Silverado

Another vote for Fire/Shield: good for farming, good for teams, good for soloing AVs, etc.

As for endurance issues, I went with Body Mastery on mine.

The Crab and the Corruptor can both be good. Patron doesn't really matter per se, what does matter is the build as a whole, and of course the player behind it.

I would recommend you respec your therm to BS for the AoE immobilize, which tends to help the Brute hold the aggro better against the Phalanx in the last mission.

Most Praetorian AVs tend to be weak and wimpy.

Silver Mantis, Scirocco, Mako, Kalinda, Viridian, Baphomet, Foreshadow, Mynx, Ms Liberty, Lord Recluse, Statesman, Citadel, Synapse, Positron are some of the real difficult AVs IMO.

There are a few inbetweens:

Ghost Widow is tricky because of her mag 100 hold; if she hits you with that you're pretty much dead. Aside from that, she isn't too hard to kill

Diabolique is mostly harmless, but can be a pain to finish off because of her PFF

Malaise, Numina and Sister Psyche will eat you alive if you don't have psionic defense/resistance, but aren't exactly deadly or too hard to kill otherwise.

The robotic types (Luminary, Nightstar, Siege, Vandal, Dreadnaught Titan, etc) are hard to take down because of their high resistance to S/L/N damage, but aren't otherwise too dangerous or too hard to kill (except Citadel, who hits hard and has a godmode on top of it)

So play an Ice powerset, it's cooler.

I read all that, nice guide.

You'll most likely need neither, as Blinding Feint (especially stacked) and some accuracy slotting should cap your ToHit chance at least against +3's

But to answer your question: Tactics gives a bigger +ToHit buff to you and all your teammates within 60ft range. Focused Accuracy gives you (and only you) a small combo of +accuracy and +ToHit, but it also gives you resistance to -ToHit debuffs.

They both cost a boatload of endurance

You also don't get debt, deaths and inf badges in AE. Not sure if you get leadership badges while leading teams in AE though, I think you do.

Fire/Shield

Scrappers are unkillable, yes, but nobody is gonna die to a Scrapper if they don't want to

I think your CC still needs to have a valid US-based billing address

WP needs all the defense it can get, as well as all +hp and +rgn it can get.

I'd grab the fitness pool, if anything for the mobility and the +rgn in Health

You don't need envenomed daggers as a rad

Pray-Toria

Go Rad/Sonic Def or Fire/Rad Controller.

Recovery Serum, a Shivan and/or a Backup Radio summon, some purple insps and you're good to go.

Forget Sonic, if it's a Corruptor you want you should be looking at Fire Blast. Fire/Rad corrs are much better than Rad/Sonic defs at killing AVs and GMs

Fire does more single target burst damage than Stone, and it's resisted less commonly
WP doesn't have any offensive capabilities, Shield has Against All Odds which further boosts your damage when surrounded by enemies. Add in Shield Charge + Fire Sword Circle + Breath of Fire and you have the burst AoE damage you need.

I think BS was favored for its burst damage, Katana has always been better at sustained DPS.

As for Fire Melee, yeah I tend to favor it over Dark Melee when paired with /Shield, just because FM doesn't kill its own SD/AAO fodder like DM does