Sentinel if you want significant survivability without needing to delve into an expensive IOs
Blaster if price is no concern & you don't mind the Mez Risk
The set has lots of -Def powers... none of them seem to allow you to slot regular Def Debuff sets, but you can slot the lack luster Accurate Def Debuff sets, can we get this fixed?
When I'm in the mood for blasting (& not playing my AR/MA/Mace) I level a Dark/Atomic Blaster, Already have multiple end game builds mapped out in Mids too
I have no devotion to old patterns besides seeing them as a loose outline, not too long ago I suggested an Assault Rifle APP for Melees that was patterned after Brute/Tank Leviathan Mastery PPP including a Pet patterned off Mercenaries' Spec Ops & Commando Henchmen which compared to creating a new APP from scratch shouldn't take much time.
All dew respect(pun intended) I think it's better to do it right, in a way that will truly be appreciated then to phone it in by replicating the elemental sword attacks
-Removes small fries(minions) so that you can focus on the hard target sooner
-Speeds up mish clear times
-Provides an additional avenue to better fulfill character concepts
there is the Buoyant whatever power you can get in First Ward but you can only buy up to 30 minutes worth and it runs out in real time rather than used time, I'd love it if it were changed so that you can buy up to 5 hours of it and it worked on used time