What are the strengths and weaknesses of each follower?

Question

I've been playing mostly multiplayer so far, so I haven't had much experience with using followers. But now that I started a new character that I will be playing solo, I will surely need a follower to keep my squishy self out of harm's way. This has got me wondering: Which follower should I choose?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of the followers?

Which followers would you suggest for each of the character classes, and why?

Answer 1

Kormac the Templar

Strengths

• Good support character for higher difficulties, ranged classes, or while initially learning the game. Can heal and taunt from the player when they are at low health.
• Decent Tank, as he can be equipped with one handed weapons and a shield in addition to rings and amulet.
• Can provide good DPS through the use of items that give "Thorns" type damage on hit, as he will charge into the thick of combat and be hit by packs of enemies.
• Level 20 "Inspire" ability helps with resource regeneration for the player, leading to more opportunities for ability use

Weaknesses

• Susceptible to being surrounded and killed fairly easily if not geared properly. His charge in and hack style gets him killed a lot by high difficulty elites.
• Not a particularly good direct damage dealer

Suggested follower for: Demon Hunter, Wizard, Witch Doctor, though he is a very useful follower for any class at more difficult stages.

Suggested Gear Stats: Vitality, Strength, "Thorns" type damage on being struck in melee

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PLEASE NOTE: Follower stats are increased by a 2.5x multiplier on the 4 base stats, as denoted in this post. Therefore, it is worthwhile to give followers items that increase these stats primarily.

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Lyndon the Scoundrel

Strengths

• Good ranged support character for melee classes, has decent crowd control ability
• Offensively focused, can deal more direct damage than the Templar and Enchantress
• Good survival ability, high dexterity boosts his dodge chance and helps him avoid taking damage. Level 15 "Vanish" ability allows him to drop aggro and heal himself.
• Can provide a boost to critical hits using either of his Level 25 abilites "Anatomy" or "Hysteria" depending on preference
• Witty and humorous, making his dialogue more interesting than other followers

Weaknesses

• Not extremely durable if he gets cornered
• Crowd control abilities are inferior to those of the classes he is ideally supporting
• Like the Enchantress, is prone to pulling groups before a player is ready

Suggested follower for: Barbarian at early difficulties where Templar healing is not necessary, Monk at all difficulties.

Suggested Gear Stats: Dexterity, Vitality, +Damage, +AtkSpd, Crit%

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Eirena the Enchantress

Strengths

• Good ranged support character for melee classes, has excellent crowd control ability
• Good balance of support spells and damage dealing
• Can buff the attack speed of the hero
• Her Charm ability even works on elites (non-boss), which will completely incapacitate them for a short time or turn them against their allies. Very helpful on high difficulties.
• High intelligence allows good mitigation of ranged attacks

Weaknesses

• Not durable, but can generally get out of trouble with excellent crowd control ability
• Damage is inferior to Scoundrel, and can also be inferior to a properly geared Templar
• Like the Scoundrel, will pull sometimes before player is ready

Suggested follower for: Barbarian at early difficulties where Templar healing is not necessary, Monk at all difficulties, Witch Doctor at any difficulty.

Suggested Gear Stats: Intelligence, Vitality, +Damage, +AtkSpd

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Basically you should pick the follower to support your playstyle. I personally prefer to have the Templar following me just about everywhere as I can count on him for an emergency heal and taunt when I get in trouble, he also provides increased resource regeneration so I can use my skills more often. However, there are obvious benefits at lower difficulties to use the Scoundrel, where a tank type may not be as necessary and the direct DPS increase helps get through mobs quicker. The Enchantress can also be a good choice due to her CC ability in late difficulties where you don't want to get overwhelmed by numbers.

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Answer 2

I don't think any of the characters themselves have any weaknesses per se. They all just have certain advantages and lack the advantages of the other two, putting the player at a disadvantage in situations where he might need them.

It also seems like all three characters can fit the three archetypes (tank/support/dd) to some degree, although some are better at certain roles than others.

I think the advantages or roles can be roughly put like this:

Templar:

I think his major role as support (specifically in higher levels) wills be that of a tank. He can wear shields and even has "Taunt", a tank signature spell in most games, to keep enemies off of you, and can stun, slow down, and intercept enemies when they're attacking you.

Enchantress:

She is what I would consider something like "buffer" and classical "support" that you see in other games. She has spells to crowd-control enemies, keeping some of them from hurting you (she can hex a number of them, disorient a group and charm one to fight by your side).

Scoundrel:

He seems to be more like a classical DD support, perhaps to assist tanky characters that don't do tons of damage for themselves. He has CC abilities too, but these seem to be mostly to his benefit (he can blind enemies in front of him which is of course only useful for mobs that attack him already, and he can slow them down which will mostly help you to catch enemies who are running away). In addition to that, most of his abilities seem focused on increasing his own damage.

It has to be noted that all of them posses, at their highest skill level, some form of aura or buff for you and your follower that increases some stats. Therefor it would probably be wise to take these into consideration when picking a follower at higher levels:

The enchantress provides a 3% speed increase buff. The scoundrel provides a 3% increase in your critical strike chance. The Templar has class specific buffs which increase resource generation:

• 2 Mana regenerated per second for Witch Doctors
• 0.5 Arcane Power per second for Wizards
• 1 Hatred for Deamon Hunters
• 8% of all Fury generation increased for Barbarians
• 12% of all Spirit generation increased for Monks

Choosing one of these buffs is then a matter of your class, and skill build.

I also need to mention that in higher difficulties other attributes, such as health and dodge, probably play a larger role not only for the Templar (like one might assume since he seems tanky), but also for the Scoundrel and the Enchantress.

The monsters on those difficulties hit very hard. Often enough it will be very difficult to keep yourself alive, which means that it will usually look much more grim for your followers. Since my personal guess is that the focus of use for followers in higher difficulties will be their crowd-controlling abilities, since they most likely won't be able to keep up in damage, having them survive for a longer time (thus giving them a lot of Vitality gear) will probably become pretty important.

Finally: Which follower should you choose for your class? Needless to say, this will depend on your playstyle. A barbarian that is very focused on dealing maximum damage, and who doesn't use any of his life regenerating abilities or who only has few Vitality points on his gear, might make good use of a tanky Templar. In the same way, a tanky Barbarian might get much more out of damage-centric Scoundrel builds.

It's also possible that the buffs, later in the game, will play fairly large rolls, since e.g. 3% more chance to do critical strikes can have tremendous consequences on overall damage when your Strength, Intelligence or Dexterty values (for the respective classes that need them) are very high already, although this will probably end up being theory-crafted a lot by hardcore endgame-players.

However, I think it's indeed possible to look at what you're character is doing all the time and determine a smart choice for your follower. I would personally do it like this:

• Do you deal lots of damage and have no life? Tanky Templar
• Do you take lots of damage and have a high amount of life points, but only do medium amounts of damage? Damage Scoundrel
• Are you good, but not amazing at both? Crowd-Control Enchantress.

These are only personal suggestions however. One thing that Blizzard has, in my opinion, done very well in this game is to make a variety of different builds and setups very viable even in higher difficulties.