Followers -- what am I missing?

[vor_lord]

One part of the game I have yet to figure out are followers. I enjoy the dialogue from them (except for the repeated non-situational blather) so I'm playing through each of the first three difficulty levels with a different follower.

In my limited experience, they provide occasional marginally useful abilities (CC/healing), they rarely die, and do damage that is completely insignificant. Since they seem plenty hardy (so far) and do no damage even with a good weapon, the only gear I've been putting on them is magic find or gold find.

I read other posts talking about "excellently designed" followers, and I know I must be missing something.

What do we know about follower theorycraft? Is there something I should be doing with them that will make them more useful?

[Dozer]

I just stack vitality and % life. My templar has (almost) 100,000 hp, which allows him to live long enough in most cases to heal me multiple times.

[RiotInferno]

I just stack vitality and % life. My templar has (almost) 100,000 hp, which allows him to live long enough in most cases to heal me multiple times.

100k? I didn't expect vitality to be that strong ... y'know, because the will of a templar is stronger.

[WimpySmurf]

What do we know about follower theorycraft? Is there something I should be doing with them that will make them more useful?

I know the character sheet shows that you get some % of their MF, GF, and +EXP.

I've been giving them the highest dps weapon I'd sell/melt and my enchantress has been sitting around 1/5 of my damage on my barb, an extra 20% dps doesn't hurt even if it's uncoordinated.

Now, when they stand in plague/descration/molten on a vampiric boss that's when it's nice for them to just stay dead.

-WimpySmurf

[PapaSmurf]

One part of the game I have yet to figure out are followers. I enjoy the dialogue from them (except for the repeated non-situational blather) so I'm playing through each of the first three difficulty levels with a different follower.

In my limited experience, they provide occasional marginally useful abilities (CC/healing), they rarely die, and do damage that is completely insignificant. Since they seem plenty hardy (so far) and do no damage even with a good weapon, the only gear I've been putting on them is magic find or gold find.

I read other posts talking about "excellently designed" followers, and I know I must be missing something.

What do we know about follower theorycraft? Is there something I should be doing with them that will make them more useful?

The real value IMO of followers are the buffs. The enchantress provides a 15% armor buff and a 3% IAS buff. The templar provides a resource regen buff. The enchantress is a must for melee characters IMO due to the extra armor.

[MongoJerry]

You only get 1/5th of the MF%, GF%, and +experience to kill that you put on the follower, so it's not really worth going out of your way to stack those stats on them. Meanwhile, the follower gets 2.5 times as much benefit from any straight stats -- str, dex, int, vit -- so it is beneficial to stack those on the followers. For the templar, vit is crucial to allow him to be a partial meat shield. The enchantress and scoundrel can deal a decent amount of supplemental damage if you stack int or dex, respectively, on them.

The auras are good, but most importantly, the cc's they provide are the greatest benefit they provide.

[vor_lord]

The enchantress and scoundrel can deal a decent amount of supplemental damage if you stack int or dex, respectively, on them.

For myself, I can see big changes in listed damage when I swap in a weapon. Stacking a dps stat (for me, INT) shows more measured increases at my gearing level.

If the follower gets 2.5x on a dps stat, then I'll try stacking some. The amount of base DPS even with a "good" weapon seemed so low I just have been using them as meat shield/CC.

[MongoJerry]

If the follower gets 2.5x on a dps stat, then I'll try stacking some. The amount of base DPS even with a "good" weapon seemed so low I just have been using them as meat shield/CC.

Understand when I say "decent," I mean like 10-15% of your dps, but it's not nothing. Their cc and aura benefits are of course big benefits.

[BellaStrega]

On my monk, in inferno, my scoundrel and enchantress followers can actually take on some monsters with a hope of killing them. I mostly spec for cc/buffs, though. I like the 3% IAS/15% armor on the enchantress the most, however.

[Archon_Wing]

Well, if anything, my enchantress can stand in Inferno Butcher fire for quite a while...

They also get a larger boost from primary stats then we do, to make up for their lack of equipment. If they can do 1k damage then that would be a 10% damage boost for me. And they don't cost anything to resurrect.

They're not meant for DPS, but support skills like improved defense and turning enemies into chickens is incredibly useful.

A chance to freeze or other status effect weapon could help too, with the ranged followers. I've also loaded her up with some mediocre or old stuff that happens to have crit chance to increase her relevance.

She can't use this level 60 weapon yet due to being only 59 1/2 but when she does she'll be more effective; merely a 5k purchase on the AH, since most regular characters have no use:
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot023.jpg

Her current weapon is a 420 dps weapon with 14% IAS for a pitiful 600ish dps.

The real question is what to socket.


Since nobody values follower items, you can easily improve your followers for cheap amounts of gold.

[swirly]

If they can do 1k damage then that would be a 10% damage boost for me.

Just to give actual numbers. My hardcore witch doctor is 60 and has killed up to the Skeleton King in inferno. He has 8647.94 damage listed. His Enchantress has 2204.41 damage listed. So roughly 25% of my damage.

[Elric of Grans]

Followers only get 15% of the damage as advertised on the weapon, but by stacking their primary stat you could probably mete out some reasonable damage (though survivability would probably be a better plan). Apparently their special attacks use 100% of the weapon damage, and as such do considerably more damage.

[MongoJerry]

Apparently their special attacks use 100% of the weapon damage, and as such do considerably more damage.

Thank-you! I wondered about that. It seemed like once in a while my follower would get in a shot that seemed like it was doing way more damage than I was expecting and couldn't figure out why. This would explain a lot.

[Archon_Wing]

With another 15k invested (10k into a new weapon with a bigger freeze chance, 5k into a new trinket), and accidentally wasting 1k more because I socketed the wrong thing, my enchantress finally breaks 2k dmg! She provides ample support in act 1 and 2, although those damned wasps are the end of her. I'd say she pays for herself.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot028.jpg

[kandrathe]

Now, when they stand in plague/descration/molten on a vampiric boss that's when it's nice for them to just stay dead.

::nod:: I have to run around and wait for the companion to die before I burn down the boss. I would like just a little control over resurrection, or being able to park them out of combat if needed.

My hardest to kill mob with my barb so far was a gold hard hitting knockback champ in Act III (Sin tunnels) who was vampiric teleporter, and it was surrounded by a blue champ pack of those bloated goat shaman who run away, cast fire balls, heal and shield other mobs.

The boss would heal about 10% of it's life per hit on me... When I got it cut out of the herd, we could stand toe to toe with me doing as much damage as it was healing (and me dying). Finally, I just ran around a circle (with a handy healing well) avoiding being hit until my specials finished cool down, then I'd burn wrath of the beserker (insanity), and earthquake(mtn's call) at the same time and I'd get it down another 20-30% of it's life --- rinse repeat once per 1.5 minutes until it died. It took about 20 to 30 minutes -- ya, I'm stubborn. Sometime after this I saved up some more money to make an AH run to bring my DPS up a notch.

But, this is why I play softcore. It killed me twice before I found a strategy for beating it -- and it felt soooo good to beat it.

On the plus side for the follower, had I wanted to just run around for an hour I'm sure the enchantress chasing behind us would have killed the mob eventually.

[MMAgCh]

Followers, and perhaps summons, should just ignore or be highly resistant to non-targeted damage like Puddles of Death, arcane beams and the like, really, given that I'm sure their AI will never be improved to the point where they know to stay away from them. (This already seems to be the case for some such sources of damage like the fiery grates in the Halls of Agony, but for the most part they just get utterly destroyed by any kind of damaging zone.)

[Mavfin]

Followers, and perhaps summons, should just ignore or be highly resistant to non-targeted damage like Puddles of Death, arcane beams and the like, really, given that I'm sure their AI will never be improved to the point where they know to stay away from them. (This already seems to be the case for some such sources of damage like the fiery grates in the Halls of Agony, but for the most part they just get utterly destroyed by any kind of damaging zone.)

Yeah, something like the WoW pets resistance to AoE would be appropriate in this case.

[Archon_Wing]

What do we know about follower theorycraft? Is there something I should be doing with them that will make them more useful?

I know the character sheet shows that you get some % of their MF, GF, and +EXP.

I've been giving them the highest dps weapon I'd sell/melt and my enchantress has been sitting around 1/5 of my damage on my barb, an extra 20% dps doesn't hurt even if it's uncoordinated.

Now, when they stand in plague/descration/molten on a vampiric boss that's when it's nice for them to just stay dead.

-WimpySmurf

You can dismiss your follower by right clicking on their icon. But it can be cumbersome in the middle of a fight.

[Archon_Wing]

As a small hidden fact; the damage penalty only applies to their auto-attack-- Their abilities really do hit for full damage. So it is not worthless to upgrade damage on your follower.

Act 1 inferno has gotten a bit easier this thread was made, but my enchantress could pull this off before; it'd just take a bit longer. I think these enemies aren't deserving of my blade, so I just let me enchantress take them out on her own. :p :S

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot125.jpg
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot123.jpg

She can deal with act 2 mobs, though some of the tougher affixes are too much. She also took the butcher down to 15% when enrage started so I had to kill him myself.

For some unknown reason she can tank these monsters when I'm sure I couldn't with those stats; I'm guessing Followers get some kind of damage reduction-- plagued does very little to them.


With 7.5k damage, she does more than 1/3 of my own, so this is a great help in act 3 and act 4.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot126.jpg