Energy Blast primary with Mental Manip Secondary with
epic Ele Mastery was da bomb! So much so that I did it 3 times to max level. Okay, okay, so I get off (or did) on playing Fragile Artillery. (All blaster TF's were WAY exciting! Blasters either win fast or we get defeated fast - and man do we LOVE our tankers and defenders!!)
In LOTRO, my minstrel can heal an entire team to full ONCE every 30 minutes!!! Oh, and I get to pull ALL the aggro in the Barrow Wight's tomb just for doing this. After dabbling in LOTRO, with RL friends, it was back to CoH for me with Issue 19 or 20, where my Defs could heal a team to full every 8 seconds, apparently without pulling any aggro at all. (Yeah, playing def's solo above level 30 is a hassle - educational, but so much more fun when teamed.)
My fave Def primaries are dark miasma (accuracy to hit/heal but debuff on baddies) and Kinetics (reminds me of Ki Aikido). I mention this only for the fan who once commented on a graphic about wanting to learn "curse" science. LOL, I'd say skip the curses altogether; rather just go with Bless Science (e.g. Empathy primary and all those recovery and healing aura.) I'll admit I never got very good at RP empathy. My primary dark def, Kristoff, kept trying to pretend he was a blaster who could heal, but Kinetics secondary with gravity control was excellent! Also, dark miasma worked even better than triple dark def, Kristoff, when i paired miasma with rad blasting for my Battle Hag persona - now
she was AWESOME!!!
*modified for a typographic error I noticed.