Draeth Darkstar

Fire and Radiation probably have the best AoE for Primaries. DP is good at AoE too but lacks a bit in the single-target department due to long animations on its heavy hitters.

For secondaries, Fire has great PBAOE and Mental has a solid cone and really big PBAOE. Dark also has a bit IIRC, and has Soul Drain which is very powerful for propping up the damage on your primary.

The DoT Interfaces are generally held to be wildly superior to the debuff-only ones due to low duration, low magnitude debuffs with ramp-up time not competing well with the fairly notable DPS increase the DoTs bring.

Since it's been several days with no reply, I'm going to bump this in the hopes that someone will respond :X Perhaps I will try cross-posting to the Build Workshop if this doesn't work.

The way the Interface proc DoTs work is (if my understanding is correct):

You have an X% chance to proc the DoT power on a target, based on your specific Interface power.

Once procced on a target, the DoT will do one tick of damage, then roll a 75% chance to see if it will tick again. This process repeats up to a maximum of, I think, 5 ticks per proc. I have read that the average total damage dealt by a Reactive (and now, Spectral and Preemptive) Interface proc is roughly 50.

I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this, I have not had the greatest couple of days IRL.

As I mentioned, I have the version of the Vanguard booster that was given for free to all players active for a couple months during the spring, so it may not be exactly the same as the one on the Market (I have no way to test that), but I can confirm for you that my Robotics mastermind is able to select and save his costume with the Vanguard rifles selected.

I do not have any of the powers that actually use the rifle, but I would be inclined to assume that it works as expected.

Also, yes, it is probably a bug that the Vanguard Rifle isn't craftable on the tables via merits in game.

I would argue the opposite, and say Controller.

With Containment, Hot Feet does quite a bit of damage (Controller base damage mod is .5, but Containment doubles all their damage, so on a Controlled target it is effectively 1.0 - Corruptor damage mod is 0.75 for comparison). It also synergizes nicely with Venomous Gasses.

Note that I'm not saying a Fire/ Controller will actually put out more damage than a Fire/ Corruptor, because I don't know that for sure, but what I am saying is that they are no slouch, and offer a lot more safety with their damage.

It really depends on what you want.

Dark Mastery is very nice if you want damage, for example, and Mace Mastery is great for +S/L/E defense and a pet.

Unfortunately, the placate proc will only placate mobs from attacking you, not your pets, and the recharge is prohibitively long to rely on a 33% chance to fire.

Just a note on Flash Freeze... this is both one of the weakest and buggiest powers in the game. It is an AoE sleep on a very long recharge timer that does (incredibly) minor damage, so it can't even be stacked for hard targets, if you take an Interface that does damage it will proc on Flash Freeze because it takes Damage Enhancements and immediately break the sleep, and the VFX frequently doesn't even show up at all, so you can't actually tell what you have successfully affected with it.
There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this power except that it can cheaply get you set bonuses from Fortunata's Hypnosis if you have four slots to spare.

I would very strongly suggest that you go for Power Boost from Mace Mastery to increase the defense you're getting from Farsight for your pets. I promise you, they will need it. Ninjas are extremely squishy.

Oh jeeze, I don't think I can do this.

I have a Bots/Force, Bots/Traps, Demon/Thermal, Thugs/Traps, and Necro/Dark and I love them all.

I also, once upon a time, had a Mercs/Traps and Ninja/Poison, but due to excessive frustrations with Mercs/ and both Ninja/ and /Poison, deleted them both long ago, so I guess that tells you which sets I wouldn't choose to be The One, at any rate.

Traps is a tough secondary to go light on just because it's got so many great powers. If you have any personal attacks from your primary I would consider dropping those first, the -resist is.. nice, I suppose, but it isn't very high in magnitude or duration, and will be totally eclipsed by your Acid Mortar anyway.

Assuming you're willing to slot all 4 mitigation-based Aura IOs (Sovereign Right, Edict of the Master, Call to Arms, Expedient Reinforcement), which you can do easily with 4 slotted Hell on Earth, you're looking at something like ~55% resist to most types, 10% defense to all, for the T1/T2 pets, and closer to 45% to most types, 30% defense to S/L/C? and 10% defense to the rest, for the T3. Mind you, this is all from memory.

Maneuvers adds around another 5% defense to all types fully slotted.

If you go with Thermal, you're looking at ~24% resist/all for all pets and teammates, but not yourself. You also get two heals and some savagely brutal debuffs.

If you go with Time, and you're also willing to take Power Boost (IIRC, only Mace Mastery gets it for a Mastermind), you'll get around 24% defense/all for yourself, your pets, and all teammates. You get one spammable heal, some great buffs that don't do much for your pets (they ignore recharge), and some decent debuffs, as well as a bit of control.

I would say that Time is better if you care more about team play and Thermal if you care more about supporting your minions.

Repair, in my humble opinion, is about as big of a joke as any power available to a MM primary. The pets have such low max HP values that a decently slotted Aid Other will heal them for the majority of their hp anyway, and the cooldown on Repair is absurdly long. I have Aid Other slotted with 5xDoctored Wounds and 1xLevel 50 -Interrupt Time IO, and it's all the healing I need. I never feel like, "Darn, if I had repair, I may have been able to save that one." Usually when one of my pets dies it's because it gets one-shot through it's soft-capped defense.

I'm not at home right now to check my MM, but I will let you know if the account wide vanguard unlock actually works on him. I don't have any of the gun powers, so I never bothered to check, but I got the Vanguard Booster from the loyalty event back in spring. I think it's the same as the vanguard pack offered in the market.