I’ve always treated followers an afterthought. I’d give them their immortality token, an Oculus Ring, maybe a Unity, and then proceed to ignore them for the rest of time. Of course, with the follower re-work coming this week I’m looking forward to gearing them properly.
Due to my treatment (or lack thereof) of followers, I am largely ignorant regarding some of their mechanics and I have some questions. I figured if I have these questions, maybe some others are asking themselves the same things. I know the great minds here can help me out.
Question #1 Do follower abilities benefit from cooldown reduction?
Question #2 Are there any legendary gems followers benefit from wearing?
Question #3 Are there any affixes (not Eminate) on follower’s gear the player benefits from? (crit, cdr, resists, etc.)
Question #4 Do followers benefit from any set bonuses other than the ones which have Eminate?
Question #5 Do all Legendary affixes work on followers?
Question #6 Followers are never considered ‘pets’, are they?
The only follower abilities directly affected by CDR on gear affixes are the Templar’s heals. None of his other abilities, and none of the other follower abilities benefit. The follower tokens that give 50% CDR to all skills obviously work.
There are a couple of gems which will benefit followers that are not wearing their “cannot die” tokens. These are covered in the follower guides already linked. The reason you might not want to take the “cannot die” tokens is that when farming easy content, the followers can have sufficient defences so they can stay alive (and the legendary gems help with this) and use the “all skills” or “50% CDR” tokens instead, to get more of their buffs, or get their buffs more often.
Followers can wear items that whilst not emanating can benefit the player. For example, the Oculus ring is a firm favourite, as it can create circles of power which give the hero up to 85% more damage output when they stand in it. There’s also the combo of Thunderfury and Wyrdward which can reduce mobs’ damage output, and so on.
You said follower’s abilities benefit from cooldown reduction.
Only Templar heals do. No other abilities do. So, almost none do.
You said there aren’t any legendary gems which followers benefit from wearing.
There are, and they’re in the guides linked to prior to your initial post.
You said experience and magic find were the only affixes players benefit from.
They’re not. Oculus, Thunderfury + Wyrdward were examples if this.
Other stats that work on Followers are: Area Damage, Attack Speed, Block Chance, Cooldown Reduction (only for Templars Heal), Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage (capped at 150%), Elemental Damage, Damage vs Elites, Life per Hit, Life per Kill and Life %.
If you post information that’s incomplete, or incorrect, you should expect people will point that out, so that other readers know the actual right answers.
Can’t remember if it was Raxx, Wudi or someone else, but I’m fairly sure I saw a video where they showed a follower without the “cannot die” token on their follower, and it was managing to stay alive up to around GR120-130 or so, I think.
I also saw something similar but do not recall who it was they were talking about the 2 gems working on the followers. This could free up the follower Cannot die relic. You could replace it with the Gain access to all skills relic.
Only Templar’s Heal ability benefit from cooldown reduction. Besides that only legendary token for 50% cooldown reduction amounts to something.
Mutilation Guard and Esoteric Alteration gems and apparently Gem of Ease as stated at the very start of Followers wiki. Rest of them don’t work and apparently not worth testing.
Only magic find, gold find and experience per kill with 20% efficiency.
Very limited. For instance Captain Crimson 3-piece bonus don’t work at all; Followers don’t benefit from resource related powers besides Krede’s that they also emanate. Born’s and Guardian’s Set works for Templar pretty nicely I have read.
No idea about Blackthorne’s but it supposed to work to some degree as they get elite damage bonuses.
No. There’s a list at Followers wiki thread over at New Players Help section. For example; Bovine Bardiche or Vigilance can not be triggered by Followers but Buriza and Burning Axe of Sankis just work fine and tested by the wiki author and myself in the last month.
No idea. I don’t remember such bit from Followers wiki myself. Just I know Tasker and Theo and Asheara summon Followers don’t synergize. Go read it or just do a google search. It would give you all the answers at the first place.
