Mace/WP - is this just an awkward phase?

[TheMoncrief]

OK, I have a War Mace/Willpower Scrapper who's been running into some massive problems starting at level 40. I went into Tina MacIntyre's story arc and immediately get bodied by the Praetorian Clockwork. It's like they are custom made just to utterly wreck Willpower, with massive regen and defense debuffs. I can beat the missions at low difficulty, but I'm a *SCRAPPER*, I'm usually running at, well, not low difficulty. 

 

Is this what playing Willpower is going to look from now on, facing massive debuffs that make most of my secondary set pointless or at best massively dependent on inspirations or locked into difficulty settings that make more sense for a poorly built Blaster? Or are Praetorian Clockwork just the exception, my personal kryptonite, and I'll not be facing many enemies so perfectly designed to hard-counter me in the future?

[Yomo Kimyata]

Praetorian Clockwork have tons of minions that use ranged energy attacks that debuff defense, and they tend to stay at range.  As a willpower scrapper, you don't have great ranged (or even energy) defenses and no defense debuff resistance.  Scrub bots suck!

 

I don't particularly enjoy Willpower myself, but I used to have that same issue on my BS/INV scrapper before they added DDR.  My suggestion is to hold your nose for most of the arc and to hide behind corners and make them come to you.

[TheMoncrief]

As long as it's not a universal "Your secondary will just be disabled in all future content, choose a better set scrub!" problem I'll stick with it. I have a concept and Willpower fits better than anything else, so I'll cope. Hiding behind corners does help. As does having another contact providing missions that aren't complete nightmares when I need a break.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Willpower does get a little mushy for endgame if you are pushing it; it's great for most content but when things go pear shaped they go really pear shaped.

 

I would probably look to add Shadow Meld from Soul Mastery, or Unleash Potential from Force of Will, or most likely both.  But that's if you are pushing it.

[Uun]

You should also be careful of factions that drain endurance (Arachnos Mu and Malta Sappers). Willpower has no end drain resistance and they can drop your toggles easily if you're not paying attention.

[Zect]

The clockwork are armed with plasma blasts, and you know what plasma means in coh. -Regen! (They also have a fair amount of -def as previously mentioned.)

[Haijinx]

I imagine at 40 you haven't build a lot of added defense or resistance into the build yet, 

 

And you don't have the levels of recharge you need to just smash them with a  debuffed secondary. 

 

So I'd expect it to get better.  

 

Shadow Meld can really help here as can Strength of Will.

[Thraxen]

I just leveled up a kat/wp a few months ago. It’s different because of divine avalanche.  But it’s very sturdy at 50. Not as much as SR but I’m always biased towards SR. Debuffs do hurt WP more than some it seems. Last boss of market crash is really brutal. I don’t remember having any difficulty doing Tina or MJ arcs on mine though. 

[Sovera]

Yeah, those clockworks are plenty mean. The trick is killing them fast, and since they are ranged it's not a bad idea to do corner pulls is you're solo. And keeping at least one small purple going all the time.

 

With my Fire Armor Tanker they could hurt enough to eventually kill me if I was playing fat and happy. But corner pulls, Build-up, and Fire Armor, makes kill fast a thing.