Rise to the Challenge!

Just made my first tanker with the willpower primary. What's the best way to slot this power? Right now I got it slotted basically for regeneration, and also with a single endurance reduction io. So when I am surrounded by enemies, my regen is going sky high with fast healing, physical perfection, and health. This toon also has the regenerative tissue proc, and the numina regen/recovery.

So ya, what in your experience is the best way to slot this power? I'm thinking with -to hit, coupled with his 24% s/l defence, and/or his 21% melee defence, maybe it's worth slotting more for -to hit than strictly for regeneration. Any thoughts?

The to-hit debuff is pretty insignificant... around 5.5% fully slotted vs 3.5% unslotted. 2% more to-hit debuff isn't worth a slot, much less 2-3 of them. The regen is of course very important, but as a Tanker the other thing you'll want to slot it for is Taunt. RttC is by far the worst taunt aura for actually holding aggro, so assuming you plan to actually tank and not just be a really tough, low damage Scrapper (or an unusually calm Brute) you'll want to slot up RttC's taunt and also the Taunt power, because you'll be more reliant on actively taunting than some other tanks.

RttC doesn't take taunt sets, so I'd probably go with a couple of Taunt IOs (highest level you can slot) and maybe three Numina's (for regen and HP bonuses) or Miracle (recovery and HP), like the Heal/End, Heal/End/Rech, and Heal IOs. You could also drop a Dark Watcher's Chance for Recharge Slow proc or a To-Hit Debuff/End IO in the 6th slot if you want but I'd skip it.

I don't have MIDs infront of me right not but I believe that the -tohit is so small that you don't get much benefit from enhancing it. I have 3 numinas and 3 miracles (heal, heal/end, and heal/rech for both) and I'm beating pretty hard on ED for the heal so I can get the most out of my ultra rare spiritual alpha.

RttC is your biggest source of +regen on your willpower so you do want the most out of it, but with my alpha I probably need to play around see if i can move slots around and make improvements.

Edit: Mine is a Brute so i was less concerned with the Taunt, but Stryker is right that the taunt part is rather weak and on a tank might be worth enhancing.

Ah ok. I was assuming that the -to hit would be multiplied by how many enemies were around me? Cuz my regeneration seems to vary depending on how big the mob is, or at least that is how it appears to me. I have it monitored on my combat attributes window, and in combat it seems to move up and down a lot. RttC says it affects 10 targets max, so would the -3.5% be per enemy, or total?

Edit
*ah I see it is -3.5% per TARGET. Duh. lol So ya...not really worth slotting for that I guess. I was kinda thinking it was -to hit = +def. You know like 10 targets would make it -35% to hit, or adding +35% defence type thing. How wrong I was. @_@*

Well, it's true that RttC ToHit Debuff is not that much, but -ToHit is used in the same formulas that Defense is, so... my thinking is that that if you're close to SoftCap (say, near 40%), some extra -ToHit can get you 'effectively' over the top (at least it can for most minions; I think Bosses and such can resist it somewhat...).

Anyhow, I put 4 Dark Watcher's despairs in there for that very reason (and extra Recovery, Health, and Recharge bonuses from that set is never a bad thing for the ATs that use Willpower . Threw in a couple of Numinas to top it off.

I didn't bother with Taunt enhancments. If you want to be a serious taunt-bot, get something besides Willpower *shrug*

The thing to remember is that it's 3.5% with nothing at all slotted, and since to-hit debuffs have an ED cap of 60% you end up with about a 2% increase in debuff strength with two level 50 to-hit debuff SOs. Since any enemy a Tank is likely to be concerned about enough for 2% less to-hit to matter is either an AV or +4, that's more like 1% more debuff on average when it counts. 1% more effective defense is pretty much meaningless even near the softcap... you'll need Herostats or such to actually tell the difference.

On an even level AV, which resists 85% of to-hit debuffs, the difference between unslotted and ED capped is around 0.3%, and against +3 normal mobs it's around 1%. Against +3 AVs, like on the Incarnate trials (assuming level shift) it's around 0.15%. If that's worth two slots to you, go for it... it wouldn't be to me.

If you're going the -ToHit route, my recommendation would be to four-slot Numina's and two-slot DWD. If you're alpha-slotting Spiritual, then you can drop down to three-slotted Numina's and two-slotted DWD, possibly with a Taunt IO in there to help with aggro management.

Numina's bring a big +hp bonus to the table, plus some more regen (and a healing bonus if you four-slot, but I'm not sure how that works for WP's powers). They also allow you to keep the regen high for RttC, which will keep you alive longer in those big groups.

The DWD set looks wonderful with 4pc slotting. You get +hp, +recov and +recharge. All good stuff! However, you really need to look at what you give up and what the set brings you outside of its bonuses.

Two-slotting DWD can get you within 0.6% of four-slotting DWD for total to-hit debuff. It also gets you within 0.2% of two-slotting Common ToHit Debuff IOs. You lose 2.5% recovery and 5% global recharge compared to four-slotting, but that's not much loss in the grand scheme of things. Two-slotting keeps the +hp around, which is the foundation of WP/* survivability.

But global recharge is king, right? Well, only if you've got enough recharge in your attacks in the first place. For example, a WP/* Tanker's gets more out of slotting 3pcs of Crushing Impact paired with 3pcs of Mako's in their single-target attacks than they do with four 5% global recharge bonuses and 60% recharge from slotting. Again, you're grabbing up +hp, but you're also getting recharge (single-power, but recharge nonetheless) and keeping your endurance costs down (much further down that a 2.5% recovery bonus).

Spiritual Alpha slotting will give you even more recharge, above and beyond ED caps, plus more regen and HP. Tough to beat that for a WP/* Tanker. It'll also free up that fourth slot of Numina's (again, not sure if that 6% heal bonus hit HPT or any of the set's +regen).

A WP Character is gonna have pretty good healing already. Yeah, you can choose to beef Healing/Regen up a bit more, but I feel that if you have a choice between extra healing and more Defense (or its rough equavalent, -ToHit), you go with Defense. Overall, it's best to have layered defenses (Defense, Resist, and Regen), but when you have to choose, go with Defense. Just my feelings on the matter...

So, 4 Dark Watchers for that little extra (maybe even a full increment, which matters near softcap). Plus, that 5% recharge comes in handy if you skimped on Crushing Impacts because you went with Kinetic Combats instead.

Again, I don't worry about Taunt on a WP toon. It's not WP's theme. If Taunting was really a priority for me, I'd go with a Set that simply taunted better.

Of course if you really can't decide between healing and debuff, why not go 3x Heal/End Hami-O, 2x lvl 50 defense debuff, and 1x lvl 50 taunt? ED capped healing, ED capped endurance, almost ED capped to-hit debuff (0.2% off or so, which you will never notice),and some taunt to boot?

Okay, I have a WP Brute that's slotted the same as we've been discussing. I had 4 DWDs and 2 Numinas slotted in RttC for her.

Streetlight's numbers convinced me to give the 4-Numina slotting a try. I bought the Numinas for 70 million or so and ran a tip mish (set at +8) to check it out. My regen was better, but so little I barely noticed. I guess I expected more, so I look at the differences in MIDS.

RttC with Numinas slotted (in all cases most optiomal IOs for Healing)
2-Numinas (my previous slotting):
1 foes in range: 56.87 hp/s
10 foes in range: 112.9 hp/s

4-Numinas (my current slotting):
1 foes in range: 71.69 hp/s
10 foes in range: 119.83 hp/s

With one foe in Range, there's a fairly significant difference (almost 15 hp/s)

But with 10 Foes in Range, there only about 7 hp/s difference. The difference lessened! What the hades is going on here? I have the latest version of Mids - are these numbers right? Is there some kind of Uber-ED going on? I tell you when I jumped into an 8+ mob what I saw might have accurately reflected this.

If these numbers are right, then I'm of the opinion that 4 Dark Watchers (giving an xtra -.5 ToHit, plus 5% more global recharge and some End. Recovery) was the better deal after all. The more-foes' numbers matter to more to me. I'm a giant Mobs basher, not an AV killer.

Feel free to show me my error, but the final numbers are less than stellar, or so it seems.