Heraclea

This amounts to about the same thing to what I was saying. An all passive set would be expected to have a weak taunt aura, being all passive. It would have to rely on Gauntlet for aggro control. Which in essence is what Willpower does. Which is why I've always held that selecting a secondary for fast recharging AoE was always the key to traditional tanking with Willpower.

Out of the box, Willpower is not all that sturdy, either. Strength of Will is absolutely essential before Tough and Weave; though after you get those two you may as well respec out of it. And, of course, Willpower doesn't find those endurance costly pool powers as taxing as other primaries do.

My first IO project was not to collect +def bonuses. My first project was to collect +end and +recovery bonuses for Heraclea. A lot of my non-WP tankers have two or more Performance Shifter Chance for +End slotted, including the ones slotted for defense. Especially them.

The endurance mechanic still annoys after being largely ameliorated. You know I always was carping about this. This is also why I loved Willpower as well. For the first six years and more of its existence, the game showed its worst face to the new player. Endurance was the biggest QoL problem, and Stamina was what you were more or less forced to take to get around it; and after Stamina was on and SOs available the game started to get a lot more fun to play.

If players had the QoL improvements from the start that they have now, this game might have so many subscribers and be making so much money that nobody would dream of closing it.

It had ever been my understanding that WP was meant as an offense oriented set. Willpower tankers were expected to rely on attacks rather than auras to hold aggro. As such, they had more endurance than other tankers had, and a weaker aura. But inherent Stamina diminished that advantage somewhat, if it did not erase it completely.

I have never taken Unstoppable on an Invuln tanker, and I have 3 at 50. On my Invuln brute I have it. Then again Willpower is so much of a better deal than Invuln is for brutes that I don't see all that many new ones being made.

The only thing that really gives me issues is psi, and for that all of them have the Rikti invasion accolade.

When I wrote my Willpower guide to holding aggro, the number and quality of AoE attacks was always an important consideration. Then again, I always recommended that Willpower characters get Stamina anyways: Fitness played to their strengths. But now that Fitness is inherent for Willpower too, builds I didn't like for being way too tight, like WP/DB, became a lot more feasible. It's easy now to get all the combos.

I respecced and played my Freedom WP/DB tanker last Tanker Tuesday. Picked up Tough and Weave; never had them before, and always relied on SoW if it was up. The character worked fairly well.

Hehe.... It ain't over 'till its over.

That's glorious. Glad to have seen it.