Top Primaries for Willpower? (Not SS)

I'm a big fan of /WP, I just love how it plays, and how well rounded the set ends up being.

What I can't settle on is a primary. I played SS/ on my old account, but coming back to the game I think i'd like to stay away from it.

Besides that, what is your opinion on the best primary, or top few, and why?

The way i see it, Willpower really thrives off of being in a big crowd, and if you can somehow stop incoming damage, survivability really skyrockets.

From my experiences with SS/WP, I found that for example, using Footstomp was amazing for survival, because you could get the full huge regen bonus from a group of mobs, with none of the damage for a few seconds when they get knocked down.

I'm also unsure of which direction to take WP when it comes to IOs. I don't have much influence, since this will be only my 3rd character on this account. Is it worth trying to enhance regen, def, or resist? I don't think i'd be able to cap defense, given the influence i have.

Anything with knockdown or other control to give RttC time to heal you up works nicely with /WP. TW as mentioned is outstanding, and Battle Axe, War Mace, and Stone Melee should all be nice as well. Those would be my top picks.

A /WP build IMO gets the most benefit from defense, even if you don't reach the softcap (which is rather difficult on a brute anyway). /WP doesn't rely on never getting hit the way something like /SR does, you only need to reduce incoming damage below your regeneration rate. My /WP brute built for 32.5% defense, and my /WP scrapper is not much higher. This allows them to softcap with one purple inspiration or one good team buff, although I rarely find even that necessary to survive most things. +HP is also good to build for. Building for regen gives minimal returns because you already have so much, and building for resist is difficult to even do because resistance set bonuses are small, rare, and often expensive.

Broadsword works well with WP. When Parry is fully slotted you get at least a 15% bonus to defense which can be stacked with the defense from Combat Jumping, Weave, and a couple of other powers from the auxiliary power pools. Mace is also a good choice.

As to how to slot, I don't have a lot of experience with that, but I think it all comes down to a matter of taste. With WP, I would maximize regeneration, recharge, and/or IO defense bonuses against smashing/lethal attacks, which are the most common in the game. Kinetic Combat sets are very popular, but some of the enhancements in it can be very expensive. Best advice is to just shop around for what ever suits your fancy or your budget.

Thanks for the input guys.

I like the idea of building for defense / hp.

I think i've settled on Stone Melee. With /WP you've got enough endurance for the powers, and SM gives you two aoe knockdowns, which seem like the best form of mitigation from the primaries. Might give you enough time to do aid self when needed as well.


I also think it has enough Single Target damage to take down tougher targets while letting the minions stick around for the regen boost, keeping them knocked down most of the time.

Oh man that's going to be a fun toon. If I didn't already have a high level Stone/Dark I would make one too. Come to think of it, Stone/Elec would work really, really well too.

Yep, i think it will be. At 16 now, and its already fun with just RttC, the mallets, and fault.

I think it will really shine with the full set and gloom. That way i can choose to use the mallets etc, and gloom for some really nasty ST damage, but at the same time If i feel the need I can go heavy on the KD to regen to full

If you were going specifically for mitigation through Knock Downs I would definitely suggest War Mace, even over Battle Axe which is SUPPOSED to be The Definitive KD Set. The thing about Battle Axe is that most of its attacks simply have a moderate to high chance of causing KD, that being the gimmick of the set. War Mace supposedly does better dps due to Clobber (which is a pretty amazing attack) but Battle Axe has slightly superior DPA on the majority of its attacks. Still War Mace has 2 powers with KD and one with KU but their chances are all higher than Battle Axe's similar powers. I heard all this from one of my friends when I was defending Battle Axe to him, and it turns out he was right and War Mace is better in certain respects, especially getting some GARUNTEED KD when you need it. If you are decently lucky, you can still find Battle Axe to cause good KD but the inverse is that if you are unlucky, you can find no KDs when you really need them.


Here are some numbers directly from the game comparing similar attacks. (scaled to lv50)


Battle Axe: Swoop
DPA: 51.96
Cast Time: 1.83s
Recharge Time: 12.00s
70% chance for KU

War Mace: Jawbreaker
DPA: 44.67
Cast Time: 1.83s
Recharge Time: 10.00s
75% chance for KU

Jawbreaker does actually do a bit less damage, and has a (barely) higher chance to KU and a faster recharge, all in all between these two I would admit Swoop is better. Axe wins this one.


Battle Axe: Cleave
DPA: 49.40
Cast Time: 2.33s
Recharge Time: 15.00s
80% chance for KD
Cone: 10ft 20degrees up to 10 targets

War Mace: Shatter
DPA: 40.81
Cast Time: 2.33s
Recharge Time: 12.00s
100% chance for KD
Cone: 8ft 45degrees up to 5 targets

So here's a similar situation. Again Cleave deals the better damage, but somehow Shatter gets the better KD and recharge again. The cones are different, but Cleave can hit more targets and is a little narrower, and Shatter gets the 100% KD and wider cone. I would call these two powers evenly matched, because of the situational importance of having a wider cone.


Battle Axe: Pendulum
DPA: 39.62
Cast Time: 2.00s
Recharge Time: 15.00s
50% chance for KD
Cone: 7ft 180degree up to 5 targets

War Mace: Crowd Control (my friend calls this "THE BEST MELEE ATTACK IN THE GAME!!!1!!1)
DPA: 33.57
Cast Time: 2.00s
Recharge Time: 12.00s
100% chance for KD
Cone: 8ft 180degree up to 10 targets

You may notice a pattern here, that again Pendulum has better DPA but Crowd Control gets the 100% KD and faster recharge. However this time it is the War Mace attack that gets the 10 target cap and poor Battle Axe only gets 5 targets. I find that this fact counters out the previous powers where Battle Axe got the higher target cap, becase hitting 10 people with that narrow cone is HARD, and hitting 10 people with Crowd Control is easy peasy. Also the discrepancy in the KD is huge here, with Pendulum only having a 50% chance and Crowd Control having 100%. Crowd Control is indeed a mighty attack, Mace wins this one.


Battle Axe: Whirling Axe
DPA: 15.62
Cast Time: 2.67s
Recharge Time: 14.00s
50% chance for KD

War Mace: Whirling Mace
DPA: 17.50
Cast Time: 2.67s
Recharge Time: 14.00s
30% chance for 2mag Stun for 5.96s

In this last case, Axe has an AoE which can KD while Mace's cannot KD. This is also the one situation where Mace's AoE does better damage than Axe's. I think that Mace has enough KD that it doesn't NEED the KD here, but the minor Stun effect will rarely help vs tough enemies. Mace wins this one.



In summary, if you want to keep any melee toon alive by keeping your foe off his feet, War Mace is the way to do it. Two Cones with 100% Knockdown and 12 second recharges, a high recharge build can use these two powers with proper timing to keep an enemy (or small group of enemies) floored constantly. If you don't have quite enough recharge to do his, adding Jawbreaker in with its 75% chance still means you can keep a single enemy floored most of the time with only moderate recharge. Battle Axe cannot say the same thing, since there is always the chance that your attack chain will have bad luck and not KD right when you really wish it would, although you will do slighty better damage on most attacks with Axe. Mace is also completely capable of mitigation through Stuns as well, which Axe doesn't do at all, furthering the argument that Mace is the ideal mitigation set. Finally, Clobber has ridiculous DPA, and although I don't necessarily agree that this one attack negates the fact that most of the other Mace attacks do less damage than the Axe ones, it is certainly worth noting that Clobber will keep Mace pretty freaking good when it comes to DPS.

You wanna stay alive on a Willpower Brute? My vote falls squarely on Mace.

Willpower goes well with pretty much anything, really. It's my go-to secondary when I want to try out a new primary and don't feel like being bothered to come up with something thematic.

I have a stone/wp/soul and he has 30-35% def to s/l/f/c/e/ne and he is almost unstoppable. He is a superior shock trooper for missions since I bring little aggro to myself unless Im spamming aoes. That being said I sometimes have difficulties being playing the maintank since I do lack aoe and a more active taunt aura

I can strongly second building for defense and +hp. Just standing with RttC Im at 2645 hp and regen 44.4 hp/sec.

All the KD stacking with the -tohit make me very hard to kill indeed. Throw in darkest night's -dmg component just makes it sweeter.

Endurance is still an issue in extended fights but soloing I tear through mobs so fast and with just a few seconds of downtime Ive got enough end to go after next mob.

BS or Kat sound nice too being able to add some beefy def numbers early on and both can maintain a solid attack chain with little global recharge.

Blissful raises a good point in the way that Darkest Night works. Building for -dmg and pairing Kinetic Melee with Darkest Night is an effective strategy, but that is more effective on an armor with a -damage toggle such as Ice Armor. Brutes don't get Ice Armor, and now I'm off topic...

I am pretty sure Stone has more mitigation than Axe or Mace.

I'm glad you brought up Warmace, Necro.
I took a look at WM vs SM. I think WM might have the edge.

WM has more guaranteed knockdown compared to SM, and almost all of the attacks have higher accuracy, less endurance use, and shorter recharge. Also some of the comparable ST attacks are cones in WM. For example Shatter is similar in many ways to heavy mallet, but can hit more than one foe.

I'm thinking even though WM has less KD attacks than SM, its high chance to KD and faster recharge makes up the difference.

Stone Melee has a mag 4 hold attached to its best ST attack, and a 15-foot radius TAoE stun, as well as a 15-foot radius PBAoE knockdown. Don't get me wrong, I know from experience that WM has a lot of mitigation/control. But IMO, SM is just the king in that area. On the other hand, WM offers a lot more AoE damage.

Totally disagree that Whirling vs Fault goes to Whirling when the discussion has been about mitigation. I also disagree that WM can outdamage SM, when I could have sworn SM has the best single target damage per second. Fault's stun also lasts twice as long as any of WM attacks on top of the kd, as well as having 20 ft range to the target.

...at best, WM is better at AOE and ACC, that's it. Mitigation goes to SM and has very high DPS to single target.

EDIT: If Bill's numbers are still valid, he calced that SM comes in second place behind Fire Melee for DPA. WM comes in 4th. This does not consider newer sets like KM, SJ or TW.

I've played both Stone Melee and War Mace to 50. I'm not guessing based on the numbers in Mids, I am speaking from observing firsthand how well each set mitigates damage. If talking just about mitigation:

Seismic Smash beats Clobber handily. Seismic Smash holds a boss immediately; Clobber will not stun a boss at all unless you also proc a low-chance stun from one of your other attacks - and the power most likely to proc a second stun is also your slowest and worst attack for single-target.

Tremor beats Crowd Control. It has more than six times CC's area, and only slightly less chance to knockdown. It is far easier and far more common to hit everything or nearly everything with Tremor than with CC.

Fault is really the crowning jewel for SM's mitigation, though. It has a large radius, a guaranteed minion stun and a fair chance for lieutenant stun, and can even be used from 20 yards away. Its duration and recharge are such that you can make it perma, or even double-stack it if you want to, which will control everything including bosses. WM does not have anything that even compares to this.

I'm not sure how they compare for single-target and don't care enough to crunch the numbers for attack chains. Both are quite good at it, in any case. War Mace definitely wins by a mile for AoE damage, and I would probably give it the edge in overall performance for most things. But it does not beat Stone for mitigation.

Yep. SM does better DPA and mitigation. WM does better aoe and has higher acc.

...although I would probably prefer CC over Tremor even after you said that, but that's just me.

It's worth pointing out that in the discussion of Whirling Mace vs Fault, i was saying which I'd prefer not which is better for mitigation.

As for damage, yes SM has the better single target damage. I was talking AoE, because in a game like this, AoE is much more applicable for the majority of the content than ST.

I think you have to consider damage at some point, even if we're just talking mitigation, because if you can do enough damage, you can mitigate by killing.

I was under the impression that Mag 3 stuns a boss, but I suppose that is my mistake, which makes Seismic a much better power.

Still, went considering AoE potential and damage potential, WM pulls ahead.

Aoe and Acc, not damage. WM does less damage than SM.

Single-target damage, yes. Overall throughout a normal mission, probably not.

Yeah it is probably pretty close as even if SM does more damage, the use of Fault makes one lose DPA even at the expense of superior mitigation, without even looking at AOE vs single target differences.

The sets are close enough I think that picking one or the other won't really affect your playstyle or build much, but if we reaaaalllllyyy want to compare these sets in reference to the OP, let's talk about set bonuses. Stone Melee gives additional purple options in an inherent hold and ranged attack, although you wouldn't in practice put a purple hold set in Seismic Smash, and lots of epic power pools contain holds and ranged attacks. A more practical analysis would be to look at the obvious S/L Def bonuses possible from the sets, since most people building a /WP Brute will be looking for S/L Def.

Stone Melee offers:
4 kinetic combats
1 obliteration
1 ranged attack (I count this because the hp/regen bonuses from Apocs or Devastations are still highly useful on a WP)

War Mace offers:
4 kinetic combats (realistically 3)
3 obliterations
Unfortunately, it's unlikely people would actually need both Bash and Pulverize which kindof ruins this point, but the option always exists to set bonus mule it. A silly option since you can hit 5 kin combats anyway by using Brawl and Boxing in addition to your 3 from your primary.

In either case it is perfectly feasible to have 5 Kinetic Combat sets just by mule-ing useless powers like Brawl and Boxing, but War Mace offers more Obliteration sets. Again, we have certainly pointed out that both these sets rule for Mitigation and are both great sets, but which do you find easier to build well in MIDs?