Do Garrison Followers need to be leveled at the same rate?

Question

I've started acquiring several level 90 Garrison followers. I have noticed that my Garrison quests are 92-93 and the followers have little chance to complete the missions. Should I level them at the same rate? Will new followers be given at level 94 (for example) or do they all start at 90? If they all start at 90 do I ever get Garrison quests that will match their level or will I just have a really low percentage chance to complete the quests?

Answer 1

This is kind of broad, but I'll try to tackle all your questions. I spent a lot of time with followers and missions in beta and reported a few issues.

First, you will sometimes be offered missions that are above your followers' level, especially if you outlevel your followers significantly. You also get more difficult missions once any follower reaches level 100. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to attempt them. Sometimes it's better to just ignore them.

You'll generally see new missions regularly; if you don't, then you can always try the ones you have; sometimes you can complete a mission even with a low chance of success. That's what the percentage means; it's basically just the RNG exposed to you.

Your followers' chances of completing a mission are significantly reduced if the mission is two or more levels above them, and very slightly reduced at one level above.

Also, at three or more levels, your follower's traits will no longer counter a monster's threat ability, (The UI will simply not display the relevant trait in this case.) and the follower will only earn 10% of the XP for the mission.

Follower XP changes at level 100; from this point, the XP rewards and pools become much larger, and the XP is used to upgrade your follower to rare or epic.

The followers you acquire aren't necessarily level 90; it depends on when and where you acquire them. Those you find in Spires of Arak will start out at level 96, for instance, and there are some followers who start at level 100, such as those you can purchase as reputation rewards at Ashran. Speaking of those, I don't recommend you purchase them until you have other followers at level 100, as simply having them may cause a lot of your offered missions to be much higher level than your other followers. (I reported this in beta, but as it still seems to be happening I assume it's intentional, or at least low priority.)

If you picked up a high level follower but most of your followers are lower level, you will see more difficult missions. Your high level follower can, to some extent, "carry" your lower level ones. This can sometimes be useful to level a follower quickly. A level 100 mission that offers 15,000 XP will only give 10% of that (1,500 XP) to a lower level follower, if you complete the mission, but that may be much more than a level-appropriate mission would grant. However it's not always easy to find a mission where you can slot in a lower level follower with a decent chance of success; I did use this to get level 98 and 99 followers up quickly.

Answer 2

do I ever get Garrison quests that will match their level

Yes, lower level missions will be generated.

Example: I have only level 98-100 followers and I get a new level 90 follower. At the first visit to the mission table, there probably won't be any level 90 missions. Tomorrow, there probably will be a level 90 mission as long as I have cleared some missions out.

Should I level them at the same rate?

If you want to successfully do group missions while leveling, you should prioritize leveling lower level followers and avoid leveling your top followers.

If you just want to rush to get the best missions unlocked, focus on leveling top followers(however, your odds of completing those missions will be low without a good team of followers).

What else should I know mechanically?

There are three possible ways for a follower to relate to a mission:

• Qualified (green): at level or better. Contributes fully to mission success and gets 100% of follower xp mission reward.
• Under qualified (orange) : 1 or 2 levels below the mission. Contributes less to mission success. Gets 50% of follower xp mission reward.
• Way under qualified (red) : more levels below the mission. Does not contribute to mission success. Gets 10% of follower xp mission reward.