I would go Willpower/Stone Melee, decent ST attacks and when your on a team, Fault will give you the breathing room you need for RTTC to activate. Also, with QR and Stamina you will be able to use stone melee to its fullest.
I evaluated the several secondaries available from a team tanking perspective in this guide.
Personally, I really like Willpower/Dark Melee to make a character with plenty of utility that can be quite hard to take down. Stone, Axe, Mace, Super Strength are all pretty good performers solo or teamed.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
I would pair it with something with a lot of AOE... you'll have to depend on your secondary for aggro management thanks to the nearly non-existent taunt aura. Good candidates would be Fire Melee and Stone Melee in my opinion, both offer good damage and aggro management. Of the two, Fire has better AOE at the cost of mitigation... Stone Melee has less AOE but superior mitigation with Fault, Tremor and the knockdown in the hammers... to say nothing of the MAG-4 hold in Seismic Smash.
I would NOT pair it with /EM... but then since the changes I wouldn't pair anything with /EM 
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
[ QUOTE ]
I evaluated the several secondaries available from a team tanking perspective in this guide.
Personally, I really like Willpower/Dark Melee to make a character with plenty of utility that can be quite hard to take down. Stone, Axe, Mace, Super Strength are all pretty good performers solo or teamed.
[/ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't suggest Dark Melee for a WP build. Here are some of the reasons:
1) Dark Melee has redundant tools when paired with WP such as Siphon Life (healing) and Dark Consumption (endurance recovery).
2) Dark Melee is mitigation light, it's only "real" mitigation being single target powers such as Touch of Fear (which is usually skipped) and Midnight Grasp (if you can call a single target immobilize "mitigation"). DM's toHit debuff, while a nice addition to WP, is a fairly slippery one and reactive (i.e. you have to get your hits off for it to apply).
3) WP has no attacks in it ... without supplementing DM's long AOEs with another AOE, it plays like a gimpy single target set (which is why it has the undeserved stigma of being a "weak" set). You can go the Pyre route, but again you have lack of mitigation and you will have a hard time building a sustainable WP Tanker by having Tough/Weave and then fitting in Pyre on top of that.
For WP I suggest something with AOE physical mitigation ( knockdown, stun, etc ...). Stone, SS, WM and Battle Axe make very good secondary combinations with WP (I run a WP/Stone myself and it operates very well, although I might have gone War Mace instead in hindsight).
*EDIT* These suggestions are based on not "gimping" yourself for team play. Solo-wise any combination will work fine and I'd proably go the WP/Fire/Pyre or WP/SS/Pyre just to be a damage machine if soloing were my only concern.
Stone, Mace or SS
[ QUOTE ]
1) Dark Melee has redundant tools when paired with WP such as Siphon Life (healing) and Dark Consumption (endurance recovery).
[/ QUOTE ]
Not to be contrary, but I cannot agree with your assessment of SL at all. It would akin to saying "don't pickup Weave on an Invuln because it already has defense." Just because WP has regen doesn't mean SL is redundant. One of WP's weaknesses is not having any reactionary powers (outside of SoW) to bail it out in a tight spot; SL is an answer to that. (Over time, it can be just as strong or stronger than Reconstruction-like powers.)
As you add more mitigation (Tough, Weave, IOs, etc) the effects of SL become more pronounced. Another benefit of SL is that it's one of the few powers with a secondary effect that works against AVs (and other control resistant enemies).
I know you didn't say it was a useless power, but I'm not seeing any redundancy issues from it. (That was all I was trying to explain by the above.)
The biggest problem with the DM pairing for WP, to me, is its lack of real AoEs to help hold aggro on teams.
With three multi target attacks, Dark Melee would seem on paper to have a generous helping of AoE attacks. The problem is a simple one: recharge. Get enough recharge in your build, through Hasten or set bonuses, and the native AoEs are more than adequate to get first-strike aggro.
On my WP/DM tanker, I supplemented the two native AoEs I took (Shadow Maul and Soul Drain) with Salt Crystals. My alt build skips Strength of Will to pick up Quicksand as well; and once a WP tanker has both Tough and Weave, SoW becomes almost entirely redundant IME. You could get three Pyre auxiliary powers in a standard build if you also skipped Touch of Fear. I keep it, mostly for the big to hit debuff it brings.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
not to start an argument with awesome up there, but i WOULD recommend /EM, here's why. the problem with the /EM changes was it slowed down the attacks that used to be super duper fast, thereby reducing the DPS in the short term. but if you pair it with WP/, and build for recharge, you can have an endless stream of good ST damage attacks and never move your blue bar. i've found in the later game it becomes quite powerful, but it is kinda sub par for the first hal of your career.
i will second the /SM though, for the same reasons as above, endless endurance to fully utilize Stone melee's awesome attacks despite it's prohibitive end costs. also, most of the attacks recharge pretty quickly out of the box, so a little recharge makes you a smashtastic monster. 
Oh yeah, that was the time that girl got her whatchamacallit stuck in that guys dooblickitz and then what his name did that thing with the lizards and it cleared right up.
screw your joke, i want "FREEM"
[ QUOTE ]
once a WP tanker has both Tough and Weave, SoW becomes almost entirely redundant IME.
[/ QUOTE ]
Even with Tough/Weave I'd never drop SoW if only for two reasons:
*) Cimerorans
*) STF (herding the Patrons & Recluse)
The ability to cap your s/l res is too powerful to pass up on for one power pick, to me. (Using it after getting unlucky with GW's hold has mildly helpful, too.)
[ QUOTE ]
The ability to cap your s/l res is too powerful to pass up on for one power pick, to me. (Using it after getting unlucky with GW's hold has mildly helpful, too.)
[/ QUOTE ]
Based on the number of faceplanting wp tanks I've seen in 54 boss farms in the last few days, I must agree.
WP/Stone is silly good. Good ST for rather fast pace soloing, Group mitigation with fault spamming.
War Mace shouldn't be too bad either but slower solo IMHO.
And SoW has saved my bacon on several occasions so it sure isn't leaving my build YMMV
@Viper Kinji
Currently working on:
Turtle Snapper - SD/MA/Ice Tanker
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1) Dark Melee has redundant tools when paired with WP such as Siphon Life (healing) and Dark Consumption (endurance recovery).
[/ QUOTE ]
Not to be contrary, but I cannot agree with your assessment of SL at all. It would akin to saying "don't pickup Weave on an Invuln because it already has defense." Just because WP has regen doesn't mean SL is redundant. One of WP's weaknesses is not having any reactionary powers (outside of SoW) to bail it out in a tight spot; SL is an answer to that. (Over time, it can be just as strong or stronger than Reconstruction-like powers.)
As you add more mitigation (Tough, Weave, IOs, etc) the effects of SL become more pronounced. Another benefit of SL is that it's one of the few powers with a secondary effect that works against AVs (and other control resistant enemies).
I know you didn't say it was a useless power, but I'm not seeing any redundancy issues from it. (That was all I was trying to explain by the above.)
The biggest problem with the DM pairing for WP, to me, is its lack of real AoEs to help hold aggro on teams.
[/ QUOTE ]
I understand where you're coming from and you're correct to a point. However (and you should love this) I think you'd get more mileage out of Tremor/Fault then Siphon Life when combined with a WP build (and considering WPs huge regen factor). The upside to Siphon Life in a WP build being you can slot for strictly melee, as opposed to other builds where you might be looking to slot Sihon Life with heals and/or frankenslot the heck out of it (removing decent set bonuses).
In other words, Siphon Life's heal aspect is more superfluous in a WP build then in other builds that aren't regen focused (but superfluous in and of itself).
I run a Fire/DM/Pyre Tanker (newest Tanker project) and I don't get near the same value out of Siphon Life that I do in my SD/DM Tanker, simply because Healing Flames makes Siphon Life redundant (mind you I'm not saying not useful ... just not useful as often (triple negative? my English professor just groaned)).
In my estimation the 600%+ regen from WP > Healing Flames. In that scenario making the healing aspect of Siphon Life that much more redundant.
WP needs the mitigation more then the bail out powers (mitigation mitigating the need for bail out powers here) and in a situational tight spot that's what inspirations are for.
In my mind DM thrives in builds that don't need as heavy a mitigation as the more squishy (out of the box) Tanker sets such as Stone, Invuln and SD (SD due to its particular makeup).
Finally, if you build your */DM Tanker well it's the second best AOE secondary there is (Shadow Maul, Soul Drain and Dark Consumption) although I agree that due to the longish recharges of SD and DC, it needs another AOE filler (either from APPs or the primary).
*EDIT* Keep in mind that the OP is asking for the "best" secondaries to pair with WP ("best" being subjective of course). In that regard I like the mitigation heavy secondaries over the ligher mitigation ones. Otherwise all of the secondaries will "work" with WP to a greater or lesser degree of efficiency.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
once a WP tanker has both Tough and Weave, SoW becomes almost entirely redundant IME.
[/ QUOTE ]
Even with Tough/Weave I'd never drop SoW if only for two reasons:
*) Cimerorans
*) STF (herding the Patrons & Recluse)
The ability to cap your s/l res is too powerful to pass up on for one power pick, to me. (Using it after getting unlucky with GW's hold has mildly helpful, too.)
[/ QUOTE ]
/agree 100%
Ironically the only build of a WP I can see without SoW is one without Tough/Weave as well, which is the solo Scranker build.
*EDIT* SoW becomes much more situational with Tough/Weave then it is normally, so in that regard I could see it being skipped in favor of another power ... I personally find that the situations come up far more often then not, so I like to keep SoW.
The other form of mitigation in Dark Melee that Willpower benefits from is, of course, the to hit debuff that almost every attack has to some extent. These stack as well, and can be stacked fairly easily on high priority targets. This also strengthens Willpower's defensive side, which looks unimpressive on paper, and do still more once Weave is in place.
This benefits Ice and Shields even more, of course.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
[ QUOTE ]
The other form of mitigation in Dark Melee that Willpower benefits from is, of course, the to hit debuff that almost every attack has to some extent. These stack as well, and can be stacked fairly easily on high priority targets. This also strengthens Willpower's defensive side, which looks unimpressive on paper, and do still more once Weave is in place.
This benefits Ice and Shields even more, of course.
[/ QUOTE ]
With set bonuses WP's Defensive numbers look very impressive.
My Energy/Neg is at 40% and my Fire/Cold is at 46%.
Thanks for your replies. I have started digging into the SS and Stone secondary. I was interested in the DM but it didnt fit my concept. I also decided that the weapon sets didnt fit my concept either.
Heraclea your guide was helpful. Great summary on the attack sets.
G_tanker you said you saw a lot of WP tankers face plant on the 54 boss farm. Why do you think they face planted and how can you build a tanker to avoid that? Does WP suck at Tanking?
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for your replies. I have started digging into the SS and Stone secondary. I was interested in the DM but it didnt fit my concept. I also decided that the weapon sets didnt fit my concept either.
Heraclea your guide was helpful. Great summary on the attack sets.
G_tanker you said you saw a lot of WP tankers face plant on the 54 boss farm. Why do you think they face planted and how can you build a tanker to avoid that? Does WP suck at Tanking?
[/ QUOTE ]
Let me answer for G_tanker.
I'm going to guess the WP Tanks he saw faceplant either did not have Tough and Weave or just were not good at Tanking.
It could also be the lack of mitigation in their secondary depending on their build.
My WP/SS easily stands in the middle of the pack against level 54 bosses.
Kruunch: I suppose what I should have said was that Siphon Life isn't bad due to its redundancy with WP, rather, because crowd control ('mitigation') provides better returns. The catch being that CC offered from other sets doesn't work on all mobs (notably AVs/GMs, etc) while SL continues to function. (I disagree that the heal is superfluous - if used constantly, it functions as pseudo regen, which raises the immortality line of WP.)
Also, DM is not 2nd in line for AoE, I'd say that at least Mace, Axe, DB, and (possibly) Ice would be better. All of those have more AoEs than DM does (SD & DC are utility powers that deal damage, not true AoE attacks). Don't get me wrong, I really like DM and Shadow Maul, but an AoE set it is not.
[ QUOTE ]
G_tanker you said you saw a lot of WP tankers face plant on the 54 boss farm. Why do you think they face planted and how can you build a tanker to avoid that? Does WP suck at Tanking?
[/ QUOTE ]
direpsyche: WP is a solid set, one of the most well rounded available to Tankers. That said, its survivability will depend on the build and enemies (as with all sets). WP benefits greatly with Tough/Weave, the difference between having and not having those is day and night. Other build options with IOs involves +MaxHP and +def to make the biggest difference. (Regen is good too, but I think def is a better option for high stress situations.)
I don't know what enemies G_Tanker was up against, so I can't make any hypothesises as to why. At any rate, lucks are your friend, use them!
The biggest problem WP has is holding aggro due to RttC's taunt component being far weaker to other sets (~9% strength of most sets). It's why people strongly suggest taking Taunt and the liberal use of AoEs.
[ QUOTE ]
G_tanker you said you saw a lot of WP tankers face plant on the 54 boss farm. Why do you think they face planted and how can you build a tanker to avoid that? Does WP suck at Tanking?
[/ QUOTE ]
To add to this, invul/ tanks (invincibility) and wp/ (RTTC) both have their major mitigation in their aura. This aura power goes up with more in melee range. Some invul/ and wp/ tanks love to jump around (a lot), which means their aura isnt saturating, making them more squishie.
You can test this easily by getting a mob watching your defense, then jump to the outside of it.
On difficult mobs, its easy to forget, as the lower mitigation is fine on lower level/easier mobs.
this 'may' have been their problem.
That or they didnt take their core powers :P
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
G_tanker you said you saw a lot of WP tankers face plant on the 54 boss farm. Why do you think they face planted and how can you build a tanker to avoid that? Does WP suck at Tanking?
[/ QUOTE ]
Let me answer for G_tanker.
I'm going to guess the WP Tanks he saw faceplant either did not have Tough and Weave or just were not good at Tanking.
[/ QUOTE ]
I can speak for myself, thanks, I have lots to say about terrible tanks.
First off, willpower is a middle of the road set. It does not really excel at anything - jack of all trades syndrome. It can be built for pretty much anything, however. Innately, as a set, it does not have a great starting point against 54 smash/lethal bosses.
Many of the terrible tanks I've seen this week did have tough and weave. Some were too stupid to run them, I kid you not (too much endurance? lol). Incidentally, one non-WP highlight of this week was the stone tanker that didn't enhance granite and was going down where my invuln scrapper had no problems. That cracked me up.
Typically they weren't played/built. 54 smash/lethal bosses are not WP's forte innately the way it is for invuln or stone - they do more damage per hit than lower bosses, meaning more needs to be regenerated, and the -tohit effect is much weaker vs them. Higher resistance is important if you want to stand up to that much damage consistently, and you definitely want to softcap S/L or melee for that environment if you can manage it. (Of course, one FF defender or Fort and you're pretty good!)
By comparison, my invuln scrapper was tanked 53's from 28-39 and 54's since then in the last few days. I simply IO'd out for defense to S/L and built teams or brought purple insps to finish the softcap when needed, always with at least 60% S/L resistance.
Another thing is keep in mind your taunt aura is weak. Annoyingly weak. I have played with a number of bad willpower tanks in the last few days (my ABSOLUTE favorite one was the 48 WP/Fire/Pyre yesterday that thought she was 'helping' whenever I brought a new pack of 54's into the group by fireball/taunting them off me and losing the ones she had next to her - we had like a dozen squishy deaths in a run due to her not knowing when NOT to taunt) so I'm a bit jaded.
Willpower's big strength is not innately S/L, but it can be designed for it with a little effort and can do quite well. As always, there's an insp vendor right outside the AE - it always pays to have an emergency skittle to cover your holes. Bad players will think they can tank simply because their AT says "Tanker" (*laugh*), and most of them get too caught up in the glory of standing in a pile of mobs to realize the nuances of capping and agro, then wonder why their teammates are dying. Please, please don't be one of these players. I can't do double and triple spawn herds of 54's with partners that try to steal my agro and lose theirs in the process - it kills teammates.
[ QUOTE ]
Incidentally, one non-WP highlight of this week was the stone tanker that didn't enhance granite and was going down where my invuln scrapper had no problems. That cracked me up.
[/ QUOTE ]
was this on guardian? Cause about a week ago on the STF, we had the eternally dying granite tank (56% resistance!). I lasted longer in lobster (warshade) form than he did.
I'm scared to think there are more of them out there!
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
Reasons Iwould recomend DM with WP:
[ QUOTE ]
1) Dark Melee has redundant tools when paired with WP such as Siphon Life (healing) and Dark Consumption (endurance recovery).
[/ QUOTE ]
Suplimenting WP's regen with a heal in your attack chain is only redundant if you fight weaker enemies then this build is cabable of handling.
[ QUOTE ]
2) Dark Melee is mitigation light, it's only "real" mitigation being single target powers such as Touch of Fear (which is usually skipped) and Midnight Grasp (if you can call a single target immobilize "mitigation"). DM's toHit debuff, while a nice addition to WP, is a fairly slippery one and reactive (i.e. you have to get your hits off for it to apply).
[/ QUOTE ]
As for mitigation I think DMs attacks stacking ACC debuffs on all the enmies around you is nice compliment to the -acc in WP's aura. The idea you have to get your hits off is silly. I don't care what build you play, if you can't hit it won't work. DM feels it misses much less to me then most other sets. Most likely as many attacks are neg only and don't have to worry about getting by the huge smash/lethal and nrg def that the most common faced enemy has in abundance.
[ QUOTE ]
3) WP has no attacks in it ... without supplementing DM's long AOEs with another AOE, it plays like a gimpy single target set
[/ QUOTE ]
Wha? You mean I would have to supliment a set that comes with 3-4 nice AoE attacks with another pool AoE? So to prevent having to do this I should pick a set like SS with only ONE AoE?
Uh explain this one one more time to me.. not getting it. 
[ QUOTE ]
I'm scared to think there are more of them out there!
[/ QUOTE ]
Most tanks and scrappers I see before 30 (where I'm usually grouping) don't have their status protection. I've been noticing it a lot lately since I've been playing controllers and defenders that have been attempting to alleviate status effects. At least when they cause vigilance to kick in I can blast to my hearts content without a single concern.
[ QUOTE ]
Kruunch: I suppose what I should have said was that Siphon Life isn't bad due to its redundancy with WP, rather, because crowd control ('mitigation') provides better returns. The catch being that CC offered from other sets doesn't work on all mobs (notably AVs/GMs, etc) while SL continues to function. (I disagree that the heal is superfluous - if used constantly, it functions as pseudo regen, which raises the immortality line of WP.)
Also, DM is not 2nd in line for AoE, I'd say that at least Mace, Axe, DB, and (possibly) Ice would be better. All of those have more AoEs than DM does (SD & DC are utility powers that deal damage, not true AoE attacks). Don't get me wrong, I really like DM and Shadow Maul, but an AoE set it is not.
[ QUOTE ]
G_tanker you said you saw a lot of WP tankers face plant on the 54 boss farm. Why do you think they face planted and how can you build a tanker to avoid that? Does WP suck at Tanking?
[/ QUOTE ]
direpsyche: WP is a solid set, one of the most well rounded available to Tankers. That said, its survivability will depend on the build and enemies (as with all sets). WP benefits greatly with Tough/Weave, the difference between having and not having those is day and night. Other build options with IOs involves +MaxHP and +def to make the biggest difference. (Regen is good too, but I think def is a better option for high stress situations.)
I don't know what enemies G_Tanker was up against, so I can't make any hypothesises as to why. At any rate, lucks are your friend, use them!
The biggest problem WP has is holding aggro due to RttC's taunt component being far weaker to other sets (~9% strength of most sets). It's why people strongly suggest taking Taunt and the liberal use of AoEs.
[/ QUOTE ]
DM as an AOE Set: Well I will have to say my experience with DM as an AOE buildat L50 comes from pairing it with Shields. AAO making Soul Drain and Dark Consumption actually worth while from a damage perspective (100 and 145 respectively) and of course Shield Charge and that build has a high amount of recharge which you'd need.
However my Fire/DM/Pyre Tanker is coming along and is defintely an AOE build as well (and in answer to Lord_Umbra's last question).
I haven't personally found too much in the game that mitigation when paired with my WP Tanker's regen can't handle and I tend to be on the extreme side of tanking (also in response to Lord_Umbra's questioning of what I tank). AV's and GM's (thus far) haven't put out enough damage on a single target basis to down my Tanker (although on the STF my guy does need a little support, but that's been my experience with almost every non-Stone on an STF) and on a pack basis, this amounts to the same (Tremor providing more then enough mitigation for my regen to catch up).
Unless you were talking about packs of AVs, which I haven't tried yet 
Face Planting WP Tankers: 9/10 times these are poorly built and/or poorly schemed builds. Either without Tough/Weave (which a WP Tanker must have to group tank imo) and/or without some form of AOE mitigation (i.e. KD, Stuns, etc ...). I've seen WP/Fire Tankers with Tough/Weave face plant a bunch (this is from lack of mitigation in my estimation). I haven't actually seen a WP/DM Tanker in-game yet, but I'd imagine that it wouldn't be quite as squishy as WP/Fire (for the reasons Sarrate points out).
Also L54 boss farms plant most non-Stone, non-Invuln Tankers. By and large L54 boss farms are bad farms in my experience (takes too long to kill, even with a great kill team). L52 boss farms seem to be the pinnacle of boss farms for efficiency.
I want to make a Willpower tanker but I am unsure what attack set to use. I want to solo but I dont want to gimp my team play either.
I have never rolled a tank before. I most play controllers or blasters so I am kind of lost when it comes to tankers.
Thanks