Happy to be back.
For my first character I'll be leveling organically through story, sometimes teaming up to do TFs and such when I'm supposed to. I've basically spent the past week scouring the Tank/Brute/Dom forums to get a better idea of the current state of my favorite archtypes and I have my Dom pick down, but she won't be my starter (Earth/Psi Dom, my favorite from back when I locked down Incarnate bosses).
But for my Brute/Tanker it's a much harder choice as I am planning on trying something new. I'm looking at Tanker over Brute right now to lean more towards survival, but I'd like to ride the line a bit more closely than doing something faceroll like Rad/MA or Invul/_____.
To that end I'm looking at Shield/EM, Fire/MA or Fire/EM. These are all builds I've taken from and researched in the forums, so I'll by no means be flying by the seat of my pants to a degree, but I don't know how their power ramp feels and if there's a bit of advice for early leveling power choices before maybe a respec later on to a more high level version of the build. From what I read about the Fire/MA guide I would follow, they've designed the build to have all their AoE setup by 20 which is huge for early missions and the feel of most builds. Not so sure how Shield/EM and Fire/EM feel early>mid. I know both will be pretty silly once I get them slotted at high level though from my experience with an EM Brute I used to use for farming back before the official servers went under.
I also read up on the market/merit/converter stuff so I'm not stressed about eventually getting the higher end sets Ill need to push the crazy content at end game.