Reducing motor wear due to motor braking.

So I wired up a motor braking circuit in my rewired stryfe. Well, I notice that when braking I can see a flash of arcing beneath the motor caps (blade 180s). I don't want to wear out my motors but taking 5 seconds to spin down is annoying. Any ideas on how to gradually deliver braking current upon trigger release without using pwm & a board? Inductor in line on the braking lead to the negative line? And calculations on what inductor to use?

I really don't want to reduce my motors' life to a span of hours.