Easiest AT/Powerset to start out with?

A while ago I teamed with someone who said this was the first time they played CoH, in itself this is not very strange, seeing the influx of new F2P players, but what struck me is the claim he made about his AT and powersets.
A friend of his had suggested that he should play an MM, because that would be one of the easiest AT's to start out with.

Which got me thinking, what do the boards think is the easiest AT (And powerset) to start out with?

For this discussion, let's set the following rules:
-The new player has never played CoH or an other MMO before
-The new player has access to every AT except the EAT's
-The new player has the inf nor the money to deck out his character with IO sets.
-The character has to be "fun" to start playing with, and not only start becoming fun in it's late 30's.
-Please elaborate your choice, why that AT and those sets?

For me it certainly wouldn't be a MM, things like the Bodyguard mechanic, specific attack orders and what (not) to buff can be mightily confusing at first.
I think my guess would be a X/WP scrapper, where X is every set without a special mechanic (like the combo mechanic on DB or the Momentum on TW)
A scrapper because it's one of the more survivable solo AT's. Also it's quite easy to get a team. Another big plus is that most scrappers can survive easily in the low lvls.
Willpower: This is one of the easiest sets to understand, extra health and healing are concepts that are easy to grasp. Also it adds some res. Defence sets are a big no-no in terms of feeling powerful.
As for the primary set, "confusing" mechanics might make the game less enjoyable, other sets that just let you hit stuff untill it dies are easier to grasp than having to worry about combo counters or momentum.

MA/WP scrapper is a fire and forget missile that is pretty sweet 1 to 50, and is just pure butt kicking fun.

Yeah, MM is very powerful, but you do need to know what the heck is going on and I would not recommend them to the OP under said conditions...no way.

A scrapper or brute, IMO, or maybe a Stalker if they prefer a slightly less direct approach. Willpower is a good set from start to finish, as you mentioned, although several other sets are pretty straightforward also. Preferably, you'd also want an attack set that blooms pretty early, like Claws.

I actually do have a Claws/WP scrapper, and it was a very easy character to level.

Claws/SR scrapper or Brute or Katana/SR Scrapper or Brute

SR is easy to softcap and cheap to build (relatively) and has the highest DDR in the game...it really gets good in the 20's

A brute is probably more straightforward than a scrapper since fury completely dominates everything at low level and masks slotting deficiencies at higher levels. Sure, a player as green as this may not exactly understand fury, but who says you have to understand it for it to be effective? Just about any primary would be good, as would most secondaries: the fact that all of them are sticky is another point toward ease of use for novices.

As far as the easiest- definitely one of the melee ATs. That is not, however, what I would recommend to a new player. I would recommend a Blaster- not because of it's performance, but because of what it teaches you. If you start playing melee ATs from the beginning, then try any of the squishies, you will be like a fish out of water and flop around lamely until giving up and going back to the tough guys. A Blaster also teaches you the value of having a team- a new player would have a fairly tough time soloing with one. As well as learning to think about a fight and not just charging in every time.

So yes, I'd recommend a Blaster. Not because it is good (it isn't), but because of what it teaches you.

Claws/Something Brute. Probably Willpower since it's basically designed to be COH on training wheels.

I'd have to agree with Mad Grim, I first started out with a Fire/Fire blaster and like he said it was good enough to solo as long as I was careful, and taught the value of teaming. If anything it encouraged me to team more because of the squishiness, and really this game is about the teaming.

What previous gaming experience does this person have? Since they're new to mmos I agree it's best to start of as easy as possible, but I'd say what's easy+fun is going to incorporate some of their previous experience. Their first character is going to be a sort of extended tutorial, and it's likely that by the time they're familiar with the game they'll want to play something else. The AT should probably be scrapper because it has the fewest extra systems to manage and they'll have plenty of basic mechanics to learn already. I'd only start them on a blaster if they have previous RPG experience, in which case they can probably handle the sharper learning curve.

Assuming scrapper:
The primary doesn't matter a great deal, just let them pick what sounds interesting. The faster sets are probably going to be more fun, but if they're not used to fast paced games they'll be more difficult to use. If they're not familiar with fighting games don't let them pick street justice, titan weapons, dual blades, or staff fighting as those all have combo systems. Just try not to pair a set with redraw with an active secondary.
The choice of secondary is more important. If they're used to managing a lot of things, they might enjoy having more buttons to press (such as fiery aura, or even regeneration if they're twitchy). If they're more used to shooters where you don't really have health management, something that's mostly passives/toggles will be more familiar to them. You should probably steer clear of the sets that that have scaling abilities (invulnerability, willpower, shield). And don't let them play dark armor as good use of dark regeneration takes some finesse.

Assuming blaster:
For the primary, I'd say avoid electricity, energy, beam rifle, and dual pistols. Anything else will work, although I'd try to steer them to one of the higher damage sets.
For the secondary I'd suggest ice, mental, or electricity. All the sets start out the same, but if they make it into their 20s these sets will start teaching them about cc and debuffing, and start providing some extra mitigation so they can learn how these things let them handle tougher content.

Once they've gotten a few levels under their belt and have teamed with some of the other ATs, you might want to encourage them to try whatever they're most interested in.

The easiest AT? I suppose it depends on how you want to play the game. Certainly the various scrapper builds are the most forgiving with the best damage potential. They are always popular with teams and just as good solo. But if you plan to play with a team you DO have wider options IMO. Blasters are great with teams as are Defenders but they can be torturous to build soloing. Controllers are almost exclusive to teaming and until you develop some skills I would advise against Controllers (and Dominators as well). Brutes and Tanks are certainly forgiving to the learning players and are great either solo or with teams. Masterminds the easiest? Well I disagree, as like Controllers they depend on teamwork (their pets being the team). With a team of other players the MM can widen the learning curve until they develop the control of pets. Stalkers are good and bad as first choices for beginners. The damage potential is superior with the sneak attack the hit points can be the deterent if your skills are not kept up. The epic archtypes need not be mentioned since to access them you'd have figured out the pros and cons of the game getting to the upper levels.

Please explain to me how player awareness of fury has any impact whatsoever on the fact that a low level, soloing brute will be getting ~150% +damage full time simply by virtue of the fact that they're using attacks and being attacked. I don't see it, unless you're also assuming that the new player will be pausing for undue periods of time between spawns. If that's the assumption, why should we assume that they're competent in any other way? Perhaps they're going to take nothing but pool powers!

The higher base HP for Brutes also makes them a more viable option than a Scrapper in my opinion.

Yeah, any /WP Scrapper is hard to beat in terms of easy of play and learn-ability.

I didn't really grok the game at first until I rolled a defender. On that note, I'd vote for a rad/rad too or maybe a rad/rad corr: Just enough buff, debuff, heal, control, and damage to get you a taste of everything but melee. And you'll truly see how much exciting and fun teams can be.

... Damn, now I want to dust off my rad/rad again.