Something you don't see much

[Xandyr]

Willpower.

 

 On the forums and in game, you don't just see much of WP. I know it doesn't have a damage aura, and relies a bit more on the actual "Taunt" power, but why? Why is it that WP has kinda been deemed the red headed step child?

 I really can't remember the last time I saw a WP tank in game. So, today, Old Man Kowalski made his debut in Paragon City.  Wanting to settle down in a peaceful community to live out the remainder of his years, Kowalski just wanted to enjoy life. However, those pesky little Outcasts had other plans. They continued to vandalize the neighborhood, even as Kowalski sat on his front porch drinking and watching.  The straw that broke the camel's back was when they tore up his yard.

 Kowalski jumped up and grabbed the first thing he saw...an old tree branch that he planned on whitling on. He taught those young punks a lesson...stay of his lawn!

 

 Anyway...this will be my first attempt at WP and my first attempt with Staff. We'll see how it goes.

[Apparition]

Up until a couple of weeks ago, Willpower's Rise to the Challenge taunt aura was extremely weak in comparison to other power sets' taunt aura.  Some power sets' taunt aura lasted up to seventeen seconds, while Willpower's only lasted about four seconds.  This was changed a couple of weeks ago so that every taunt aura now lasts about thirteen seconds.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Sounds a lot like Old Man Winters who I had on Live, except I went with war mace and the shillelagh.

[Sura]

I finally re-created my main from Live, but this time made her as Willpower/Ice.  She's early forties and cruising right along so far.  I don't have a lot of resources for her, but I'd really like to chase some high goals with her in the long run.  So far I'm impressed with WP.

[Xandyr]

4 minutes ago, Sura said:

So far I'm impressed with WP.

I mean, in all actuality,  WP (on paper) looks great! You can get respectable defenses, decent resists, and A LOT of regeneration. It may take quite a bit of influence to afford it, but it still looks attractive. 

[Call Me Awesome]

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

Up until a couple of weeks ago, Willpower's Rise to the Challenge taunt aura was extremely weak in comparison to other power sets' taunt aura.  Some power sets' taunt aura lasted up to seventeen seconds, while Willpower's only lasted about four seconds.  This was changed a couple of weeks ago so that every taunt aura now lasts about thirteen seconds.

As I recall Invuln had the longest duration aura of MAG 4, 17 seconds.  Willpower was MAG 3 and only lasted 2 seconds.  Although Mid's disagrees experience seems to show that SR's aura was similar in strength and duration to Willpower.  Because of that there was literally no comparison to the aggro management abilities of WP and SR to every other set in the game.  The aura taunt would wear off immediately after the mobs or the tanker moved out of melee range.  Although WP was a fairly durable set I felt it was worthless for the primary purpose of a tanker, to take and hold aggro.  If the changes actually work... and last I saw there were issues with it not working... then WP will become a viable option.

 

Whenever I teamed with a WP tanker I knew that we had a low damage, high durability scrapper on the team and not by any means a tanker.  From the beginning when Tanks got WP up to now I've only seen ONE WP tanker who was able to actually fill the tanking role, and he had an AOE heavy secondary (Fire I think) to help... and he worked his butt off to maintain aggro with Taunt and his secondary.

[Sura]

31 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

As I recall Invuln had the longest duration aura of MAG 4, 17 seconds.  Willpower was MAG 3 and only lasted 2 seconds.  Although Mid's disagrees experience seems to show that SR's aura was similar in strength and duration to Willpower.  Because of that there was literally no comparison to the aggro management abilities of WP and SR to every other set in the game.  The aura taunt would wear off immediately after the mobs or the tanker moved out of melee range.  Although WP was a fairly durable set I felt it was worthless for the primary purpose of a tanker, to take and hold aggro.  If the changes actually work... and last I saw there were issues with it not working... then WP will become a viable option.

 

Whenever I teamed with a WP tanker I knew that we had a low damage, high durability scrapper on the team and not by any means a tanker.  From the beginning when Tanks got WP up to now I've only seen ONE WP tanker who was able to actually fill the tanking role, and he had an AOE heavy secondary (Fire I think) to help... and he worked his butt off to maintain aggro with Taunt and his secondary.

How would I test the taunt?

 

[Call Me Awesome]

4 hours ago, Sura said:

How would I test the taunt?

 

The quickest way is to have a team and jump into a group of even level mobs, wait a couple seconds for your aura to grab them then step back and see how fast you loose aggro.  Willpower used to shed aggro after 2 seconds, the other sets would keep it for about 14 and Invuln would keep it 17 seconds.

[Heraclea]

When Willpower was introduced it was the only tanker primary that had endurance relief built in.  Other sets had relatively slow clicks that gave endurance if they hit surrounding mobs, but nothing like Quick Recovery.  So I made many Willpower tankers back then and learned to be semi-effective on them.  Back then, while I never really agreed with it, I could sort of see the point: being the only endurance friendly set required a more active playstyle. 

 

Now there are many more armor sets like Bio,  Radiation, and Electric that offer significant relief from the endurance mechanic.  As such, I used to be bullish on the set but soured on it towards the end: its one advantage was no longer unique. And none of these sets have an aggro aura penalty.  So there wasn't much point any more to giving WP a weak aura.  WP is now a slightly weaker version of Invulnerability that adds extra recovery but isn't quite as tough out of the box and lacks a self-heal, even a slow one like Invulnerability's.  WP's other advantage is that it gives you a bit of immunity to seldom encountered but annoying forced AFKs like Terrorized and Confused.  It is a very concept friendly set that doesn't add funks or glows to your character if you don't want them.   None of this stuff justifies giving the set an aggro disadvantage. 

 

I now do have a level 50 WP/mace tanker on TB and will probably create more next time I get an itch to make a fresh one.   Oddly, I also made an experimental Staff character: a regen brute built to see whether, and at what cost, I could make a regen brute that could tank for a team. 

Edited February 24, 2020 by Heraclea

[Sura]

9 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

The quickest way is to have a team and jump into a group of even level mobs, wait a couple seconds for your aura to grab them then step back and see how fast you loose aggro.  Willpower used to shed aggro after 2 seconds, the other sets would keep it for about 14 and Invuln would keep it 17 seconds.

I went and stood next to some gray cons in RWZ and didn't attack.  I could see the Taunt message going through the combat log a bunch of times (I don't know how to look at logs) over the course of a minute.  The tooltip says 14 seconds I think, but I'm not sure how to verify that.  I'm happy to do what I can though.

 

Maybe @Captain Powerhousecan help clarify the status of WP's taunt aura.

[Call Me Awesome]

6 hours ago, Sura said:

I went and stood next to some gray cons in RWZ and didn't attack.  I could see the Taunt message going through the combat log a bunch of times (I don't know how to look at logs) over the course of a minute.  The tooltip says 14 seconds I think, but I'm not sure how to verify that.  I'm happy to do what I can though.

 

Maybe @Captain Powerhousecan help clarify the status of WP's taunt aura.

I just looked at the patch notes on Beta and they claim the problem is fixed there so we'll get it with the next patch here barring issues in testing.  The game's code is apparently extremely convoluted and fixes frequently have unintended consequences.  Past experience says there's a good chance the fix will work and go live shortly.

[Haijinx]

On 2/24/2020 at 12:39 AM, Heraclea said:

When Willpower was introduced it was the only tanker primary that had endurance relief built in.  Other sets had relatively slow clicks that gave endurance if they hit surrounding mobs, but nothing like Quick Recovery.  So I made many Willpower tankers back then and learned to be semi-effective on them.  Back then, while I never really agreed with it, I could sort of see the point: being the only endurance friendly set required a more active playstyle. 

 

Now there are many more armor sets like Bio,  Radiation, and Electric that offer significant relief from the endurance mechanic.  As such, I used to be bullish on the set but soured on it towards the end: its one advantage was no longer unique. And none of these sets have an aggro aura penalty.  So there wasn't much point any more to giving WP a weak aura.  WP is now a slightly weaker version of Invulnerability that adds extra recovery but isn't quite as tough out of the box and lacks a self-heal, even a slow one like Invulnerability's.  WP's other advantage is that it gives you a bit of immunity to seldom encountered but annoying forced AFKs like Terrorized and Confused.  It is a very concept friendly set that doesn't add funks or glows to your character if you don't want them.   None of this stuff justifies giving the set an aggro disadvantage. 

 

I now do have a level 50 WP/mace tanker on TB and will probably create more next time I get an itch to make a fresh one.   Oddly, I also made an experimental Staff character: a regen brute built to see whether, and at what cost, I could make a regen brute that could tank for a team. 

I think there was some resentment against Willpower back in the day, largely from some of the Invul proponents for stepping on some of its toes .. and it kind of hung around for a long time.  

 

Like you I made a WP tanker on the first day WP went live, and I loved that character.  The extra recovery really helped with Rage and Hasten end crashes and so on.  And of course back then Stamina was not inherent. 

 

Eventually as the better IOs came out it was a lot easier to patch up Invul's holes and improve its recovery (plus inh Stamina etc)   

[Haijinx]

On 2/23/2020 at 6:05 PM, Xandyr said:

I mean, in all actuality,  WP (on paper) looks great! You can get respectable defenses, decent resists, and A LOT of regeneration. It may take quite a bit of influence to afford it, but it still looks attractive. 

A little bit of knockdown goes a long way on WP.   

 

If you are taking damage .. AOE knockdown and then you'll have regened a huge amount before they get up. 

 

I expect other mitigation helps similarly.   

[Sura]

6 hours ago, Haijinx said:

A little bit of knockdown goes a long way on WP.   

 

If you are taking damage .. AOE knockdown and then you'll have regened a huge amount before they get up. 

 

I expect other mitigation helps similarly.   

I'm finding that Ice Patch works well with WP.  I did have some Malta the other day that were somehow killing ALL of my regen, which was surprising, but I was still jumping in and doing OK.   

 

[Heraclea]

On 2/25/2020 at 3:20 AM, Haijinx said:

A little bit of knockdown goes a long way on WP.   

 

If you are taking damage .. AOE knockdown and then you'll have regened a huge amount before they get up. 

 

I expect other mitigation helps similarly.   

When WP had the aura penalty, I would aim for Salt Crystals and Quick Sand in the build.  Still think they're a good idea generally, adding useful -def and control and allowing the slotting of many procs.

[EyeLuvBooks]

I must confess that my WP Tanker (WP/SS) had some growing pains because WP relies on Regen quite a bit. I added Tough to the mix (because End is never an issue) and the Absorb Proc and that fixed it. Just remember to hit MoG before rushing into that big spawn with the Psy damage and you'll be fine.