Merc's Guide to Multiboxing Followers

[Mercurio]

Introduction
The follower mini-game within the garrisons is actually a lot of fun. In fact, it is so fun that actually doing quests has taken a backseat to messing about with follower missions for me. In fact, though I have 320 level 100 followers, I'm yet to ding 100 on any of my actual characters.

However, the followers will have my characters pretty well decked out when they do hit 100. I have a ton of ilvl 615 gear and an increasing amount of ilvl 630 gear just waiting for each of them when they do.

Getting all the followers leveled up to 100, leveled to epic, then increasing their ilvls will have to be done if you ever want some "free" heroic Highmaul gear out of them. My thought was, "Why not do it now when the 615/630/645 ilvl gear that comes along with the follower progression journey will be meaningful along the way?"

I run ten accounts and have gotten through Shadowmoon Valley on three teams. With mouse broadcasting, it is easy to go through the 70 or so mission rewards each team has waiting for them every 90 minutes or so. Then I try to optimize the next set of missions selected for each character's followers, then log on the next team and repeat.

With three teams to go through every couple of hours, I hardly have time to leave my garrison!

At any rate, after having run a ton of missions, here are some thoughts that may be helpful to you if you are enjoying them as much as I am:

Thoughts on Missions

• Follower XP missions are your #1 goal - always try to optimize your chance to succeed at them by using counter abilities/terrain bonuses/race bonuses
• Almost never run an XP mission if it is higher than the character's level. Have a level 95 follower that is perfect for that level 96 mission? Think twice - it will only net you half the XP if you are successful. Much better to run a level 94 or 93 mission and get the full (if reduced) XP.
• Character XP bonuses are nice. I've gained about 3/4 of a level on my characters just by succeeding at these, though I still optimize follower XP missions first.
• Ignore the chance to succeed on gold missions - who cares about 20 gold?
• Never run 10 hour missions to level up followers unless you are going to be away for 8+ hours. The XP gains are large, but nowhere near as much as running 4-5 regular missions in that amount of time.

Thoughts on Follower Abilities

• I believe the best trait combination to shoot for is Epic Mounts and Burst of Power. With lots of followers with these abilities, you will cut your mission time in half while getting a lot of % success bonuses at the same time.
• Scavenger is amazing. With a few followers with this trait using it on every salvage mission they can get a >40% success rate on, you will never have to worry about Garrison Resources again. Because they triple resources gained, use a Scavenger over a follower with the right counter for salvage missions. If possible, double up scavengers for even greater gains for multiple follower salvage missions.
• High Stamina is nice for the longer missions (most level 100 missions) when you don't have Epic Mounts
• Blook (found in Gorond) is one of the best followers available because of his trait that makes all mission success rates higher.
• Extra Training is really nice while leveling, but will be useless once your followers are capped.

Thoughts on Buildings

• Keep your Garrison as level 1 provides for patrol missions that are better follower XP than regular follower XP missions (look for the spyglass icon)
• At level 96, immediately and get a Salvage Yard and upgrade it to level two so all of your follower missions will produce Crates of Salvage and they have a chance to contain follower ilvl upgrades. In fact, these crates are so crucial that you may want to wait to level up your followers at all until you have this. This will mean many more crates created as followers from levels 90-100 finish far more missions than level 100 followers.
• At level 98, immediately get a level two inn so you can recruit followers with specific traits. I put together a little spreadsheet for each of my characters listing how many followers have the most important traits: Epic Mount, Burst of Power, Scavenger, and High Stamina. I also listed how many followers have counters to each of the 9 types of boss abilities (Wild Aggression, Group Damage, etc). I think it is best to have the headhunter look for followers with the trait you most need, then select which of the three possible followers based on which ability they have best shores up holes in your counters.

As Lyonheart noted, there is a very cool addon that enhances the garrison mission screens called Master Plan: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/master-plan

The expansion is still very new - let me know if I've missed anything!

Lastly, Lux pointed me to a Big Bear Butt blog with some similar thoughts on the joys of followers that you might enjoy (World Tuned Upside Down): http://thebigbearbutt.com/

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Neat. I've been foregoing them as they drastically slowed down leveling time but I may have to rethink things. Thanks for the links and info.

[Lyonheart]

The are really good follower mission addons.. Master Plan >>http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/master-plan


Also, the bunker at lvl2 gives follower gear via workorders

[Shodokan]

Level 3 salvage yard can yield 665 epics for you to sell on the AH. They are like a 1% chance from the boxes. So if you have 320 followers doing missions... you're bound to get some.

[Mercurio]

Very cool add on, Lyon. Though it isn't perfect, it definitely improves on WoW's rather lackluster mission interface. The tooltips and auto summaries of counters are really nice.

As as far as the level 2 bunker and level 3 salvage yard, those are both only available at character level 100. I guess those are good enough reasons to actually level my characters to 100.

[Lyonheart]

Very cool add on, Lyon. Though it isn't perfect, it definitely improves on WoW's rather lackluster mission interface. The tooltips and auto summaries of counters are really nice.

As as far as the level 2 bunker and level 3 salvage yard, those are both only available at character level 100. I guess those are good enough reasons to actually level my characters to 100.

There are a few new addons that manage missions.. master plan was the first one i came across. MP also updates a lot.. you used to have to click through each individual mission to complete it, now it auto completes them all for you and gives a list that tells you which ones succeed or failed.. and an option to see what you got.

EDIT: this is a nice little update

• Item rewards received from a Garrison invasion now have a chance to be Warforged, contain a socket, or tertiary stats.
• Barn: Iron Trap, Improved Iron Trap, and Deadly Iron Trap now have a 15-second cooldown (down from 30 seconds).
• Mine Levels 2-3: Mining Carts now contains more Primal Spirits and Archeology fragments. The amount of ore given by each mining node has been adjusted to a more appropriate level.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'd be careful with Master Plan. I trolled through the comments section and post-0.3 release people are complaining about losing rewards. Could be just people being idiots but it's worth being careful.
Disregard the above. In point of fact, the 0.3 version wouldn't work properly on my system. The latest build (from curse) works fine. FYI...

[Mercurio]

Yep, I looked through those comments too, Ugh, but after using it on 30 toons a couple of rounds, I can safely say this is just another instance of people raging over bad RNG. Rewards are the same using MP as without it.

[fightcow]

Great post. 320 followers lol wtf i have about 20.
But im a bit saddened that 645 and even 665 gear can be had from garrisons.
It feels like they spent so much time and effort on the instances and yet they are almost irrelevant to most people i would think.

youre making me think i shouldnt be skipping the garrisons, seems like its a much bigger part of wod than i thought

[Lyonheart]

Great post. 320 followers lol wtf i have about 20.
But im a bit saddened that 645 and even 665 gear can be had from garrisons.
It feels like they spent so much time and effort on the instances and yet they are almost irrelevant to most people i would think.

you're making me think i shouldn't skipping the garrisons, seems like its a much bigger part of wod than i thought

I knew from the start that they "could" be a very important part of WoD. They are in no way mandatory ( once you get them started you can ignore them if you want). BUT your garrison dailies are you fastest route to apexis crystals for gear( also needed for legendary quest line), and if you maximize your followers and buildings, you can reap a ton of benefits, as the examples discussed in this thread show.

I love them, but can understand how they will not appeal to everyone. I just wonder whats coming in the next expansion.. as they have stated that garrisons are a step up in the tech used for farms in MoP, and could be used for player/guild housing in the future. It will be hard to top garrisons though.. they feel like interactive player housing to me already!