Elm/shield scrapper, ring of fire or char?

I was looking through getting my build as optimized as possible. I was wondering whats better? Ring of fire has a much quicker recharge and better damage, and I can get some great defense out of it with thunderstrike. On the other hand, char has that hold, and I can put a basilisks gaze in it for some rech and the ranged defense to make up for the lack of thunderstrike. Both attacks when IOed out will get me at the ranged softcap that I need.

I was tempted to put in the basilisks gaze because it gives that 7.5% recharge...the only problem being that it shaves off a second at the most of LR from 27 to 26 seconds. I'm guessing that's not really worth it for the price of even 4 basilisks.

So will ring of fire be a decent single target damage immob, or should I go with char for the utility effect and the small boost to recharge?

Keep in mind that you can slot Thunderstrikes into Char as well, if you want.

It really depends on how you want to use the power. In everyday play, Char will probably be more useful. Mez an annoying enemy, and it will likely be dead before the hold wears off anyway. Against hard targets, up level bosses or EBs/AVs, the better damage of Ring of Fire will be noticeable.

Which is likely to be more important to you?

With my build I'll have softcapped defense with some decent recharge. 11 second recharge for char, which won't be enough to hold a boss, correct me if I'm wrong.

Anything that mezzes that isn't a lieut or below I can't hold with char anyways, and if they're a lieut or minion...well, they'll be dead or damn well near dead with LR+SC, right? And I'll have active defense for myself so that probably won't be too much of an issue unless we're talking about team play.

Ring of fire has some decent single target damage, something I need more than aoe...

I might just be going with RoF at this point because char won't seem to be that much of a help when my gameplan is mitigation through killing everything.

[EDIT] My mistake on char, it has a longer hold time, just forgot to replace the thunderstrike from ROF with a basilisks gaze. Still tempted to roll with ROF though[/EDIT]

Char can hold some nice sets. Basilisk's Gaze is nice for recharge, and Lockdown is nice for defense.

If you take Char you can contribute against the mitos in the LGTF.

Sorry for the late replies, I appreciate the advice.

I'll probably go with Char for now for the utility purpose and the recharge buff.

However, looking at Mu, it does look appealing except for the setback of having to go viggy then villain. However, looking through, I see that ball lightning does less damage than fireball according to mids? Is the extra damage on fireball in dot form...? There's a pretty decent difference in damage between the two it seems.

I was looking at Lightning Clap...is that a KB or a KUp? If its KB I'm not interested, since most of my damage will be through keeping mobs clustered for AOE deliciousness. I could possibly sneak in one with the shield but it wasn't that useful, and I'm going to be going with the Cardiac alpha slot, so end/recovery isn't an issue, and I'll have aid self. I figure at this point one with the shield probably won't have that much of a benefit for me.

it is indeed knockback, so if you're one of the majority of players, you probably won't like it

I personally love it, solo, and feel it has surprisingly wide application on teams as well, but I'm aware that this is an opinion that is shared by a relative minority

I was doing a few more comparisons. The one hundred difference in damage is pretty tempting to go with for fireball, but someone pointed out, especially in PVP (Which...I don't even do much of anyways admittingly) that Mu is pretty great. The -end is helpful.

But then again is -recovery and -end useful when your main plan is to kill everything as quickly as possible anyways...?

Also, a friend pointed out that I can probably use the gravitational anchor hold proc with ring of fire along with four thunderstrikes for the defense if I go with fire.

So far pyre is looking tempting. For one thing I don't have to go redside, which isn't bad, but the damage looks much better in the long run, especially when your plan is to pretty much make sure everything falls dead before the blasters rain of arrows even hit the ground.