BS/SD or Fire/SD Whats the better choice?

Hi, pretty noobish question I guess but I made a BS/SD Scrap a while back and got him to 38 before I quit the game and came back after a few months. Now I see a lot of Elec, Dark and Fire /SD Scrappers owning it up. So I decided to level up a Fire/SD Scrap for the heck out it. As I'm coming along I keep thinking there isn't much of a difference between the two. They both have a "Whirling Sword" AoE attack, they both have their single target pwners and so on.

I was just curious as to if I should continue the Fire/SD Scrap or finish out my BS/SD Scrap.

Any tips or advice would be much appreciated

Thanks in advanced if I don't get back to this for a while

BS has an easier time of surviving early on thanks to Parry, as well as having some good single-target control with the knockdowns on Headsplitter/Disembowl, but it's inferior damage-wise to Fire. I personally prefer Fire/Shields, just because of the level of crazy you can pump your damage to.

BS is you aren't looking to spend much money, or if you aren't a fan of using inspirations while leveling.

Fire if you plan on upping your def through IO's.

I went BS/shield, it is a very strong toon as soon as you get parry. It performed much better for me than the dm/shield brute I ran up to 38 before it, but the BS is eclipsed by fire if you spend some money getting shields into the uber status.

Broad Sword would be better for surviving Architect Entertainment content, where you get a lot of to-hit buffs, pets and other things that can blow through "mere" soft capped defense. Broad Sword would give you the ability to go quite a bit over soft cap. I don't play much AE, so it's a non-issue for me.

Broad Sword is a better choice for survivability while leveling, with or without IOs. Without IOs, it'll always be more survivable. But even with IOs, it'll likely be more survivable for the bulk of the game. Fire/Shield is "strong enough", though, at least for my definition of strong enough for leveling.

I've leveled both to 50. I had a little more fun leveling my Broad Sword/Shield, but I'm probably going to IO out my Fire/Shield instead for the massive damage. I already have enough survival machines.

I have a BS/SD at 50 with a soft capped build; it's quite a killing machine and as survivable as most tanks. One of the biggest advantages BS/SD has is Parry... it's MUCH easier and cheaper to soft cap if you can rely on Parry to make up the Melee defense and only have to worry about Range & AOE.

I'm currently working on a Fire/Shield scrapper... it will be considerably more expensive to soft cap than the BS/SD was but it'll deal more damage.

Either combination will be extremely capable, one's a cheaper build and the other can edge it out in damage. If you're looking at SO enhancements or cheap IO's then the BS/SD is much better since it's a lot tougher without IO bonuses. If you have the budget, and frankly you ought to be able to come up with most of it simply by playing and selling your drops, the Fire/SD looks to be stronger in the end game with a fair amount of IO bonuses.