I’m writing this as a feedback post from my perspective for the newly reworked followers for season 23. This will not be a compiled list of suggestions from the community such as my recent List of GoD DH Rework Ideas thread but rather my own opinion on some ideas that can make the next season more enjoyable.
Some of these ideas are based on feedback from other players, I do not claim credit for any of the ideas in this thread. The intent of this thread is to share what my favorite ideas are whether they be the community’s or my own.
Overall, the follower overhaul is a great new feature that reinvigorates the use of followers and the single-player experience. That said, I have noticed a few issues and have some solutions available to address these in some form.
Issue 1) Followers die too easily.
Even with the ability to equip up to 14 items, the followers are still too fragile and will die in a single hit even in moderate-level content (e.g. GR100). While the “follower cannot die” token can circumvent this problem, it then locks out the potential use of other follower tokens (all skills or skill cooldown -50%).
Solution 1) Increase the damage reduction for followers.
Followers will survive in high level content
May be difficult to tune scaling for all settings
Followers may always die in some situations, but never in others
Solution 2) Followers scale toughness with the player (like pets).
Solution 3) Increase the defensive legendary options for followers.
I think a combination of solution 1 and 3 might work to give followers more options to stay alive but also make them killable in really dangerous situations.
Issue 2) Followers deal negligible damage.
Even with the ability to equip up to 14 items, the followers damage output remains negligible. While it isn’t good to have a follower outperform the player, the minimal damage they deal forces players to not bother gearing a follower beyond that of a “stat stick”: providing no combat capability but enhances the player indirectly.
Solution 1) Followers gain a damage multiplier.
Solution 2) Followers scale damage with the player (like season 22 clones).
Balancing the damage of followers will be a tricky endeavor in that there will likely not be an easy way to tune their damage for all situations. Following the example of the season 22 clones, scaling their damage with the player may be the best approach but that would negate the need for the follower to equip items with offensive attributes (e.g. critical hit chance).
On the other hand, ignoring follower damage also will limit their build diversity in that players will simply use them for emanate buffs and some crowd control effects.
An optimal solution would be to somehow enable both follower styles (geared for damage vs geared for support) to have uses in different scenarios with different player builds. Perhaps a mix of solutions 1 and 2 (follower scaling combined with player scaling) can allow for this.
Issue 3) Followers could use more emanate buffs.
While the current list of emanate bonuses is a good start, some item slots will be highly dominated by a certain item (e.g. Flavor of Time on every amulet slot). For the sake of build diversity, I recommend adding these to the list of interesting emanate bonuses (based partly on clueso’s post):
Consider the following legendary effects for emanate. I will provide short descriptions of these but the idea is to not allow any abilities that amplify damage, toughness, or healing of the player. I will list generally safe abilities with
This list is not exhaustive but while there are certain effects which do not directly provide damage, toughness, or healing, some are very strong. For example, the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Ring of Royal Grandeur, or Leoric’s Crown provide a such a strong effect that it would then limit build diversity.
Issue 4) Season 23 has no season-only theme.
Since season 16, the unique themed events have been a huge success in drawing players back to Diablo 3 to start a fresh season with a new perk. However, even with the new follower reworks, the seasonal gameplay will die out faster than usual since the same benefits will exist nonseason.
I will therefore suggest a couple ideas which are quickly implementable for a season theme:
Theme Idea 1) Grant all 3 followers in single player (1 per player in groups).
Theme Idea 2) Grant Asheara’s Vestments 4-piece bonus to everyone.
Theme Idea 3) Followers gain effects of all legendary tokens.
Theme Idea 4) Followers emanate legendary gem effects from amulets.
To keep followers in a central part of this season, they should be allowed in group settings and more so in single-player settings; this was the motivation behind ideas 1 and 2. Theme idea 3 is the least powerful but at least addresses the toughness problem and allows followers to showcase all their skills. Lastly, theme idea 4 is my favorite in that it provides a much-needed boost to single player but may require some balance testing.
Issue 5) Followers need some quality of life improvements.
I will bundle a few quality of life ideas that I agree with here:
Idea 1) Followers should be mode-specific instead of character specific.
Idea 2) Followers should get their own armory tool.
Idea 3) Followers details list should be expanded (e.g. cooldown reduction visible).
Idea 4) Followers should have the option to disable use of certain abilities.
These are just a few of the quality of life ideas that I think could make followers just a little bit easier to manage and use.
This concludes my list of issues and suggestions for the newly reworked follower system. As is, the followers are a welcome addition to build diversity and I am glad to see them get revamped!
I know that the PTR is generally too late for developers to make large changes for the season theme but I hope at least some of these ideas can help inform future decisions about how to increase build diversity while keeping build balance in place.
Thank you for reading!