RTTC - Change?

It's been stated by the developers that Willpower's very weak taunt aura in RttC was an intentional build weakness. As so many others have pointed out, it's because Willpower has no real downsides otherwise, gaining a little bit of everything (and a lot of others).

I would suggest you trust Sarrate's information regarding how aggro contro/taunt effects work, as I think they're one of the few people who really have paid attention to what little info there's been about taunt mechanics and tried to understand it, to help inform others. Gauntlet and taunt together can easily make the taunt aura a non-issue.

Since posting, I have put wp brute versus both a shield tank and invuln for aggro. Better still tomorrow I can take 1 WP Brute with taunt enhancements in RTTC and versus it with another WP Brute without taunt enhancements and see the difference.

Anyway I'll test this tomoz. All my Brutes, Scrappers and Tankers get taunt or confront, I have never knowingly needed an aura what stacks.

I ain't been back to this thread as I ain't finished testing and that's because at home we had a router change and I think I got to get a new wireless card to have the same security. Not sure. My current one don't do WPA-PSK at all.

Came to the thread late, but I wouldn't be opposed to a buff to RTTC to make it a less crappy taunt aura. On the other hand, it might be that some Scrapper taunt aura's are too strong, like AAO. I've had Shield Scrappers peel AV aggro off of my Shield Tank for a decent amount of time on multiple occasions while I was spamming taunt.

Were you kiting or in melee?

So I got a question: If the weak taunt aura is a penalty to WP for being such a well rounded set for Tankers, what's the penalty for WP for being the way it is for Scrappers?

My Spines/WP scrapper is tough enough to pass, and has tanked every task force in the game shy of Statesman. Despite the weak WP aura, somehow she has no issues holding aggro when she wants to.

For Brutes, the advantages of Willpower are jaw-dropping, monumental; so much so that I think that you have a difficult job justifying the use of any other defense set. A case might be made for Stone (You really wanted a tanker. But now you can have a real one redside if you want.) or Shield (damage buffs and AoE) but why you'd want something like Invulnerability on a brute when you can have Willpower instead is pretty much beyond me. I have an Invuln brute, but that's more on account of the history of the game than anything else. The disadvantages of scrapper/brute vs tanker mitigation levels and HP are far more glaring on Invuln than they are on WP.

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This price it is said that, with all of WPs well roundedness is in having something that its not good at compared to others, which is aggro control, I am still not inclined to say is fair. Mostly because the penalty is for the team mates and secondly perhaps because WP doesn't deal with alphas very well. People could say that once IOs are added..tra la la, but I think the game should upto a certain level/extent be based around SOs. The fact that WP doesn't take an alpha very well for its strengths is enough but having said that alphas don't need to be taken but this can slow a team down depending on the method.

Without gauntlet WP tankers would be less magnetic than WP scrappers excluding the range taunt. The range taunt is easily more useful on a WP tanker compared to others, and without a damage aura I ain't so sure as to why.

I'm starting to see conflicts in information from different sources when it comes to taunt auras. They can't all be right.

Potentially in game a Shield Scrapper can not only give a WP tanker extra defense but redirect aggro from them too. WP tankers have the self res but in the above being done the Shield scrapper might be the first to eat dirt. Cheeky.

I don't see the lack of taunt duration on WP tankers, as something that makes up for vulnerabilities. Being poorer at dealing with alphas might already do that. Can anyone provide a link to where a Dev has something that will do enough to arm people with the belief?

I think you might be getting too hung up looking for vulnerabilities. It's a set weakness, not a vulnerability. Instead of looking for "what is the set vulnerable to" look for "what doesn't the set do well". For many sets, at least one of their weaknesses is a vulnerability. In WP's case, it isn't and it only has one weakness really.

WP isn't that bad at eating alphas. My DB/WP Brute was weak to alphas (SOs, usually +2 diff, teams of 3+), then I added Tough & Weave and it wasn't. He's no Stone Tanker, but he's still plenty well protected and I haven't thrown sets on him yet. WP Tankers are even better.

Looking at the numbers, I'm likely happier taking an alpha on a WP Tanker than an Elec at equivalent levels, pools, and slotting (more HP & regen). Fire and Dark are questionable, but they do have self-heals that can literally pull them back from the brink. Even Ice is debateable until you get IO sets to softcap, due to the gambling nature of defense-based sets.

Shield Scrappers & Brutes are the game's aggro kings, whether they're stripping from WP Tankers or any other Tanker out there. Barring liberal use of Taunt by the Tanker, they have to cause 33% more damage in most cases, which isn't difficult at all for those ATs. Even with liberal use of Taunt, it's still possible if the Tanker isn't throwing enough DPS.