Which is better?

Yeah I forgot about that in my answer, Karma recipes were almost vendor trash last time I more active in agricultural stuff in the AE, they're very cheap nowadays, don't buy the crafted IO. I used to put the recipes at 5 infl because they sold for 10k-100k, the steadfast -kb is a bit pricier but not much.

I remember reading somewhere that slows in particular will trigger mob-flight (albiet slowly), and that exacerbated the trouble from Spines (DoT+slows). I could be wrong/misinformed though.

Not that I have much trouble with runners on sp/da/blaze - scrappers with good ranged dmg are fun.

Yup the slows makes mobs run too, I forgot about that because I couldn't get into spines.

But mostly the complainers were people who used their spines/da, /elec or /fa for farming. The /FA users complained more because I think fire naturally causes a little more running, but that's a guess because my only /fa is a brute and the spines/fa were the ones who complained more even before Burn was a decrnt power (I remember now, scrappers got fa before the FA buff, I took a break so I was in doubt). That's why scrapper farmers switched to fm or elec/shields since it has a great taunt aura.

I love ranged attacks too and that's one of the reasons I'm leveling my DM/DA again, this time as a brute - I can't make a build the way I want (Cloak of Fear, defense) that has ranged epic attacks so I figured I'd just reroll my beloved scrapper into a brute to keeps mobs close (although when she's high enough I'll ask for advice because Gloom is too good).

And damn this thread is making me wanna roll a db/da but I have a db/elec scrapper who just got power sink and now she's unstoppable, very fun combo