Beam Rifle/what?

I have a Beam/Traps Corr stuck at level 11 (damn team locked) and a Beam/Dark that I have soloed to 19.
Both have the benefit of a -speed power at low levels (Caltrops and Dark Pit) which helps keeps mobs off you for a while. Caltrops has better -spd of course but Dark also has the PBAoE heal at level 1.

I find the 40' Piercing Beam/Ray (?) stun power a bit short ranged. As a major source of mitigation its VERY hard to use safely.

I also tried Beam/Sonic but it wasnt to my taste (YMMV) as the secondary was too active for me. I want to focus on my Beam attacks. Again thats just me

Beam/Traps at 39 now. Insanely safe solo build, still highly effective on teams. When teamed, you just have to remember to grab SS and a Celerity +Stealth so you can buzz into the spawn and drop a few toebombs before the rest of the team starts wailing on things. Or, if you are lazy, just hang back and pew pew zzzzzt pew.

I've been enjoying beam/traps far more then I thought I would.

I built my Beam Rifle toon as a Beam/Sonic Corruptor, Sonic is relatively set it and forget it type set, shield,toggle,toggle, DISINTEGRATE! So it lets me focus on getting the spreads which is pretty fun.

I've been kind of torn between making a Beam/Rad or a Beam/Time myself. Time looks well balanced and fairly hard to kill if played correctly, but part of me does worry about combining what looks like a very active primary with an equally active secondary. Any high level Beam/Time's that can let me know what that's like? Both combinations do seem like they'd be highly effective, so I'm not terribly worried either way, but it would help me make a decision.

Hmm, sounds hectic but also very fun and very powerful. I wonder how /Rad would do in comparison?

I'm going to go Beam/Rad (one of the support sets I haven't leveled despite its popularity).

I'm only level 18 on my Beam/Time Corr and I honestly don't find it that much more busy than any other primary. The basic strategy is to use any buffs or debuffs I have then try to spread disintegrate, whether or not it works, I always get into position to use the cone attack.

I've re-rolled Beta Beam as a Beam/Rad. Just feels like a much better match than Kinetics was.

Played Beam/Kin up to 18 but just didn't feel like my secondary was all that beneficial, even teamed. I'm able to leverage the spread pretty consistently, to my enjoyment, so I wanted something with a little more utility.

I can already tell this guy is going to be a beast!

After getting hold of the new Mids.

I have to say I am not excited about the numbers in Mids concerning time and traps. I built a defense cap build and a Range S/L cap build with Beam Traps and Beam Time defense cap build utilizing Time Junctures. But endurance wise with Cardiac were just way too high. I was barely getting a 2 point ratio on endurance which is usually the comfortable minimum on a build.

With the Time build you are relying on being Range capped and then having the PBAOE debuff of time juncture slotted for -ToHit to help you achieve your Melee and AOE caps numbers, pretty much similar to some storm builds using hurricane to obtain positional defense cap.

End result the endurance drain kills the build atm.

I can tell you that at 43, my Beam/Traps Corr had a LOT of endurance issues in his early to mid 30's. At 35 I slotted in a Perfomance Shifter +END into 3-slotted Stamina. That didn't do much. Then I double-slotted Health and dropped in both the Numina +Recovery/+Regen and Miracle +Recovery. Once I had those three in place, my END issues became far more manageable.

/Traps isn't all that END heavy. Beam, especially cycling Disintegrate frequently per spawn, is very end heavy, or so it seems to me. As I started dropping in LOTG +RCHG and IO sets that grant me +RCHGE, I realize that END can be problematic for those not slotting all three uniques. It sure was for me.

I went with BR/Time myself, and I like the build,
I could see Traps, FF(if defender), and Dark also working well

sets I don't think there is a lot of synergy,
Kin- as mentioned before, it requires another set with some damage mitigation to work well
Poison- It work better if its tier 1 power was an aura heal
TA-I have my own dissatisfaction with this set, given its a control/debuff set with no self heal, its -to-hit is super weak, and there is of course the redraw

The remaining sets come in the middle IMO

I decided to try something different. I went Beam/TA.

I figured, why not? Now that Mids is out, and I can plan the build, I'm happy that I did.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

Another vote for Beam/Traps.

Got to lvl 22 without a single defeat. Hit a bumpy patch. Now just shy of 27 with only 3 defeats. Did Cooling's arc solo, didn't drop. That might be saying something right there.

I'm contemplating Beam/Pain, with a side order of Leadership toggles.

There will be some redraw with spot heals required, but with Soothing Aura and World of Pain I think I can get by without having too much redraw, compared to say Empathy's busy buff cycle.

Or maybe Thermal.

Has anyone got any particularly good or bad experiences with Thermal or Pain paired with Beam Rifle?