups. When teaming, allies will cheer as they rarely miss their targets due to the sheer awesomeness of the -Defense of Earth Control. Earth Control is *always* bringing something to the team, even when the mez magnitude is not enough.

As for bringing enough -Defense to beat Elude and MoG, Quicksand is available so often that double-stacking for a particularly defense-heavy group isn't unreasonable even with SO-slotting. Combine that with the amounts of -Defense from Earthquake to overcome any targets that somehow managed not to be mezzed in the first place.

After IOs:

If you consider slotting for high recharge, you will witness a decent soloist and an amazing team AT Combo transform into a ridiculous instrument of molten devastation. There is much joy to be found in Fire Breath especially as it is already a moderate damage cone. I imagine some folks like Combustion. I don't know these people though as I tend to use this AT combination for a ranged wave of destruction. I can currently machinegun Fire Blast + Flares with a damage proc at a rate that sometimes leads me to forget about Blaze. And then I remember Blaze. And then I am out of targets.

When it comes to melee on my Earth/Fire, I remember my highly-resistant rock pet that is impervious to Psionic damage and likes to punch my enemies in the face. He also helps grab the aggro when necessary and sometimes even when you don't ask him to. He's a go-getter.

If you decide to add the Fire APP, Quicksand + Earthquake + Rain of Fire + Fireball + Breath of Fire = a lot of things for your character to do whilst you cackle like a pyromaniac and your enemies fail their saving throw versus The Apocalypse.

Of course, I ultimately took a Respec into the the Ice Mastery APP because Sleet promotes the spirit-crushing juxtaposition of covering someone in ice and setting them ablaze. It reminds me of Christmas.