In an effort to improve my follower, I explored a few well-known websites to look at gearing recommendations for the follower, especially for GR pushing.
What puzzles me is the inclusion of the Unity ring in the setup for literally all the followers. And yet there’s no Unity ring on the main character. This makes me conclude that the ring is not being used for its 50% damage reduction.
‘Damage to Elites’ seems to be the only other worthwhile mod that distinguishes this ring from any other. And as we all know, the damage output of the follower against any Elite is insignificant. Furthermore, the ring doesn’t bear an ‘Emanates’ tag. So I assume I don’t get an automatic 10-15% (the variable mod) increase in DPS against an elite. Or do I?
As both the Templar and the Sorceress are shown to be best equipped with Thunderfury and its lightning damage, wouldn’t Wyrdward ring be a more obvious choice as it provides a Stun effect?
Could someone with a bit more knowledge shed some light on this?
Thanks in advance.
Hard CC effects are generally not good for followers since you can’t count on them consistently and they might ruin other aspects of your build (i.e. the ability to pull targets).
Personally, when I play DH I just use Avarice Band on my follower’s 2nd ring slot (1st is always Oculus Ring) so I can be lazy when I switch to a speed T16 build with Boon of the Hoarder.
Another valid option is the Ring of Royal Grandeur so they can equip one less piece of Cain’s set (or something else).
If you don’t need Unity you can go with a ring with socket, attack speed, high main stat, CDR (for Templar), life on hit (if you don’t use immortality token).
that basically means “any ring without CC”
The only thing I rely on my follower for is emergency life shield and shrines (which of course means it doesn’t die). The rest seems so unreliable as to just not be worth worrying about. I do use some vaguely useful looking items with (Emanates) on them, but I guess they are not that significant as I cant recall what I actually stuck on it (EU).
Many season back there seemed to be a thing where people were using unity with their follower (ie player and follower had it). After stacking a follower full of toughness I quickly came to the conclusion that tying yourself to idiot follower who just seems to take every possible opportunity to get itself killed was basically a suicide pact with your follower and now immediately salvage the damn things on sight.
If your follower is wearing “cannot die” item this means when your hero and your follower are wearing Unity 50% of the damage your hero takes is instead given to your immortal follower, so it’s a straight up, permanent 50% damage mitigation for your hero. As your follower can’t take damage any damage that would have hit the follower is ignored, so no damage they take gets transferred to the hero.
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OK - ta.
I looked at it more literally as cannot die rather than takes no damage. Either way, I just don’t have room in a build for a unity for a long time without taking out something significant and the only ring that can give gives me 60% DR anyway.
Unity setups used to be more common in early seasons. It’s less common now. There’s so many powerful rings that there aren’t a lot of set builds that would run Unity anymore. As you’ve noted, you’d give up too much to work it in.
Most common place to see it is LoD builds. You can’t use RoRG (well I suppose you could but it wouldn’t do anything!), Focus/Restraint, or Compass Rose, so many LoD builds will have room for Unity.
It’s a long time since I played hardcore, but I guess it might see more use there because the loss of outgoing damage might be deemed an acceptable trade-off for the extra mitigation from hero/follower both using Unity.
The Marauder build has provided some really interesting ways to play this season. But it’s really glassy at high levels. CC isn’t actually a bad thing with this build.
Appreciate all the replies. All this actually has me curious and I’m going to try subbing out the CoE with a Unity in the build that uses Obsid/CoE instead of the Focus/Restraint. We’ll see if a little tankiness helps or hinders.