Claws or fire?

So i'm about to roll another brute, and i'm determined to get past lvl 25, i have settled on willpower for my secondary, having played with most of the others, but i can't choose between fire or claws for a primary.
Any tips/ positives/negatives for either?

Claws is spectacular. However, I will never make another S/L-only character after the frustration of dealing with the ones I do have. Most people don't have that problem, and claws really is spectacular.

But I'd go fire because you don't have the issue of resistance coming up as often. And every now and again you fight someone vulnerable to fire. I'm not sure anyone is vulnerable to Lethal (i assume there must be someone).

And if you care about potential, both are at the top of the damage foodchain (per "The Results are In" on the scrapper boards:

Brute Fiery 172.6 3.1
Brute Energy 157.5 3.3
Scrap Energy 151 3.3
Scrap Claws 149.6 2.9
Brute Claws 149.5 2.9
Scrap Fiery 149.3 3.1
Brute Warmace 148 3.7
Brute Dark 143.7 3.1
Brute Martial Arts 143.7 3.6
Scrap Strength 142.1 2.9
Scrap Dark 141.6 3.1
Scrap Martial Arts 141.5 3.6
Scrap Warmace 141 3.7
Brute Stone 137.5 3.5
Scrap Dual Blades 136.3 3.5
Brute Dual Blades 134.8 3.5
Scrap Stone 131.8 3.5
Brute Katana 131.2 3.2
Brute Battleaxe 129.3 3.2
Scrap Katana 128.6 3.2
Brute Strength 127.3 2.9
Brute Broadsword 124.9 3.1
Scrap Battleaxe 123.3 3.2
Scrap Broadsword 121.7 3.1
Brute Electric 106.6 2.9
Scrap Electric 103.6 2.9
Brute Spines 93.4 1.6
Scrap Spines 80.1 1.6

Carnies, plant-type DE, Vhazilok Zombies/Amobinations, and certain CoT mages come to mind.

Claws is an awesome pair with Willpower.

Unless I'm mistaken those numbers are for single target damage; useful if trying to solo AVs and pylons, not quite as important when trying to feel useful on a team or level quickly solo.

Advantages to claws: Since follow up gives you a constant +to-hit buff you don't need as much accuracy slotting to reliably hit +level mobs. Spin is a stupidly nice AoE to get at level 6. Having ranged knockdown in focus is very nice for dealing with troublesome stuff like sappers, as well as letting you keep bosses on their back when RttC isn't up to dealing with the damage they'd be doing upright (banes spring to mind here).

Disadvantages: Only aoe mitigation is a cone knockback that will make you a bit unpopular unless you've got a wall handy to smack the mob into. Follow up needs to hit something to give you any buff, so is useless for punching through high defense. Lethal damage is resisted more than most types.

Advantages to fire melee: Ridiculous amounts of damage.

Disadvantages: Has nothing but damage. Breath of fire and fire sword circle need drastically different positions to use optimally. DoTs are unreliable and can result in attacking stuff that would die anyway if you left it, wasting attacks on unecessary overkill (although as a brute you might not recognise that concept).

Yes, the numbers are for the highest possible single-target attack chains using only common IOs and no patron pools (because gloom pumped brute damage way too far over scrapper damage). Still, as a point of comparison it is useful. Not the be-all-and-end-all, but it is a good comparison.

It works as good to predict your kill rate on bosses and EB's which you find in nearly every mission as it does on AV's and pylons.

So, I find it an accurate and helpful list for solo characters. AoE specialists will want to look elsewhere for numbers for sure though.

Oh it's a useful point certainly, but when leveling the difference between 170 and 150dps fully slotted isn't going to be as important as that the 150 gets all the single target powers by 18 and an aoe from 6 onward, and the 170 set gets its aoe at 26 and only gets all the powers in its single target chain slotted past level 32. Being able to kill a boss a few seconds faster 14 levels later might not hold someone's interest long enough to get there.

After barely another 10 minutes forum browsing I found out that those dps threads were assuming brutes got a direct port of the scrapper claws set - which they didn't; so how useful those numbers are normally is irrelevant since in this particular case they aren't even right.