Tough decision

Hello everyone!

This is probably my first own thread so you're up for a premiere.

Anyway, since I've had a lot of Defense based Brutes (and other ATs) I would like to sip into resistance based sets. I'm already rolling a Stoney at the moment and have been thinking about trying Fiery Aura next.
As for the primary: I don't like obvious choices, so the pairing with fire is out of the race despite maybe being the theoretical best choice.
What I've been thinking about is

1) Claws because they look pretty cool and a flaming clawslinger might be fun conceptually - besides everyone seems to agree that claws are pretty awesome (although I don't really like the KB on Shockwave when teamed with Claws Scrappers)
2) Mace because I've liked the Mace smashing on my Bane already, and having more of those attacks can only add to the fun. The mitigation might also fix the defensive side of Fiery Aura.
3) Energy Melee - Yes, yes, I know it's crap, but I've never had one and the glowing hands look kinda cool, especially whirling hands.

What I want you to tell me now is not which is the best of these choices in numbers (well, not exactly at least - it might actually be a component to my final choice if all else fails) but which one would be the most fun to play. While I know this is as subjective as it can get I also want you to tell me why you think your choice would be the most fun, stylish, awesome, strong, pretty, whatever.

I'm usually a fan of being near immortal, even if it takes me a little longer to kill stuff, so Fiery Aura might be the wrong choice in general, but I've already told you I was going to have a look at something different

Claws/Fire.

However:
Fire relies heavily on healing flames, which will cause redraw. Every 20 seconds or so, you'll be doing this. The same would go with choosing mace.

Whirling Hands is just awful. I'm happy you like the look of it. If you think you'll enjoy it, go ahead and roll with it. IO's make anything look impressive. Of the three, if you want to avoid redraw, this is a good choice. The damage aura helps with AoE and healing flames helps take the edge off of energy transfer.

i have a lvl 50 axe/fire brute, hes extremely fun to play, but im debating on deleting him when GR is out because i hate pllaying him because of the constant redraw (i dont know how many times its killed me because i have to constantly redraw after healing flames)

EM isnt as bad as everyone says, but if you get it, try to build it for single target dmg because i also have a 50 EM/SR brute with whirling hands and its a horribly pitiful attack (although it is funny when you pop it and every minion around yuo starts stumbling around stunned for a few seconds), EM is incredibly strong single target (its not superb like some other sets, but its very good especially once you build up fury).

but i do agree that whatever you choose would definitly be good to avoid powers with weapons to avoid redrawing constantly (claws wouldnt be as bad since the redraw is pretty fast comparatively)

I have an EM/FA which I made for pvp (lol) ages ago and it is really cool, but as you say EM is absolutely glacial. ET taking a chunk out of your hp doesn't really help much either since FA takes enough damage as is. You can put out huge (if slow) ST damage with BU+FE and ET/TF/BS.

BUT

I would urge you to consider SS/Fire. Its an awesome pairing. The KD/KU from SS gives you a lot of breathing room which Fire often needs. If you've not tried SS before I guarantee you'll fall in love once you get KO Blow and then Footstomp. The good thing about SS/Fire is both sets benefit immensely from +recharge, so IO building is relatively straightforward. Lots of +rech and +rec to sustain it, then go nuts

A Force Feedback proc in Footstomp works wonders for bringing Healing Flames back up faster. While you can also put a FFB proc in Tremor and Whirling Axe, Axe causes redraw and while decent, Tremor pales in comparison to the awesome Footstomp.