They really need to buff the followers damage wise. This could be useful in closing the gap between solo and group players. For as long as I can remember, followers have been relegated to the role of walking, talking buff. Nothing worse than playing a UE dh and watching all the monsters walk right by the Templar as he is hopelessly, pathetically flailing away at them for essentially zero damage.
The best way to fix this would be to add some legendary gems that only the followers can use. This way the followers can scale up with the player as they progress through the GR levels.
You can just give him Azurewrath and Bul-Kathos’ ring for that. I’m more of interested in utility they may offer. If you’re really into it, he may get a skill where he can share your Nephalem Glory effect once you’ve achieved it; he might be able to pull aggro abit better in combat that way.
Templar is the keyword guy in the lore, his ramblings can be used to move gigantic stone doors or open secret passages to the places that are locked in the Campaign. Each Act can have its side stories thanks to him.
Scoundrel can disable deadly traps leading to certain areas and unlock locked chests for gaining access towards different areas. Just like stone walls and passages, each act may have hidden areas behind deadly environmental hazards as well.
Enchantress can act just like you’ve described, she provides lights in dark areas and casts some light emitting wards here and there for you to pass through a dangerous territory.
However, there’s that conundrum of who would go with that? Nobody really plays Campaign to utilize those abilities. Campaign rewards must be fixed for Follower abilities to gain some sort of importance first. It’s a long shot but I wish jewels, runes and charms were to return for small item chase.
Yet again, this sorta thing shouldn’t prevent developers from improving the solo play. Developers can turn them into better buff providers where their professions are widely helpful for certain specs or they could simply litter the old abilties and replace them with the better ones.
When Paragon 2.0 was introduced I actually had some fun in gimp and made a pic of a follower that could equip all items just like our char and had it’s own paragon level, skills that could be leveled like in D2 and some more crazy random things which made any follower pretty bad a$$…
Made also new jewels (like in D2 lod) with pics included, skill runes that actually could be leveled in some way (each skill runes had 3 other effects), just by killing monsters, a new inventory with categories for item stored, increased stash and many more crazy stuff, but that was a long time ago (in a galaxy far far away)…
That could work if it’s an embed skill with a very long cooldown. So long that it require you to use 50% cooldown reduction token instead of invulnerability to have a proper go at it. I always thought that’d fit your own pets better but I think a Follower ability is a better call. Once you have tons of CdR% that sorta second cheat-death thing can go out of hand if it doesn’t have an inner cooldown.
The ring is not that useful, the Templar should have an aura similar to the Crusaders law, the aura should emanate from the Templar, and should not be contingent on any Item. Kormac is the greatest Templar. He took on the Grand Maester and the Templar order. Lesser demons should melt in his holy aura. That is what I would like to see. I enjoyed the follower side quests, I wish they expanded them even more. Some players do not even know about them.
I thought they left it for another expansion but now it appears we’re all outta luck to learn what happened to them. Just like we don’t have any idea to what happened to D2 heroes after Worldstone destroyed.
Echoing Fury: This would have been good for the Templar, another missed opportunity.
New Legendary Power: Slaying enemies engulfs the wielder into a Frenzy. (Killing enemies increases your attack speed by 15% and movement speed by 5%. This effect stacks up to 5 times)
I had it in the cube for my Monk early on, but had to replace it.
Unless they changed it to be triggered by someone else’s kills a la In-Geom or Bane of The Powerful it runs right into the other issue with followers, past the lowest difficulties they don’t kill much of anything.
I think you mean “This is actually intended, and not a bug”. However I find the excuse weak because no one really ever considers the popularity of Followers balanced already. If it would help top players and enduring tanks to push further since they can do well without the healing effects of Templar, may as well allow it.
If it were to apply when you bring Rift Guardian down to 10% health, Eirena can still execute it with a mere 2 million damage attack. Even though RG still have a trillion to go for it will be an insta-kill; it’s free Frailty with a lower threshold effect. I honestly didn’t get what were you trying to describe.
I meant that it wasn’t intended to work. It’s a weak excuse with absolutely no thought behind it. Because Elrina sees so much use, amirite? and Executioner is being used by every build. /s
Why are they added legendaries that will see no use?
But seriously, if 10% was too strong, lower it to 7%. It would be neat if the followers actually did some cool stuff. I’d like Eirena to bring damage, the templar to tank and heal, and the scroundrel can CC and group stuff up.
Eirena is actually widely used thanks to her ranged damage mitigation and mass crowd control abilities. Templar’s upside is healing and acting like a secondary cheat-death.
Most elite affixes that can be mitigated by such affixes are ranged; check leaderboards and peek at the secondary affixes on their equipment.
Yeah, that role is taken sadly. Eirena does it way better than anyone in the group. Scoundrel supposed to be the dps booster type of guy but now his old dps buffs are laughable and out of date.
I really wish they did something to actually make followers to be useful.
What’s the problem with increasing the followers damage? The game difficulty can rise equally the more damage your follower does - same way the monsters get extra health for each player in multiplayer group.
I see this, for example, as follower-only legendary gem. It can be super simple, like:
Each gem level increases follower damage by x% and monsters you fight are y% stronger.
So that monsters will have more health, more dmg, more loot, more exp, more gold.
What is the point of this, some may ask?
Well, the point is that there’s a huge imbalance between 4-man groups exp earning and solo players exp earning. Adding some buffs via followers could actually improve the situation without making the developers to break anything in current gameplay.
And as followers have access to 3 jewelry slots, there could be 3 legendary gems for each slot and each gem could be leveled up to level 99/99 (because why not), and at level 99 one gem will buff the monsters and exp and gold within the game equally to a presence of 1 additional player.
It wont add any imbalance and it wont make a single-player better than a multi-player. BUT it will give those single-only players an opportunity to better catch up with a progression of a 4-man groups, at least in magic find and exp earnings. And it could be done by making the followers better - so you’re killing two birds with one shot.
Anyone ever play the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing? Blizzard could take a page out of that game’s playbook in regards to making decent followers. How about the skillset of that Katarina? So many to choose from! And dedicated sets for Katarina when she is capped. And the cherry on top…she does not disappear in a group with your friends which adds even more strategy and thought…“oh, your follower should do x, and my follower can do y.”
I enjoyed the follower side quests, I wish they expanded them even more. Some players do not even know about them.