Sailboat

You'll quit because of an event that made you "raged and mad," but it won't be "ragequit?"

The reason the Incarnate system exists is because players wanted more for their 50s to do. A change to the system that would reduce the amount of time spent on Incarnate content is directly counter to the reason it was developed. As such, I can state with absolute confidence that what you're asking for will never happen.

To the OP:

It's worth noting that I'm happy with both my high-investment Fire/Fire/Pyre and Inv/SS Tankers and am often undecided as to which one I'd rather saddle up for missions with friends.

And if I want to mindlessly solo at x8, Fire/Fire/Pyre is fantastic.

Yeah, that's the place.

My Guardian squad is tank-heavy; not sure which one I'll bring, as it will depend on the vagaries of my whim. Also have active tanks on Justice, so I plan to join tonight (probably as Djinni).

Yeah, 75% resistance on a character with defense and Aid Self is solid enough.

Eh. Speaking theoretically (as I don't have a high-level WP Tanker) it looks like the truth is in the middle -- WP should indeed be vulnerable to huge spikes of elemental (heck, even s/l) damage, against which regen is uncertain protection; whether that can properly be termed "quite vulnerable" is open to debate.

I agree that in bleeding-edge cases, Invuln should stand some alphas WP won't; I also tend to agree with the view that those are extreme edge cases and WP is very tough indeed.

A few comments:

1) Open the Leaping pool with Combat Jumping -- low end cost, gives a nice little defense bonus, and the alternative (Jump Kick) is a poor attack with a long animation. The last power, Acrobatics, is redundant on a Willpower character; don't bother with it.

2) There's no consensus on how to replace Inherent Fitness. I like grabbing Recall Friend if I have no urgent needs.

3) Fortunately slotting order doesn't matter too much AND you can change it later if it does. As a very vague generalization, I would get a couple of attacks slotted up to 4-6 slots early on, then make sure most of your defenses are slotted up (4 slots for toggle defenses, 3 for passives).

Thanks for the input, folks. Looks like there's no solid consensus.

Traditionally procs go best in the attacks you repeat most rapidly -- more chances to activate. In this case I'm not sure, because chaining together combos means you won't just be spamming the rapidly-recharging Tier 1. Maybe Blinding Feint, since you'll be trying to stack it anyway and you'll use it before either combo?

Regarding the best way to get the combos down, I finally systematized my tray, putting the powers for the Attack Vitals combo on 1-2-3 and the Sweep combo on 4-5-6. I keep BF on the next tray up, so it's alt-1 (same place I habitually put Build-Up-type powers). Chaining the combo is a little easier if I'm just working my way down the row.

I like parts of it, but the standout "I don't get it" decision was to make all 3 bird beaks raptor beaks. I would have done a curved parrot beak, a raptor beak, and a straight softbill beak.

Interesting that there's 8 of them, the size of a full team of players.

Although I haven't made a Willpower tank myself yet, observing many of them in action, looking closely at the powerset numbers, playing Willpower Scrappers, and reading many, many forum threads has led me to the conclusion that it's a solid Tanker set. Conventional wisdom places it among the hardiest of Tanker sets -- Stone/Granite first, then Invulnerability, then Willpower just a tiny shade under Invulnerability, then the rest (although I've read a lot of recent arguments that Elec should be rated tougher than I have considered it in the past). And considering that any Tanker can be successful in most circumstances, and Willpower is one of the tougher, Willpower should survive almost any tanking. Holding aggro will require more consideration than it does for other powersets, but it can be done.

Yeah. Test it yourself.

Turn off Blazing Aura and all other damage-causing powers. Find a single enemy of around your level; bosses are better (gray enemies will die too fast for this test to be clearly visible).

Now hit him with ONE un-boosted attack and watch the damage number over his head, NOT the damage bonus number on the "combat attributes monitor." The damage will also report to a chat tab that's set to show combat results.

Now hit Fiery Embrace and use THE SAME attack you just used. Don't use other attacks; you don't need to kill this guy quickly; you can take a few hits, you're a Tank. Watch the damage number over his head. Where in the first test it said something like, in the case of Incinerate, "29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29," now it will say "29 13 29 13 29 13 29 13 29 13 29 13 29 13 29." Those 13s are the bonus fire damage from Fiery Embrace.

You'll have a vaguely similar problem when you use Burn -- Burn doesn't report damage to your "combat" chat tab, but to a channel called "pet combat" which you can add to your combat chat tab or to its on separate tab if you prefer. But if you were checking chat for Burn damage you wouldn't see it reported where you'd expect it, even though it's plainly visible in actual combat.

I'm thik ning this has to be a misunderstanding of some kind, as I have recently respecced several high-level characters using Mids and did not have this problem, and also seeing as I can't quite understand what you're saying.

Can you perhaps post the Mids build and point to exactly where the in-game respec diverges from it?

I don't know about defense debuffs. But my own Inv Tanker has done well with about 40% fire/cold defense (1 enemy in range) and 30-32% resistance and considerably less regen. And that definition of "doing well" includes soloing x8 missions against fire-only enemies.