Definitely heat. as far as lux, it won't travel well from one light to another. it can give you a good idea of intensity for your light, but if the spectrum is not the same the lux measurement will be drastically different and not neccessarily correlate to PAR/ppf/ppfd etc.. a lower lux could have a higher number of photons/s that matter.
since it's damaged, go to 30" until it heals and starts to grow. Avoid it stretching if it does. i'd bet ~24" is a good ballpark to start from once it is growing vigorously again. Try moving up from there and see how it reacts at 22, 20 etc.. then dial back at first hint of a negative reaction.